Why you shouldn’t miss this!
Why you shouldn’t miss this!
A co-commission from NYU Skirball and The Walker Art Center, Open Machine is the newest work from acclaimed choreographers Rashaun Mitchell + Silas Riener. This World Premiere extends experiments with dance for cameras and screens in earlier works like TESSERACT (2017) and combines recent group practices of uncertainty.
ABOUT THE WORK
ABOUT THE WORK
Audiovisual description, projected images, and virtual renderings amplify and react to the unfolding dance. Technological and human paths converge into a dynamic choreography for the stage that imagines an Artificial Intelligence lovingly programmed by experimental dance.
The cast of 9 move with precision and abandon, and grapple with responsive choice-making systems. As they synthesize disparate modes of working, they reflect the social and spatial structures that shape our daily lives.
- Fri Sep 19 – Sat Sep 20, 2025
- 7:30 PM
- $42-$57
Run Time
This performance is approximately 65 minutes.
Advisory
PRODUCTION GUIDANCE This production contains flickering lights and disorienting video.
Gallery
Gallery
Photo by Greg Kessler
Photo by Greg Kessler
Photo by Greg Kessler
Rashaun Mitchell + Silas Riener, OPEN MACHINE rehearsal, Al Held Foundation, July 17, 2025. Picture by James Autery, courtesy River Valley Arts Collective.
Rashaun Mitchell + Silas Riener, OPEN MACHINE preview, Al Held Foundation, July 20, 2025. Image by James Autery, courtesy River Valley Arts Collective.
Rashaun Mitchell + Silas Riener, OPEN MACHINE preview, Al Held Foundation, July 20, 2025. Image by James Autery, courtesy River Valley Arts Collective.
Trailer
Trailer
The artists
The artists
Rashaun Mitchell
Rashaun Mitchell is a 2014 Guggenheim Fellow and recipient of the 2012 New York Dance and Performance (“Bessie”) Award for Outstanding Emerging Choreographer. With his ongoing collaborator, Silas Riener, he received a 2014 City Center Choreographic Fellowship, was selected for LMCC’s inaugural Extended Life Development Program, and was a Wellesley College Artist in Residence. Other awards include a 2007 Princess Grace Award: Dance Fellowship, a 2013 Foundation for Contemporary Art “Grant to Artist,” and a 2011 New York Dance and Performance (“Bessie”) Award for “Sustained achievement in the work of Merce Cunningham 2004- 2012.” He is a Cunningham Trustee and licensed stager of the repertory. Mitchell is currently the Associate Chair of the Dance department at NYU Tisch School of the Arts.
Silas Riener
Silas Riener is a graduate of Princeton University and NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and was a member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company from 2007-2012. He has performed with Chantal Yzermans, Takehiro Ueyama, Christopher Williams, Joanna Kotze, Jonah Bokaer, Rebecca Lazier, Tere O’Connor, Wally Cardona, and Kota Yamazaki. His own work has been curated at EMPAC, The Chocolate Factory, LMCC’s River to River Festival, The Serpentine Pavillion, and Danspace Project. His ongoing collaboration with artist Martha Friedman has resulted in works at Andrea Rosen Gallery 2, The Henry Museum, Locust Projects Miami, and Jessica Silverman Gallery.
Support
Support
The presentation of Open Machine by Rashaun Mitchell + Silas Riener was made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Foundation and the Mellon Foundation.
Additional funding was provided by The Samuel Scripps Foundation, The Princess Grace Foundation, The New York State Council on the Arts, Creative Capital, the Harkness Foundation for Dance, and the University of Michigan’s Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR) and Stamps School of Art & Design. Open Machine received residency and creation support at Headlands Center for the Arts, The Barnard Movement Lab, and The Bogliasco Foundation underwritten by Van Cleef & Arpels.
NYU Skirball’s programs are made possible in part with support from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; and the Howard Gilman Foundation; Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels; Culture Ireland; The Shubert Foundation; Collins Building Services; General Delegation of the Government of Flanders to the USA; Goethe Institut New York with support from the Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany; Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs; New England Foundation for the Arts; Harkness Foundation for Dance; and Marta Heflin Foundation; as well as our valued donors through memberships, commissioning, and Allies for Arts Access Fund support.
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Study Guides
Rashaun Mitchell + Silas Riener: Open Machine
Open Machine – Rashaun Mitchell + Silas Reiner
Rashaun Mitchell + Silas Riener are New York-based dance artists. Their work involves the building of collaborative worlds through improvisational techniques, digital technologies, and material construction.
Learn More