KASHIA KANCEY
THE CLOSTIES VARIETY HOUR
Co-presented with Live Artery | New York Live Arts
RUNTIME: 80 minutes with no intermission.
This performance contains the use of water based haze and strobe lighting.
Flyer by Cristina Moya-Palacios. Photo by Kyla Thomas
Created by Kashia Kancey in collaboration with the cast
Directed by Kashia Kancey
Starring: Kashia Kancey, Khandis Merritt, Channce Williams, and Morgan Gregory
Ensemble: Alondra Balbuena, Kyla Thomas, Cristina Moya-
Palacios, Lakeria Robinson, Nayah Merisier, Johnny Matthews
Lighting Design: Connor Sale
Sound Board Operator & Director of Production: Anna Wotring
Stage Manager: Sabrina Canas
Music Editing: Cristina Moya-Palacios
Costumes: Kashia Kancey and cast
Dramaturg: Cristina Moya-Palacios
The Closties Variety Hour is a multi-disciplinary production that follows four friends as they showcase their lives in the form of a televised variety show. This work serves as a journal entry written in hot pink gel pen as the cast transform into their deepest desires, allowing viewers into an expansive world of dreaming while reflecting on shared memories and interests they hold closely. Delving into themes of friendship, childlike wonder, self-indulgence, and radical black joy, these friends embody and immerse themselves inside an experimental landscape filled with transcendence, discovery, and pleasure. The Closties Variety Hour is an extravagant evening that morphs realities and invites audiences into the souls of the characters, experiencing the way they all relate to themselves and one another. This work explores the many ways we can and do exist as individuals and the importance of community, while also celebrating our complex and multi-faceted natures.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
KASHIA KANCEY is a Miami-born performer and choreographer, who earned her BFA in Dance from New World School of the Arts. Some of her choreographic history includes having work presented in The Carnival Studio Theater at the Adrienne Arsht Center through commissions by Peter London Global Dance Company. She has also had work presented throughout NYC at CreateART Performance, Triskelion Arts and Movement Research at Judson Church. Kashia has performed in spaces like Perez Art Museum Miami, South-Miami Dade Cultural Arts Center, Dance Place DC, the American Dance Festival, The Yard, and New York Live Arts. Kashia has had the pleasure of working with Rosie Herrera Dance Theatre, Adele Myers and Dancers, and Abby Z and the New Utility. She has also worked with artists like Marcella Lewis, Donna Uchizono, Tendayi Kuumba, and Annie-B Parson. Kashia was most recently an apprentice with Urban Bush Women and is a company member with David Dorfman Dance. Kashia is based in Brooklyn, NY.
Kashia has been grateful to have been a recipient of residencies like Gallim Moving Artist (2023), Triskelion Arts SPLIT BILL 42 (2024), and Baryshnikov Arts Center (2024). She is currently the 2025 Triskelion Arts Fellow and is a 2025 Fresh Tracks Residency Artist with New York Live Arts.
kashiakancey.com | @kashiakancey | SUPPORT
CHANNCE WILLIAMS is a freelance artist living in New York, born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. He is interested in exploring ways of presenting narratives regarding memory, longing, and the accumulation of self via experience. His practice encompasses various elements of performance, poetry, and visual media. He began his training at the Center of Creative Arts and continued his studies at Point Park University, where he received his BFA in Dance in 2020. Throughout his endeavors he has performed both new and restaged works by Kyle Abraham, Hannah Garner, Sidra Bell, Martha Nichols, Aszure Barton, and Maxine Doyle, among others. Since graduating he has worked with GroundWorks DanceTheater, Sidra Bell Dance New York, and GALLIM Dance Company, along with a cohort of independent choreographers including Slowdanger, Jaka Pearl Porter, and Demetris Charalambous.
MORGAN GREGORY (b. Richmond, Virginia) is a transdisciplinary performer/choreographer/… who focuses on reimagining Afro-diasporic imagery through a futurist lens. In her choreographic and performance work development, she constantly explores ancestral importance, and in this continuous effort of understanding, she dreams within intersectional identities. Morgan is a graduate of the Ailey/Fordham BFA program and was honored as a Denise Jefferson Memorial Scholar, majoring in African and African American Studies and Dance. Morgan has toured with Julien Creuzet/Ana Pi on a multi-disciplinary project, Algorithm Ocean True Blood Moves, to the Dakar Biennale, National Opera & Ballet, Brown University, and Performa Biennale. In 2024, she was named a recipient of the LiftOff Residency with New Dance Alliance, a fellow with The Performance Project-University Settlement, and a BAX Space Residency Grantee. She has premiered performances at Mark Morris, Triskelion Arts, Movement Research at Judson Church, Arts on Site, University Settlement, and more, all of which range from proscenium-situated to community-centered cyphers and video installations.
KHANDIS MERRITT is a writer and performer based in Brooklyn, NY. She is grateful to be creating and performing with her best friends.
KYLA THOMAS is Brooklyn-based performer and movement director. Originally from Miami, she graduated with her BFA from New World School of the Arts. While in Miami, Kyla has performed works of choreographers such as Robert Battle, Laura Murphy, Kashia Kancey and others. Spaces she has moved in include the Perez Art Museum, Olympia Theatre and community-ran art galleries. She is currently working as a freelance performer, movement director and stylist. Some of her work includes companies such as Nike, Rebel Magazine, Kulfi, Timberland, and more. One of her active goals in her career has been to help continue to bridge the gap between the dance, fashion and film worlds.
ALONDRA BALBUENA, born in New York City raised in Miami, Florida is a freelance dance artist working to deepen her understanding of human connection through performance based movement. Currently she is based in Brooklyn, NY.
CRISTINA MOYA-PALACIOS is a Venezuelan-born, Miami-raised artist with a BFA from New World School of the Arts. She’s had the pleasure of working with Adele Myers and Dancers, Rosie Herrera Dance Theatre, and Jamar Roberts. Upon moving to Brooklyn, she’s taken on more collaborative roles with peers and is currently with Company [REDACTED], Skyla Schreter Dance, and most recently RudduR Dance. Beyond performing, Cristina enjoys crafting sonic scores for fellow artists and choreographing her own works.
LAKERIA ROBINSON, born and raised in Miami, Florida, is a BFA graduate student from New World School of the Arts College. She is trained in ballet, modern, Jazz and Afro dance techniques. Lakeria is an alumni of the School at Jacob’s Pillow Dunham Legacy and Afro Latin intensives. Having been a part of programs like Archcore40 and the Overtown Youth Center, she is also well versed in commercial styles like Hip Hop, Jazz Funk and Musical Theater. Lakeria has had the opportunity to perform works by Tina Santos, Robert Battle, Ronald K. Brown, Darshan Singh Bhuller, and several others who influence her creative process today.
NAYAH MERISIER is a Haitian-American Dance Artist from South Florida with a BFA from New World School of the Arts (NWSA). She continued her training with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre School, Jacobs’ Pillow Dance Festival, and the Joffrey Ballet School. Aside from her own choreographic experience, she is trained ballet, jazz, contemporary, west African, Afro-Caribbean, and commercial dance styles. Nayah strives to provide representation and inspiration for young artists of color, and shed light on the Haitian-American experience through dance.
JOHNNY MATHEWS III (he/they) is a Brooklyn-based dancer and choreographer from Madison, Wisconsin. Johnny is a company member with Valerie Green/Dance Entropy, Daniel Gwirtzman Dance Company, and KAŌS Dance Collective. Johnny is a 2026 CPR Artist-in-Residence and has been in residence at The Residency Project @ 280 in Pasadena, CA, and the Digging In Group Residency at Green Space in Queens, NY. He holds a BFA in Dance from the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor. @johnnymathews3
CONNOR SALE is a Brooklyn-based Lighting Designer and the Resident Lighting Designer of Triskelion Arts. Recent collaborations include: The Suite; to begin with no end; ENUF; The Dybbuk Part Two (Triskelion Arts), Das Ersatz (The Brick), MEOW! (Exponential Festival), This is How We Remember (Triskelion Arts, Philly Fringe), But, Soft and What Light (PAGEANT), the body || dust (Gibney), and Sea Change (Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago). He tours internationally with Akram Khan’s Gigenis and with the production of Pina Bausch’s The Rite of Spring that Sadler's Wells and École des Sables are producing. He’s interested in using the temporary nature of light to make people more active in space. More of his work can be found at connorsale.com and at @connorsalelight.
ANNA WOTRING is a community-minded dance artist, designer, and production stage manager, dedicated to the practice of collaborative leadership. As the Director of Production at Triskelion Arts, Wotring shapes programming that makes production design accessible to movement artists, whether they're starting to explore an idea or deep in research. Trisk serves as a home, allowing artists to materialize their production vision and find imaginative pathways around and through tangible possibility. Wotring holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance from the Five College Dance Department in Western Massachusetts. She has had the privilege of working with a wide range of dance artists and organizations, including Alvin Ailey Studios, Annie Heath, Attack Theater, Ballet Des Ameriques, BalletNext, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, the Dance Conservatory of Pittsburgh, Dance Place, H2O Contemporary Dance, Jennifer Nugent, Lauren Horn, Monica Bill Barnes & Company, New York Live Arts, the Pillow Project, Prayers of the People, RoseAnne Spradlin, Scapegoat Garden, slowdanger, Time Lapse Dance, and many others. Wotring is deeply grateful and honored to be working, imagining, and making magic with the Trisk team and community.
NEW YORK LIVE ARTS
The dynamic Live Artery festival at New York Live Arts is one of NYC's most attended dance-specific platforms during the annual presenter conference season, featuring resident commissioned artists and curated guests. New York Live Arts, guided by the leadership of visionary artist Bill T. Jones, collaborates with boundary pushing artists, advocates for their vision, and fortifies a creative future.
TRISKELION ARTS, lovingly referred to as Trisk, is a nonprofit organization, live performance venue, and rehearsal space in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, offering NYC-based dance and movement artists high-quality, sustainable opportunities to create and present work. Trisk partners with artists creating trailblazing work that broadens the cultural dialogue and elevates its community’s many voices and perspectives. Trisk is a home for artists and audiences to connect, to make art happen, to make magic. Trisk presents artists practicing, crafting, mining, experimenting, speaking up, and speaking out.
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