Performance Space New York, formerly known as Performance Space 122 or P.S. 122, is a nonprofit arts organization founded in 1980 in the East Village of Manhattan in an abandoned public school building.
- Venue
- Performance Space New York
- Town
- Manhattan, US
Performance Space New York, formerly known as Performance Space 122 or P.S. 122, is a nonprofit arts organization founded in 1980 in the East Village of Manhattan in an abandoned public school building. The former elementary school, Public School 122, was abandoned and in disrepair, until a group of visual artists began to use the old classrooms for studios. In 1979, choreographer Charles Moulton began holding rehearsals and workshops in the second-floor cafeteria and invited fellow performers Charles Dennis, John Bernd, and Peter Rose to collaborate in the administration and use of the space. Tim Miller, John Bernd's lover, later joined the four in launching P.S. 122. One of the space's earliest offerings created by one of the founders, choreographer Stephanie Skura, was Open Movement, a weekly, non-performative, improvisational dance event. Early participants in Open Movement included artists Ishmael Houston-Jones, Yvonne Meier, Jennifer Monson, Yoshiko Chuma, Jennifer Miller, Jeremy Nelson, and Christopher Knowles, among other dance and performance artists. P.S. 122 began presenting shows in 1980 with the first "Avant-Garde-Arama", a multidisciplinary showcase, and published its first complete calendar of performances, classes, and workshops. The first full-length public play or performance presented in P.S. 122 in October 1980 was a play by Robin Epstein and Dorothy Cantwell's experimental women's theater company, More Fire! Productions. Mark Russell was hired as the artistic director in 1983 to curate and focus the overall programming, expanding it from a rental house into a year-round presenting facility. P.S. 122 doubled its programming in 1986 when it converted the old gym on the first floor into a performance space to be used for extended runs of small theater groups and as a site for community meetings. Russell departed in 2004. Vallejo Gantner succeeded him in the position with the 2005-2006 season through 2017 and notably created Performance Space 122's