DC EMPTY
Dallas Contemporary’s time-based programming series features regional artists and collaborators activating vacant gallery spaces with short-term interventions.
COMING SOON
Danielle Georgiou Dance Group
Friday, 11 July 2025
The Danielle Georgiou Dance Group (DGDG) is an ensemble-based, collaborative dance theatre group that works within the ideas of contemporary dance and physical theatre. DGDG explores the experimental and avant-garde nature of dance and theatre in their creations of original dance musicals and dance plays. The artists of DGDG constantly strive to transform themselves, either in image or skill. They work to create pieces that question what dance is and can be while pushing the boundaries of theatre. The Danielle Georgiou Dance Group was selected as Best Dance Troupe by the Dallas Observer for 2020, 2017, and 2015 and Best Dance Company for 2016 by the readers of D Magazine. As Artistic Director Danielle Georgiou says, “Technique is your foundation—not your identity.”
PAST
Bombshell Dance Project: The Dallas Creation Lab
Monday, 22 July – Saturday, 27 July 27 2024
Bombshell Dance Project presented the first installment of the Dallas Creation Lab as part of the museum’s DC EMPTY programming. Curated by Bombshell’s Emily Bernet and Taylor Rodman, the project included a week of ideation at DC, culminating in a one-night-only performance. Visitors were invited to step into the creative process of seven Dallas-based artists during regular museum hours, and joined us on Saturday, July 27 to experience the result of their collaborative work. Following the performance, guests stayed for a discussion with the artists, along with sips, bites, and jams by Jeff Kinsey.
About Bombshell Dance Project
Bombshell Dance Project is a dance theatre company based in Dallas, Texas. The company creates innovative, audience-driven experiences with the goal of sparking community conversations and bringing audiences closer to dance.
Christian Cruz: Breaking Backs: A Solo Exhibition of Living Portraits
Saturday, 13 January 2024
Breaking Backs: A Solo Exhibition of Living Portraits is a one-day solo installation created by conceptual and multimedia artist and educator Christian Cruz, presented as part of Dallas Contemporary’s DC EMPTY programming. The installation features three durational performances spanning seven hours, presented during the museum’s open hours from 11:00 AM to 6:00 PM. A reception follows the conclusion of the performances.
The day-long series of performances unfolds through the efforts of three compensated performers, each engaged in acts of labor throughout the gallery space. Breaking Backs critically explores tools of empowerment and resistance, encompassing hybridization, juxtaposition, and integration tactics. The installation, crafted in rasquachismo style—a term commonly used in Chicano and Mexican art movements to describe working-class aesthetics that make the most from the least—serves as a symbolic allegory for struggle, hope, and grief.
Breaking Backs: A Solo Exhibition of Living Portraits is supported by the City of Dallas Office of Arts & Culture and the National Endowment for the Arts through the “Culture of Value” grant.
About Christian Cruz
Christian Cruz (b. Dallas, 1989) is an independent educator, writer, and award-winning multimedia artist whose practice encompasses installation, sculpture, and performance within a visual arts context. Her performances have been presented nationally and internationally in galleries, museums, universities, festivals, and public spaces. Cruz earned a Bachelor of Arts in Visual Arts Management from Columbia College Chicago and is currently pursuing studies in Visual and Performing Arts at the University of Texas at Dallas. She is an artist-in-residence at The Cedars Union arts incubator. In addition to being a mother and a survivor, she is the founder of the Artist Mama Fund and the Dallas Performance Art Index.
Agora Artists: The Eldert Lofts
Friday, 03 March 2023
The Eldert Lofts is a collaborative dance work with creative direction by co-founders Lauren Kravitz and Avery-Jai Andrews.
Ever wonder about those strange noises coming from the apartment upstairs? Waltz through the hallways of The Eldert Lofts as a unique cast of characters explores the intimacies and intricacies of community. Take a peek behind closed doors to catch that familiar fight in the kitchen, or hide among the curtains as the woman downstairs dances alone. This original movement-based work presents a series of vignettes following the stories of five tenants as they investigate their relationships, exploring themes of connection, isolation, and identity.
Organized by Dallas Contemporary’s Communications and Graphic Design Manager, Alexandra Hulsey.
Created by Avery-Jai Andrews and Lauren Kravitz in collaboration with Cami Holman, Jennifer Mabus, and Omar Humphrey.
Excerpts performed by: Avery-Jai Andrews, Cami Holman, Jennifer Mabus, and Lauren Kravitz
Original sound by: Brittany Padilla
Costumes by: Kelsey Olver
Set by: Tori Reynolds
Lighting by: Ryan Burkle
About Agora Artists
Agora Artists is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization focused on providing programming and resources that contribute to a supportive ecosystem for dance in the Dallas–Fort Worth area. Through workshops, forums, and other creative assets, Agora Artists aims to help individual dancers maintain an active and sustainable creative life. Led by Booker T. Washington HSPVA and NYU Tisch School of the Arts alumni Avery-Jai Andrews and Lauren Kravitz, the organization collaborates with local and regional movement artists to cultivate new opportunities for dance in DFW. Agora Artists hosts much of its programming at Arts Mission Oak Cliff and has partnered with other local arts spaces—including Odyssey Studios and Sweet Pass Sculpture Park—to offer dance programming in non-traditional spaces.
Kasey Short: The Tuna, the Whale, the Hillbilly and the Subterranean
Saturday, 18 February 2023
Kasey Short: The Tuna, the Whale, the Hillbilly and the Subterranean is an immersive, interactive multimedia installation that challenges relationships between humans and animals, the environment and technology. The project integrates elements from the artist’s family history, mythology, and objects inspired by trauma, popular culture, poetry, and theater.
The experience is delivered through new media methods, including video, performance, sound, sculpture, and augmented reality.
Organized by Dallas Contemporary’s Louis L. Borick Foundation Renaissance Intern, Seth Tarango.
About Kasey Short
Kasey Short is an interdisciplinary artist working in installation, performance, sculpture, and new media, with an interest in expanded media through immersive ecosystems. His work explores intersections of art and technology, urbanism, ecology, video, sound, and site-specific exchanges through time-based and interactive platforms.
Short holds an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania and a BFA from Texas State University. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, and he has participated in residencies including Vermont Studio Center; ACRE Projects, Chicago, IL; and AVL-Mundo Foundation, Rotterdam, NL. He is a recipient of the Charles Addams Memorial Prize, the Vermont Studio Center Scholarship Award, the Dallas Chamber of Commerce Emerging Artist Award, and a grant from the Houston Arts Alliance Support for Artists and Creative Individuals.
College Night + DC EMPTY: Anti-Avant Garde Avant Garde Artist Collective
Saturday, 04 February 2023
College Night featured an after-hours experience at the museum with a new DC EMPTY performance by UNT-based arts collective Anti-Avant Garde Avant Garde Artist Collective, alongside gallery exhibitions by Shepard Fairey and Gabrielle Goliath, and art-making activities with local artists.
Anti-Avant Garde Avant Garde Artist Collective presented the piece Cooperative Conundrum, which explores notions of community and methods of gathering and connectivity through an allegorical performance of movements, conflicts, compromises, and synchronicities. Utilizing a spool of yarn, members of the collective embodied archetypal figures—providers, weavers, community—and engaged in a connective act that exhausted collective resources.
Colton James White: They Love Me, They Love Me Not
Sunday, 08 January 2023
For the second presentation of DC EMPTY, Dallas artist Colton James White presented They Love Me, They Love Me Not, a 5-hour durational performance piece that explored themes of uncertainty, infatuation, delusion, and the challenges of personal relationships—monogamy/polyamory and platonic/romantic. Centered on a copious mound of flowers, White performed a series of repetitive actions, aiming to activate an atmosphere of rococo neo-romance and create an overwhelming dramatic tone within the space. The performance was organized by Dallas Contemporary’s Louis L. Borick Foundation Renaissance Intern, Seth Tarango.
About the Artist
Colton James White is a fake pop-star, 28-year-old queer artist from Dallas, Texas, with a BFA in New Media Studio Arts from the University of North Texas. Their work primarily focuses on durational and interactive performance art, but it also extends into installation, photography, and video. White’s work explores themes of queerness, sexual frustration, intimacy, and persona, all presented through a glittery lens of “70’s glamour wanting to be grit.” Follow on Instagram @juliaroberts275.
Kitchen Sink Performa
Saturday, 03 December 2022
The first project to launch DC EMPTY was Kitchen Sink Performa, a multimedia happening curated in collaboration with artist and University of North Texas professor Kasey Short and Dallas Contemporary’s Louis L. Borick Foundation Renaissance Intern Seth Tarango. Showcasing a group of artists working in performance and time-based mediums, Kitchen Sink Performa served as a platform for exploring performative and reactive aesthetics across performance art, performative computing, experimental cinema, and video art. The project examined genres such as narrativity, abstraction, artificial intelligence, identity, and gender.
Participating artists included:
Brandy Michele Adams (@brandymicheleadams), in collaboration with Lynné Bowman Cravens (@lynnebowmancravens) and Julie McKendrick (@momwow); Gren Bee (@itmegrenbee); Melanie Clemmons (@auraquartz), in collaboration with Zak Loyd; Diana Gonzalez (@dimagogo.art); Zak Loyd (@zakloyd); Connor Mizell (@connor.mizell); Erick Ortiz (@vive_somnia); Teresita Navidad (@sourmoonjuice); Kamyrn Robins (@okamco); Kasey Short (@sirdukeofkasey); and Colin Stokes (@colinstokes22).