Culture Lab LIC's New Works Festival 2025 will showcase the year-long, original work of our four 2025 Emergence Artists in Residence! Featuring four separate works by Emily Batsford, Kizuna Dance, Obremski/Works, Forager Theatre Company
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2025 Emergence Artist
Residency Program
Culture Lab LIC presents our 2025 Emergence Artists in Residence!
These diverse and exceptional performance based artists will be a part of Culture Lab LIC's New Works Festival starting November, 2025.
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Culture Lab LIC's Emergence Artist Residency is a developmental performing arts program geared toward the support and creation of new work.
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Started in 2021 by former Director of Performing Arts, Tana Sirois, the Emergence Artist Residence began as a desire to offer free rehearsal and performance space to performing artists. Since its conception the residency has been further developed and led by Artistic Director Tess Howsam expanding the program to include peer review sessions during the artists year and culminating in Culture Lab LIC’s New Works Festival November and December.
Obremski/Works presents
Coloratura US
Part of Culture Lab LIC's New Works Festival 2025 collection
Collaboration of multidisciplinary AAPI artists' "Coloratura US", addressing wartime anxieties, family, and the heartbreak of dreams.
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Friday, November 07, 8pm
Saturday, November 8, 3pm & 7pm
Sunday, November 9, 3pm & 7pm
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Coloratura US is a world premiere evening by Founder, Director, and Choreographer Jesse Obremski to be premiered the first week of November at Culture Lab LIC during their Emerging Artist Residency program.
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This site-specific evening-length work will highlight a colorful array of human emotions, connections, and injustices during war, wartime anxiety, and the heartbreak of dreams, showcasing that AAPI artists can advocate for more than just AAPI subjects.
The work will involve a partnership with Compound Playground to incorporate live music by four musicians with Jesse Obremski as the vocalist, and all of the music being composed by Coldplay.
Joined by visual artists, Tsai-Hsi Hung and Midori Furutate, Coloratura US is a world-building and life-affirming juxtaposition to our current global climate.
Obremski/Works
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Founded by Jesse Obremski and associate founders on July 28, 2018, and given deepened purpose after the spate of hate crimes against the AAPI community in 2021, Obremski/Works (O/W) is a hub for Jesse Obremski’s choreography, and a internationally presented contemporary ensemble and community of AAPI equity-minded individuals, with a deep dedication to life-affirming/why-driven performance art, support fellowships, and AAPI culture.
Obremski/Works continues to enhance its programming and artistic outreach toward the expanded presence and artistry of AAPI individuals and communities and was described as “more than a dance company, it is a vehicle for social change” and a company that “already displays a signature style and emotional resonance” by The Dance Enthusiast.
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Cumulo: A Workshop Run
Part of Culture Lab LIC's New Works Festival 2025 Collection
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Puppet protagonist Plum freefalls through the sky, encountering weather and whimsy along the way. A nonverbal puppet piece by Emily Batsford.
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Whimsical and violent, Cumulo is a puppet allegory that examines how we reclaim autonomy when life sends us into freefall. Protagonist Plum plummets through a skyscape of sentient cotton candy clouds and creatures in an immersive journey of embodied self-transformation, supported by a cotton candy set embedded with fans and a large-scale mobile of floating cloud islands.
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Co-produced by Concrete Temple Theatre. ​This workshop run of Cumulo was developed during Culture Lab LIC’s 2025 Emergence Artist Residency.
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Thursday, November 13
7pm doors, 7:30pm curtain
Friday, November 14
7pm doors, 7:30pm curtain
Saturday, November 15
1:30pm doors, 2pm curtain
7pm doors, 7:30pm curtain
Sunday, November 16
1:30pm doors, 2pm curtain
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Performances run 50 minutes, with no intermission.
Emily Batsford
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Emily Batsford (they/them) is an NYC-based puppeteer and theater maker. Their artistry prioritizes inclusion & accessibility, and takes inspiration from immersive and physical theater practices, puppetry, and experimental forms.
As a passionate theater deviser, Emily has also participated in countless work-in-progress showings at incubators like PuppetBlok, Concrete BOOM, Special Effects Festival, Object Movement Festival, LabWorks, The Tank, and the Henson Carriage House. When not performing, Emily is a Teaching Artist for Child's Play NY, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, New York City Children's Theater, and CO/LAB Theater Group.
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Kizuna Dance presents
Bread & Circus
Part of Culture Lab LIC's New Works Festival 2025 collection
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Thursday, November 20, 7:30pm
Friday, November 21, 4pm
Saturday, November 22, 7:30pm
Sunday, November 23, 7:30pm
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A blended dance-form performance that questions the allure of escapism through dynamic dream-inspired sequences.
Inspired in part by the vivid worlds within the works of Seijun Suzuki, Oscar Oiwa, and Tomokazu Matsuyama, Kizuna Dance’s BREAD & CIRCUS questions the allure of escapism by using dreams as a lens for both self-discovery and for confrontations with reality/the status quo. The company’s idiosyncratic mix of contemporary floorwork, streetdance styles, and capoeira hyperphysicalizes the surreal progression of dreams — from familiar yet uncanny beginnings to vibrant, chaotic twists and turns — and investigates the paradox of boundless imagination constrained by individual perspective.
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Kizuna Dance is an international repertory ensemble that blends streetdance with contemporary floorwork to create dances that celebrate Japanese culture. The company has performed nationally and internationally at prestigious institutions and festivals such as Kobe College, The Japan Society, Performatica, the Let’s Dance International Frontiers Festival, Middlebury Institute for International Studies, and La Halle aux Grains. With more than 20 years of Japanese language study, award-winning Artistic Director Cameron McKinney has received fellowships from the U.S.-Japan Friendship Commission, The School at Jacob’s Pillow, Princeton University, the Alvin Ailey New Directions Lab, and the Asian Cultural Council. He has presented work and taught in over 20 states and in Mexico, Germany, Belgium, Spain, Japan, Ireland, France, and the UK. In 2020, he performed his original choreography alongside Sayo Homma (Dance Barbizon) in Tokyo, Japan in the U.S. Ambassador's Residence. He has received over 30 commissions from institutions across the U.S. and abroad, including The Ailey School, Marymount Manhattan College, Princeton University, Montclair University, three times from the Let’s Dance International Frontiers Festival (UK), Slippery Rock University, Swarthmore College, and Brigham Young University, among numerous others. He has been on faculty at Montclair State University and NYU Tisch, among other universities and festivals. Each year, he organizes Kizuna Dance’s Open Intensive, a week of day-long intensives made entirely free for all participants.
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Performers include Isabele Rosso, Lesar Stepputat, Juan Ospina, Emily Aslin, Rachel Calabrese, and Eric Blovits
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This performance and creation of this work has been supported through a Peridance Center Artist Residency.
​Kizuna Dance
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​Kizuna Dance uses a blend of street dance and contemporary floorwork to connect the American and Japanese cultures through the performing arts. The company has performed nationally and internationally at prestigious institutions and festivals such as the U.S. Ambassador’s Residence in Tokyo, Kobe College, The Japan Society, Performatica, the Let's Dance International Frontiers Festival, and Middlebury College's Japanese Language School, among many others.
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With 19 years of Japanese language study, Kizuna Dance Artistic Director Cameron McKinney has received fellowships from the U.S.-Japan Friendship Commission, The School at Jacob’s Pillow, the Asian Cultural Council, Princeton University, and the Alvin Ailey Foundation. He has also presented work and taught in twenty states and in Mexico, Germany, Belgium, France, and the UK.
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8min20sec
A Collection of Musical Reckonings
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Part of Culture Lab LIC's New Works Festival 2025 collection
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Thursday, December 4, 7:30pm
Friday, December 5, 7:30pm
Saturday, December 6, 3pm & 7:30pm
Sunday, December 7, 3pm & 7:30pm
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It takes 8 minutes and 20 seconds for the sun's light to reach our Earth. 8min20sec is a collection of musical reckonings, each beginning when the sun is announced to have gone out. We witness different reactions to the world-ending news, but each story begs the question: how can we hold on when we have to let go?
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Directed by award-winner Jennie Hughes and co-produced by Forager Theatre Company.
Forager Theatre Company
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Forager Theatre Company is an independent nonprofit organization that builds spirited, joyful, holistic experiences from the objects, spaces, viewpoints, contributions, and people it can gather from any and everywhere. Founded in 2022 by Jennie Hughes, Iris Rodrigo and Alex Parrish, Forager proudly brings freaks, geeks, and drama queens together for unforgettable experiences. Artists with Forager participate in any of its four branches or can build a pathway through them, beginning with compassionate donation-based education donation-based education (Take Root) and productive content development (Unearth), then expanding into diverse one-night experiences (Blossom) and innovative mainstage productions (Harvest). “Art starts with what you have.”
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