SUMMER PERFORMANCE SERIES 2026
LIVING INSTALLATION: DESIRE PATH, BY NICOLE ROSSI
CHOREOGRAPHIC WORK: MEANWHILE, BY ANDREW SKEELS + PERFORMED BY LLOYD KNIGHT + JACQUELIN HARRIS
THU. JUNE 25, 7:30PM (RSVP)
THU. JULY 9, 7PM (RSVP)
SAT. JULY 25, 3PM (RSVP)
SAT. AUGUST 8, TIMING TBD (RSVP)
INSTALLATION ON VIEW JUNE 26 — AUGUST 8, 2026
The fifth edition of CARVALHO’s acclaimed performance series opens with a living meadow, a verdant expanse sculpted by Nicole Rossi encasing the latest choreographic work by international choreographer Andrew Skeels. Titled Meanwhile and performed by two of contemporary dance’s most distinctive artists, Lloyd Knight (Principal with Martha Graham Dance Company) and Jacquelin Harris (of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater), the collaborative work brings choreography and landscape into dialogue, tracing parallel temporalities unfolding across bodies and environments. The installation opens the evening of June 25, from 6 – 9PM, with the debut performance at 7:30PM.
Rossi's installation, Desire Path, recreates the natural world in miniature within the gallery, a composition of reeds, willows, verbena, hare's tail, and steel grasses. Taking its title from the informal routes forged through repeated passage in nature, the work considers how instinct, attraction, and need are made visible through repetition—movement becomes trace and intention finds form. As Knight and Harris return to the space across the six-week series, choreography and environment evolve in tandem. Here, the relationship between the performers and the landscape is not illustrative, but reciprocal—two distinct yet interconnected rhythms. Each undergoes its own process of change, neither serving as backdrop nor subject to the other.
Through the series, time becomes perceptible not as an abstract measure, but as a material force acting upon bodies, relationships, and living systems alike. Drawing from a relationship spanning two decades, Skeels' choreography moves through a fluid and intricately woven language, continually threading the performers together as their points of connection shift. As phrases return in altered forms, the duet reveals itself less as a narrative arc than as an accumulation of gestures, tensions, and shared memory. Through cycles of alignment and autonomy, what emerges is not a distilled definition of intimacy, but a layered portrait of connection—how it absorbs repetition, accommodates transformation, and persists through subtle change as it is lived.
Performance series are commissioned by CARVALHO, New York, and curated and produced by its founder, Jennifer Carvalho. The biannual series invites both visual and dance artists to reimagine their creative processes. It draws dance out of the theatre and into the collective consciousness, while bringing visual art into the realm of movement and performance—opening possibilities for both forms. Commissioned collaborations between performing and visual artists consider how disciplines are transformed through collaboration, as limitations are eclipsed, creating new intersectional approaches and total, synthesized works.
The performance is 20 minutes in length and will take place on June 25th, July 9th, July 25th, and August 8th. Programming is free and open to the public, but due to the limited space, an RSVP is required: rsvp@carvalhonewyork.com
Learn more about the Summer Performance Series 2026, here.
Nicole Rossi is a Hudson Valley–based designer whose practice centers on sculptural installations composed of living and natural materials. Drawing on a foundation in architecture, she creates site-responsive environments that bring landscape into dialogue with the built environment, treating plants, flowers, and organic matter as dynamic materials rather than decorative elements. Her work explores scale, temporality, and embodied experience, transforming organic materials into evolving spatial compositions that foreground processes of growth, change, and impermanence. Installations by Rossi have been presented in partnership with the Philadelphia Museum of Art, IPSUM, and CARVALHO, New York; activated at the Barnes Foundation, Delaware Art Museum, and Philadelphia International Airport; and developed in collaboration with brands including Mothpaper and Terrain.
For press inquiries, please contact Elisa Smilovitz at elisa@elisasmilovitz.com