NOoSPHERE Arts warmly invites you to celebrate our 15th Anniversary!
Join us for an unforgettable evening of live performances, a festive dinner, dancing, flowing drinks, and delightful surprises as we raise a glass to 15 years of creativity, community, and art.
The evening will feature a cocktail hour on our rooftop at sunset, a sit-down dinner, a DJ set, and multiple surprise performances.
Be part of this milestone occasion—celebrate with us as we close out our 2025 We Are Nature season and look ahead to the next chapter of NOoSPHERE Arts, surrounded by friends and community.
Dress Code: Festive & Fun Cocktail
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Evening Lineup
Rooftop Dance Performance
It’s Showtime NYC! presents: Skyline, 2025
Choreography by Shemar “Shem” Walcott
Dancers: Tyrik “Blank” Johnson and Jameel "Stein" Aleem.
Shemar “Shem” Walcott
Shem’s Guyanese, West Indian roots helped tune him into Brooklyn’s dancehall scene at a young age. Raised in Queens, Shem danced on the subways to raise money for his high school step team’s dance uniforms. Today, Shem’s homebase style is flexN, while he also embraces step, Afrobeats, hip hop, locking, jazz-funk, dancehall, house, litefeet, and popping dance forms. Holding strong convictions about the value and future of street dance, Shem’s goal, in particular for flexN, is to access bigger stages to show the artistry and patience that has crafted this artform. He aims to raise the bar on street dance and asks, how can we make dance inclusive for all dancers on all levels? His motto: continue to move the artform forward. Shem’s training included performing and serving as a teaching artist for: KR3T’s dance company; X-factory training at Brickhouse; a FIAF residency; and Urban Dance League. He has also performed, taught workshops, and, at times, offered choreographic contributions for projects at : Barclays Center, The Apollo (opening up for Burna Boy), Lincoln Center with the company Step Afrika, NOoSPHERE Arts, HarlemStage, Choreographer’s Carnival, Brickhouse, Ifetayo, and Williamsburg Collegiate Charter School.
Tyrik “Blank” Johnson
Born in Jamaica, Blank started dancing in high school in his home borough of Brooklyn. He first discovered flexN from fellow dancers who worked with him at a skate shop. They formed a dance crew which included Stein. Castro, and Anrki. His main dance form is flexN and he also embraces gliding, tutting, and bruk up. He is drawn to street dance, particularly to freestyle dancing, because there is no right or wrong. To Blank, freestyle dancing empowers him as an artist to create whatever he wants. Dancing is therapeutic for Blank, and he admits that when he’s not feeling himself, dancing is his remedy. He finds dancing, on his roof, calms him down and centers him. “The love that I have for dancing is so strong, I just can’t stop.” Street dance battles Blank has won include: The Vybe, Channel Flex and Rounds of Flamz. He’s performed at Dancers’ Therapy, Barclays Center, NOoSPHERE Arts, Sybarite Love is Love. His mentors include Cal Hunt and MainEvent’s Slicc and Dre Don. He performed in videos for DJ Webster, Shortyjah, Reignmusic and taught flexN at High School for Arts and Business in Queens.
Jamil ”Stein” Aleem
Raised in Decatur, Georgia, and now based in Queens, NY, Stein has been dancing his whole life. He learned how to shuffle in high school and on the streets. While working in a skate shope, he learned flexN from It’s Showtime NYC alum Anarki. He equates dance with freedom and is drawn to flexN’s less formulaic and innovative qualities. Highly inspired by Asian culture, Stein is influenced by tai chi and slowing down his movements and energy, also incorporating anime and karate into his work. Dancing has helped him mature; teaching him patience in life, helping to clear his mind and stay grounded. Throughout his dance journey he has learned to be empathetic to others’ challenges, as he too has been discouraged and stopped dancing. Stein understands others’ motivational challenges, and seeks to help dancers make their way back to dance and find their style.
Video Screening
A Matter of Quality
Live Video Projection: Federica Patera & Andrea Sbra Perego (DRIM Contemporary) with music by Piero Acuto & Roberto Brandispada
A Matter of Quality is a live video set created specifically to celebrate Noosphere Arts’ 15th anniversary. The piece blends images from performances held at Noosphere Arts between 2020 and 2024 with fragments from films, places around the world, abstract visuals, and footage of our own installation works, creating a layered dialogue between memory and transformation.
ARTISTS STATEMENT:
Federica Patera and Andrea Sbra Perego are an Italian artistic duo based in Brooklyn, New York. Their collaborative practice intertwines textiles and text-based art, transforming recycled fabrics into crafted words through ancient thread-wrapping tapestry technique. This process creates layered meanings carried by soft materialities. The fusion of fibres' tactility with the impalpable resonance of voice shapes multidisciplinary experiences that blend visual, textual, and time-based performativity. Thriving in this liminal space, their practice pushes the conventional boundaries of these mediums. They explore calligraphy, scale, and materiality in physical and digital environments through wall-mounted works, sculptural objects, immersive installations, and sound-integrated pieces. Their work engages with deconstructing and reconstructing language and personal and communal stories, inviting audiences into dynamic dialogues. Their early collaborations wove excerpts from diverse texts to create new narratives, illustrating the timeless nature of art. At the core of their practice is translation—not just between languages but as a means of navigating different realms of meaning. Drawing connections between cultures and texts, they investigate how reality is constructed. Their latest research examines verbal roots and their ties to cosmogony, drawing from living and ancient languages.
BIO:
Federica Patera and Andrea Sbra Perego are an Italian artist duo based in Brooklyn, New York. Their collaborative practice intertwines textiles and text-based art. The fusion of fibers’ tactility with the impalpable resonance of voice shapes multidisciplinary experiences that blend visual, textual, and time-based performativity. They explore calligraphy, scale, and materiality in both physical and digital environments through wall-mounted works, sculptural objects, immersive installations, and sound-integrated pieces. Their work engages with the deconstruction and reconstruction of language, drawing connections between cultures across centuries and geographies as they investigate how reality is constructed. Since 2021, they have also been developing their ongoing curatorial project, DRIM | Contemporary Art Ground, through which they organize exhibitions that foster dialogue between emerging artists and diverse audiences.
Hair Hanging Performance Love Transcends Mortality
Shipra Saraogi (Hair Suspension Artist)
Ellena Phillips (Harp) · Jonathon Keeling (Sound Mixing) · Ben Klein (Rigger)
As we approach Samhaim- a sacred time when the veil between physical and spiritual realm thins. We take a moment to honor our ancestors, celebrate endings and beginnings, and embrace the magic and beauty of transformation.Love is the eternal thread weaving through the fabric of existence, unbound by the fragile limits of time and flesh. Though our mortal bodies fade like autumn leaves, love remains—a luminous spark that defies the shadow of death, timeless force that death cannot claim. In love’s embrace, mortality is but a doorway, not a wall.'
DJ Set: Till Later
Till Later, primarily a visual artist, got introduced to the Swiss electronic music scene at an innocent age by the Villa Masslos and Balztanz collectives and several years of design work for the legendary Hinterhof Bar in Basel. Recently, he has also been spotted behind the decks more often, sharing his love for vibrant, uplifting music that spans various styles and eras
Food Altar & Catering: Chef Justin of J. Infuse Cuisine
My first experience at NOoSPHERE Arts was a indulgence of whimsy, flora, and dance all beset an industrial wasteland. A juxtaposition of noise and nourishment, greens and metals- artist crafted sculptures became landing spots for welcome pollinators.
The Altar:
The communal altar displays a family style variety of home style dishes, seasonal salads, an abundant vegetable harvest, and warm proteins. Each dish is uplifted by items specifically recycled from local artists as well as elements foraged directly from the natural world. Centering our shared ancestral connection to food and dining, the altar acts as a meeting place for the age old ingredients that fueled artists and innovators of past to those in the room.
Chef's Statement:
I'm a Chef and Spiritualist who weaves together the worlds of food energetics, culture, and connection. For over twelve years, I've cultivated my culinary practice around the art of communal "home•cooking" - meals that expand our sense of self, our stories, the land, and one another. To me, a good meal does more than fill an aching belly; it eases a groaning mind, ignites the soul, and electrifies the body for artful creation. My food is a conversation with the past, a prayer for the present, and an offering to what's yet to come.- and often inspired by own Scotch and Boricua ancestry. In 2024, I began crafting food altars called ANTEPASADO, inspired by the tangible way food connects us to our ancestors, their struggles, and their revolutions. Each altar is a living story - part ritual, part remembrance, part rebellion.
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🎟 Tickets (sales end Oct.24, no tickets at the door)
This special evening doubles as a birthday fundraiser in support of NOoSPHERE Arts’ ongoing programs and the artists we champion.
Can’t make it? Please consider making a birthday donation to support our future programs and the vibrant, creative community we serve.