Fables For The Future: Lights Out

Join us at 4:30pm for firefly origami and other arts activities led by artist Sophia Chizuco, plus learn about the exciting world of firefly communication and life cycles with science educator Gabriel Willow. Stay until dusk to walk in a firefly procession led by composer Jude Icarus and writer Hannah Story Brown and watch a dance piece choreographed by Sarah Yasmine Marazzi-Sassoon inspired by firefly flight patterns, firefly mythology and folklore, and the factors leading to their population decline. This piece is produced by Julia Gleich Dances, Norte Maar, and the NYC Department of Transportation.

Meet The Artists:

Sarah Yasmine Marazzi-Sassoon, choreographer

Sarah Yasmine Marazzi-Sassoon is an Italian and American choreographer based in New York City. She graduated from Barnard College where she combined evolutionary biology with storytelling and dance to create a self-designed area of study. Raised in Paris, France she trained at the Académie Américaine de Danse de Paris and then in San Francisco at the San Francisco Academy of Ballet. Her work has been staged across the U.S. including at the Alvin Ailey Citigroup Theatre in New York City and the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco and has been featured in Pointe Magazine, CBS News New York, and Art Spiel. Her choreographic and scientific goals are to understand what makes us human by exploring how and why we, as a species, tell stories and what our relatives in the animal kingdom can tell us about this process. For the past three years she has been commissioned by Norte Maar for their annual CounterPointe series, affording her the opportunity to collaborate with visual artists, musicians, writers, and scientists. Currently, she is working on a series of ‘Fables for the Future’: a collection of stories told through dance, music, and writing inspired by imperiled ecosystems around the world. This series combines her love for science and nature with her desire to create interdisciplinary and immersive shows.

Hannah Story Brown is a writer and political researcher based in New York City. She co-leads the climate team at the Revolving Door Project, a watchdog group focused on scrutinizing corporate influence on the federal executive branch. Her nonfiction writing has appeared in The New Republic, The Nation, Democracy Journal, Washington Monthly, The American Prospect, The Seattle Times, Burningword Literary Journal, The Columbia Journal of Literary Criticism, and other publications. She holds a BA in English from Columbia University and is currently working on a novel about the fragility of the lives we take for granted on our rapidly changing planet.

Jude Icarus is a musical and performance artist with an interest in contrasts—between analog and digital, tenderness and roughness, control and chaos. His artistic work as a composer, producer, director, and performer of music, video, and immersive theater is rooted in the creation of an emotionally honest heightened reality that enables both artist and audience to engage with collective questions on a personal scale. In performance, he often leverages interactivity and immersion, bringing the audience into a shared world and giving their actions felt weight. His work has been featured in them, GLAAD, The Guardian, and The New York Times.

Sophia Chizuco is a multidisciplinary artist, art educator, and curator based in Brooklyn, originally from Japan. She received her B.A. in Art and Education from Tokyo Gakugei University and moved to New York in 2000 to study abstract paintings at the Art Students League of NY, where she earned a certificate in painting.​ Chizuco has been selected as a leader for various community art projects, including ArtBridge public art project, the “Hospital-Based Community Murals Project” at NYC Health + Hospitals’ Arts in Medicine program, projectart art and social practice in Cypress Hills library, and SU-CASA artist-in-residence in Young Israel Senior Center. She has also conducted workshops at Non-profit organizations such as the NARS Foundation, Lewis Latimer House Museum, and the Museum of Jewish Heritage. She has also been a mentor at the Immigrant Artists Program in the New York Foundation for the Arts, and has curated shows for immigrant artists. Her curatorial projects have been featured by various publications, including White Hot Magazine, World Journal (Chinese newspaper), Yomitime (Japanese paper), and ConEdison Newsletter. Her latest curatorial project, “Self-Reflection:Rehash/Practicing Uncertainty” was selected by Bronx Council on the Arts. Chizuco received the grand prize from ArtNetwork and a merit scholarship from the Art Students League of NY. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the Staten Island Museum, New York Hall of Science, ChaShaMa, the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum (Japan), Affordable Art Fair in Brussels (Belgium), and Makati Shangri-La Hotel (Philippines).

Nicholas (they/them/theirs) is a wildlife scientist focused on the bioacoustic study of bats and birds. They began their career in conservation as a volunteer with NYC Bird Alliance’s Project Safe Flight. This experience led them to their first professional role as an avian monitoring technician with the National Park Service in the desert southwest. After returning to New York City, Nicholas earned a Master’s degree in biology. They developed an interest in bioacoustics through research on bird song and park soundscapes as part of their graduate studies. Nicholas’ research interests expanded to bats in 2020 after they were given the opportunity to survey bat populations in Westchester County. They have since published a study on acoustic bat detection and worked on bat conservation projects throughout the US and Costa Rica.

Nicholas fulfilled a long-term career ambition when they joined the NYC Bird Alliance staff in 2023, where they assist with a variety of monitoring projects at green infrastructure sites throughout Manhattan.

Julia K. Gleich is a choreographer and is the founder and Artistic Director of Gleich Dances. She has been making dances for 25 years and is motivated by working in collaboration and by illuminating the relationships between the traditional and the contemporary. Gleich Dances has received critical notice in the New York Times, Village Voice, Brooklyn Rail, New Criterion, and dancelog.nyc, among others. She  consistently develops new work with visual artists, scientists, mathematicians, and musicians, in collaboration with Norte Maar for Collaborative Projects in the Arts, based in Brooklyn, NY. With Norte Maar she has produced CounterPointe annually since 2011, Dance at Socrates 2014-2018, and The Brooklyn Combine. Gleich was Head of Choreography (2005-2017) at London Studio Centre, UK, a BA(Hons) conservatoire programme, and on faculty of Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance (2003-2017). For 13 years she taught and produced the annual London Studio Centre/Central St. Martin’s College of Art and Design dance and design collaborations. She taught company class for Michael Clark Company on the largest dance floor in Europe at Tate Modern Turbine Hall. She teaches at Peridance Center, NYC and has been on faculties of the University of Utah Ballet Department and Manhattanville College and Molloy College in New York. Ms. Gleich earned an MFA from the University of Utah and MA in Arts Administration from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  

Founded in 2004 by choreographer Julia Gleich and gallerist Jason Andrew, Norte Maar for Collaborative Projects in the Arts creates, promotes and presents collaborations within the disciplines of visual, literary, and the performing arts: connecting visual artists, choreographers, composers, writers and other originating artists with venues and each other. Norte Maar encourages and supports innovative and educational projects in the arts by offering unique exhibitions, unusual performances, workshops and lectures for residents of our community and beyond. Norte Maar with Gleich Dances, an integral part since its founding, aims to be a leader in building collaborative partnerships between originating artists and other organizations thereby uniting cultural forces to foster artistic expression and raise the imaginative energy in us all. Norte Maar is all about blurring the lines that distinguish artistic passions and practices.