Once, Live
Live, time-based performances for an in-person or real time virtual audience are the exception not the norm in my practice. I spend quite a bit of time researching, reflecting, listening and collecting. The resulting works often include a libretto which I read from. And how the libretto is compiled: on notecards, postcards, in a three-ring binder, loose leaf print-outs, hand-written or typed up are intentional. I don't memorize the words. This feels more connected to an actor's mindset where you become one with the words, letting them occupy your body. For me, the performance is the time to let go, of whatever I've been holding--I don't want to carry or live with them so palpably anymore. And I am in collaboration with my audience, my witnesses. And what they give back, send out to me in our shared space can impact my pacing, my energy, my timing. I am my truest, rawest, freest self before them. I put trust and faith in them that we will hold one another.
The piece could only come into existence, could only be offered at the selected date and time with whomever's there. Will the piece be documented? Yes, likely, but with the performance's documentation, I make efforts to modify as well, so it exists as it's own piece. Because the live experience's energy can't be captured wholly via the lens via the recording.
deserve, 2026
A meditation on being deserving of living well
a l a bell hooks from Sisters of Yam: Black Women and Self-Recovery.
Performed at a May Day reading event at Half Moon Bar in Hudson, NY on May 1, 2026.
Documentation by Aron Sanchez.
LOOK AT ALL THIS TIME! (for the wanderers, for Mahalia Jackson, for Noah Purifoy, 2025
A performative offering composed of a live, improvised soundscape with footage of Southern California desertscapes by Daonne Huff and Aron Sanchez.
Performed Sunday, May 18, 2025 from 4:30pm - 6:30pm
FiveMyles Project Space, 558 St Johns Pl, Brooklyn, NY 11238
Seeking: a person, a place, a thing that invokes the sublime that provides a sense of a feeling of freedom of comfort of solace of catharsis of hope for / in something, still.
One of Aron Sanchez and Daonne Huff’s hinges is a love of and for the desert: the air, the sounds, the colors, the creatures, the scale, the textures, the space, the time. The time. How time seems to collapse and expand simultaneously out there!
The current state of the world has made being in the now a challenge. As life and living seems to be a precarious and exhausting playground game. The rules are constantly changing and as participants we’re skipping, overstepping, waiting and/or anticipating across and between the past, present and future. All the while trying to keep in step. Note to self: create reminders of the passages of time. How long has it been?
And so in an effort to reset, recharge and regroup, we headed west, in pursuit of something that was greater than. That would compel from within an ecstatic song to ultimately be shared out, to make space, to ready for what is still to come.
Yea, though we walk through the valleys…oh Come Sunday, come Sunday that’s the day. Can I get an amen? Amen my sister! Amen my brother. Peace, if only for a moment, be with you.
(Extra pom poms will be available.)
mere mortals too close too close falling back (sky so sky) (after Anne Carson, Rachel Eisendrath, Byron Kim, Geoffrey Hendricks, Magritte, Kermit the Frog and so many others), 2024
Performed Saturday, November 9, 2024 from 6pm until it was done at FiveMyles Project Space, 558 St Johns Pl, Brooklyn, NY 11238
Featuring: Daonne Huff with Joshua Araujo, Arone Dyer, Kiowa Hammons and Aron Sanchez
A confession. I don’t know what the fuck to do with all that’s going on or honestly what I’m doing in this midlife moment. I’m exaggerating…a little. But I can say with 100% confidence I’m overwhelmed or underwhelmed but rarely whelmed. Overstimulated, hyperstimulated to a stunted state. No cause for serious alarm though–it’s all about perspective. I often forget to count–lost in the deluge of sights, sounds and smells that inundate daily. I often forget to breathe–so at times you may hear a forceful whoosh release from within. I faint at times from the spirits, from the stress, from the dehydration, from the invisible threats–survival mode. Fake death and resurrect, again and again to protect the self. Icarus was an idiot–too close my son, too close to the sun. Why fly so high when there’s so much to consume from the ground? Endorphins that rush as you look up up up and all around! And in holding that, I can say, I’m blessed. A reminder. Each of us, is blessed. We may just define it within different structures, terms, frameworks or timelines.
The performance is inspired by, centered on and framed around skyscapes documented and recorded since the late 2010s. It will offer a multimedia, multi-sensory experience incorporating moving and still image, voice and live soundscapes in the hopes of offering a bit of a reprieve, retreat, reset as the world and the lives that inhabit it continue to spin, sit, spiral, sway, sing, slay, serve and support.
Full performance video available by request.
day cover(s) over "This Woman's Work"
after Kate Bush
after Maxwell
after Dezron Douglas and Brandee Younger, 2023
Performance took place on Saturday, August 19, 2023 at Desmond's House (private residence) in New York, NY.
This is an excerpt.
Annual Valentine’s Day Poem 2023
Don’t let them take your Sparkle or Giving him something he can feel or I WANNA MAKE IT TO THE TOP! (A history of Billboard’s R&B Hits) [for Irene Cara, 1959-2022]
The performance took place on Thursday, February 9, 2023 at Maysles Documentary Center in Harlem, NY.
Performance footage was taken by Langston Sanchez and edited by Daonne Huff.
PART 1: IS THIS LETTING GO?
Featured music:
Tyrone Davis, "Can I Change My Mind"
Hiroshi Yoshimura, “Blink” and Dance PM”
PART 2: REFLECTION AND PROCESSING
The poem is comprised of the first two lines of the #1 song on Billboard’s R&B charts from 1959-2022. A song for each year of Irene Cara’s life. The selected songs were the #1 song on the charts during the week that overlapped with Valentine’s Day.
This playlist features the songs performed in chronological order:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4uF3HaQQFEy9yDUqUxCPMf?si=5oolThmbRrmgvlTZUo5xqQ
PART 3 : A CHORUS, A RELEASE VALVE FROM THE HEAVENS OR HELLS OR LACUNAS
The performance was the prelude to the screening of Sparkle (1976) starring Irene Cara. The screening was to be the first in a proposed film series called Black.Art.Love. Event description can be found here: https://www.maysles.org/calendar/2023/2/2/blackartlove-sparkle
Annual Valentines Day Poem 2022
Let’s leave it all to chance and other c words or words that sound like it, are you Keeping up? But while I do, would you give me a sign so I can know from time to time?
Performed for Black Lunch Table's IG Live
Sunday, March 6, 2022
AN HORIZON OF POSSIBILITY
or (something something sublime something something in the stars)
after Saidiya after Alice after Abbey, 2021
Transmitter Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
"A Discourse of Accord" Exhibition, August 14 - September 19, 2021
Live performance August 14 and 15, 2021
Over the Course Of [3 Ways], Annual Valentine's Day Poem, 2021
The film is centered around a performance that took place on Instagram Live on February 13, 2021.
Framing [Big White House], Stay in Touch for Mom and Dad, 2020
Text, built in mirror of historic brownstone, Windex, yellow rubber gloves, rag, cocoa butter, audio recording, performance in an ethereal floral dress
A note: the piece says my mother was one of 7 kids. She was in fact the eldest of 8.
Performance stills from the exhibition:
How Did You Get This?: The Spaces We Inhabit
Welancora Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
March 14 - June 30, 2020
Editor: Alison Mao
Images courtesy of Welancora Gallery, Adam Reich, Deborah and Willie Huff
This performance was supposed to take place on March 14, 2020, which became the first official day of COVID-19 lockdown for New York City. I did not get to perform this piece live at the exhibition opening as hoped but a patchwork quilt like my great grandmother made was created thanks to 200 plus documentation stills captured earlier for the exhibition catalogue. As a result, this performance now exists as a series of moving stills brought to life by the magically talented hands of my dear friend Ali Mao.
When performances are intended as ephemeral and precious, the documentation is the means to experience a portion of the in person energy and dynamic. This is not a substitute but a new something, a new life entirely, courtesy of Corona.
A Need for Leafy Greens [excerpt], 2019
Performance for Stimulus Progression 21 at Mirror in the Woods in Gowanus, Brooklyn
on Saturday, August 24, 2019
Footage shot by Mahsa Biglow.
Below: performance libretto on postcards
All the Things (for Mary Ellis 1750 -1828) [in 35 parts], 2019
Kara Walker presents The Colossus of Rutgers
Brooklyn Army Terminal, Brooklyn, NY
May 11, 2019
Tastes like Chicken [a protein source]
This may offend some, cause discomfort in others, bore a handful and arouse the remainder
Ode to chickenheads, Audre Lorde, Tracy K Smith, Lil Kim, Katie O’Brien, Trina and to the givers regardless of their dietary preferences, 2018
Performed at Motel Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
My Sunshine, 2018
Performed at Kirkpatrick Chapel, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ
Performance included live instrumentation and a silent film in collaboration with Marigangela Ciccarello
Performance still by Young Sun Han
