At Matins or Evensong
Choreographed by Emma Judkins
Performed by Emma Judkins and Grace Yi-Li Tong
Music by Adam Schatz

Thursday through Saturday, March 19th through 21st.
7:30pm
$25 general admission
$20 early bird special, expires March 9th

TICKETS

At Matins or Evensong is an evening-length dance rooted in time, reverence, darkness, and beauty. It stems from an obsession with the late summer ubiquitousness of the goldenrod plant in my childhood home state of Maine and surrounding Northeast. For a little over three weeks, this bright yellow wildflower appears everywhere, covering fields, highway medians, and backyards, and then starts to disappear, announcing the beginning of the end. Its reliable lifecycle led me to regard the plant’s timely blooming as not only a tether to the passage of time and personal change, but as a universal signifier of the fold of the year, the tumbling, light-chasing, equinoctial slip of the season’s shift. This interval of moving from light to dark and back is archetypal; it lives in the turn of the day, years, phases internal and communal. I draw on these repetitions, attempting to notate the religiosity of vanishing light, the quiet witnessing of heading into the dark.

BIOS:

Emma Judkins is a freelance dancer and performer based in Brooklyn, NY with roots in the Northeast. She graduated summa cum laude from Connecticut College with a BA in Dance and French in 2011. Described by The New York Times as “terrific” and having “a natural, winning, clarity,” she has performed most recently with Beth Gill, Tere O’Connor, Anna Sperber, and Pavel Zustiak/Palissimo Company. Past artistic and performing collaborations include Laurel Snyder/Adam Schatz, The Space We Make, Kendra Portier/BANDPortier, Amber Sloan, Derrick Belcham & Emily Terndrup, Phantom Limb Company, Cortney Andrews, and Kyle Abraham/A.I.M. Emma has collaborated with Asli Bulbul, Eleanor Hullihan and Jimmy Jolliff on an improvisational performance project called Deborah since 2019. Many years ago, when she first moved to NYC, Emma shared her own dance work in living rooms and at no-longer existing venues. She has recently re-ignited her choreographic spirit. Early stages of At Matins or Evensong were supported by residencies at Bennington College and she has shown excerpts at the Sundays on Broadway series at WeisAcres, and in a backyard in southeastern Vermont during 2025. Outside of dancing, she is an Administrative Assistant to a private family foundation and a freelance administrator and bookkeeper.

Instagram: @emmamkins
Website: www.emmajudkins.com

Grace Yi-Li Tong (she/her) is a playful Chinese-American dancer and choreographer based in New York. Grace holds a BFA in Dance and a minor in Gender and Sexuality Studies from NYU Tisch School of the Arts, and has recently performed with: the Metropolitan Opera/Annie-B Parson, Patricia Hoffbauer, Beth Gill, Luis A., Kristel Baldoz, and more. As a choreographer, she has recently presented work at Performance Garage (Philadelphia, PA), the NOD Theater (Seattle, WA), Snug Harbor Cultural Center, The Center for Ballet Arts, Flushing Town Hall, Triskelion Arts, and more. Her commercial credits include collaborations with Tod’s Shoes, Yayi Chen, bluetrails, Kevin Sun, and more. 

Instagram: @graceytong
Website: www.gracetong.com