2021 Princess Grace Award
Nominated by: Stephen Petronio Company
Johnnie Cruise Mercer is a queer black thinker, maker, performer, educator and social entrepreneur born in Richmond, VA and based in New York City. He is the founder of TheREDprojectNYC (TRPNYC), a multidisciplinary arts ensemble dedicated to the study of movement philosophy and its use toward building communal spaces for black/other process, documentation, and investigation.
His most recent processes and work have been hosted and presented by: The 92Y Harkness Dance Center, Gibney: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center, The Dixon Place, Danspace Project Inc, The Fusebox Festival, Mana Contemporary, The NADA Conference, Abrons Arts Center, and most recently at The Clarice Performing Arts Center’s The BlackLight Summit. Johnnie has had the honor of being in community with The 92Y Harkness Dance Center (2016-2017 AIR), Cuny Dance Initiative at York College (2017-2018 AIR), NYU Tisch Dance (2018 Summer Creative Residency), Bates Dance Festival (2018 AIR), Abrons Arts Center (AIRSpace 2018), Stephen Petronio Center (2019 Partnership Residency Program), Brooklyn Arts Exchange (AIR 2019-2021), The New Dance Alliance (Black Artists Space to Create Inaugural AIR 2020-2021), and was recently a Creative Fellow with Ping Chong and Company working in Archival Storytelling and Creative Media for their 2020-2021 Season.
Johnnie, and his company TRPNYC, are in their fourth year of the company’s current six year project; “A Process Anthology: The Decade from Hell and the Decade that Followed Suite.” Charted as ten individual memoir based happenings/events, the full project will soon come to a close with two DocuEpic Works set to launch Fall 2022 (commissioned by Gibney), and Spring 2024!
Find more info on this project and his other work on Instagram
@jcruisem, @jcm_redprojectnyc
Photo credit: Sarah Silver