Welcome All You Dragonflies

In January 2019, Morgan Bassichis and Ethan Philbrick embarked on a year of “musical cruising.” Each month, they improvised—with Philbrick on cello and Bassichis singing—in different spaces that matter to them. These semi-private performances responded to the acoustic, historical, and political resonances of venues such as the Sunken Forest on Fire Island and the Lesbian Herstory Archives in Brooklyn, and became a sustained study in free association. For Welcome All You Dragonflies, Bassichis and Philbrick invite an audience to listen to excerpts from the year-long project and the live recording of the final improvisation.

“March Is for Marches,” which presents selections from the twelve recordings, will be published by Triple Canopy shortly after Welcome All You Dragonflies. The work documents an experiment in queer friendship, historical meditation, and improvisation against the backdrop of the endlessly marketed fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall rebellion. They also capture Bassichis and Philbrick using sound and humor to navigate what the scholar Danielle Goldman terms the “tight spaces” that characterize our political landscape, imposing an ever shifting set of constraints that shape our movements and expressions. In the words of one of the improvisations, “Every time I step in that hole, I'll think of your freedom.”

Welcome All You Dragonflies is part of Omniaudience, a series that considers the role of listening, the settings in which speech and sound can have a meaningful effect. Omniaudience is being published in Two Ears and One Mouth, a forthcoming issue that examines how we speak and listen and who has the right and capacity to be heard.

This public program was made possible through generous support from Jane Hait, a founding member of Triple Canopy Director’s Circle; the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation; the Jacques Louis Vidal Charitable Fund; the Lambent Foundation Fund of Tides Foundation; the National Endowment for the Arts; the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; the New York State Council on the Arts; and the Opaline Fund of the Jewish Community Endowment Federation and Endowment Fund.

Seating & accessibility

Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis. In order to ensure that events are accessible and comfortable, we’ll open the doors thirty minutes prior to each event and strictly limit admittance to our legal capacity. Please check Triple Canopy’s Facebook and Twitter accounts for updates, as we’ll indicate if events are sold out.

Triple Canopy’s venue is located at 264 Canal Street, 3W, near several Canal Street subway stations. Our floor is accessible by elevator (63" × 60" car, 31" door) and stairway. Due to the age and other characteristics of the building, our bathrooms are not ADA-accessible, though several such bathrooms are located nearby. If you have specific questions about access, please write at least three days before the event and we will make every effort to accommodate you.