LABA 
Shanti Grumbine received her MFA from the University of Pennsylvania and her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is a visual artist who transforms appropriated print media through paper cutting, drawing, collage, printmaking, sculpture and performance. By removing, fracturing and recombining text and image from journalistic sources and advertising, she makes
Kendell Pinkney is a Texas-born, Brooklyn-based theatre writer. A graduate of Oberlin College and New York University’s Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program, his collaborative works and songs have been performed and/or developed at venues such as 54 Below, Two Rivers Theatre Company, Goodspeed Opera House, Musical Theatre Factory, The 52nd Street Project, and Joe’s Pub, to
BY JESSICA GROSS Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life begins as a classic coming-of-age tale: four young men, college friends, navigate their way in the world. But slowly (over the course of 700-plus pages), the novel narrows into the story of Jude. A beautiful boy, he suffers a litany of vile abuses, beginning with serial rape
Artist Lital Dotan dedicated most of the past decade to creating utopian environments for performance in the domestic sphere. Her Brooklyn-based Glasshouse ArtLifeLab, co-founded with Eyal Perry, is nourishing artists and audiences across generations and disciplines. She is the founder of Que sal mah, the newly launched concept boutique that merges performance, art and fashion.
This year, LABA launched its first international program, LABA-BA: Laboratorio de Arte y Cultura Judía, in Buenos Aires. As in New York, LABA-BA’s fellows are artists across all disciplines, studying classic Jewish texts in a non-religious, open-minded setting. Here, words from LABA-BA’s founder and director, Mirta Kupferminc. Three years ago, I received the first invitation to be an international fellow
Joshua Max Feldman is a writer of fiction and plays. His debut novel, The Book of Jonah, a modern retelling of the Biblical Book of Jonah set in contemporary New York City, was published in the U.S. in February, 2014, by Henry Holt. Amazon named The Book of Jonah the Debut Novel of the Month, and the New York Times praised
Rebecca Margolick and Maxx Berkowitz are a Brooklyn-based integrative and experimental performance collaborative. Rebecca Margolick was born and raised in Vancouver, Canada. She graduated with an honors BFA in Dance from NYU – Tisch School of the Arts and received the J.S. Seidman Award for Excellence in Dance. Primarily based in NYC, Rebecca is a
On Tuesday, LABA kicked off our year of study around a table in the 14th Street Y’s gorgeous theater, washing down our discussion with food and wine. Each of our fellows and staff brought in a beautiful item and explained its power in an effort to begin to parse our personal relationships to beauty. And then, cracking open our discussion
The idea to spend a year studying beauty was not a new one. We at LABA have spent years contemplating the possibility of having beauty as our theme, but each time we ended up passing on it. Why? We thought beauty was too simplistic, too political and, perhaps worst of all, unlikely to engender new
With just five days until the launch of LABA’s new year and new group of outstanding fellows on Tuesday, we wonder: what does BEAUTY mean to you?