Inside Pageant: How an East Williamsburg Loft Became the Vanguard of New York’s Experimental Performance Scene

In an era increasingly dominated by polished artifice, slick digital rendering, and commodified culture, the East Williamsburg performance space Pageant offers a bracing counter-narrative. Rather than providing an escape from contemporary realities, its founders embrace the friction of our current cultural moment. For a growing segment of New York’s avant-garde, this commitment to confronting—rather than retreating from—one’s lived and systemic conditions feels nothing short of a renaissance.

The underground collective’s rising prominence was crystallized this past August during a sprawling, month-long residency at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Culminating in a seven-hour performance marathon titled Pageant Presents Pageant, the residency positioned this grassroots Brooklyn loft not merely as an alternative venue, but as a critical heavy-hitter in the conversation between contemporary dance, visual art, and institutional history.

Main Facts: The MoMA Takeover and the Rise of Pageant

On a humid Friday morning in late August, an intimate auditorium at MoMA was packed to capacity. Spectators gathered to witness choreographer, director, and writer Isa Spector writhing on a stark, red-painted platform. Spector had been given a deceptively simple prompt by the museum: to make “a painting of dance” in 10 minutes.

Spector flailed wildly across the red floor, shifting from all-fours lunges up toward the harsh glare of fluorescent studio lights. Throughout the movement, they rhythmically called out to a parental figure whose moniker playfully mutated from "mom" to "MoMA," and a counterpart that shifted from "dad" to "Dada" through an alliterative stream of consciousness.

Just as the ten-minute mark loomed, an epiphany struck. Seconds later, five performers wearing bright red gloves emerged from the wings, converging at the center of the platform. Hand in hand, they began to twirl in a hypnotic circle, staging a living, breathing parody of Henri Matisse’s modernist masterpiece, Dance (I) (1909), which hangs in the museum’s permanent collection just one floor above.

The five performers executing this conceptual living painting were Sharleen Chidiac, Lili Dekker, Jade Manns, Owen Prum, and Alexa West—the co-founders of Pageant.

Spector’s piece, MoMAlogue #1, served as the explosive opening salvo for Pageant’s historic seven-hour performance marathon at MoMA. Over the course of the day, 25 distinct 10-minute performances unfolded, each serving as a profound meditation on dance’s tangled relationship with its own history and the broader lineage of visual art.

Chronology: From Apartment Loft to Museum Marathon

The journey of Pageant from a makeshift DIY project to an institutional residency at MoMA reflects the resilience and adaptability of New York’s underground art scene.

Pre-2022: The Genesis

Before Pageant took physical form, co-founders Jade Manns and Sharleen Chidiac were already laying the groundwork by running an informal, artist-led performance series out of their apartment. Emerging from the isolating isolation of the early COVID-19 pandemic, the pair realized that emerging and mid-career artists lacked viable, low-stakes physical platforms to test ideas.

2022: Establishing the East Williamsburg Loft

Pageant officially opened its doors in 2022, securing a third-story loft space on Graham Avenue in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn. According to co-founder Alexa West, the launch was completely organic, born out of necessity rather than a calculated business plan.

"We didn’t set out with the intention for it to be like an institution," Chidiac noted in a joint interview with Hyperallergic. "We just needed a space to work, to show our work, and to show other people’s work."

August 2026: The MoMA Residency

Four years after opening its Graham Avenue doors, Pageant achieved a major milestone by securing a month-long residency at MoMA. The residency dismantled the invisible wall dividing elite museum collections and grassroots performance art, allowing underground creators to directly interrogate, critique, and play with canonical works housed within the institution.

Supporting Data: The Anatomy of a Grassroots Movement

While major cultural institutions across New York City have faced criticism for prioritizing blockbuster commercial exhibitions over risk-taking contemporary art, spaces like Pageant operate on an entirely different economic and ideological frequency.

• Physical Footprint: Located in a third-story loft on Graham Avenue, East Williamsburg, the space deliberately avoids the pristine, white-cube alienation of commercial galleries, opting instead for an intimate, tactile environment.
• The MoMA Marathon Scale: The Pageant Presents Pageant showcase featured 25 distinct performances, each capped at a rigorous 10-minute time limit, executed consecutively over a 7-hour marathon.
• Founding Collective: The space is entirely artist-run and sustained by its five co-founders: Sharleen Chidiac, Lili Dekker, Jade Manns, Owen Prum, and Alexa West.
• Historical Intertextuality: Performances like Spector’s MoMAlogue #1 actively draw upon early 20th-century movements—specifically Fauvism (via Matisse) and Dadaism—bridging the gap between historical modernism and contemporary post-dance.

Official Responses and Perspectives: Reclaiming the Pictorial Form in Dance

The intersection of dance and visual art was a primary thematic engine driving Pageant’s MoMA residency. Speaking with cultural critics following the marathon, the founders elaborated on the historical trajectory that informed their programming.

"I think the history of dance, coming from a ballet proscenium stage into modernism, then into postmodernism, started with a pictorial form," Alexa West explained during a group interview. "And it’s slowly been breaking away from that over time."

By inviting choreographers to explicitly engage with terms like "painting," "canvas," and "frame," Pageant encourages artists to reclaim the pictorial history of movement. Rather than hiding behind abstract movement for movement’s sake, Pageant artists confront the spectator with direct visual citations.

Art critics have noted that Pageant’s programming feels vital precisely because it rejects the sanitized, Instagram-optimized art trends sweeping Brooklyn. Instead, it offers a venue where failure, messiness, and intellectual rigor are welcomed on equal footing.

Implications: What Pageant Means for the Future of New York Art

The unexpected rise of Pageant—culminating in its triumphant MoMA residency—signals a broader shift in how the contemporary art world views artist-run spaces.

1. The Survival of DIY Spaces

In a post-pandemic New York plagued by hyper-gentrification, skyrocketing commercial rents, and the steady displacement of creative communities from neighborhoods like Williamsburg and Bushwick, Pageant proves that grassroots sustainability is still possible. By keeping their operations lean and community-focused, the founders have created a blueprint for artist survival that bypasses traditional commercial gallery gatekeeping.

2. Bridging the Grassroots-Institutional Divide

MoMA’s decision to hand over its auditorium and curatorial attention to an independent East Williamsburg loft highlights a growing institutional hunger for authentic, unpolished energy. Major museums are increasingly realizing that they cannot remain culturally relevant without engaging directly with the underground ecosystems where tomorrow’s movements are actually being forged.

3. A Renaissance of Critical Performance

In a cultural landscape heavily skewed toward digital consumption and passive viewing, Pageant demands presence. Its commitment to confronting real-world conditions through physical performance art offers audiences an antidote to modern alienation.

As Pageant continues to evolve beyond its Graham Avenue loft and onto major institutional stages, it carries with it the raw, unapologetic spirit of Brooklyn’s underground—proving that when artists build their own tables, the establishment will eventually come knocking.