Haunted House

Cathy Weis’ SoHo loft is haunted. This is not because of the skeleton that dangles on the wall, or the iron hand that floats ominously above the piano. 537 Broadway—or Weis Acres, as the multi-media artist Weis dubs it—is enchanted by spirits of artists and eccentrics past.

Performance

Sundays on Broadway, curated by Cathy Weis, David Guzman, and Zo Williams

Place

SoHo, New York, NY, May 3, 2026

Words

Cecilia Whalen

Cathy Weis with co-curators David Guzman and Zo Williams “A History Lesson of the Building We're In.” Photograph by Rosa Allegra Wolff

For a handful of Sundays every year, Weis opens up her home and recounts some of her loft’s histories as an introduction to “Sundays on Broadway,” a salon series where intergenerational artists gather to share experimental performance work. In these introductions, Weis shares that 537 Broadway was the site of P.T. Barnum’s second American Museum in the nineteenth century, where viewers could see “mermaids,” exotic animals, and the “real” Tom Thumb for just 25 cents.

Later, in the 1960s and ’70s, George Maciunas, who founded the artists’ collective Fluxus, purchased a strip of then-derelict industrial SoHo buildings—including 537 Broadway—and turned them into artist co-ops, or “Fluxhouses.” All kinds of experimental artists moved in, like Trisha Brown, Lucinda Childs, David Gordon, Douglas Dunn, and others. Simone Forti, who now lives in California, lived in 537 Broadway last. Weis bought the apartment from Forti in 2005.

“Sundays on Broadway” is one of the last of what used to be a frequent phenomenon in the SoHo lofts of the ’60s and ’70s: Experimental artists would regularly open up their homes for parties and share what they were working on. SoHo is now more known for its luxury shopping than for its artists, but “Sundays on Broadway” still attracts the kind of quirky, curious, and often irreverent performances that pay respect to the Fluxhouse era.

Amelia Heintzelman with Brendan Elefante at Sundays on Broadway. Photograph by Rosa Allegra Wolff

Weis starts each “Sunday on Broadway” with a similar introduction, but the way she does it is always a surprise. The last time I attended “Sundays on Broadway,” which Weis has been hosting since 2014 (with earlier iterations beginning in 2003), Weis glided into the performance space six feet off the floor on a performer's shoulders. This time, she slowly melted into the floor in a weight-sharing exercise with David Guzman, one of this year's co-curators of the series. As she and Guzman descended, Zo Williams, another co-curator, assembled a rainbow train of painted children's chairs on wheels. The chairs connected through magnets and made a wonderful sound like a rain stick as they were dragged across the space. The chairs circled Weis and Guzman and then banged into them. Guzman and Williams rearranged the chairs around the room as Weis lay flat on her back holding a microphone to her lips.

Weis preceded three artists: Amelia Heintzelman, Fabio Tavares, and Sondra Loring (Loring performed a new work by Stephen Petronio, the first since the closing of Petronio's company last year).

Heintzelman, a young choreographer and performer, is a regular in the New York City downtown experimental dance scene (her work has been performed at Judson Church, Danspace Project, and Center for Performance Research, among other venues). This evening, Heintzelman and fellow dancer, Brendan Elefante, slowly circled each other in the space, then burst into athletic partnering, lifting, shoving and pinning each other to the floor in a wrestling match. Heintzelman had microphones attached to the floor, an ingenious sound manipulation that amplified every sound the performers made. Each roll and fall became tumbles and slams that reverberated with a spectacular echo.

Fabio Tavares's “I wish I was a Thundercat.” Photograph by Rosa Allegra Wolff

Loring entered the stage in a dark hoodie and a sparkly t-shirt for Petronio's “Leave Me Alone.” Facing the back corner, she sliced her legs through the air and bowed her head. Her arms, tattooed with long wrapping vines, swung through the air like ribbons, cutting then curling around her and supporting her as she transitioned in and out of the floor.

Turning around to face the audience, Loring removed her hood and began to slide through the space with big, flying steps and gentle stumbles as a techno score by SQÜRL pulsed in the background. With sharp, taunting movements forward and relaxed looks over her shoulder, Loring both confronted and comforted the audience.

Tavares, who is a trained gymnast and was a performer with “Extreme Action” choreographer Elizabeth Streb for over 10 years, concluded the evening. In “I wish I was a Thundercat,” Tavares used speech, repeated gestures, and song to explore his aging body and the dreams that slowly become more and more out of reach as time goes by. Tavares first fantasized about being a contortionist, folding his body as far as it would go (purposefully not very). He then dreamed of being a vocalist, bursting into song about aches, pains, and occasional itches.

In the piece's last section, Tavares rattled off names of physical illnesses interspersed with social diseases like “hypocrisy” and “guilt.” “I wish I was an exorcist,” he said.

Exorcism—or expulsion—are the opposite ideas of “Sundays on Broadway,” where Weis connects the past and the present through storytelling, historical acknowledgement, and intentionally intergenerational performances. At 537 Broadway, everyone is welcome, even (maybe especially) the ghosts.

Cecilia Whalen

Cecilia Whalen is a New York City-based dancer, choreographer, and writer. She is a graduate of the Martha Graham School and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. In addition to her work with Fjord, her writing can be found in various publications, including Dance Magazine and Commonweal Magazine.

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