Queride community, Show Box L.A. is pleased to announce our invited artist for FALL 2021: Isis Avalos
We are excited to have her on board to lead a community engagement program for residents in L.A. She will lead “si|embra” a community engagement, re-introduction, and performance event between 11/11-11/13. Isis is supported by our SHOW BOX L.A. residency program with funding from the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles
Isis Avalos is a mother, bordercrosser and multidisciplinary movement artist based in Los Angeles, originally from Brownsville, TX. Avalos received her BFA from University of North Texas and has more than 7 years experience touring nationally and internationally as a Teaching/Performing Dance Artist. She is currently a Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Facilitator for The Courage Collective based out of Nashville, TN. Her lived experience growing up undocumented in the South Texas borderland informs her relationship to living in the in-between/identity politics and a somatic approach to anti-racism work. Her movement aesthetic relating to her Mexican Heritage, street/social dance forms and Modern release training serve as a crossroads to her praxis rooted in exploring a de-colonial approach to movement and art-making. IG: @morenamover
*OPENING EVENT Please join Isis Avalos on Thursday, November 11th from 11am to 5pm at Jireh Estética Unisex. Communally, we will be building the altar juntes (together) that will be part of the main event on Saturday, November 13th. Please stop by any time. We invite you to share a picture on the altar.
NOTE: Virtual Streaming of the opening event via Facebook and Instagram live
It is with excitement that Show Box L.A. invites you to our first in-person event for this year: si | embra, an in-person, immersive experience of life and death existing inside one space. si I embra is created to honor death through pictures in an activated altar inside a live movement celebration by artist in residence Isis Avalos (creative altar collaboration with Raquel Cabrera).
pictures have helped us see parts of us that we no longer recognize -a goodbye that we never had with ourselves only until we see that picture again. How do we continue to cultivate ourselves while in transitions of life that often asks us to let something die in order to invite what wants to be born? The act of bringing life into this realm simultaeneously invites the death of what we once were. How doe continuously exist in this duality? Like the molcajete, how many curaciones have we had before we ultimately are grounded back into the earth?
si | embra invites you to honor the parts of you that have died and exist to remind you, you are alive.
Si la comunidad quiere bailar pues que más, que a bailar!
A part of SBLA’s mission for this year is to work with and highlight local immigrant-owned businesses in Los Ángeles, merging artists from all backgrounds and mediums together. Your donations and contributions go towards this collaboration with local business and ongoing partnership for future performances and projects.
Si|embrando Life and Bailando Death: Isis Avalos’ “si|embra” as a Look at Life-Death Dichotomies and Gentrification
December 6th, 2021
Irvin Manuel Gonzalez
image from Isis Avalos’ Instagramimage courtesy of Gabriela Isabel HernandezJirhe Estética Salon
A euphony of polyrhythms, cymbals, harmonicas, and guitars pours out of an agape, rusting white bar door. It fills the cool night breeze of Jefferson Blvd with a palpable heat, one cultivated by the convergence of bodies sudando, grooving, and feeling their way through an open dance floor. Above the door, a faded banner reads: “Jireh Estética Unisex,” a hair salon I am all too familiar with after having walked Jefferson for most of the spring in 2020 for a dance project I was working on.
Haidee Marin, the owner of the salón that has been on the block since 2007, linked with Show Box L.A. (SBLA) this year to open her space as a performance spot, helping contribute to the organization’s vision of partnering with local, immigrant-owned businesses to house artists and highlight the community, forms of art, and ways of being that already exist in the neighborhood. Since the loss of the organization’s studio, “we live in space,” in 2020 and the takeover of the SBLA by Primera Generación Dance Collective members, Alfonso Cervera, Rosa Rodriguez-Frazier, Irvin Manuel Gonzalez, and Patricia “Patty” Huerta, the mission of the non-profit has focused on integrating more possibilities of putting funds into L.A.’s District 10.
Haidee Marin, owner of Jireh Estética Unisex Hair Salon
Upon entering the estética-turned-nightclub/ Zumba dance class party/altar, we are greeted with the setting for “si|embra,” a work that “invites you to honor the parts of you that have died but exist to remind you, you are alive” (Avalos). The event was envisioned by Isis Avalos, a self-identifying border-crossing, brown mother and artivist. She is joined by Raquel Cabrera, another Mexican-American LA-based artist who specializes in storytelling through dance and visual design, and Dennis Guzman a local Zumba dance instructor.
Raquel Cabrera (left), Isis Avalos (center), Dennis Guzman (right)
Inside the estética, the smell of hair dye swirls about the space as neon purple lights compliment the glowing red sign that reads “OPEN.” My body is immediately drawn towards an ornamented altar positioned in the lower, right-hand corner of the space. There, I am greeted by a rainfall of cempasúchil (marigold flowers) that beckons my belonging. The bold, orange blossom is a flower we use in Latine traditions for Día de Los Muertos to help our ancestors find their way to the physical world and join us for a celebration of life and death. The use of cempasúschil flowers follows in the tradition of the Aztec legend of Xótchil, a woman who was turned into a flower as a way of forever preserving her connection and affection for her deceased lover, Huitzilin. Xótchil’s affective bond manifested as these bright, aromatic flowers that we use to this day as a way to maintain togetherness in life and death. Avalos and Cabrera’s ofrenda, adorned in dried corn husks, maiz, candles, and images, situates an intimate environment where the magnificent stretch of the altar that frames one corner of the salon and stands opposite a ritual-in-the-making, implicates our bodies as integral to the ofrenda process, as conduits for life beyond death.
“We go through stages in our life… with different versions of ourselves. That version of you is still in you, but is placed to the side to make room for something else…In reality, death is something to be celebrated.”
image from Isis Avalos’ Instagramimage from Isis Avalos Instagram
Standing next to the salon owner, Haidee, Avalos explained “We go through stages in our life… with different versions of ourselves. That version of you is still in you, but is placed to the side to make room for something else…In reality, death is something to be celebrated.” To help us rejoice in these different versions of growth and death, Avalos invited Dennis to co-lead participants in a movement class of Latine rhythms and movimientos. In these moments of facilitated dancing, si|embra guides our perceptions by tapping into the ways that Black and Brown bodies have learned to move amid moments of joy and loss, provoking the layers of embodied life and death within us, while adhering to the local neighborhood’s call of “queremos una clase de Zumba” (“we want a Zumba class”).
Avalos, Cabrera, and Guzman’s ofrenda experience asks us to consider the ways in which bodies converge daily with ritualistic practices of life and death; how we embody survival and confront our own perceptions of afterlives, beyonds, untimely departures, and nonlinear belongings. From health & lifestyle awareness, Zumba parties as bolsillos/pockets of shared safe space for Latine, middle-aged women, to the corporate grasp of branded fitness programming, to altares/altars with pictures of deceased loved ones, to captured smiles in photographs, to the forceful displacement and unjust killings of Black and Brown communities, the grasp, power, and interconnected messiness was present within a little rinconcito/corner of Jefferson Blvd in Los Angeles, CA.
Through kinesthetic energy and booming cross-rhythms spilling into the night, the event momentarily adds another layer of joyful breath to a street who is still feeling the ongoing effects of gentrification. Just as recently as August 2021, it was announced that a 54-apartment building project would be developed to replace commercial businesses in the street.[1] The units will be located just 5 minutes from Jireh Estética. Jefferson Blvd residents have seen these continued “development” projects for years. During interviews I conducted in March of 2020, business owners, many of whom are immigrants from Latin America, explained that they had encountered increases in rent prices while seeing a new wave of white residents join the street.
…Yet this community perseveres; selling pupusas, renting party supplies, cutting hair, and of course, dancing.
Through breathy “hey’s, hah’s, and eh’s,” Avalos and Guzman lead a group of mainly Brown and Black peoples through an impromptu Zumba lesson, beckoning us to locate ourselves through multiplicities of movement as a way to (un)consciously consider death through life. As part of this reflection, Avalos journeys her audience through an encounter with danced pleasure, asking us to move our cuerpos; dipping caderas, shimmying chests, and beating hearts, into a space of layered protection where Black and Brown folx can rely on the familiarity of polyrhythms, cumbias, salsas, and corridos to groove together on the same pulse in the face of adversity.
image courtesy of Patricia “Patty” Huerta
At the same time, there is something about Brown and Black people coming together to sweat that transforms space. We could be in Haidee’s salon, literally getting down with the owner, pressing heels into her purple-and-white tile flooring, but also exist elsewhere, in a future, in a past, in relationship with severed parts of ourselves, by taking in Avalos’ words: that nothing ever really dies. These parts are there but hidden, maybe even forcefully buried. The power comes in how we can visibilize and work with them again. In fostering this space, Avalos reminds us of the powerful ability that BIPOC folx hold to dance life in the face of death, to dance life and death, to dance life into death, and death into life. These ideas are echoed in her ending duet with Cabrera where the two women outstretch their arms towards one another and care for their affective woes and sweating souls. Their bodies beautifully intertwine, deliberately sewing arms into each other’s open space, limbs inching towards spines to cradle torsos. Death meets life.
Isis Avalos and Raquel Cabrera
In many ways, the work rebounds back to the gentrification of Jefferson Blvd, and how something like dancing energy can redirect the painful effects that displacement has on bodies and communities. Brown and Black L.A. is being erased by white hipsters and corporate greed, but as si|embra asks us to question: how do we work with and amongst death in ways that fight back, find resiliency, and redirect narratives of death as the end? How do we go beyond romanticizing death, but rather, get real with it, look at the facts, and do something with and about it?
Avalos’ si|embra ultimately invites us to position ourselves more palpably in connection with the daily, millisecond-by-millisecond truth that death and life and vida y muerte are not necessarily opposite spectrums but coalesced states of being that teach us how to move in volatile times, giving experience to the old adage, “Nos quisieron enterrar, pero no sabían que éramos semillas” (“They tried to bury us, but they didn’t know we were seeds”).
And it is here, in the space of social movement, that Avalos leads us to find commonality as a spectrum of bodies entering the experience, guiding a collective knowing that we all live and die. What is perhaps most important, is how we confront this cycle and the realization that we all do not die in common ways. Ultimately, the work reminds us that, like cempasúchil’s layered, persisting aroma and colors, Brown and Black resiliency continuously perseveres in the face of peril.
Irvin Manuel Gonzalez (he/him/his) is an artivist, scholar, and teacher. He received his PhD from the University of California, Riverside and teaches as an Assistant Professor at Florida State University. Gonzalez’s scholarship analyzes the constructs of brownness, queerness, and mexicanidad(es) within social dancing, looking at how immigrant, queer, and working-class dancers navigate trans/national politics through feeling and creativity. As a dance artist, Gonzalez grounds his art approaches, strategies, and constructions in rasquachismo, a low-brow Chicanx methodology, to generate collaborations and new potentials. He revels in rasquachismo’s “low brow” aesthetics and sensibilities to redefine the intended use-value of materials, connections, and being. In doing so, he seeks to dismantle notions of the “solo artist” based on white supremacy by highlighting how minoritized bodies are always already ancestrally-connected and linked to one another through emotions, experiences, and ways of resisting. Gonzalez investigates these ideas within his collaborative group, PGDC, where he works alongside brown creators and family to define ‘mexicanidades’ as a communal formation and to highlight the complexities of brown joy and loss in the United States.He is a founding member of Primera Generación Dance Collective (PGDC) and a board member for Show Box Los Angeles (SBLA).
x collaborations is a new series that invites artists from different disciplines to co-create a performance that encompasses their combined artistic practices. The intention of this series is to provide a platform in which artists can network and experiment with the possibilities of what collaboration can create. This project moves outside of only highlighting dance and seeks to be malleable for artists who desire experimentation.
Meet our 2021 X-Collaboration Artists:
Pavel Acevedo, Oaxaca, Mx. (84)
My formal art studies began at the Rufino Tamayo Plastic Arts Workshop in Oaxaca City while I was an assistant and student of the Lithography studio. In 2006, I enrolled to complete my Bachelor’s Degree in visual arts at”La Escuela de Bellas Artes/ Fine Arts School of Oaxaca where I studied under the guidance of prolific artists Shinzaburo Takeda and Raul Herrera.
In 2010 I moved to Southern California and started getting involved in printmaking projects with a social justice and educational awareness in communities of color. In 2015, I opened my printmaking studio by collaboration with “The Desert Triangle Print Carpeta” located provisionally in Riverside.
I’ve been commissioned to create permanent and temporary murals by the Wignall Contemporary Art Museum, Chaffey College, La Sierra University, Mission Cultural Center, We Rise, Comalito Collective, etc.
As an independent artist educator I’ve traveled by giving printmaking workshops through California and part of educational projects as “Barrio móvil” by Self Help Graphics, “I Learn America” and Speedball Artist Demo. My artwork has been granted with art residencies at KALA Art Institute, Self Help Graphics, Hornedtoad Print Studio and it’s in public and private collections in Mexico and the United States.
Oaxaca, Mx. (84)
Mis estudios formales en grabado comenzaron como asistente en taller de litografía en taller Rufino Tamayo en la ciudad de Oaxaca, en el 2006 ingrese a La Escuela de Bellas Artes para continuar mis estudios en Artes Visuales con maestros como Raul Herrera y Shinzaburo Takeda.
En 2010 migre al Sur de California donde empecé como impartiendo talleres de grabado en comunidades de color sobre igualdad social. En el 2015 forme mi taller de grabado colaborando con el proyecto “Desert Triangle Carpeta”. He creado murales provisionales y permanentes comisionados por el Wignall Contemporary Art Museum, Chaffey College, La Sierra University, Mission Cultural Center, We Rise, Comalito Collective, etc.
Como educador independiente colaboró con proyectos como “Barrio móvil” por Self Help Graphics, “I Learn America”y Speedball Artist Demo.
He recibido residencias por KALA, Self Help Graphics y el taller Horned Toad Print studio así como mi trabajo es parte de colecciones públicas y privadas en los Estados Unidos y México .
Diana Cervera
Diana Cervera, is a transborder Chicanx artist based in Tijuana and San Diego. Holding a BA in Ethnic Studies from the University of California San Diego, Diana’s work navigates the intersections of art and social justice; she is a filmmaker, storyteller, poet and educator. In 2018 Diana was awarded an artistic grant from the Critical Refugee Studies Collective, a University of California-wide million-dollar initiative of scholars and activists, to develop the Mujer Mariposa documentary through critical refugee studies’ lenses. She also received the Jorge Huerta Spirit Award for creating an original and BIPOC-centered theatre production of students of color voices at UC San Diego. Thereafter she has produced and directed original theatre works in the Bay Area with BIPOC communities and youth where she had the opportunity to work alongside Playwright Cherrie Moraga.
Diana facilitates identity-based workshops and lectures at universities, cultural centers, and grassroots organizations using poetry and theatre as a point of departure to engage in complex conversations about equity, race, representation and the power of the counter-narrative. She has been invited to present transnational workshops throughout universities and community spaces in California, including UCLA, UCSD, SDU, USD, Clark University in Boston, Puerto Rico, UNAM in Mexico City, and University of Guanajuato, Mexico.
Gabriel Gutierrez
Originally from Chicago, but now based in LA, Gabriel is an adult adoptee, first generation street dance artist, founder of MoFundamentals, and artivist dedicated to highlighting the resiliency of foster and adoptee youth. His work centers around disseminating his knowledge of underground hip hop, house, and breaking culture from pioneers, directly to foster youth, to heal traumas caused by placement in the child welfare system. His contributions at the intersection of hip hop, education, and foster care advocacy have earned him invitation to train at intensives hosted by Rennie Harris, nomination for the ACTIVATE Arts Advocacy Fellowship to represent Los Angeles City District 1, and recruitment to pilot reentry programming funded by the California Arts Council. Currently, Gabriel continues to provide adoptee-led arts through his program, MoFundamentals.
September 29, 2019 5pm. Showing and discussion at we live in space 2520 W Jefferson Blvd., Los Angeles CA 90018
Residency artist Mallory Fabian/fabe dance company
Sept 29, 2019
free studio showing and discussion open to the public
as well as workshops Sept 8,15,22,29
For this showing and discussion, Fabian/fabe dance company will share movement material from their residency in preparation for their full evening performance Drugs Can’t Buy at Highways Performance Space. A new theatrical dance work that explores what love can do to someone. Evocative, dark, and deeply personal, it is an experiment on how love moves and motivates us — for better or worse.
Mallory Fabian, a Las Vegas native, received her BFA in Choreography & Performance at California Institute of the Arts. Mallory, a Los Angeles based freelance artist has had the opportunity to perform for Gob Squad, RGWW, Zoe Scofield, Szalt, No1 Arthouse at the 14th Factory The Assembly, Dance Aegis, Andrew Pearson, & B Dunn Movement. Mallory is Board President and dancer for Rosanna Gamson/World Wide as well as a co-teacher for GO, an internationally toured improvisational workshop with Rosanna Gamson. In January 2017, Mallory started her dance company fabe. fabe premiered Don’t Inhale it, Strictly Mouth, her first evening length work, at MESH, an evening of live performance, immersive experience, and visual art, produced by Mallory Fabian and Bryanna Brock. Their second evening length work, unknow, premiered in June 2018, and Thanks for Asking, choreographed by Mallory and Executive Director, Darby Kelley, had it’s premiere November 2018. fabe has presented work at REDCAT, Highways Performance Space, The Bootleg Theater, The Rose Center Theatre, Civic Center Studios, Electric Lodge, Mimoda, Lula Washington, Brockus Studios, and Diavolo.
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These events are part of the Show Box L.A. / we live in space Residency Program, and made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles, Department of Cultural Affairs.
Show Box L.A. / we live in space residency artists present a charrette with Gayle Fekete. This will be an informal discussion and sharing of tableaux, sketches and movement excerpts.
@ we live in space
2520 W Jefferson Blvd
LA, CA 90018
Sat May 4, 2019 at 4pm
feketePROJECTS anatomy of a bee
In creative collaboration with Manny Macias, JonMarc Edwards and E. Martine Gimenez
This charrette will be an informal discussion and sharing of tableaux, sketches and movement excerpts of our installation which will be presented fall 2019; location TBD.
Gayle Fekete is the Head of Dance/Professor in the Department of Theatre and New Dance at Cal Poly Pomona. Gayle has been associated with Urban Bush Women NYC as guest artist and consultant on numerous international residencies and summer institutes. She is on the consultant team for Urban Bush Women’s Choreographic Centre NYC. Gayle Fekete presents and produces festival and immersive performance projects in the Los Angeles area, and has produced and facilitated numerous CSU Summer Arts Dance intensives. She is a creative consultant/dramaturge for independent performance practice. Fekete is an active voice regionally and has served on numerous grant panels including NET, DCA, and COLA. Currently, she is exploring site specific, interactive media and interdisciplinary performance collaborations. Her interests include dancetheatre, choreography, installation architecture, and performance practice that challenges class, race, culture and identity. She also is an independent producer and performs with PRISM, Mechanism Dance Theatre, Rennie Tang/Architect, Opera Del Espacio, and The Market Gallery Studio in Los Angeles.
Painting by JonMarc Edwards
This work was developed in part through the Show Box L.A./we live in space residency program, with support from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.
Show Box L.A. / we live in space residency artists present showings of work in progress.
@ we live in space
2520 W Jefferson Blvd
LA, CA 90018
Mar 3, 2019, 2-3 pm
DaEun Jung / Byoul 2019 A solo project, Byoul is a dance made by Korean dance vocabulary and chance procedure, in collaboration with pansori singer Melody Shim.
The performance will start from the we live in space studio, and take the guests to a short trip to the outside neighborhood. Then, a feedback/sharing time will follow back in the studio. The admission is free and no ticket or rsvp required.
DaEun Jung is a bicultural dancer-choreographer whose work reveals her past and present body memories. Her works have been presented at performance venues in Los Angeles including Electric Lodge, Highways, The Mortuary, Pieter, and REDCAT. She has been awarded artist-in-residencies from Santa Monica Cultural Affairs at Camera Obscura Art Lab, Los Angeles Performance Practice at Automata, and Dance Resource Center at KYCC Menlo Center. DaEun redefines the principles, form, and context of Korean folk dance in inter/multi-cultural settings as a continuation of her graduate study at UCLA where she received her MFA in choreography and Westfield Emerging Artist Award. She has worked with award-winning choreographers such as Oguri & Roxanne Steinberg, Victoria Marks, Milka Djordjevich, Ros Warby, Wilfried Souly, Jeanine Durning, Shahar Biniamini, and Melinda Ring. daeunjung.com
Muscle Memory has been developed during Sadie’s choreographic residency with Show Box L.A. / we live in space. It is a solo work that investigates the body’s ability to retain and trigger memory. Please join us to see and dialogue with the artist about her work-in-process. Running time: 15-20min + dialogue. Light refreshments will be served. Please RSVP here: https://bit.ly/2NDHYlD
Sadie Yarrington is a Los Angeles based performer, choreographer, director and educator. Her choreography and direction has been presented at The American Theatre of Actors (NYC), Brand Library & Arts Center, Descanso Gardens, Moss Theater, The Music Center’s Sleepless and Bootleg Theater (LA). An avid educator dedicated to creating safe spaces for students to discover their own connection to movement, Sadie is on faculty at Inner-City Arts (DTLA), New Roads School (Santa Monica) and teaches movement workshops across LA that honor the physical and neurological diversity of each group. Sadie holds a BFA in Dance and BS is Anthropology from the University of Michigan.
This work was developed in part through the Show Box L.A./we live in space residency program, with support from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.
DJANJOBA LA 2018
A Drum & Dance Gratitude Festival
February 23 – 25, 2018Join Souly Dance Arts in honoring the dedicated teachers and culture bearers of Mande culture active in the Greater Los Angeles area!
A very popular public celebration across the Mande Empire (Mali, parts of Senegal, the Gambia, Burkina Faso, Guinea, & Ivory Coast), Djanjoba brings people together to honor a specific person, concept, historical event or civic action. Souly has participated in these festivities since he was a child dancing professionally in Burkina Faso, and is honored to bring the experience to Southern California.
Over 3 days and across 4 venues, festival events include numerous dance and drum classes, a dinner and roundtable discussion to discuss our past and chart the future; and a Midnight Dance Class. On Sunday, Feb 25th, a traditional open-air festival in Leimert Park, as part of the Leimert Park Artwalk will be the culmination of the festival.
Sunday, February 25:
2:30 PM Djanjoba Festival Opening with Shine Muwasi
3:30 PM – 5:30 PM Djanjoba Celebration
as part of the LEIMERT PARK ART WALK
4343 Leimert Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90008
Free!
Featured Teachers: Jahanna Blunt, Nzingah Camara, Nikki Campbell, Ndella Davis-Diassy, Mareme Faye, Dramane Kone, Aboubacar Kouyate, Kara Mack, Mama René Fisher-Mims, Djeneba Sako, Solo Soro, Willy Souly, Magatte Sow, and Malik Sow.
Djanjoba LA 2018 is presented with the support of Alliance of California Traditional Artists Living Cultures Grant; and in collaboration with RhythmQuest, OCTENATE, Leimert Park Art Walk, and Motherland Music. Souly Dance Arts is fiscally sponsored by Show Box L.A., and a 2017-18 residency artist. The Show Box L.A. residency program is supported in part by the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs and the National Endowment for the Arts.
January 12 & 13, 2018 8:30pm we live in space
2520 W Jefferson Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90018
Judith Sánchez Ruíz performs her latest solo, Encaje; plus Cycles Score with Laurel Jenkins, a spontaneous duet honoring the memory of Trisha Brown, with music by Brian Wood.
What can I love? a country, an arm, a doll, a new brand? We scratch our hearts with the patience of a farmer in a glittering landscape. What is it that is me? What is it that is not me? How much freedom or limitation do I endure?
ENCAJE is a work about hypocrisy, and is inspired by Anis Nin Diaries. It is a work concerned in how unbalanced we are in our actions and thoughts.
Limited seating – reserve HERE
$15 in advance/$20 at the door, as available
ENCAJE – The Process ENCAJE plays with two concepts I have been exploring in my research for a while: «Diary exercise » and « Radio exercise ». The « Diary exercise » is a tool referencing the daily writing practice of novelist Anaïs Nin which she employed all through her life. I have always been inspired and somewhat guided by Anaïs Nin’s writings. Nin was an essayist and memoirist born to Cuban parents in France, where she was also raised. She wrote journals since she was 11 years old and ending shortly before her death as well as novels, critical studies, essays, short stories, and erotica. Her at times raw and blunt accounts of her everyday life as well as the acute observations of her own behavior and that of her peers had a great impact on the development of feminist thought. «Diary exercises»: is a “Pull-out” to set a short material, exploring mood sensations in the present moment and within it, searching for a fitting at times visceral vocabulary. It collects from the everyday material, a diary of unpredictability, a set of emotions and transformations affected by the minute, the hour, the day. I am interested in a form of recapitulation, an archive that captures the instant. I reinvent the untold, unpublished present of chaos and vulnerability. In that vein I designed the « Radio exercise » : I am letting radical changes of states, provoking a shift of action in the brain that combine spontaneously preset determined information, making space for complexity and coincidence, thereby empowering a challenge delivery. Very much like turning the dial on an old radio, the body snaps from one state to the next, allowing the collision of contrasting facts to unfold.
The two exercises both influence and structure my solo. « Diary exercise » is choreograph and « Radio exercise » is an improvised solid structure. I start « writing » my entry of the day, looking at it line by line, to then gloss some paragraphs, to remark, reject, re-design.
« My life is not possible to tell. I change every day, change my patterns, my concepts, my interpretations. I am a series of moods and sensations. I play a thousand roles. I weep when I find others play them for me. My real self is unknown. My work is merely an essence of this vast and deep adventure. » Anaïs Nin
Encaje music by ARCA; Costume Design by Beate Borrmann.
ENCAJE Performance History
Work-in-progress at Festival Deltebre Dansa, July 2017, Spain.
Residency award at Choreographisches Centrum Heidelberg in Projekt der TANZAllianz, August 2017, Heidelberg, Germany
Premiere at the 14th Guangdong Dance Festival, November 30, 2017, Guangzhou, China.
2018
Show Box L.A. / we live in space, January 12-13. 2018, Los Angeles, US
Brooklyn Studios for Dance: January 19-20. 2018, Brooklyn, US
Radialsystem, June 9-10. 2018, Berlin, Germany
About the artists:
Director, choreographer, improviser, and teacher Judith Sánchez Ruíz began her dance studies at the age of 11 at the National School of Arts of La Habana, Cuba. After graduating from the Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA), she started working in various dance companies in Cuba as well as abroad. From 1999 to 2011, she lived in New York City where she established JSR Company, focusing on multidisciplinary and site-specific performances. Judith Sánchez Ruíz lives and works in Berlin.
Sánchez has been choreographing, performing as well as staging her own work since 1993, whilst being simultaneously employed as a company dancer with DanzAbierta Company, Cuba (1991-1996), Mal Pelo Company, Spain (1997-1999), Trisha Brown Dance Company, New York, US, (2006-2009) and Sasha Waltz & Guests, Berlin, Germany (2011- 2014). She worked with independent choreographers such as David Zambrano (1997), Jeremy Nelson and Luis Malvacias (2001-2002), DD Dorvillier (2002) and Deborah Hay (2012), amongst many others.
For several years Sánchez has strongly been committed to improvisation as a performance format involving live music. From 1996-2009, she collaborated with former long-time partner, 2011 MacArthurFellow composer and drummer Dafnis Prieto on an ongoing investigation into the dynamic interplay between dance and music. She collaborated on several improvisation projects with innovative composers and visual artists, amongst whom Steve Coleman (1997), Henry Threadgill (2002, 2008), Jonathan Cramer (2002), Stephen Talasnik (2010), Sun K. Kwak (2010), Kentaro Ishihara (2010-2011), Burt Barr (2008), Ian Trask (2011) as well as with photographers Anna Lee Campell (US), Anja Hitzenberger (Austria), Octavio Tapia (Chile) and Manuel Moncayo (Mexico).
In 1997, “Un Lugar”, one of her early pieces created together with Cuban Jazz band Columna B, was awarded a Stanford Jazz Workshop Residency, thanks to the support by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. She has subsequently been commissioned to create choreographic work by Aaron Davis Hall – via their Fund for New Work through the Jerome Foundation (2002) – as well as for Danspace Project St. Marks Church NY – within the commissioning initiative supported by NYSCA (2004-2005) and the commissioning initiative from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (2009-2010) – and for the Whitney Museum NY together with composer Dafnis Prieto (2007).
In 2008, Sánchez was awarded a grant through the « Meet the Composer’s Creative Connections Program » with the support from the Department of Cultural Afairs, New York State Council on the Arts, Virgil Thomson Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. In the same year, Sánchez invited performer and media artist Jonah Bokaer to co-create a duet that will later become “Replica”, a multidisciplinary collaboration with renowned American visual artist Daniel Arsham which toured extensively in the US and Europe (2009-2010). “Replica” was commissioned by the Cultural Programs of the National Academy of Sciences (CPNAS), Washington D.C with support from the Harman Center. The collaboration was made possible thanks to the support from the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts and the Trust for Mutual Understanding, the New Museum, U.S. Artists International, the Institut Valencià d’Art Modern, Valencia, Spain, and the Musée Carré d’Art in Nîmes, France.
In 2010 Sánchez established JSR Company in New York City to promote her own choreographic activities. As a company, she received commissioning support from the Storm King Art Center, NY (2010) as well as from the Guggenheim Museum’s Works & Process Performing Arts Series (2010). The company was awarded grants by the American Music Center’s Live Music for Dance Program (2010), Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (2010), TheRockefeller Brothers Fund and the Field (2010-11), Baryshnikov Arts Center in the frame of their Martha Dufy Resident Artist Spring Program (2011) and DMAC – Duo Multicultural Arts Center (2011).
In 2008 Sánchez was awarded “Mujeres Destacadas” (Outstanding Women) by “El Diario”, the Spanish newspaper in New York, and was selected by Dance Magazine as one of the 25 Dancers to Watch in 2010.
After her relocation to Berlin, a year later in 2012, Sánchez entered a choreographic collaboration with Berlin-based Mozambican performer Edivaldo Ernesto. “There is a name for it” (2012-2014) was presented at Radialsystem V, Berlin, Germany, at the Tanzfestival im Kulturzentrum Tempel, Karlsruhe, Germany, at OFFestival, Garage 29, Brussels, Belgium, at BOUGE B, deSingel, Antwerp, Belgium as well as at Gdańsk Dance Festival, Gdańsk, Poland. “Noise”, their most recent collaboration from 2016, was premiered at Tanz_House, Salzburg, Austria (2016) and toured to Argentina to be presented in the frame of the Festival EL CRUCE, Rosario, and at El Porton de Sanchez Theater, Buenos Aires (2016) as well as to Notafe Festival, Estonia (2017). Further dates in 2018, Hong Kong and Radialsystem, Berlin, are confirmed. Thanks to their recent exposure in China, Sánchez and Ernesto have been invited to create a choreography for Chinese contemporary dancers from different provinces of China, starting in November 2017, with a tour planned for China and Europe early 2018.
Meanwhile, JSR Company premiered “Micro Revolution” in 2015, a site-specific performance with 11 artists at ACUD art center Berlin, collaborating with sound designer Jassem Hindi, pianist Sebastian Schunke and opera singer Atalyá Tirosh. “Sebastian Schunke Meets Judith Sánchez Ruíz” was a collaboration with German Jazz pianist Sebastian Schunke and premiered at Pavillon Hannover, Hannover, Germany, in February 2016. The improvisational project “Mirror Equation” was performed at Flutgraben, Berlin, in July 2016.
“Encaje”, her most recent work drawing from the diaries of writer Anaïs Nin was presented as a work-in-progress at Festival Deltebre Dansa, Spain, July 17, 2017, and received a residency award at Choreographisches Centrum Heidelberg in Projekt der TANZAllianz, Heidelberg, Germany, the same year. It will premiere at the 14th Guangdong Dance Festival, Guangzhou, China in November 2017. A US tour is planned for early 2018.
Next to her activities as both choreographer and performer, Sánchez has been teaching and creating work for the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris, France (2015, 2016, 2017), SNDO Amsterdam, Netherlands (2017), den Danske Scenekunstskole (the Danish National School of Theatre and Contemporary Dance) (2010, 2014), at Norges Dansehøyskole (Norwegian College of Dance), Oslo, Norway (2014), at the Modern Dance Theater School, MTD, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2015) and the University of Music and Dance Cologne, Germany (2014, 2015, 2016).
She has been invited to teach and give summer workshops at Dance Umbrella Festival, London, Coda Oslo International Dance Festival, Oslo, Tsekh Summer School, Moscow, Objectif Danse, Marseille, Summer Melt: Movement Research, New York, Summer Workshop, Guangzhou, China (2016-2017), NYU Summer workshops, Berlin, Festival Deltebre Dansa, Spain.
Laurel Jenkins is an independent choreographer, dancer, and teacher from Vermont. As a member of the Trisha Brown Dance Company from 2007-2012, she developed original roles in Brown’s final works. She continues to perform and restage pieces for the company. Jenkins has also danced with Sara Rudner, Liz Lerman, and Vicky Shick. Her work has been presented in Los Angeles by REDCAT, Automata, Highways, the Electric Lodge, the Getty Center, and the Fowler Museum, and in New York by Danspace Project and Dixon Place, and by Berlin’s Performing Presence Improvisation Festival, and Tokyo’s Sezane Art Gallery. She has been commissioned to choreograph for LA Contemporary Dance Company, CSULB, UNL, and the Wooden Floor. With the support of the Asian Cultural Council, Jenkins traveled to Phnom Penh, Cambodia in 2016 to work with Chey Chankethya, and Amrita Performing Arts. In addition, Jenkins recently performed the role of Iseme in Peter Sellars’ opera Oedipus Rex and Symphony of Psalms conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen. This winter she will choreograph Berstein’s Mass with the LA Phil at Disney Hall. She received a BA from Sarah Lawrence College, an MFA from UCLA, and is certified in the Skinner Releasing Technique. Jenkins is an Assistant Professor of Dance at Middlebury College.
Beate Borrmann (Costume Designer) Beate Borrmann was born in Berlin in 1975. She studied Fashion, Costume and Stage Design in Berlin, Saint Petersburg and Krakow. Besides working as an assistant costume and stage designer she has produced her own designs for Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz Berlin, Staatsoper Unter den Linden Berlin and Kleisttheater Frankfurt/Oder. She has worked with Sasha Waltz since 2003 and created the costumes for Sasha Waltz’s »Gezeiten«, »Dialoge 06 – Radiale Systeme« and »Jagden und Formen (Zustand 2008)In collaboration with Hussein Chalayan and Sasha Waltz, Beate Borrmann designed the costumes for the choreographic opera »Passion« at Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Paris. In 2012 she designed the costumes for Sasha Waltz’s and Mark Andre’s choreographic concert »gefaltet« as well as for the dance project »MusicTANZ – Carmen« within the education program of the Berliner Philharmoniker. In 2013 she created the costumes for Sasha Waltz’s »Dialoge Kolkata« in India as well as for »Dialoge Avignon« in collaboration with the artist GIOM. In 2014 Beate Borrmann designed the costumes for the Opera »Orfeo« of Sasha Waltz, to be seen in Berlin in Staatsoper im Schillertheater in 2015. In 2016 she worked with Ai Weiwei on his installation »Laundromat« at Jeffrey Deitch Gallery, New York City. In 2017 she worked for the first time with Staatsballett Berlin, for Nacho Duato’s production »Erde«. Beate Borrmann lives and works in Berlin and Mecklenburg.
Brian Wood is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, improviser, songwriter, and healer. He uses music and sound to help connect people into deep experiences with their bodies, emotions, and environments and assists people in bringing out their own authentic voice. He is a Radical Aliveness/ Core Energetics practitioner with a private practice and he currently accompanies modern and improvisation dance classes at Chapman University, Cal State Long Beach, The Wooden Floor. He has composed for dance, video, film, and multimedia performance, including collaborations with artists in Japan and all over Southern California. He composed for the Internet documentary series “Group,” and has composed and accompanied live for theater productions in Los Angeles. He holds a degree in music composition from UCSB’s college of creative studies. Examples of his songs and dance compositions can be found at brianwood.bandcamp.com
These performances are made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles, Department of Cultural Affairs; and through Show Box L.A.’s /we live in space Residency Program. Encaje Production: JSR Company & Produced and supported by the14th Guangdong Dance Festival, (CH) .
Los Angeles to San Diego
Thursday, November 5, 2015
Our friends, PADL West in San Diego, are presenting a Performance-Lecture by Ishmael Houston Jones. We are taking a road trip.
Join us!
Tickets are $10 – a seat in the van + the ticket for the event.
Ishmael Houston-Jones (NYC) is a dynamic dance performer and internationally known choreographer, author, performer, teacher and arts activist. He received numerous awards including two Bessie Awards for his piece Cowboys, Dreams and Ladders, and for the revival of THEM (1985), which focuses on masculinity, sexuality and the AIDS epidemic. Recently he was honored with the prestigious Doris Duke Impact Award. Join us to hear Houston-Jones in an evening of talking and dancing — sharing highlights from his career and discussing black choreographers and post-modern choreography.
Co-sponsored by Arts and Lectures, CSUSM Dance Studies and PADL West
RESERVE YOUR SEAT
GET ON THE BUS
We will meet at 3pm (location to be determined, stay tuned)
The van will depart promptly at 3:15 for San Diego
The event begins at 7pm
The van will depart for LA at 9:30pm
WHERE WE ARE GOING
California State University San Marcos
333 South Twin Oaks Valley Road
Arts Building Room 111
San Marcos, CA 92078
Thursday, November 5, 2015
from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM
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November 14, 2015: 7pm. Showing at Paloma Street Studios 1518 Paloma Street, Los Angeles, CA 90021
December 12, 2015: 3:30pm. Showing at Live Arts Los Angeles 4210 Panamint St., Los Angeles CA 90065
Presenting the first showings of two companion pieces.
Both showings are free and open to the public.
November 14: Paloma Street Studios
Prelude – solo
Choreographed and Performed by Meg Wolfe
Music by Maria de los Angeles Cuca Esteves
Props by Gregory Barnett
Quilts by Meg Wolfe
Prelude is an exploration of movement material and physical objects.
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December 15: Live Arts Los Angeles
Prelude- trio
Choreographer: Meg Wolfe
Performers: taisha paggett, Marbles Radio, Meg Wolfe
Music by Maria de los Angeles Cuca Esteves
Quilts by Meg Wolfe
NFD – Redux
Choreographer: Meg Wolfe
Performers: taisha paggett, Marbles Radio, Meg Wolfe
Music by Maria de los Angeles Cuca Esteves
Props by Gregory Barnett
Robes by Meg Wolfe
Conjuring the energy of social dance forms, within the structure of a performance work, NFD is experiential, sensational, energy moving work. There is no narrative. Our bodies are the conduit: where we meet with our differences and similarities; where dances are generated, transferred, translated in an attempt to build a recycled and remixed revolution.
These performances are made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles, Department of Cultural Affairs; and developed through Show Box L.A.’s Los Angeles Dance & Research Residency Program, supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. These companion works are being developed in partnership with Paloma Street Studios, Live Arts Los Angeles; commissioned by REDCAT and the National Performance Network.
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SUPPORT Donations to Show Box L.A.’s sponsored projects go directly to the artist, in support of the creation of their works. DONATE NOW
Thursday and Saturday at 8:00p
Bootleg Theater
2220 Beverly Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90057
“Materials—the body, sound—merge exquisitely in this hourlong dance-song (song-dance?) … the song unravels into something wild, then plain, bodies as they are.” —The New York Times
MASS is a dance, singing and dancing, a song and dance in a black box, a slow dance on a pedestal for three women, with music. It’s also the mass, force, and friction against, around, and inside that box. It’s a trio of voices tuning, their bodies objectified and recomposed through gradual processes in motion and sound. Like a prayer, it proceeds without manipulation, loving the flaw.
MASS was created as a part on an ongoing collaboration between choreographer Milka Djordjevich and composer Chris Peck. Three female dancers execute an interdependent score of dancing while singing live. They are their own musical accompaniment; a choir of voice, action and image. The trio creates hyper-objectified anonymous forms and three-part harmonies that pulse and throb through the black artifice of the theater. The performers oscillate between action and inaction, singing and dancing, chanting and swaying—an engine that evolves through space and generates friction over time. The work aims to unveil the materiality of the moving and sonic female body, unraveling its inherent choreographed code.
CREATIVE TEAM
Choreography: Milka Djordjevich
Music: Chris Peck
Dancers: Jessica Cook, Kyli Kleven and Djordjevich
Performance Advisor: Rebecca Brooks
Lighting Design: Madeline Best
Asst.Lighting Designer/Production Manager: Cecilia Durbin
Scenic Design: Sara C. Walsh
Vocal Coach: Peter Sciscioli
Costumes: Naomi Luppescu
Presented in association with Bootleg Theater.
• • • Commissioned by the Kitchen, NYC and developed at Abron’s Art Center, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Swing Space, PACT Zollverein, Essen Germany and Workspace Brussels, Belgium. MASS is a sponsored project of Show Box L.A., made possible in part with generous support from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, and the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.
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ABOUT MILKA DJORDJEVICH Milka Djordjevich is a choreographer, dancer and teacher based in Los Angeles. Since 2003, herwork has been shown at several venues including REDCAT, Pieter, Machine Project and Hammer Museum/REstore Westwood (Los Angeles); the Ktichen, 2010 Whitney Biennial, Chocolate Factory Theater, Danspace Project, Movement Research and AUNTS (New York); Counterpulse and The Garage (San Francisco); Uferstudios (Berlin); Kondenz Festival and Bitef (Belgrade); Locomotion Festival (Skopje); Artdanthe (Paris); WUK (Vienna); Fabrik (Potsdam); Solo in Azione Festival (Milan); Toihaus Theatre (Salzburg); Gateshead International Festival of Theatre (UK). She has received funding from the Suitcase Fund; The Center for Cultural Innovation; a commission from the Danspace Project 2010-11 Commissioning Initiative, with support from the Jerome Foundation; and residencies at Fabrik Potsdam, PACT-Zollverein, Workspace Brussels, UCLA Hothouse, LMCC Swing Space, among others. Djordjevich was a 2006-2007 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence and a 2008/2010 danceWEB Europe Scholar. Her other projects include serving as guest editor for Critical Correspondence and curating Monday Morning Class at Pieter in Los Angeles. In addition to her work with composer Chris Peck, she has collaborated with choreographer Dragana Bulut and has performed for Heather Kravas, Jennifer Monson, Elizabeth Ward, Sam Kim, Sasa Asentic and Ana Vujanovic, among others. She has also assisted choreographer DD Dorvillier in various capacities and is currently Visiting Assistant Professor in Contemporary Choreography at the University of California Riverside. Djordjevich received a B.A. from UCLA and an M.F.A. from Sarah Lawrence College.
ABOUT CHRIS PECK Chris Peck is a composer, computer musician, and improviser who often collaborates with contemporary dance and theater artists, including David Dorfman, John Jasperse, RoseAnne Spradlin, Jeanine Durning, Mark Jarecki, Abby Yager, Ming Yang/Dance Forum Taipei, and Beth Gill. Peck performs as an improviser and multi-instrumentalist with Crystal Mooncone along with Jon Moniaci and Stephen Rush. The trio has toured widely since 2006, with performances at CCRMA (Stanford), the Center for New Music in San Francisco, and Spectrum in NYC. Peck collaborated with Deke Weaver and Jennifer Allen on Land of Plenty in 2008-2010, and made music for two installments of Weaver’s Unreliable Bestiary: Elephant in 2010-11 (performing in the premiere at the Stock Pavilion in Urbana, IL as well as subsequent iterations at the Sundance Film Festival and Salt Lake Arts Center) and Wolf in 2013. In addition to his work with Djordjevich, Chris is currently working on a new piece with Brussels-based choreographer Eleanor Bauer and the Belgian new music ensemble Ictus which will premiere in 2016. He is also a Ph.D. candidate in Composition and Computer Technologies at the University of Virginia.
“Cheerfully wacky … both hypothetical and very real.” —The New York Times
In an inventive and humorous unscripted live performance, Michelle Ellsworth prepares audiences for the end of men. Her “man archive”—a vast compendium of science, non-science, procedures and possibilities—provides the foundation for a hyper-linked tour through the modern mind and the future of our species. Committed both to conservation and archival efforts, Preparation for the Obsolescence of the Y Chromosome employs web technology, choreography and the latest data from the Whitehead Institute at MIT to ask a random sampling of humans what it might mean if, as some scientists have predicted, men disappear from the scene. Under the steady watch of her male gaze simulator, Ellsworth demonstrates her one-of-a-kind replacement apparati, shares her idiosyncratic research and works to expand an inventory of artifacts that may just become irreplaceable.
Presented in association with Bootleg Theater.
• • • Made possible with generous support from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission.
Michelle Ellsworth, Preparation for the Obsolescence of the Y Chromosome, 2015. Photo: Ian Douglas, courtesy of American Realness.
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ABOUT MICHELLE ELLSWORTH Michelle Ellsworth is a dancer, choreographer, video maker, writer, cartoonist and web designer. In her often humorous and always thought-provoking performances, Ellsworth combines dance with technology, creating performable websites that exist as independent sites as well as live pieces. She is a 2013 Creative Capital and New England Foundation for the Arts’ NDP Grantee and a 2011 United States Artists Knight Fellow and has performed at venues throughout the United States including Jacob’s Pillow, P.S 122, Dance Theater Workshop, On the Boards, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, and The American Realness Festival in New York. She has performed and taught at Brown University, Columbia College, Naropa University, The University of Costa Rica, the University of Colorado, and in Ireland. Her drawings and spreadsheets have been published in CHAIN and her screen dances have been seen around Europe and throughout the U.S. michelleellsworth.com
W.o.W #001 ARTISTS
Allie Hankins (Portland, OR), Grand Lady Dance House, Nickels Sunshine
AND
Alex Mathews, Barry Brannum, Constance Jaquay, Devika Wickremesinghe, Gregory Barnett, Jahanna Blunt, Justin Streichman with Gustine Fudickar, Los Angeles College
You’re W.o.W.?! is Show Box L.A.’s new low-tech series designed to celebrate the creative spark of L.A.’s dance and performance scene, and to fan the flames of its riskiest endeavours. Each edition features sections from two or three works currently in-progress, interspersed with a variety of ultra-brief presentations in which artists fire off quick sketches, share impulsive ideas and venture on wilder experiments.
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Made possible in part by generous support from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission.
Edenic Idyllic: I Can Take You To Heaven, Let Me Take You To Heaven gathers a small group of people in a state of creative suspension, as each awaits a private, one-on-one performance within a ritualized Technicolor realm, behind a closet door. Heavens are invoked, dances are shared and kindness is made manifest in an altar-like environment that reconfigures dollar-store finds and hand-made crafts into resonant geometric constellations. With Edenic Idyllic, Gregory Barnett launches a series of projects inspired by the teenage party game Seven Minutes in Heaven that explores the potential of intimate, co-imagined states of being.
Creation and Installation: Gregory Barnett
Performers: Gregory Barnett, with Diamondback Annie, Kate Gilbert
• • • Presented in partnership with Schkapf’s Artist-in-Residence program.
Made possible in part by generous support from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission.
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ABOUT GREGORY BARNETT
Gregory Barnett creates signs, dances and altars, and believes he is better for it. He wants the things he creates to assure people they are not alone. He wants to further feelings of compassion and trust. He wants everyone to relax.
Gregory Barnett is an interdisciplinary performing and visual artist based in Los Angeles. His recent works include A Home For Wayward Satyrs, presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, as part of Ann Magnuson’s One-Hour Bacchanal, and If This Were Any More Camp You Would Need A Tent / This Is What I Want / Our Technicolor Dream Dance, a VistaVision-inspired public use dreamscape at Human Resources.
Saturday at 2:30pm, Sunday at 4pm, Monday at 8pm
Bootleg Theater
2220 Beverly Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90057
Co-presented with Los Angeles Performance Practice as part of Live Arts Exchange [LAX]
In New Faithful Disco, a dance work-in-progress by Los Angeles choreographer Meg Wolfe, belief is made manifest as energy. A trio of dancers—taisha paggett, Marbles (Rae Shao-Lan), and Wolfe—feel it, generate it and re-mix it as they prepare to take on something big. Love, faith, impermanence? Pleasure? Power? Soul retrieval? Disco is an accumulation and dispersion of bodies and effort and hope in the form of a dance. Featuring Maria de los Angeles (Cuca) Esteves’ layered score of nature sounds and disco rhythms transmitted by three cassette players, with stylings by Gregory Barnett.
Choreographer: Meg Wolfe
Performers: taisha paggett, Marbles (Rae Shao-Lan), Meg Wolfe
Music: Maria de los Angeles Esteves
Styling/Set: Gregory Barnett
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Presented with generous support from the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, and the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs. Created with support from Show Box L.A., REDCAT, and the UCLA World Arts and Cultures/Dance Hothouse Program.
Saturday at 4pm, Sunday at 7pm, Tuesday at 8pm Bootleg Theater 2220 Beverly Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90057
Co-presented with Los Angeles Performance Practice as part of Live Arts Exchange [LAX]
“It’s refreshing to see female performers being this bold.” —Village Voice
Set inside an actual dressing room, Actress Fury is the unruly passion play of one tormented actress as she wrestles with her own deep-seated desire to be extraordinary. Sourcing three narratives of highly ambitious characters—Sophocles’ Ajax, the diaries of Vaslav Nijinsky, and the recollections of abstract painter Bridget Riley—dramatic threads unfurl through dance to reveal an anti-strategy about being female and an artist in the wake of third wave feminism.
Created by Jennie MaryTai Liu with Hannah Heller and Alexa Weir
Performed by Hannah Heller, Jennie MaryTai Liu and Alexa Weir
Music by Julia Bembenek and Mark Nieto/ COMBAT!
Original visual design by Tanya Brodsky
Costumes by Wendy Yang Bailey
Creative assistance by Ben Gullard
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Presented with generous support from the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission and the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.
Thursday–Saturday at 8:30pm
Highland Park Ebell Club
131 S Avenue 57, Los Angeles, CA 90042
“A breakout success—evocative and fresh, revealing a voice as compelling as her stage presence.” —Village Voice
“In the midst of this great feat of performance, she breaks your heart, absolutely slays you with the poetry of it.” —Eva Yaa Asantewaa, Infinite Body
West Coast Premiere
Created by celebrated dance/theater artist Okwui Okpokwasili and directed by Peter Born, Bronx Gothic gives vivid physical force to the charged relationship between two girls on the verge of adolescence in the 1980s. Okpokwasili’s unforgettable performance pushes against extremes and reverberates with a potency that threatens to break the body. Memories surge in this fictive autobiographical invocation—as the lives of two 11-year-olds are revealed with unflinching honesty through their sex-saturated, hand-passed notes. Drawing inspiration from Victorian-era novels and West African griot storytellers, Bronx Gothic conjures a darkly powerful tale of sexual discovery and intimate entwinings in the outer boroughs of New York City.
Okpokwasili and director Peter Born were awarded a 2010 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award for the work Pent-Up: A Revenge Dance. Okpokwasili is widely known for her ongoing artistic collaboration with Ralph Lemon and performance work with Nora Chipaumire, Young Jean Lee and Dean Moss, among many others. She is a 2012 Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography Fellow, a 2013 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in Choreography and a 2014 Foundation for Contemporary Arts grantee for Dance.
Written and performed by Okwui Okpokwasili
Directed by Peter Born
• • • Bronx Gothic is presented by Show Box L.A. with generous support from the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs and members of the Bronx Gothic Host Committee: Antonio Castillo and Edgar Miramontes, Jessica Fleischmann, Randy Lakeman, Roy López and Angel Perez, Brian Ronan, Anna B. Scott and Joel Smith.
Bronx Gothic was co-commissioned by Performance Space 122, Danspace Project, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC) and the Jerome Foundation with residency support from Park Avenue Armory’s Under Construction Series, New York Live Arts, Baryshnikov Arts Center and LMCC’s Extended Life Dance Development program. Additional commissioning support provided by Le Maillon in Strasbourg, Théâtre de Gennevilliers in Paris, Théâtre Garonne in Toulouse and Zagrebačko Kazalište Mladih in Zagreb, as part of PS122 GLOBAL program.
Saturday–Sunday at 8pm
Live Arts Los Angeles
4210 Panamint Street, Los Angeles, CA 90065
San Francisco artist Sara Shelton Mann premieres Hybrid 2 with collaborators Christine Bonansea, Jesse Hewit, Robbie Beahrs, and Mark Growden. Also on the program is tribes/dominion, SNF, and a live music performance by Mark Growden. Hybrid 2 is part of The Eye of Leo Series, a collaborative series of solos created through self-inquiry and conversation. This journey is two solos put together, overlapping. It is a puzzle without a beginning or end. Framed, condensed and constructed through the consciousness of performer and witness, the work functions as both façade and transparency, to look through and listen into. Imagine what they will do next, and what they are thinking. Watch in retrograde. Enjoy.
Discounted tickets available for participants in Sara Shelton Mann’s workshop, The Body Process.
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ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Sara Shelton Mann – Choreographer, teacher, writer, consultant. Sara trained and performed with Alwin Nikolai and Murray Louis Companies, 1968-72, created a Modern company for Halifax Dance Co-Op 74-79, then moved to San Francisco in 1979 and developed the performance group “Contraband” touring from 1979-96. She collaborated with Guillermo Gomez-Pena 1996-2000. Since 2000 She has taught and created performance work internationally. Her awards include 6 Isadora Duncan Awards, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Gerbode Choreographer in Collaboration Award with David Szlasa, and CHIME, a project of Margaret Jenkins Company. Her training consists of: Movement Alchemy Level I, The Energetic Body, Deep Touch, Writing for Scenario and Advanced Practices. www.sarasheltonmann.org
Christine Bonansea a multi disciplinary performer artist and choreographer. Graduated in French Dance National Dance school, she studied with Regine Chopinot, Mathilde Monnier and Catherine Diverres among other great artists in Europe. She’s been performing internationally with numbers of companies as Faustin Linyekula, Companie Allias, Sara Shelton Mann, La ALTERNATIVA, Tino Sehgal, Nita Little and more recently Katie Duck.Her recent works has been seen performed at Movement research-New York City, ODC-San Francisco, Dock 11- Berlin and will be seen at the Whenever wherever Festival-Tokyo. She’s been supported by Theater Bay area CASH Grant, the Zellerbach Family foundation and the French Consulate of San Francisco. www.christinebonansea.com
Jesse Hewit is a dance artist living in San Francisco. His current projects include his own ADULT with Laura Arrington, Turbulence: (a dance about the economy) with Keith Hennessy and Circo Zero, and the Eye of Leo project with Sara Shelton Mann. Recent works have been seen at American Realness in New York, The Joe Goode Annex in San Francisco, PICA’s TBA in Portland, Dock 11 in Berlin, and The Firkin Crane in Cork, Ireland, and recent works have been supported by MAP Fund and residencies from Headlands Center for the Arts and Ponderosa TanzLand. Jesse makes, performs, teaches, and curates around the U.S. and Europe. www.jessehewit.com
Mark Growden is a singer, writer, multi-instrumentalist, composer, record producer, visual artist, workshop leader, and founder/artistic director of The Calling All Choir. Growden has released several critically acclaimed albums, including Saint Judas, which was awarded “2010 Rekkid of the Year” by music blog Stash Dauber and ranked in the 2010 Village Voice Critics Poll. Growden has toured the US extensively, composed original musical scores for a number of Dance and Theater companies and scored several films. Mark has devoted his life to making music for other people, and to helping other people make music for themselves. www.markgrowden.org
Robbie Beahrs is an Oakland-based composer, sound artist, and music ethnographer. Since 2005, his fieldwork in Siberia and Mongolia has focused on applied study of nomadic music/sound-making and listening practices. Robbie actively composes chamber music, performs live sound for theater/dance, lectures at U.C. Berkeley, and gives workshops in Tuvan throat-singing and extended vocal techniques. Recent works of his have been performed at the Bang on a Can summer festival, Z Space with Jesse Hewit/Strong Behavior, as well as Dock 11 (Berlin), KUNST-STOFF Arts, and the Joe Goode Annex with Sara Shelton Mann. www.robeahrs.com
Bootleg Theater
2220 Beverly Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90057
Show Box L.A. is pleased to present a series of new works by experimental Los Angeles dance artists as part of the inaugural Live Arts Exchange Festival. Show Box L.A. events are presented on rotating split-bill programs during the first two weeks of this three-week series. Featuring:
Live Arts Exchange (LAX) creates space for and draws attention to contemporary performance emerging out of Los Angeles. This home-grown performance series showcases some of the most innovative artists and independent companies in LA, creates social events that encourage cross-genre hangouts, and provides opportunity for peer to peer critique.
Produced by Los Angeles Performance Practice and the Bootleg Theater, the first ever Live Arts Exchange pulls contemporary theater and dance, film/video, animation, punk opera, and party into one space. LAX 2013 features work from Early Morning Opera, Show Box L.A., Poor Dog Group, and Chi-wang Yang, with special events with Timur & the Dime Museum, Zoe Aja Moore and Miwa Matreyek.
Friday at 7pm, with NICK+JAMES
Saturday at 1pm, with Jennie MaryTai Liu
Tuesday at 7pm, with NICK+JAMES
Saturday at 3:30pm, with Hana van der Kolk
Bootleg Theater
2220 Beverly Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90057
Co-presented with Los Angeles Performance Practice as part of Live Arts Exchange [LAX]
Shannon Does Cloudland finds our heroine continuing her quest for fame in Hollywood. Her hopes pinned on landing the lead role in an action thriller (despite any acting experience or credits), Shannon awaits her “audition” in an isolated basement rehearsal space. In a poetic, durational selfie, Shannon impulsively explores the relationship between expectation and devastation, amateurism and expertise, in a valiant effort to shift the balance of validity in the entertainment capital of the world as we know it.
Saturday at 1pm, with Meg Wolfe
Sunday at 4pm, with NICK+JAMES
Thursday at 7pm, with Hana van der Kolk
Bootleg Theater
2220 Beverly Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90057
Co-presented with Los Angeles Performance Practice as part of Live Arts Exchange [LAX]
This is an exercise in taking blind faith in the divergent tendencies of process, the expressive power of color, and the probability that story, despite an impulse to quell it, most likely will emerge in time.
Friday at 7pm, with Meg Wolfe
Sunday at 4pm, with Jennie MaryTai Liu Tuesday at 7pm, with Meg Wolfe
Bootleg Theater
2220 Beverly Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90057
Co-presented with Los Angeles Performance Practice as part of Live Arts Exchange [LAX]
TenderHeart places the dissolution of two expressive bodies at the thrust of structural design. Resulting from a ritualized practice of allowing divergent responses to over-the-top music—ranging from Wagner to Dionne Warwick—the new work by NICK+JAMES with musician Tara Jane ONeil sews together ceaseless dancing with barely visible thread.
Thursday–Saturday at 8:30pm
REDCAT (Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater)
631 West 2nd Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012
Presented as part of REDCAT’s New Original Works Festival 2013
Two singular dance artists, Minneapolis-based Morgan Thorson and Los Angeles-based Meg Wolfe, perform a living, and moving, document of the process of human connection. A series of choreographic encounters staged in multiple cities allowed Thorson and Wolfe to trace the interactions that unlocked mutual recognition. Performed in new-found proximity, authoring their shared history with varying degrees of authenticity and struggle, the result is a dance done to destroy the awkward state of not knowing each other—exuberant, deficient, tender and daring. Continue reading Morgan Thorson & Meg Wolfe: The Other Thing→
Friday–Saturday at 8:30pm
Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles 1238 W. 1st Street, Los Angeles, CA 90026
“Amplified by an uncanny theatricality that fluctuates between gothic horror and the primal, moving body.” —The New York Times
“Downtown’s wildchild from Uruguay, Luciana Achugar…deliberately treads the line between dance and ritual.” —Dance Magazine
Los Angeles Premiere
In her Bessie Award-winning evening-length duet PURO DESEO, choreographer luciana achugar embraces the cavernous darkness of the black box to create a riveting performance ritual that invokes the power and mystery of the theater itself. Drawing on paranormal phenomena, the occult and Gothic representations of monstrosity, achugar and collaborator Michael Mahalchick generate an eerily tangible force in this visceral incantation built from sound, movement and the conflicting presences of light and dark.
Conceived and directed by luciana achugar
Created and performed by luciana achugar and Michael Mahalchick
Lighting design by Madeline Best
Costume design by Walter Dundervill
Presented with generous support from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts and the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.
• • • ABOUT THE ARTIST
luciana achugar is a Brooklyn-based choreographer originally from Montevideo, Uruguay. She makes dances to be FELT as they are SEEN and as an occasion for communion. achugar developed her voice as an artist in close dialogue with the NY and Montevideo contemporary dance communities. Her work is concerned with the post-colonial world, searching for an undoing of this abuse of power from the inside out. She began making work collaboratively with Levi Gonzalez in 1999, and in 2002 she started working independently. Since then she has created eight works that have been presented at dance venues throughout New York City, as well as atMOMA’s PS1; at the Green Street Studios in Cambridge, MA; at the Walker Art Center and The Southern Theater in Minneapolis; at Portland’s Institute of Contemporary Art during their Time-Based Art Festival; and in Uruguay at the Festival Iberoamericano de Danza, Teatro Solis and the Centro Cultural de España en Montevideo.
Monday at 9pm
Foxfairy Studios
700 S Market Court, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, CA 90021
“Wade is a captivating growling demon spastically continuing to ‘suck’ the life out of each one of us.” —Brooklyn Rail
“A soaring, secular hymn produced by a shaman.” —Deborah Jowitt
Fountain is a solo from Jeremy Wade that has been evolving since early experiments 2010. The work proposes a generative sphere of uncertainty as Wade circumvents traditional audience-performer dynamics and facilitates a generous group experience that evolves into a sensual engine. Wade assumes the role of preacher, shaman, and fool, by offering himself as a medium to receive and transform the energy of the theater space taking the audience on an emotional and alchemical journey. Wade’s choreographic technique is a unique encounter of aesthetic, sociological, and neurological dimensions. He derives movement from intense attention to the multiplicity of impulses in the body that are drawn from neurological processes, social constructions of norm, and aesthetic decisions. The stage becomes an engine where the intersubjective actions/reactions are propelled into space enveloping the audience for maximal sensation and association.
• • • ABOUT JEREMY WADE Jeremy Wade is an American dancer/choreographer based in Berlin. He graduated from the School For New Dance Development, Amsterdam in 2000. Wade premiered his first evening length work titled Glory at Dance Theater Workshop in 2006, for which he received a Bessie Award. Since then, Wade has been living in Berlin, working closely with the Hebbel Theater and Dramaturge Eike Wittrock. His most recent performance works include …and pulled out their hair(2007), Throwing Rainbows Up (2008), I Offer My Self To Thee (2009), and There Is No End To More (2010). In 2011 Wade embarked on a six month research phase titled “identity and transgression” from which he created the solo Fountain and a new trio To The Mountain. In addition to the creation of performances and a rigorous teaching practice, Wade has always been drawn to the curation, production and hosting of ecstatic events. This interest evolved from his experience as a host of vibrant parties and night clubs in New York City during the mid-90s, and his role as a founding member of Chez Bushwick in Brooklyn. He curated the Politics of Ecstasy Festival in 2009 at the Hebbel am Ufer together with Meg Stuart, Eike Wittrock and Brendan Dougherty. Wade also curated Creature Feature, a queer performance series in 13 editions from 2009 to 2011 at Basso, Berlin.
Thursday from 6–9pm (preview)
Friday from 11am–5pm
Saturday from 11am–6pm
Sunday from 12noon–6pm
The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA
152 North Central Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90012
itch Dance Journal participated in Printed Matter’s the first annual LA Art Book Fair. Free and open to the public, the LA Art Book Fair is a unique event for artists’ books, art catalogs, monographs, periodicals, and zines presented by more than 180 international presses, booksellers, antiquarians, artists, and independent publishers from nineteen countries.
Monday at 7pm
Bootleg Theater 2220 Beverly Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90057
L.A. Lady Arm Wrestlers returns to wrestle in the name of grassroots, non-profit art. Join us as Pat Payne, aka VELVET HAMMER, represents Show Box L.A. during the Fall Brawl of the L.A. Lady Arm Wrestlers event at Bootleg Theater. One part Theater, one part Wrestling. One part Anything-Can-Happen.
Eight women battle it out with strength, wits, bribery, you name it. Our celebrity judges make the final decision, and when a champion is named, the proceeds are donated back to the winning wrestlers organization, with the other seven companies earning whatever they raise from the crowd.
Along with Show Box L.A., this brawl features representatives from Sacred Fools, Ghost Road, Collaborative Arts LA, Opera del Espacio, Son of Semele, Moving Arts and Poor Dog Group. L.A.
• • • ABOUT L.A. LAW L.A. LAW is part of the national non-profit Collective of Lady Arm Wrestlers or CLAW (clawusa.org). It is One part Theater. One part Wrestling. One part Anything Can Happen. And all the money raised is donated back to our communities. In the spirit of WWF, Roller Derby, and burlesque, the Los Angeles chapter is part of a growing national movement. These spectacles are a strange brew of performance art, burlesque, sport, and grassroots fundraising, where women create wild personas, theme songs and entourages, and solicit money from the audience.
Friday–Saturday at 7:30pm & Sunday at 3pm
Bootleg Theater 2220 Beverly Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90057
Featuring Abby Crain, Margit Galanter and Meg Wolfe
Swap/Meet #01 brings together the dance worlds of Northern and Southern California, featuring LA’s Meg Wolfe and Bay-Area artists Abby Crain and Margit Galanter. Show Box LA launches its latest initiative at Bootleg, kicking off Swap/Meet with work that demonstrates a commitment to investigative practices and improvisational forms. Abby Crain presents a group work This is nothing new. These are some things we are chewing on, and this time you can watch. MargitGalanter presents her solo, Relay: Living Things Shine On. And Meg Wolfe performs a new solo work, calling it something else for now, created with long-time collaborator, composer Aaron Drake.
In conjunction with these performances, Margit Galanter offers her workshop BEING SCENE at Bootleg on Saturday, August 25, 2012.
Presented with generous support from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.
• • •
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
ABBY CRAIN is a dancemaker and performer with roots in both the Bay Area and the New York performance worlds. She has presented work in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. She danced with Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People from 2001 to 2009, with David Dorfman Dance from 2001-2003, and has worked extensively with Sara Shelton Mann. She regularly teaches and makes work with Margit Galanter under the moniker ARTWORKOUTS with can be viewed at artworkouts@wordpress.com and is engaged in an ongoing collaboration around movement, language and performance with Bay Area poet, David Buuck.
MARGIT GALANTER’s fascination regarding the construction and value of movement has drawn her to collaborative embodied research for decades. Margit is a movement investigator and dance poet living in Oakland, CA, and she presents and teaches inter/nationally – places like Mills College, Naropa University, city streets, PS122, Movement Research, SOMAFest, and Pieter Performance. Her work is highly influenced through her ongoing artistic research strands and her long-term practice in movements as diverse as Lisa Nelson’s “Tuning” Scores, Steve Paxton’s Material for the Spine, Wild Goose qigong, Amerta Movement (Javanese movement meditation developed by Suprapto Suryodarmo), The Feldenkrais Method, and Open Source Releasing technique. In the Bay Area, she collaborates with Abby Crain through Art Workouts, as well as media artist Kadet. Her practice, Physical Intelligence, encompasses her unique perspective, helping people experience the innate clarity and vitality one can uncover through the potency of movement. www.margitg.wordpress.com www.physicalintelligence.org
Noted by the Los Angeles Times as one of the “Faces to Watch in 2012”, MEG WOLFE is a LA-based choreographer/performer, co-editor of itch Dance Journal, and the founder and artistic director of Show Box LA. Her full-evening work, trembler.SHIFTER, was a 2011 National Performance Network Creation Fund Project, commissioned by REDCAT (Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater). Her work has been presented on the west coast at REDCAT, Segerstrom Center for the Arts/Off Center Festival, CalArts, Highways Performance Space, Anatomy Riot, Sea and Space Explorations, among others. Her projects have been supported by funding from the National Performance Network Creation Fund, the Center for Cultural Innovation ARC Grant, the Durfee Foundation ARC Grants, Danspace Project Commissioning Initiative, and Meet the Composer Fund; multiple residencies at the Djerassi Resident Artist’s Program; the Hothouse Residency program at UCLA, and others. Based in Los Angeles since 2004, Wolfe’s prior work occurred in NYC in the works of Vicky Shick, Sigal Bergman, Molissa Fenley, Clarinda Mac Low, and Susan Rethorst. www.megwolfedance.org
Saturday at 3:30pm
Electric Lodge
1416 Electric Avenue, Venice, CA 90291
A conversation with David Roussève, Cari Ann Shim Sham* and Sri Susilowati Dr. Anna B. Scott/Gesture & The Citizen joins Show Box L.A. to produce Wild Mind, a conversation about dance, innovation and society. Featuring with choreographers David Roussève and Sri Susilowati, along with filmmaker Cari Ann Shim Sham*, Scott leads a discussion of memory and screens, dance on film, and other topics that arise from the mediated gesture. GestureandCitizen/WildMind1 is an opportunity to chat with Dr. Scott and her guest speakers about readings that have been selected in advance. The goal is to create a rich experience in which speakers and audience are ready part in a conversational “dance” together.
Curator Darin Klein about the itch performance, 2hours4every3minutes, at Tilt/Shift LA:
“Our final program in conjunction with Tilt-Shift LA was all that I hoped it would be – and more. Not knowing the precise details of what would unfold within the gallery tonight, I had nonetheless been promising (and advertising!) an “intimate and intense” evening…”
Peruse and purchase publications from local creators and purveyors: 21st Century Queer Artists Identify Themselves, Double Break Gallery and Shop, Glaciers of Nice, itch, JIMMY, Night Papers, prvtdncr & bodega vendetta, Public Fiction, Christopher Russell, spunk (1993-96), Starrfucker, and more. Plus free reading material from The Miracle Bookmobile!
Saturday, February 18, 6-8pm: itch
Experience an intimate and intense dance performance by members of the itch community, whose interests and practices converge in a happenstance yet curiously fortuitous bricolage. itch is an evolving art project qua artist forum cum journal/‘zine published in LA.
Come visit us for these events, and check out the exhibit – running from Jan. 28 – February 25, 2012
Hours:
Tuesday – Saturday, 10am – 6pm
special program hours
and by appointment
In the introduction that accompanies this exhibition, Darin Klein writes:As queer artists, we navigate a city that may have been built on illusion but is being held together by individualized histories. Our bodies and our intellects seek harmony with or rebel against the disparate confluences of our surroundings while gleaning information and inspiration. Our art proposes pragmatic solutions to, fantastic alternatives for, or straightforward documentation of the world as we experience it at the western edge of western civilization. …Because the ground we stand on is unstable—literally and metaphorically—the fortification of our psychological landscape is of utmost importance. There is no singular viewpoint on important issues that are certain to affect entire communities where nature and man threaten to wipe out the bedrock of our collective and varied efforts and hopes. Piece by piece we work to ensure that each of our voices is heard, confident that our contributions must strengthen the foundation of a future historical dialogue as it will pertain to queer artists living and working in Los Angeles right now.
(An itch event)
(You are cordially invited)
2hours4every3minutes: a performance cycle
Featuring: Greg Barnett, Taisha Paggett, Meg Wolfe… and you?
As part of Tilt-Shift LA: New Queer Perspectives on the Western Edge
Saturday, February 18, 2012
6-8pm
Free
come late/leave early/stay for the long haul
BYOB
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles
2685 S La Cienega Boulevard (south of Venice)
Los Angeles, CA 90034
Contemplating the notion of queer performance and perusing this opportunity for real-time interaction, itch offers 2hours4every3minutes, a performance cycle.
What is it our bodies are willing to confess to that cannot otherwise be articulated? What information gets translated over time and what simply disappears? How do we share (the spotlight)? What unexpected danger/magic/disaster/confusion, etc., do we encounter when we really allow “everyone in the room” to speak, and who really takes up the invitation? What is this atrocity/beauty we call performance?
In the first hour, Greg Barnett, Taisha Paggett and Meg Wolfe rotate through a series of 3 minute performances, each one feeding off of and building from the previous experience. In the second hour, the 3 minute performance cycle opens to anyone who wishes to bring their body into the conversation. Over the course of 2 hours, the arc of the performance will be built from the shared labor of the bodies in this intimate space, bodies whose participation as witness or mover is of equal value. Mic check, mic check: how might you participate?
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles Presents
Darin Klein & Friends
Tilt-Shift LA: New Queer Perspectives on the Western Edge
Sunday at 7pm
6608 Lexington Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90038
In Loving Memory/Everything Must Go! Don’t be sad it’s over, be glad it happened.
It is with great sadness and unexpected joy that we announce the death of Anatomy Riot, “AR”, 45, of Los Angeles, CA. AR was a wanderer, making her home from bars to ballrooms over the 6+ years. Hard-working, easygoing, unassuming, and community-minded, AR was loved by many; and is survived by Meg Wolfe, Show Box L.A., and 250+ performance children, countless intersections of legitimate and illegitimate body-specific investigations. AR is survived by the spirit of _____. AR is survived by you.
FEATURED PERFOMERS
Linda Austin
Gregory Barnett & Kate Gilbert
Kate Bergstrom
Stacy Dawson Stearns
Maureen Dunn
Simone Forti & The Sleeves (Terrence Luke Johnson, Sarah Swenson, Douglas Wadle)
d. Sabela grimes
Arianne Hoffmann
Marcus Kuiland-Nazario
Pat Payne
Jose Reynoso
Nancy Sandercock
Anna B. Scott
Meg Wolfe
• • •
Show Box L.A./Anatomy Riot #45: Everything Must Go / itch Dance Journal will be featured as part of the Native Strategies series. Write to nativestrategiesla@gmail.com for more information.
Friday–Saturday at 9pm
Blankenship Ballet at The Alexandria Hotel
501 S Spring Street, Los Angeles, CA 90013
“His political and creative restlessness—his refusal to settle and to settle down—makes him one of our most provocative and necessary artistic voices.”—Dance Magazine
LOS ANGELES PREMIERE
Set to music sung by renowned soprano Cecilia Bartoli, HEAVENS WHAT HAVE I DONE unfolds from a rambling monologue addressing the artists’ ascension to success, the hypocrisies of an unstable world, artistic critiques, and dreams and desires of a more personal nature.
Created and Performed by Miguel Gutierrez
Lights by Lenore Doxsee
Set by Miguel Gutierrez and Jason Simms
Costume by Machine Dazzle
• • • ABOUT MIGUEL GUTIERREZ
Dancer and choreographer Miguel Gutierrez creates solo and group works with a variety of dancers, music, and visual artists under the moniker Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People. Gutierrez’s work has been presented in various American venues, including Dance Theater Workshop and The Kitchen in New York, DiverseWorks in Houston, and the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts in Burlington, Vermont, as well as at international festivals. He has received three New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Awards, is a 2010 Fellow in Choreography from the Guggenheim Foundation and a recipient of a 2010 Foundation for Contemporary Arts grant for Artists; he has also received support from the National Endowment for the Arts, Creative Capital, the Jerome Foundation, the Rockefeller MAP Fund, the National Performance Network Creative Commissioning Fund and New York Foundation for the Arts’ Fellowship and BUILD programs. He teaches regularly around the world and has worked with a wide variety of extraordinary contemporary dance artists, such as Joe Goode, John Jasperse, Juliette Mapp, Sarah Michelson, Jennifer Lacey, Deborah Hay, and Alain Buffard. Miguel was the curator of the Dance and Process series at The Kitchen from 2005–06. WHEN YOU RISE UP, a collection of his performance writings, is now available from 53rd State Press. www.miguelgutierrez.org
Join Souly Dance Arts in honoring the dedicated teachers and culture bearers of Mande culture active in the Greater Los Angeles area!
Commissioned by the Kitchen, NYC and developed at Abron’s Art Center, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Swing Space, PACT Zollverein, Essen Germany and Workspace Brussels, Belgium. MASS is a sponsored project of Show Box L.A., made possible in part with generous support from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, and the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.
Show Box L.A. 