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DanceWatch Weekly: TBA rushes toward its final weekend

By Jamuna Chiarini
September 15, 2016
Dance

It’s mid-TBA (the Portland Institute For Contemporary Art’s yearly 10-day festival, in case you’re new to things), and with four days left in the festival there is still plenty of time to catch a large part of what the festival has to offer. Plenty of morning workshops, midday artists talks, Field Guide sessions led by the TBA Scholars (a new program this year), multiple evening performances, visual art exhibitions, music performances and after-hours parties are still on the docket, enough for us to turn this edition of DanceWatch Weekly over to TBA.

Because I write about dance, the events listed below are dance related. That is not to say that there aren’t many other wonderful offerings outside of what I am focusing on below, because there are, and you should see them, too. Check out the full schedule of events on PICA’s website.

If you are interested in following the festival virtually, PICA’s blog offers writings and rumination’s on it’s events (written by Portland writers and TBA scholars), and their flickr account is full of beautiful moments captured on photo and video.

It’s a wild ride, and it’s not over yet. Enjoy!

Workshops

10 am September 17, Ride Now or Tail in Mouth or IDK or instead of writing, with Dylan Mira
10 am September 18, Untitled_Juggling, taught by the performers of Alessandro Sciarroni’s UNTITLED_I will be there when you die
Check out the TBA guest scholars who will be leading artist dialogues, panels and field guide sessions throughout the entire festival. They are Kemi Adeyemi, Sampada Aranke, Stephanie DeGooyer, Linda K. Johnson (Portland dance artist), Maya Mikdashi, and Ariel Osterweis. Check out PICA’s website to find specific dates and times and locations for these events.

Performances

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Allie Hankins in “better to be alone than to wish you were.” Photo courtesy of The Portland Institute for Contemporary Art.

better to be alone than to wish you were
Allie Hankins
September 15-17
BodyVox Dance Center, 1201 NW 17th Ave
In this part-lecture, part-choreographic solo exposition, Hankins, a Portland-based performer, weaves seduction, stand-up comedy, and forced voyeurism in an attempt to uncover the illogics of love and sex and the futility of lust. I interviewed Hankins in May when she debuted the first iteration of this solo called Now Then: A Prologue, which you can read here.

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“UNTITLED_I will be there when you die” by Alessandro Sciarroni. Photo courtesy of The Portland Institute for Contemporary Art.

UNTITLED_I will be there when you die
Alessandro Sciarroni
September 16-17
12:30 pm September 17, Artist Dialogue between Sciarroni and Linda K. Johnson
Lincoln Hall, PSU, 1620 SW Park Ave
Italian choreographer Alessandro Sciarroni returns to TBA for a second year with Part Two of his trilogy that began last year with “Folk-s.” Part Two will focus on the art form of juggling, stripping away the trappings of the circus, leaving the bare essentials of juggling to help us see the larger picture of flight, failure, kinetic potential and patterning.

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“Leila’s Death” by Ali Chahrour. Photo courtesy of The Portland Institute for Contemporary Art.

Leila’s Death
Ali Chahrour
September 15-16
12:30 pm September 16, Artist Dialogue between Chahrour and Maya Mikdashi
Winningstad Theatre, 1111 SW Broadway
Lebanese choreographer Ali Chahrour explores the celebration of martyrdom and heroic death through the professional mourner, Leila, whose role it is to lament and honor the dead at funerals. Using traditional songs and cries of bereavement, this work is an elegy to a fading cultural heritage, and addresses the body’s relationship to religion.

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Geumhyung Jeong’s “7ways.” Photo courtesy of The Portland Institute for Contemporary Art.

7ways
Geumhyung Jeong
September 16-17
New Expressive Works, 810 SE Belmont St
South Korean choreographer, dancer and performer Geumhyung Jeong explores the potential of the human body by blurring the line between body and machine. Combining dance, theater and puppetry, Jeong has created seven “duets” between her body and mundane household objects, exploring the sensuality, power, and mutability of the body.

Upcoming Performances

September 19, “Queer Tangueras & Rebellious Wallflowers: Women Taking the Lead in Argentine Tango”, A public lecture at Reed College by Juliet McMains
September 27, Spectacle Garden #5: Equinox Harvest, Curated by Ben Martens
September 30, Performance by Spenser Theberge and Jermaine Spivey
October 6-8, Diavolo-Architecture in Motion, White Bird
October 7-25, A Photo Exhibit of Fuse-Portland Dance Portrait, Jingzi Zhao
October 8-15, Giants, Oregon Ballet Theatre
October 13-15, Camille A. Brown & Dancers, White Bird
October 13-15, Bolero, NW Dance Project
October 20-29, BloodyVox, BodyVox
October 20-22, Inbal Pinto & Avshalom Pollak, White Bird
October 21-22, Lines of Pull, The Holding Project
October 28-30, INCIPIO, PDX Contemporary Ballet
November 3-12, Reclaimed, Polaris Dance Theatre
November 4-6, Obstacles and Victory Songs, Stephanie Lavon Trotter and Dora Gaskill
November 11-13, Epoch, Jamuna Chiarini and push/FOLD-Samuel Hobbs
November 12-20, the last bell rings for you, Linda Austin Dance
November 17-19, Reggie Wilson/Fist and Heel Performance Group, White Bird
December 2-4, N.E.W. Expressive Works Residency Performance, Dana Detweiler, James Healey, Jessica Hightower, and Renee Sills
December 8-10, In Good Company, NW Dance Project
December 8-10, ARCANE COLLECTIVE, Presented by BodyVox
December 10-26, George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker®, Oregon Ballet Theatre
December 15-17, Complicated Woman, Katie Scherman/2016 Alembic Resident Artist
December 18, Gifts, a film by Clare Whistler/2015 Performance Works NW visiting artist
December 22-24, Cirque Dreams Holidaze, Presented by U.S. Bank Broadway in Portland

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