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Weekend DanceWatch: Questions and answers

By Jamuna Chiarini
October 1, 2015
Dance

What is involved in the making of a dance? What does the duality of Shiva and Krishna look like in Bharatanatyam? What happens behind the scenes at a circus? What does the space between two people look like? How do you play a skeleton piano? How can you express yourself in performance beyond the conventional? What happens when you bring a writer, dancer and a filmmaker together in a small space? These are all questions that this weekend’s performances will address. If you don’t go, you will never know.

Evidence of a dance, Marginal Evidence by Katherine Longstreth.

Evidence of a dance, Marginal Evidence by Katherine Longstreth.

Marginal Evidence (an interactive experience of dance-making),
Katherine Longstreth
October 1 – November 14
White Box, 24 NW 1st Ave
6 pm October 1, Opening Reception
3 pm November 7, Panel discussion with paleontologist Theodore Fremd, artist Sara Huston, and Mark Johnson, a criminologist with the Portland Police Bureau.

Twenty years ago Katherine Longstreth, a Portland dance artist, received a camera for Christmas from her father, she took the camera to rehearsal, turned it on and forgot about it. Twenty years later after moving to Portland Oregon from New York she unpacked and found these beta tapes, had them converted and realized that they were the only record she had of the full rehearsal process of any of the dances she ever made. Little did she know that the footage she took of herself in those rehearsals, would become the spark for Marginal Evidence, a visual art exhibit that she developed, which opens tonight, at University of Oregon’s White Box gallery.

Marginal Evidence is a visual art installation about the intimate act of choreography. Dance is ephemeral and when it is gone, what is left? How do we know it existed? What is the evidence left behind? Using the approach of a forensic investigator, Longstreth reveals the private process of dance making and exposes the inner life of archival materials.

“My goal was to try to lift the lid metaphorically on the creative process and my creative process is dance: that’s what I am using because that’s my material and my expertise. I am hoping it will reverberate for any artist in any kind of creative process.”

She was also interested in broadening the definition of choreographer. What would be created if you took an artist from one field and had them create art in a field outside of their discipline? What would they make?

Using set design, text, illustrations, diagrams, photographs and video projections, Longstreth has created an interactive experience in collaboration with filmmaker, Dicky Dahl, and composer, Loren Chasse. As visitors move through the three rooms at the White Box, they will be encouraged to engage with the materials by reading, touching, watching and listening to it.

Inspired to look at this research process through different lenses, Longstreth has organized a panel discussion on November 7  at 3 pm, with paleontologist Theodore Fremd, artist Sara Huston, and Mark Johnson, a criminalist with the Portland Police Bureau. A Q & A with the artists involved with the exhibition will follow.

Anubhava
Choreographed by Jayanthi Raman and Guru Adyar Lakshman, presented by RASIKA
7 pm October 2
Portland State University, Lincoln Performance Hall, 1620 SW Park
Choreographed by Jayanthi Raman, this troupe of seven professional Bharatanatyam dancers from India and the US, will perform Anubhava. The word has many meanings but generally refers to the ecstatic experience of the divine. The first half of the dance will be about Lord Shiva, the Hindu god known as the destroyer, and the second half will be about Lord Krishna, the most popular Hindu god identified by his dark blue skin (the color of a dark monsoon cloud) and his love of cows.

Raymond Silos of Ballet Fantastique

Guest artist Raymond Silos of Ballet Fantastique

Cirque de la Lune
Ballet Fantastique, directed by Donna and Hannah Bontrager
7:30 pm October 3
Portland State University, Lincoln Performance Hall, 1620 SW Park
Set in the 1930’s depression era, Ballet Fantastique will take us behind the the scenes of a traveling circus company just an hour before curtain. Mother and daughter choreographic duo from Eugene, Donna and Hannah Bontrager, have created a contemporary ballet piece that sets the scene on faded grandeur and romance, combining texture and illusion, set to original music by Troupe Carnivàle, Mood Area 52, and Betty and the Boy. Expect the unexpected. Guest starring three folk orchestras and international guest circus artist Raymond Silos.

Michelle Fujii and Toru Watanabe in 88: Hachi Hachi

88: Hachi Hachi
Unit Souzou, directed by Michelle Fujii and Toru Watanabe
October 2-4
Zoomtopia, Studio 2, 810 SE Belmont Street
Portlands newest professional Taiko company, Unit Souzou, will perform 88:Hachi Hachi directed by dance artist Susan Banyas. A new work that weaves taiko, dance and theater, the piece will investigate the space that exists between two people in a percussion journey.

Skeleton Piano Dances
Agnieszka Laska Dancers
October 3-4
Bodyvox Theater, 1201 NW 17th Ave
Now in its twelfth year, Agnieszka Laska’s modern dance company will be searching for the truths that have occupied human minds for centuries: what is true, what is worth fighting for, and what is worth being lost.

The evening will fuse modern dance choreography, video work by Takafumi Uehara and live music by three living composers—Jack Gabel, Dan Senn and Jennifer Wright—on the Skeleton Piano. Wright has written Obscure Terrain for Laska and will be playing a shot glasses, wire brushes, timpani mallets, picture wire, scrap wood, a homemade bottle cap mandolin rail, cannibalized hammers and keys, a tambourine stick, magnet strips and a junkyard cymbal. You can get a sneak peek to her marvelous music on Vimeo.

Performance artists Kelly McGovern

Performance artists Kelly McGovern.

Lucy Lee Yim, Kelly McGovern, Future Death Agency and Antibody Corporation
Presented by Lacuna Club & Performance Works NW
9 pm October 2, Lacuna Club, 5040 SE Milwaukie
8 pm October 3, Performance Works NW, 4625 SE 67th
One performance, two locations, two different days, brought to you by Lacuna Club and Performance Works NW, this show features Portland performance artists Lucy Lee Yim, Kelly McGovern, Future Death Agency, and Chicago-based Antibody Corporation, who will be performing new works.

Pure Surface
Dora Gaskill, Tyler Brewington, Justine Highsmith
6 pm October 4
Valentine’s, 232 SW Ankeny St<
Curated by Stacey Tran and Danielle Ross, Pure Surface is a performance series interested in encouraging cross-disciplinary practice and performance by bringing together movement, text and film in the spirit of improvised collaboration. Each month a new group of artists is brought together in the intimate, open air setting of Valentine’s and performance is made. This month’s artists are dance artist Dora Gaskill, writer Tyler Brewington and filmmaker Justine Highsmith.

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