Weekend Performing Arts: Devised Theatre, Soviet Theatre & Seattle Dance

Donna B. Isobel of Aluminum Siding Dance. Photo by Tim Summers.

Yesterday I did a full-on preview of Dayna Hanson's phemomenal new show Gloria's Cause opening tonight at On the Boards, but that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this week's performing arts offerings. Even as the big houses all turn to their yearly holiday shows (and as always, I highly recommend ACT's A Christmas Carol), there's plenty of not-remotely-holiday-themed work launching in the month of December.

The big dance event this week is Velocity Dance Center's annual Next Fest NW, a festival of the region's top choreographic and dance talent (tickets $15). The line-up this year features new work by Salt Horse, SANDSTROMMOVEMENT, and Kristin Hapke's tindance, as well two people whose work I don't know: Aluminum Siding & mattisonmovement and Portland's Eliza Larson. As an added treat, Velocity's teaming up with NW Film Forum to extend the festival a third day with Next Dance Cinema (tickets $7-$10), featuring short dance films by the likes of Alice Gosti, Karn Junkinsmith, and Corrie Befort.

The Ensemble (or their theatre, The Little Theatre on 18th, at least) is playing host to a new experimental theatre work called Ithaca I'll Never See, a devised work by Basement Co., founded by the trio of Shannon Erickson, Laurie Roberts, and Kate Sumpter. The show follows the trajectory of three women imprisoned in a foreign country who--realizing they'll never be friend--go on an inward journey freely inspired by Homer's Odyssey, Joyce's Ulysses, and The Wizard of Oz. Oh, and here's the kicker: it's free! You just have to RSVP by emailing basementco(at)gmail.com; it runs Fri. through Sun. at 8 p.m.

And down at Freehold, the increasing well-regarded BASH Theatre (they used to be innocuously named "The Community Theatre," which meant I could never find their website on the Interwebs except by pure luck) are staging what's probably their most interesting show to date: Nikolai Erdman's The Suicide, in a new translation by The Moscow Times' theatre critic John Freedman (tickets $15-$18), who coincidentally I recently met...over the interwebs. Small world, huh? But here's the thing: the play, originally written in the 1920s, The Suicide and its author ran smack dab into the rising repression of Stalin's Terror; that a satirist like Erdman made it through the Thirties alive is a miracle itself (his collaborator Vsevolod Meyerhold wasn't so lucky), and The Suicide was officially censored for over fifty years despite being, in many people's estimation (besides the police, that is, though they are the best readers), one of the finest pieces of theatre to come out of the early Soviet period. So do yourself a favor and check it out.

And a final note: if you're headed Portland-ways this month, the fantastic Hand2Mouth Theatre is reprising one of their recent works, Everyone Who Looks Like You (tickets $12). Company members Faith Helma and Erin Leddy have both wowed Seattle in the last couple years, and so this is definitely worth checking out.