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TagsThis upcoming Halloween weekend, Seattle's performance art darlings Degenerate Art Ensemble are debuting a new work, Sonic Tales, at the Moore for two nights only.
Currently, they're still working on raising money to put on the show, though, and are asking the community to support their efforts through cash donations.
They still need around $8,000, so if have $10 to spare (and I know some of you do), or better yet, $100, click here to donate online or send checks to: Degenerate Art Ensemble, 210 NW Bowdoin Pl., Seattle, WA 98107.
Sonic Tales promises to be amazing. I caught a sneak-peek or some of the show at a work-in-progress performance at Canoe Club a couple weeks ago. Choreographer/performer Haruko Nishimura is structuring the show around the idea of a fragmented psyche. To represent the idea of multiple performers being separate facets of the same identity, one of the things she's turned to are old Topsy Turvy dolls that have reverseable dresses and heads, so that the same doll can be several characters (such as Little Red Riding Hood, her grandmother, and the wolf, all in one). Through creative costumes, impressive dance work, and innovative video technology, she actually makes this happen onstage.
The event promises several pieces of dance and film showings, but the main piece is a new work by Nishimura based on the "Topsy Turvy Doll." An antique children's toy, it was a two-ended doll with a reversible dress so you could switch between the two characters represented. The inspiration for Nishimura's piece comes from one of the more popular varieties, with Little Red Riding Hood on one end and her grandmother on the other.
I have no idea what Nishimura is doing with the dance, but it's a promising idea and features two talented local dancers: Trinidad Martinez, whose Tres Tristes Tigres down at Freehold Theatre won praise earlier this summer, and Marissa Niederhauser,...
About five minutes into her dance film Holding This For You, Marissa Rae Niederhauser throws herself against the wall, slides to the floor, and begins trying to untie a key knotted to the front of her dress. But Ben Kasulke's camera stays trained to her face; she squints a little as she works, purses her lips before biting the lower one, and only when she's mostly worked her way through the knot and closed her eyes does the camera trail down to her breast as she pulls the key off the ribbon. She holds it tightly in her hand for a long moment, her face, turned from the camera, slightly out of focus, and then drops it.
"Different stories work better onstage, and different stories work better on film," explained Niederhauser last week at Smith, near her home on Capitol Hill. "And I'm particularly drawn to small facial gestures and physical details. Onstage, dance is great to have these big, sweeping spacial patterns and geometric forms, kind of like a kaleidoscope. But this was kind of more a psychological drama,...
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