Recent Stories with tag on the boards

Ezra Dickinson of The Offshore Project, choreographed by Rainbow Fletcher, one of the participants in to 2010-2011 A.W.A.R.D. Show at OtB in January. Photo by Sean Johnson.

This morning, the list of 12 companies performing in the second Seattle A.W.A.R.D Show at On the Boards in January 2011 were announced, and it's, well, interesting. The backstory of the A.W.A.R.D. Show (which stands for "Artists with Audiences Responding to Dance") is that it was founded in NYC in 2005 by choreographer Neta Pulvermacher to have a new sort of dance laboratory and a new way of engaging audiences. The Joyce Theatre eventually partnered with them and a big cash grant ($10,000) was thrown on top, which is awarded (in part) by audience vote. Last year, the program expanded nationally to include about a half dozen cities including Seattle, where Boeing underwrote the prize grant.

Critics have long held that it's degrading to the artists to engage in a reality TV-style competition that risks encouraging them to appeal to the lowest common denominator to win, while supporters have pointed out that really, it's not so different from the normal process of giving out artistic development grants, but just makes it more public.

This year, the stakes have been increased in a very interesting way. While the 12 entries include a number of prominent contemporary dance artists--Zoe Scofield, Marissa Rae Niederhauser, Ellie Sandstrom, and Olivier Wevers' Whim W'Him returning for a second go--the line-up also include at least two artists/companies working in the cabaret vein: Cherdonna and Lou (dancers Ricki Mason and Jody Kuehner) and the real wildcard, boylesque star Waxie Moon (Marc Kenison).... (more)

"There's a point I've been hitting in the last few years--I'm finding dance very ephemeral, as many people would say. You do it and it's gone. And you need people, you need space, there are a lot of different limitations," Leah Schrager told me, sitting on the back patio of a Park Slope bar recently. "And this, I can just do."

Schrager was explaining the odd process that's taken her from graduating with a double-major in dance and biology from the UW back in 2007 to this coming weekend, when her first art show, called Pretty Whatever, opens at CoCA Ballard this Thursday (reception at 6 p.m.; show through August 7), 2,500 miles from Gowanus, Brooklyn, where she now calls home.

A native of someplace called Steamboat Island, which I am assured is nearer Olympia than Shelton, Schrager has had an oddly eventful artistic career since graduating. While she performs with a few small companies in NYC and apprentices with Zvi Gotheiner's ZviDance, in Seattle, she's best known for her role as the body of "Rimas," filmmaker and artist Linas Phillips' (Bass Ackwards) mentally challenged brother in Lasagna, or: How I learned to stop slipping towards the prison of permanent darkness, a collaboration between Phillips and theatre artist Jim Fletcher, which went up at On the Boads in January 2009. Aside from a couple walk-ons, either as whatever female was required at the moment or to appear as an alien at the end, she mostly trotted around stage with a television for a head, through which Rimas appeared as video.

But of course, performance opportunities from artists you run into in airports (as was the case between Schrager and Phillips, travelling from New York to Seattle; they'd met previously through working with 33 Fainting Spells) don't come along every day. As Schrager pursued her dance career in New York, she began turning to other creative outlets from which the work in Pretty Whatever grew out of.

Dubbed "phoems" by Schrager, the work in show is the simple combination of photos and text. The earliest material, which she began concocting in fall 2009, paired shots from her dance and modelling portfolio with snippets of text from her journals. From there, Schrager cast a wider net, repurposing Facebook status, collaborating with other photographers, and developing an increasingly large body of work which has previously shown in small venues in New York and Kyoto, Japan.

Often, the relationship between text and image is vague at best. In one image (most of which are simply known by their text), a voguish, vaguely Eighties looking editorial shot of Schrager blowing a kiss is counterpointed with the phrase, "People loved it. I'm fucked."

"I was sitting in a theatre, watching a dance performing that I was writing a review of," Schrager recalled, "and people really loved it. So that's what I wrote in my notebook." Months later, searching for text, she came across it and it became part of the body of work.

Other pieces are strongly biographical. While Schrager seems to have moved beyond some of the earliest pieces, which paired cityscapes with her poetry about her travails as a young artist in New York, the more subtle ones will probably show up in the up-to-fifty works in Pretty Whatever. One of the earliest, in fact, is a simple photo of the Brooklyn Bridge with the attendant text: "My pen has run out. I guess I live here now."

"One day I was writing in my journal and my pen ran out," she recalled simply. "And it was two weeks or a month into living here. And my living situation was pretty bad. I was subletting--no! I was waiting to sublet a place, and this woman just kept putting me off, for like two months. She'd be like, 'You can move in in two weeks,' and then, 'You can move in two more weeks...'" She shook her head trying to recall the details, but overall, the anecdote reveals a lot about her development in creating visual art: from the earliest, heart-on-her-sleeve poetry and drama images, Schrager has proved willing to relax and let more subtle combinations of visual image and textual content come together.

Some of the most interesting works in Pretty Whatever, in fact, are the least autobiographical, relying instead on the almost random interplay of repurposed images and texts. At one point, Schrager moved on to creating pieces based on people's Facebook statuses, and indeed, when I first saw some of the images in Pretty Whatever, what most struck me was their similarity to the randomness of Facebook news feeds, with the mixture of inane and emotional, random and sentimental all jumbled up together.

Schrager agreed, and admitted that she's been trying to plan some sort of surprise based on the concept for the show's Thursday night opening at CoCA's gallery space up on Shilshole Bay. I'm not sure if you have time still, but it's probably worth RSVP-ing via Facebook.

The Satori Group's "Making of a Monster," part of NW New Works at On the Boards. Photo by Tim Summers.

Last weekend I made the trek back to Seattle from New York and managed to catch both the studio showcase and mainstage shows at the NW New Works Festival at On the Boards. As I've said before, this really is one of the best events in town all year, and it was a fairly humbling experience to watch artists whose work I helped select (I was on the panel last fall) bring the pieces to fruition, to say nothing of the fact that we've covered the development of some of these pieces over the last year.

At least five of the works killed. Paul Budraitis presented 20 more minutes of Not. Stable. (At all.), which helped flesh out the piece along with the presentation at SPF 4 this last winter, and shows the direction the show will go as it approaches its evening length debut at OtB this coming winter. Mike Pham's I Love You, I Hate You was a deceptively funny performance that had the audience uncomfortably laughing at Pham's evocation of the downward spiral of internalized anger, public humiliation, and the cruel process of building oneself back up.

Lily Verlaine. Photo by Tim Summers.

On the mainstage, Amy O'Neal stripped down (literally and figuratively) with In the Fray, a new lo-fi solo work that saw her move away from the spectacles of Locust and explore something more personal; a woman wearing pasties has never looked more powerful and intimidating than O'Neal at the end, clutching a pink samurai sword. Mark Haim's This Land Is Your Land probably takes the cake for most commented on and most controversial, in the sense that reactions are fierce and divided. I loved it: for 20 minutes, a crew of dancers and non-dancers simply strut forward and backwards across the stage, with subtle changes at each passing. Haim's choreography is a bit like microscope slides: a relentlessly intent focus on a series of different details, inviting the audience to consider everything from the simple act of texting while walking to the ways in which different naked bodies move.... (more)

Allison Hankins, Marissa Rae Niederhauser, and Spencer Moody in "stifle." Photo by Tim Summers

"It wasn't a full-blown near-death experience," dancer and choreographer Marissa Rae Niederhauser said in a recent telephone interview, "where I left my body and saw the light at the end of the tunnel and met God. It wasn't that type of near-death experience. But it was one of those, waking-up-to-your-own-frail-mortality moments."

She was referring to an event that happened a couple years ago, when, while performing onstage, she began choking on food. While she admits she was only unable to breathe for a matter of seconds (she didn't fully pass out, and completed the performance effectively without interruption), the experience was a transformational one.

"No one—for whatever reason—was able to come to my rescue," she continued. "I saw some people in the audience look very concerned. And some people were laughing. And some people looked angry. But nobody got up to aid me, even though I was in front of all those people. And I understand. I don't know if I'd do something different. Eventually what happened was that my diaphragm went into intense, painful spasms. I coughed it up and finished the dance in this strange, sort of euphoric state of being."

While terrifying, the experience proved artistically fruitful for Niederhauser, who has been exploring it in a series of pieces since, leading up to this weekend, when her company, Josephine's Echopraxia, presents stifle at the Northwest New Works Festival at On the Boards (Sat. & Sun., 8 p.m.; tickets $14). It's Niederhauser's most ambitious stage project to date, having previously produced a pair of dance films (Holding This For You (2008), and Tracings (post-production)), in addition to performing with companies like Maureen Whiting and Degenerate Art Ensemble, while presenting her own work in mixed repertory evenings at events throughout the Northwest.... (more)

Amy O'Neal's "In the Fray," part of the NW New Works Festival this weekend at OtB. Photo by Grabrielle Bienczycki.

This weekend is the opening of one of my favorite performance events all year: the Northwest New Works Festival at On the Boards. Over the next two weekends, sixteen artists or companies will be presenting 20-minute pieces that speak to the vibrancy and diversity of performance in Seattle and the greater Northwest region. It's a smorgasbord of cutting-edge arts, and while you're bound to hate some of it, you're also bound to have something blow your mind.

The festival is broken up into two spaces over two weekends. Here's the breakdown for the coming weekend; tickets to the festival are $14 for one showscase, $20 for two, $24 for three, and $30 for four.

Studio Showcase (Fri. 8 p.m., Sat. & Sun. 5 p.m.)

Daughters of Air. A new work by avant-garde musician and composer Ivory Smith, Daughters of Air reinterprets Hans Christian Anderson's classic fairy tale "The Little Mermaid" as a polyphonic vocal symphony. But beyond the musical component, Smith and her collaborators Kelli Frances Corrado and Joseph Gray, have created a beautiful piece of multimedia art that evokes the story's setting beneath the sea. Using re-purposed videogame controllers, the performers will be generating digitally projected imagery live during the performance.

Daughters of Air, part of the NW New Works Festival starting this weekend at On the Boards. Photo by Tim Summers

Paul Budraitis, Not. Stable. (At all.). Budraitis is one of the most interesting theatre artists in Seattle. His production of David Mamet's otherwise unforgiveably bad play Edmond this winter at the Balagan was one of the most accomplished pieces of fringe theatre I've seen in years. His singular accomplishment as a director was getting world-class performances from his actors, proving a point I've long maintained that Seattle theatre's greatest weakness is not its actors, but its directors. Not. Stable. (At all.), Budraitis's first solo performance piece, directed by Sean Ryan, was a stand-out at SPF 4 earlier this year. In it, through a series of schizophrenically varied characters, Budraitis explores anomie, paranoia, and solipsism, and as he continues developing the piece into an evening-length work (which will have its premiere at OtB in February 2011), he's presenting a new set of monologues at NW New Works, so the performance will not be duplicative of the SPF show. (Click here for TSB's previous coverage of Paul Budraitis.)

Mike Pham, I Love You, I Hate You. In this piece, Pham, one-half of the creative due behind Helsinki Syndrome, continues his evolution away from theatre towards visual and performance art. In a text-free movement and video-based solo performance, Pham uses the rise and publicly humiliating fall of a figure skater to explore ideas of the public and private self, acceptance and rejection, and the narcissism and self-loathing-inducing struggle to maintain an idea of self. Which is all a pretty wordy and vague description of piece in which Pham pirouettes himself into a painful downward spiral, brutalizes some body bags, and drowns in an identity-destroying sea of glitter.... (more)

All I knew about Rimini Protokoll's Best Before show at On the Boards (through May 9, tickets $24) was that it somehow involved video-game controllers and would last two hours. This was anxiety-producing for me, a Zaxxon low-scorer, but I needn't have worried; I spent most of the evening with a goofy grin on my face, and giggles and yelps of laughter were widespread.

The zany video-game environment of BestLand (a Sim City of life choices) is balanced by a panel of "experts in daily life"--people that Rimini Protokoll found to help more movingly portray the consequences of life choices. They're not actors, though that's never a hindrance (except in the case of avuncular former Vancouver City Councillor Bob Williams, who shares my uh habit uh of "uh"ing too uh often--you people are so lucky this is a blog and not a podcast). 

Rimini Protokoll doesn't necessarily represent themselves as a fun evening. They sound properly Germanic, serious, and theoretical. The group's name is the "label for projects by Helgard Haug, Stefan Kaegi, and Daniel Wetzel." With their plays, they're "trying to invent rules in a certain way that makes something performative happen." This kind of language makes me cut myself. Thanks for that.

If the evening drags a bit, oddly, it's because of the game play, not the non-actors. Duff Amour (the biting, cynical former Electronic Arts game-tester), Brady Marks (a South African émigré and the game's chic designer), Ellen Schultz (a journalist-turned-traffic-flagger, in the evening's most compelling social commentary), and Bob Williams (also director of a credit union) tell their stories engagingly and with a minimum of monologue fussiness. Williams also sings "Don't Fence Me In."... (more)

Catherine Cabeen's "Into the Void" will appear as part of On the Boards' 2010-2011 season. Photo by Julietta Cervantes.

Today, On the Boards announces their upcoming 2010-2011 season. Full stop. I'd add in some sort of excited, oh-my-god-you-guys-check-this-out! sort of deal, but there's not really a point: for those of you who already go to OtB, my excited gushing isn't why you're interested, and if you don't go to OtB (yet) you have no idea what you're missing and we'll all just have to find some way to change your mind over the coming year.

To begin with the basic factoids: season subscriptions go on-sale today at OtB's website; through June 30, you can take advantage of the early-bird special, which further discounts what are already the best deals in town. It's $130 for the Inter/National Series subscription, $100 for the Northwest Series, and $225 for the whole thing--twelve performances in all.

The Inter/National Series (the non-Northwest artists) is a bit more theatre-heavy this year, with companies from France, Poland, and Mexico. L'Effet de Serge, which originally debuted in 2007, was an audience favorite at the last Under the Radar Festival. From what I gather, it's essentially a solo show by Gaëtan Vourc’h of Vivarium Studio (Paris), who plays a charmingly eccentric man who makes Rube Goldberg-esque lo-fi special effects, presented to an onstage collection of friends culled locally. Or something. I don't really know, but if by chance you're headed to Montreal next month, you can catch it at Festival Transamerique and let me know.... (more)

"Awesome's" "West," directed by Matthew Richter, opening at On the Boards Thurs., April 21. Photo by Victoria Lahti.

Last night's performance of West at On the Boards was sold out; the box office opened at 3 p.m. today for the final show in the run, so if you're meaning to see it, strike while the iron is hot. Otherwise, fans of the band "Awesome," returning for their second or third viewing, are going to geese your seats. 

Fans of the band also will know what they are in for, musically, but it's unlikely that you could anticipate much else. Collaborating with "Awesome" are director Matthew Richter and scenic designer Jennifer Zeyl (who, full disclosure, has the office next door and made me promise to see the show--she's not the boss of me, I was going anyway, so there, integrity intact). The result is aptly described by Anne Blackburn on OtB's blog as a "feral musical," and the production value would make Michel Gondry weep.

The stage is filled with packing crates of various sizes and (it turns out) function. They're the cultural containers, you might say, while the totemic suitcases are personal. If you enjoyed playing with blocks as a child, you'll end up wanting to take Zeyl's crates home with you. They glow and bounce, open up on dioramas, blind you with light, join up into boxcars, and release music. Actually, one releases the history of Western development.

West has faults--or fault lines, if you liked the disjunctures--that keep it from cohering into a narrative: its episodic scenes are comic, goofy, mournful, elegiac, confessional, enigmatic, even violent. The band trades a suitcase and a pilgrim's cape (it's a sort of "Man Traveler with No Name" look) but it's a mostly formal exercise, since you don't get to "know" any of them. I felt at times that I was watching seven Buster Keatons trying to out-poker face the other, though Basil Harris tells a good joke.... (more)

I was on board with pop-comedy-theater collective/band "Awesome" from pretty much the beginning. They are seven of the smartest, funniest, most all-around talented artists in town, hands down. They're also a group of genuinely good guys, except for Rob Witmer--HE KNOWS WHAT HE DID. No seriously, I love 'em to pieces, so of course, I've been excited for their latest long-form show West, directed by Matt Richter. Jeremy already mentioned that West kicks off its On the Boards run tonight (through Sunday, tix $18), but I talked to trumpeter Evan Mosher to get the full deets. We also discussed a group of local teenagers with a major crush on the band (see video above), as well as the most important thing EVAR: the final season of Lost. (PS: Give them some money.)

Your new performance piece, West, is "inspired by the journey of Lewis and Clark and the myths of westward expansion." But you're certainly not the first artists to tackle the American frontier. Why do think the region (or the idea of the region) is so artistically fruitful?

First, the impulse came from wanting to do something that was rooted in an actual physical place where we live and make our art. Our previous shows have come from more existential/absurdist ground, and we wanted to push into a new area. (We ended up with another existential romp, more on that later.) But really, each of us in the band has a pretty intensely romantic personal relationship with the (north)west. Most of us traveled a few thousand miles to settle here, and who doesn't love a good road-trip story? Lewis and Clark's journals are often referred to as our first national on-the-road epic. Again, we deviated from that story almost immediately, but it's still there in the show's DNA.

This is your second piece to be performed at On the Boards. How does the experience/process with West compare to that of noSIGNAL?

I think the main difference is that we worked with a director (Matthew Richter) from almost the very beginning of the process, whereas with noSIGNAL, we brought John Kaufmann in very late, after most of the writing was already done. For WEST we also brought in top-notch designers early on (shout-out to L.B. Morse, Jen Zeyl, Harmony Arnold, and Zac Culler). And with Matt steering that conversation with the designers, and communicating all the evolving concepts between us and the designers, we were able to create something on a much grander scale than all our previous shows.  This is by far our most ambitious project.... (more)

"Awesome's" "West," directed by Matthew Richter, opening at On the Boards Thurs., April 21. Photo by Victoria Lahti.

First off, tonight is the opening night of "Awesome"'s West at On the Boards. Directed by Matt Richter, in West the seven art rock/cabaret/musical theatre artists that are "Awesome" plunge deep into an exploration of the themes of American westward expansion. Beyond that, I really don't know much about the show, but if you've never seen "Awesome," these are some crazy-talented musicians who aren't making your standard musical theatre-fare. For more information, the kids at Teen Tix speed-dated most of the company in the guise of "interviewing" them (I'll admit, Basil Harris is kind of dreamy...), so feel free to check that out for more info.

Speaking of On the Boards, tonight is also the opening night of Amelia Reeber's this is a forgeryat the Erickson Theatre off Broadway, which originally debuted at OtB last year at the Northwest New Works Festival. It's a quirky solo dance work that, as Reeber told me in an interview last fall, ironically came out of her exasperation with dance incorporating large amounts of video. "Ironically" because this is a forgery features a lot of video components, including giant cats and birds, but Reeber has a very unique approach to interacting with video that blew me away when I saw the piece at NWNW. Reeber went on to become the winner of the first Seattle edition of The A.W.A.R.D. Show in December, which came with a $10,000 first-prize grant that she's used to fund turning this is a forgery into an evening-length work, and this is something that I can't recommend highly enough. You've got two weekends, tickets are only $15, go see it.

And finally, speaking of The A.W.A.R.D. Show...and On the Boards...well, The A.W.A.R.D. Show is returning to On the Boards this fall. Started at NYC's Joyce Theatre in 2006, the show is an attempt to encourage new audiences to engage with dance by putting a series of artists in competition with one another for an audience vote that carries some serious bank. The concept has been controversial amongst artists pretty much everywhere it's gone (it's since expanded to several cities throughout the U.S.), but with that said, a $10,000 kitty is a whopping opportunity for almost any artist (two runners-up get $1,000 a piece), and probably worth the effort considering the tenuous state of arts funding in Seattle next year. So if you're a dancer/choreographer who's looking to compete, follow this link to the OtB site and fill out your application by May 11.

Morgan Thorson's "Heaven." Photo by Cameron Whittig.

Sitting in the audience at On the Boards Friday night, watching Morgan Thorson's Heaven, I got to thinking about a line from Blackadder the First. Edmund, having been made Archbishop of Canterbury for the explicit purpose of preventing nobles from leaving their estates to the church rather than the crown, finds himself begging a sinner on his deathbed not to repent, explaining that "the thing about heaven is that heaven is for people who like the sort of things that go on in heaven. Like, well, singing, talking to God, watering potted plants."

Actually, my guest had pointed out this quote before we went in, based on what she'd read about Thorson's dance collaboration with the band Low. It started as a (nervous) joke, but as the night went on, it became more and more apt.

Other things I thought about watching Heaven: I recalled how Julian Barnes envisioned heaven in A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters, as a place where people get to do whatever they want until they get bored (and they all get bored, except the ones who really like watering potted plants). And then I tried to recall the name of Dante's book on heaven, from The Divine Comedy. There's Inferno, and Purgatorio, but what's the third...?

Okay, so maybe the problem with Heaven is that a work which explores only one half of a dichotomy is probably doomed from the start. Paradise (there it is!) in traditional Judeo-Christian thought is really just the opposite of Hell: in the one, you're exposed to God, and in the other, you're denied His grace, and that's your suffering, because what could possibly be worse? All the sado-masochistic fantasies of exactly what constitutes eternal damnation are wrought from the desire to fill that simple absence with something tangible. Unable to imagine the exquisite loss of God's grace, we conjure up hell in more human terms. But heaven? What are you supposed to do with that?

For Thorson, apparently, it's all about the longing for the sublime. At least longing and yearning were what I saw onstage. As the show opens, the nine performers (seven dancers and the two members of Low) slowly parade in unison around the perimeter of the stage, all dressed in white costumes with some cross-dressing thrown in for some reason. This goes on for like ten minutes. I don't know why. Then there's organ music, and choral harmonies, and some bowing (again, no idea why) as the dancers, in long, languid phrases, prance about, looking up, arms open, and yearn for rapture, the loss of body, and the immersion of self into something greater.

For 45 minutes this goes on, until finally Thorson gets around to dealing with the fact that these people still have bodies that tie them to earth, which will be expressed--I kid you not--by having the dancers jump up in the air and fall down.... (more)

Morgan Thorson's "Heaven." Photo by Cameron Whittig.

Time for long overdue notice: starting last night and running through Sunday, On the Boards is playing host to Morgan Thorson's Heaven (tickets $24), a collaborative project between the Minneapolis-based choreographer and indie rock outfit Low, whose members Alan Spearhawk and Mimi Parker will be playing live onstage with Thorson's crew of nine dancers.

As Deborah Jowitt of the Village Voice described it when the piece came to New York late last year, "Heaven, in Minneapolis choreographer Morgan Thorson’s piece of the same name, is a place that imperfect people labor to reach. In terms of this yearning, religious zealots have something in common with dancers, whose daily search for possibly unattainable perfection molds their lives."

Heiner Goebbels. Photo by Jakob Rendtorff.

"I just discovered a nice duo call The Bird and the Bee. You know them?" asked Heiner Goebbels, wearily leaning back into a couch at Solo Bar in Lower Queen Anne, before sipping what was mostly ice melt from an empty glass of Coke. "I'm a fan since...some months. Sometimes I get CDs from my kids. I have a son in New York and a daughter in Berlin, I mean they're not kids anymore—23 and 29—but sometimes they leave a CD in my car."

A recommendation for Inara George's wispy vocals was, to say the least, not what I was expecting to get from Goebbels. An energetic 57-year-old, born into the former West Germany, Goebbels is one of the most noted experimental composers and theatre artists in the world, whose 2007 piece, Songs of Wars I Have Seen, is being staged at On the Boards this weekend (Thurs-Sat, tickets $18) as part of a double-bill with Pacific Musicworks and Seattle Chamber Players' joint presentation of Monteverdi's operatic fragment Combattimento.

"It's true, my work is most often being seen by music critics, and only a few of them have eyes. That's a pity," Goebbels told me Monday, mere hours after he landed in Seattle. Goebbels' work is hardly limited to music and sound composition; he's as much a theatre director as a composer, and his work features both textual and visual elements well beyond the scope of a standard chamber orchestra. "It's happened only once, I think, in the last 20 years that—I think it was El Pais, the big paper of Spain—in which they were really fighting over who was the one who should write about the piece. And then finally the editor decided to send both the theatre critic and the music critic."

Goebbels' career as a composer and musician began in the 1970s, in the political crucible of West Germany, which was struggling with both becoming a more open and democratic society following the upheavals of the late 1960s and the radical domestic terrorist movements that followed, as well as continuing to deal with the legacy of the Second World War. In 1972 and '73, he even lived in the same squat as Joschka Fischer, a leading left-wing radical in Germany, who eventually served as the German foreign minister under Gerhard Schroeder in 2000s. A bit later, Goebbels began composing for the Sogenanntes Linksradikales Blasorchester, a left-wing protest orchestra that was trying to bring something more than folk songs and rock music to the New Left.... (more)

Seattle Chamber Players (l-r) Laura DeLuca, David Sabee, Mikhail Shmidt, Paul Taub

Last weekend was Love and War, this weekend it's Songs of Wars I Have Seen (tickets: $18), and in both cases, Seattle Chamber Players have not been afraid of challenging either themselves or their audience. Maybe it has something to do with their On the Boards venue--I can easily imagine Lane & Co. encouraging SCP to get wild--but it would be hard to overstate the extent to which you are "in the shit," chamber musically, once you walk in.

Michael Upchurch previews the Songs of Wars program, which is a co-production of SCP and Pacific Operaworks:

On the one hand, you have German composer Heiner Goebbels' "Songs of Wars I Have Seen," an eclectic setting of excerpts from Gertrude Stein's 1945 book "Wars I Have Seen." On the other hand, you have Claudio Monteverdi's "Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda," a 1624 piece said to mark the first time a composer employed musical sound effects that directly mimic the action onstage.

I know, right? Who hasn't heard of Heiner Goebbels? Just about everyone in the U.S. It's freakishly out there for a small organization to pick a composer whose not yet known here and a composer who was super popular, you know, about four hundred years ago. Then why not stir in crowd-pleaser Gertrude Stein? (The UW's Jessica Burstein has a helpful podcast titled "Gertrude Stein for No One.") I have the feeling that no one ran this past marketing.

It's exciting. It's like we live in a real city, where our artistic William Tells don't aim their arrows squarely at the middlebrow, but at the not-quite-attainable apple.... (more)

Monday

• Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs & Steel) talks about not Collapse-ing @ Benaroya Hall
• Thomas Goetz (from Wired) talks about healthcare 2.0 @ Town Hall

Tuesday

• If you missed it Monday, Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs & Steel) talks about not Collapse-ing @ Benaroya Hall

Wednesday

• Journalist Shane Harris unveils government surveillance @ Town Hall
• Opening: the musical Chicago with John Hurley as Billy Flynn @ the Paramount
• Opening: Solo Performance Festival 4 @ Theatre off Jackson
• Ongoing: Seattle Opera's production of Verdi's Falstaff @ McCaw Hall

Thursday

• Opening: Songs of Wars I Have Seen, a collaboration between Seattle Chamber Players and Pacific Musicworks @ On the Boards

Friday

• Before-it-was-cool stand-up lesbian Kate Clinton gets political @ the Triple Door
• UW professor David Shields reads from his book Reality Hunger: A Manifesto @ Elliott Bay Book Co., FREE

Saturday 

• Northwest Girlchoir presents a world music family concert @ Town Hall
• Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra plays "Big Band Monk and Mingus" @ Benaroya Hall
• Grand Hallway joins the Seattle Rock Orchestra for a night of "lush, baroque pop" @ the Triple Door
• Chappelle Show alumnus Charlie Murphy does a one-night stand-up gig @ the Moore Theatre
• Here/Now, a quarterly program of improvisation between dancers and musicians @ Open Flight Studio

There's plenty of great things going on this weekend, from Salt Horse's opening tonight, to ArtAttack's production of Fat Pig (just extended!) and the Balagan's Trout Stanley, to the closing of Glengarry Glen Ross down at the Rep. But that said, there's a bunch of top-notch, one-time-only events this weekend to keep you busy.

Tonight, Feb. 26, is the SAM Remix down at the Seattle Art Museum (8 p.m.-midnight, tickets $10, $8 students) the bi-monthly art-and-performance bash that tries to bring in the under-30 crowd. SAM Remix almost always sports an awesome lineup of events, but tonight's lineup is exceptionally good for two reasons: First, KT Niehoff's Lingo Dance are installing themselves as human sculpture throughout the galleries. It's part of a three-month project the company is developing with ACT Theatre called A Glimmer of Hope or Skin or Light. The second is a new work from Mike Pham, half of Seattle's performance art darlings Helsinki Syndrome, called Soccer Practice. Expect something funny, odd, physical, and--quite probably--involving glitter.

Tomorrow night, Sat. Feb. 27, the Canoe Social Club above Theatre off Jackson is hosting what promises to be the sexiest fundraiser for Haitian relief yet, Hotties for Haiti (10:30 p.m., $15, 21+), an evening of performance by local burlesque and aerial performers including Tamara the Trapeze Lady, Lara Paxton, and Violet Tendencies. I've been told to expect nonstop striptease and table dancing, with your drool-slathered dollar bills destined to travel quickly from g-string to helping the people of Port-au-Prince.

And finally, I've saved the best for last: all weekend, the Seattle Chamber Players are hosting a stunning series of concerts called Icebreaker V: Songs of Love and War at On the Boards (tickets $18). Here's the deal: for the fifth year in a row, SCP is presenting a festival celebrating the best contemporary European chamber composers. Each of the five concerts features a different nation and deals with different themes, and to top it off, SCP is bringing in guest performers from around the globe, from Polish soprano Agata Zubel, to Denmark's FIGURA Ensemble.... (more)

The various contributors to "Break a Heart" at On the Boards. Photo by Tim Summers.

Not that plenty of interesting plays aren't opening this month (Glengarry Glen Ross at the Rep, Not a Genuine Black Man at Theatre off Jackson, and The Woman in Black at Open Circle, to name a few), but February is shaping up to be a particularly incredible month for dance in Seattle. With offerings ranging from a noted staging of a ballet classic at PNB to a world premiere by one of Seattle's up-and-coming performance groups, and a couple festival line-ups thrown in, this month presents a veritable cross-section of the best of what Seattle and the region has to offer.

Sleeping Beauty at Pacific Northwest Ballet (Feb. 4-14; tickets $25-$160). A masterpiece of Romantic ballet, with a score by Tchaikovsky, PNB's production of Sleeping Beauty is based on British choreographer Ronald Hynd's painstaking 1993 reconstruction of Marius Petipa's 1890 original. I sat in on the dress rehearsal last night, and was wowed (along with a dozen or so starry-eyed little girls) by the sumptuous production and Princess Aurora's glorious movement.

Break a Heart at On the Boards (Feb. 11-14; tickets $18). A host of Seattle choreographic talent joins forces to present an evening of movement exploring love, which is of course set opposite Valentine's Day. Break a Heart features work by Wade Madsen, Crispin Spaeth, Diana Cardiff, Kristina Dillard, ilvs strauss/Jody Kuehner, Sara Jinks and Juliet Waller Pruzan/Stephen Hando.... (more)

Bruno Beltrao and Grupo de Rua's "H3". Photo by Anns V. Koiij.

The first thing my guest asked me upon leaving On the Boards last Thursday, after seeing Brazilian choreographer Bruno Beltrão's company Grupo de Rua, who are their first US tour with H3, was, "Did you respond to that more because you're a man?"

It's a fine question to ask. Not that women in the audience weren't responding—you could almost hear the panting at the end, as eight physically ripped, sweating (and most shirtless to boot) Brazilian dancers took their bow—but Beltrão's H3 is an almost Mametian (in terms of its masculinity, rather than its misogyny) exploration of men interacting with men, from the opening moments, where a pair of dancers stare down the audience, to the closing moments of chaos, the dancers each taking more and more expressive and athletic poses on an increasingly darkened stage. In between, H3 offers a detailed examination of the way men establish themselves among their peers, compete with one another, and ultimately turn to machismo as a means to exist in the world.

H3 unfolds in three distinct sections. The first is essentially narrative, centering on one dancer's character. As the show opens, he stands next to a far more self-assured counterpart, trying to follow his lead in staring down the audience. Then the weaker of the two begins to move, only to be shown up by his more assured and accomplished counterpart. Then, one by one, the other dancers move onto the stage, each in turn seeking to establish his own skills and ability. Ultimately, the original dancer finds a partner whose moves he carefully follows and thus is able to establish himself within the group.... (more)

Faith Helma in Hand2Mouth Theatre's "Undine," photo by Tim Summers.

"What I've always loved about his telling of it was that it was very ambiguous," said Faith Helma of Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué's 1811 fairy tale novella Undine. "Like, 'The Little Mermaid,' you read the original version of it, it's a pretty dark story. But this one was even more so. All of the characters are very ambiguous, and none of the characters are all bad or all good. Even the most creepy, scary character, you can kind of see his point of view. He's not a villain. And then there's the spirit world, which is frightening but also beautiful. And she's presented as this character you can identify with, but who's not to be trusted. There's something a little unsettling about it. That was my experience of reading the story—you can't really decide if you're on her side."

This was last Saturday, and I was sitting in Fresh Pot Cafe in Portland, Oregon's Mississippi district, with Helma and her husband Jonathan Walters. The two are long-time members of Portland's well respected experimental theatre company Hand2Mouth, which Walters founded in 2000. This Friday and Saturday, Jan. 29 and 30, they're bringing Helma's first solo work, Undine, back to Seattle, where it debuted in 2008 as part of the Northwest New Works Festival at On the Boards. The performances are at Theatre off Jackson, in a co-presentation with Seattle's Satori Group (tickets $10-$12), with a panel discussion about creating new work in the Northwest after each performance, moderated by The Stranger's Brendan Kiley.

While nominally inspired by Fouqué's novella, elements of which Helma admits trying to incorporate into Hand2Mouth's previous shows to little or no success, the piece is not so much an adaptation of the narrative. "I'm obsessed with the fairy tale, so I wind up talking about that, but I feel like it leaves this image in people's minds of, 'Okay, solo performance, fairy tale...'" She trailed off, eyes rolling and chuckling at the image that description must put in people's minds.... (more)

This weekend, starting Thursday, On the Boards is presenting Brazillian choreographer Bruno Beltrão's Grupo de Rua (through Sunday, tickets $24). Fast-paced and hip hop-influenced, this is the antidote to the sort of contemporary dance that can turn off casual audiences. The company has been touring the piece they're presenting, H3, for the past few months, and have scored some excellent reviews around the country. Just hurry to get your tickets—Friday and Saturday are already sold out.

Kaori Nakamura of Whim W'Him. Photo by Marc von Borstel.

It feels completely redundant to heap more praise on Olivier Wevers at this point, since nearly everyone else has been in a full-blown love-fest since his new company Whim W'Him's sold-out debut this last weekend at On the Boards. But as much as I'd love to be the odd man out in this orgy of praise, I just can't: Wevers & co. delivered a pretty stunning evening of dance that was at once accessible and charming as well as subtle and thoughtful.

The evening was split between two shorter works that have been presented before—X stasis, part of PNB's 2006 Choreographer's Showcase, and FRAGMENTS, created for Spectrum's Studio Series in 2007—and the premiere of 3Seasons, a new work set to Vivaldi's Four Seasons, with a bit of pure chance thrown in: each night, one of the seasons was swapped for an original composition, based on Vivaldi's structures, by local composer Byron Au Yong.

The word most frequently used to describe Wevers' choreography is "whimsical" (hence the company name, I assume), and that's definitely true. His vocabulary is primarily balletic, but looser and informed by contemporary dance, and lets the personality of the dancers shine through. Half the charm comes from the expressions on the dancers' faces, which isn't something you normally associate with ballet, not least because PNB's house is too large for the audience to see them. Comparatively, OtB's mainstage was downright intimate.

For instance, FRAGMENTS opens with a duet between Kelly Ann Barton and Vincent Lopez, both in tutus, lip-syncing to opera. Largely they perform the same movements, but Lopez, exaggerating a coquettish expression, comes off as aping the (sometimes) more serious Barton. But FRAGMENTS also shows off Wevers' ability to create powerful drama. The fourth suite, a solo by Lopez set to Mozart's Requiem, ends with the dancer contorted on the ground, back arched, caught somewhere between agony and ecstasy. The finely sculptured tableau is a powerful and beautiful image, achieved with neither the humor nor the light, athletic movements that are generally associated with Wevers' work.... (more)

"Oh -- Seattle" by Paul Swortz from The SunBreak Flickr pool.

Okay, Seattle, this is it: You have roughly 60 hours in which to complete your shopping before Christmas is all over you. We know there's someone you haven't figured out what to get yet, and there's surely someone who's slipped off your list that you're going to remember Wednesday at 8 p.m. and freak out. So The SunBreak--with the help of some knowledgeable friends--is here to help: this is our desperate, last-minute gift guide of the more or less local variety. Support local businesses and take all that pesky thinking out of holiday shopping!

A Cinematic Gift That Keeps on Giving Plenty of films are made in the Great Northwest these days, and plenty of them suck. The easiest way to become familiar with what's worthwhile and what's best forgotten in terms of local (and non-local) cinema is by becoming a member of the Northwest Film Forum. NWFF is a member driven collective that does more than pretty much anyone else to support film in the Northwest, as well as bringing the best independent films to town. Membership starts at $40 a person (or $70 for a couple), and gets you great discounts to shows, as well as lets you help support the cinematic arts in the region. (Jeremy M. Barker)

Just Plain Nuts Holmquist Hazelnuts are absolutely delicious hazelnuts grown in Lynden, Washington. Available at the Pike Place Market and several Farmers' Markets. (Rachael Coyle)

Mariners Merch After a few years in the wilderness of mediocrity (or worse), the Mariners are looking like contenders again. Hit Safeway or a  Mariners Team Store for Mariner gift cards your M's fan friend can buy tickets and gear with; or go balls out and put a deposit down on a 16-game plan. (Seth Kolloen)

Chocolates Falling in the delicious territory between completely useless and entirely practical (you do need calories, even if they're near-empty), chocolate makes a good gift for just about everyone on your list. An obvious and elegant choice is the Obama-endorsed Fran's, where the gray and smoked salt caramels is a classic minimalist delight. At this point, their website looks overloaded; so last minute purchases will need to be made in person. For the more ecologically conscious sweet tooth, look no further than Theo the country's only organic, fair trade, bean-to-bar chocolate factory. They have single origin bars, inspired artistic truffles, chipotle sipping chocolate, and even a vegan option or two. Order online or sample the goods in their Fremont factory. (Josh C. Bis)

Rock Musics I'd happily recommend any of my favorite albums of 2009: Curse Your Branches by David Bazan (questions about the reason for the season); Listen to the Thunder by The Maldives (best paired with The Moondoggies Don't Be A Stranger and a bottle of whiskey); and a personal favorite, one of the most underrated local albums of 2009: Space Between The Maps by The Ironclads (for fans of complex character-driven pop songs). (Abbey Simmons, SoundontheSound.com)... (more)

Coriolis Dance Collective, photo by Michael Rioux.

Sunday night, I attended the finale of The A.W.A.R.D. Show with Amy Mikel, the new dance writer for Seattlest.com. Following the competition, which ultimately awarded a $10,000 first prize to Amelia Reeber, with $1,000 awarded to the runners-up, Catherine Cabeen and Deborah Wolf, Amy and I had a long discussion about the show and what it means to artists and audiences to place choreographers in competition for an an audience vote.

Amy So what did you think of The A.W.A.R.D. Show?

Jeremy The first response I had to the closing night of The A.W.A.R.D. Show is that--not to sound mean--the line-up was uneven. For me, it was a contest between Catherine Cabeen and Amelia Reeber. Deborah Wolf's piece was definitely the weakest to make it to the final round. Not having been to any of the initial rounds, much less Thursday (the night Wolf came out on top), I'm not sure what to make of that.

It actually leaves me wondering if more established artists like Cabeen and Reeber were able to draw a different audience from the line-up on the first night. Wolf's piece was all right, but it was just too audience-pleasing, and too easy, I think--more like a musical theatre number based on Edward Gorey than contemporary dance. I like Gorey and I like musicals fine, but if The A.W.A.R.D. Show is intended to connect audiences to contemporary dance, in this case it failed. I don't want to trash Wolf--this is, I think, the only piece of hers I've seen--but musicals remain a fairly popular form of entertainment. The textual element and scripted parts make the work very accessible, and given the ambivalence expressed by so many people about how The A.W.A.R.D. Show could wind up playing to a sort of lowest common denominator in terms of allowing the audience to reward or, in a sense, punish choreographers, Wolf's win against people like Olivier Wevers seemed to confirm that.

But that's just my thought, and apparently I might just be being elitist and high-art about it, if Neta Pulvermacher has anything to say about it. (And I do love boilerplate responses posted all over the web.)... (more)

Amelia Reeber in "this is a forgery" at the Northwest New Works Festival in June. Photo by Tim Summers.

[Reposted because Amelia Reeber won The A.W.A.R.D. Show! for 2009.]

"At first when I heard about it, I was like, 'Yech! Gross!'," Amelia Reeber said of The A.W.A.R.D. Show!, making a mock-disgusted face as she sat on the floor, vaguely attempting to warm up with a variety of massage balls. "And I just immediately went to reality shows and So You Think You Can Dance and all that crap. It just didn't sound right to me. And then I started thinking, 'You know, gosh, I'm always applying for grants, and then my work gets judged and I either get money or I don't.' And most of the time they're looking at your videos, and half the time it's not even what's on your video, it's the quality of your video. So in this way, it's great to have people in the same time and space as you, and seeing the work live."

She paused. "But I think I didn't realize how much the audience was involved, so that kind of makes me a little queasy. I can't quite think of it as competition at all, because I'm not competitive, I don't think art--or cooking--should be competitive, and so I have to completely remove all of those frameworks that are put in and replace them with my own."

Apparently, whatever Reeber did worked. Last night, her piece Dream Life took the audience vote, making her the third finalist for "winning" (if that's the right word) the first Seattle edition of the fairly controversial The A.W.A.R.D. Show at On the Boards (which closes tonight at 8 p.m; tickets $15). Founded in New York in 2006, All week, the antipathy the Seattle contemporary dance community feels about being put in competition with one another for a lucrative $10,000 prize (semi-finalists, including Reeber, are guaranteed $1,000) has been bubbling to the surface.... (more)

As Cosmo Brown reminded us in Singin' in the Rain, the surest way for a performer to win an audience is via laughter. Sang he:

"Now you could study Shakespeare and be quite elite / And you can charm the critics and have nothin' to eat / Just slip on a banana peel the world's at your feet / Make 'em laugh, make 'em laugh, make 'em laugh!"

So it was Thursday night at The A.W.A.R.D. Show, an audience-judged dance competition at On the Boards. The winning group was also the only funny group.

An audience-judged dance competition raises many questions, as Brendan Kiley points out on Slog, but one question we can put to rest is whether such a format appeals to audiences. On the Boards was packed for Thursday night's first round. We even had to do the raise-your-hand-if-you're-next-to-an-empty-seat thing. 

"And Brendan Kiley wrote that arts audiences are down," snarked OtB artistic director Lane Czaplinski from the front of the house. "He did! In the Slog. You should go comment." My female friend leaned over and made a comment: "Brendan Kiley is super cute."

Now I will talk about the four 15-minute dance performances that we saw. Please note that I am not a dance expert. I'm just a regular dude who, during middle school dances, hid in the corner near the donuts. Except when "Buffalo Stance" came on. Then I got FREAKY.

Performance #1 was called "I've Never Been Good at Arranging Flowers," and was written and performed by Ricki Mason. My friend and I both agreed that Mason was the finest dancer of the night, precise and graceful. We also agreed that we didn't have any idea what was going on in her piece. Mason was an androgynous figure in a wife-beater and white briefs. There was a cut-out of a fish involved. Later some video came on of Mason wearing a 20's newsboy outfit. French music played. Whoosh--went right over my head. I assume that this is a failure on my part.... (more)