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DECEMBER 2007 PERFORMANCE |
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November 30-December 2 OPENPORT
December 3 & 10 LinkUp Residency Artists at The Chicago Cultural
Center
December 7 Julia Mayer, Coffee Dance
December 7-9 Chicago Danztheatre Ensemble,
Voices 2007
December 14-16 Asimina Chremos/Silverspace,
Red Swan Red Swan
December 21-23 Michael Zerang and Hamid
Drake, The 17th Annual Winter Solstice Concerts
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OPENPORT
A Weekend of Realtime Performance, Sound, & Language
Friday-Sunday, November 30-December 2, 7:30pm
$12 ($10 Students, Seniors, Unemployed)
OPENPORT is a convergence of artists from a set of distinct contemporary
practices including movement-based live art, experimental sound, performance
writing, and electronic poetry. Through the use of the live body and
an engagement with realtime composition and machine-processes, artists
complicate and re-map notions of language, physicality, space, and
time, navigating the hidden terrains of our networked culture. OPENPORT
was originally conceived as part of Links Hall’s Artistic Associates
program in February 2007 as a month-long international festival. This
weekend event includes performances from the festival creators and
OPENPORT artists currently based in Chicago. www.openportchicago.com
Friday November 30
(see november)
Saturday December 1
Karen Christopher US and Mark Jeffery UK
Distance x 2 = a camel caravan on a grain of rice
A performance duet in six parts
Working with live movement, spoken text, and prerecorded video images,
the performance is an investigation of the difference in getting
from here to there and back again. We have asked each other what
about the distance between my feet and my eyes, between your eyes
and the back of my head, between my hand and those clouds, between
the answer and the question, the solution and the compromise, between
green and purple, the sweet and the salty snack, between the quiet
and the silent, between the bump and the fall, your thoughts and
your prayers?
Lucy Cash UK
Sight Reading. (2007, 8 mins)
Senses and sensations (particularly kinaesthesia, and proprioceptive
knowledge) inform Cash’s work. The piece explores a book about
early twentieth century experiments in ‘eyeless sight’
- this sense of the body reading and being read, through its skin,
in relation to how we read movement through repetition and fragmentation.
The soundtrack is a rendition of Erik Satie’s Vexation-a three
line piece of music composed to be repeated over 14 or 28 hours
by different pianists. Performers: Jo.e Amado, Sebastian Baczkiewicz,
Gerard Bell, Geoff McGarry, Marie-Gabrielle Rotie, Frances Scott,
Litó Walkey. Cinematographer: Ole Birkeland. Pianist: Timor
Frederiksson.
Fiona Wright (UK)
On Lying
See Friday, November 30 for
details
Sunday December 2
Judd Morrissey US
Books that Write Me, Books I Write
Part II: Concerning Lasts Made (in the style of twilight)
A text in the shape of a Byzantine dome, a tracing of one author’s
pathway through The Last Performance, an online constraint-based
collaborative writing and text-visualization project responding
to the theme of lastness in relation to architectural forms, acts
of building, a final performance, and the interruption (that becomes
the promise) of community.
Nathan Butler US and Lori Talley
(US)
double-pole, double-throw
See Friday, November 30 for
details
Karen Christopher US and Mark Jeffery UK
Distance x 2 = a camel caravan on a grain of rice
A performance duet in six part
See Saturday, December 1 for details
Biographies:
Fiona Wright has been making mostly solo performances
since the late 1980s. Her approach is located in physicality, influenced
by release-based and somatic practices such as Feldenkrais Method.
She also works collaboratively, particularly in an independent dance
duet company in the UK with Caroline Bowditch, girl jonah.
Recent work includes a series of solo performance lectures titled
other versions of an uncertain body, and also several short
five minute works made for a solo spectator and repeated over several
hours by the performer. She is a freelance University lecturer,
a mentor and dramaturg and is currently a Visiting Artist, teaching
at The School of the Art Institute for the Fall Semester. In February
07 she presented an early version of her new solo On Lying at
Links Hall in the OPENPORT Festival. Supported by the Arts Council
of England.
Judd Morrissey is a writer
and code artist whose works of electronic literature, performance,
and site-based installation have been internationally presented.
He is the author of experimental works for web and cd including
The Jew’s Daughter (Electronic Literature Collection,
2006), My Name is Captain, Captain (Eastgate Systems, 2002),
and The Error Engine, an ongoing experiment in writing
and artificial intelligence. He is currently working in collaboration
with Goat Island performance group on a community-driven writing,
archiving, and text-visualization project, The Last Performance
[dot org], for which he was a recipient of the inaugural Creative
Capital/Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers’ Grant in 2006.
Judd is an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Art and Technology
Studies and BFA Writing departments at the School of the Art Institute
of Chicago and is a co-curator of OPENPORT. www.judisdaid.com
Nathan Butler performs with
electronic systems that respond to both the vigorous movements of
his body and the situation of the live performance environment.
He performed in the international sound festival Sonambiente 2006
in Berlin, and recently performed locally at the Museum of Contemporary
Art in Chicago as part of the 12x12 series and the Outer Ear Festival.
He lives and works in Chicago and is a co-curator of OPENPORT. www.nathanbutler.com
Lori Talley is a sound and digital artist. She
teaches in the Sound Department of The School of the Art Institute
of Chicago. She is co-creator of My Name is Captain, Captain.
Her sound work has been included in the compilation A Call for
Silence and as part of the Overgaden Sound Art Festival. Lori
is a co-curator of OPENPORT and Interactive Producer at Cramer-Krasselt.
www.loritalley.com
Karen Christopher has been
a member of Goat Island performance group since 1990. She has created
and performed in eight of Goat Island’s works and taught extensively
across North America and Europe. The company presented their last
work When Will the September Roses Bloom Last Night Was Only
a Comedy at the Venice Biennale in 2005. Goat Island is currently
making its last performance work The Lastmaker that will
tour through and into 2009. Before Goat Island, she was a founding
member of the Neo-Futurists. She also edits video for the Center
for Communication and Medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg
School of Medicine. www.goatislandperformance.org
Mark Jeffery has been a member of Goat Island performance
group since 1996. He has created and performed in five Goat Island
works and taught extensively across North America and Europe. The
company presented their last work When Will the September Roses
Bloom Last Night Was Only a Comedy at the Venice Biennale in
2005. Goat Island is currently making its last performance work
The Lastmaker that will tour through and into 2009. Mark
has shown other work in numerous spaces and contexts including SiteUnseen
2006 and 2005 in Chicago, Nottdance in Nottingham, Taxi Gallery
in Cambridge, National Review of Live Art in Glasgow, ICA London,
Arnolfini Bristol, Firstsite Colchester, Green Room Manchester,
Chapter Cardiff, and Expo 94 Nottingham. He curates performance
events in Chicago including the international performance, sound,
and language festival OPENPORT in February 2007. In 2006 he co–founded
The Chicago Performance Network, a 20 member committee of local
presenters, artists, and educators to help foster and sustain the
Chicago Performance Community and also to develop an annual time
arts festival called IN>TIME. He is currently an adjunct associate
professor at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago where he
teaches in the Performance Department and First year Program. www.goatislandperformance.org
Lucy Cash In 2000,
after earning her MA at Lancaster University, Lucy Cash began making
films with a BFI/ FilmFour New Directors’ award. Since then
she has been making work for television and cinema exhibition as
well as artists’ films and site-specific video projects. Lucy’s
work has been shown in over ten different countries–predominantly
within Europe but also Australia, Japan, Brazil and the USA–on
television, in galleries and at major international film festivals.
She is currently working on a fourth film with Goat Island.
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Karen Christopher and Mark Jeffery self
portrait |
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LinkUp image of Dan Mohr, self-portrait
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LinkUp Residency Artists
at the Dance Studio, Chicago Cultural Center, 77 E. Randolph
Free
Monday December 3, 6pm:
Jonathan Meyer, Angela Gronroos, Kristina Fluty
& MarySue Miller
Monday December 10, 6pm:
Dan Mohr, Kairol Rosenthal, Seth Bockley
The LinkUp Residency program at Links Hall annually supports six
local-based dance and performance artists/companies for an intensive
six-month period. The objective is to foster the development of
new creative work in the performing arts, which is carried out through
the provision of rehearsal space, a stipend, an on-call mentor list,
work-in-progress showings, and a fully produced production at the
end of the residency. These two evenings at the Cultural Center
showcase the work of Links Hall's 2006/07 Residency artists. The
performances range from solo to group work, contemporary dance to
experimental performance, and include collaborations in movement,
text, and music. Co-presented by the Chicago Department of Cultural
Affairs.
LinkUp
Residency Artists
December 3, 2007
at the Dance Studio, Chicago Cultural Center, 77 E. Randolph
Free
The Opal Door, excerpts from the
evening-length work
Khecari Dance Theatre
Choreography: Jonathan Meyer
Dancers: Jeremy Blair, Kendall Loyer, Melissa Mallinson, Krista
Hughes, Megan Rhyme, Whitney Cover, Jessica Marasa
With a unique fusion of classical and post-modern dance forms and
a world-ranging vocabulary of movement, Khecari Dance Theatre invites
you on an epic journey to the present day: frozen and explosive,
minute and expansive, tender and violent, grotesquely evocative
and startlingly hopeful. www.khecari.org
Forever Dreaming of Cranes
Angela Gronroos, with J’Sun Howard
A majestic journey through the perceived eyes of a great crane;
time travel and memory reveal the possibility of escape from peril
– to reach the place that is ultimately home.
Little Girl Gone
Kristina Fluty and Marysue Miller, with Carleen Healy
Live Banjo: Ben Wright
A nostalgic movement celebration of childhood, family history, and
former loves. Fluty and Miller blend live banjo, vocalizations,
and recorded Bluegrass classics to provide a sound score for their
memories.
LinkUp
Residency Artists
December 10, 2007
at the Dance Studio, Chicago Cultural Center,
77 E. Randolph
Free
Guns, Aloe: The Worldly Observations and Further
Breakdown of Andrae Gonzalo
Dan Mohr
Part song cycle, part confessional, part therapy session, part lecture,
Mohr explores a hazy perspective on the true nature and purpose
of fashion, divined through transcriptions of reality television,
beatboxing, runway stomp, and false epiphany.
Intimae
Rosenthal et al.
Choreographer: Kairol Rosenthal
Dancers: Emma Draves and Becca Lemme
Vocalists: Brad Benoit, Tenor and Monica Perdue, Soprano
Tinged with ballet and opera, Intimae studies the states
of ecstasy and deeper self that everyday people inhabit when alone
in the mundane sanctum of our homes, cars, and the after hours office.
WAR GARDEN
Seth Bockley, with Emma Stanton and Lindsey Noel Whiting
A physical and spatial experiment in patriotic agriculture. The
piece explores the history of war gardening and an epic conflict
waged over Chicago’s borderlands.
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Julia Mayer - Coffee Dance
Friday December 7, 9:30am
Free
BYOC (bring your own coffee)
Since July 2006, Julia Mayer has opened her weekly
Friday morning solo movement practice to the public once a month.
This successful series of engaged, informal performances continues
on the First Friday of every month at 9:30am. Each performance will
last approximately 20 minutes, with the opportunity for discussion
afterward.
As a mother and full-time worker in her forties, Julia Mayer
is exploring new paradigms for performance—places, processes,
practices—to stay active and to activate audiences to join
her in experiencing unique moments of the body moving. In sharing
her highly personal movement adventures, Julia invites audience
members to contemplate their own creative impulses.
In its first year, CoffeeDance attracted curious, insightful
audiences who valued the opportunity to start their day investigating
dance and the act of performance in an intimate setting, flooded
by daylight. Thanks in part to the rigor and success of this inquiry,
Julia has received a prestigious Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist
grant for 2007.
[her] movement is refreshingly off the map - Chicago Reader
a delicately luminous, inquisitive stage presence - TimeOut
Chicago
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Photo by William Frederking |
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Chicago Danztheatre Ensemble
Voices 2007: Chicago
Friday & Saturday, December 7 & 8, 8pm
Sunday, December 9, 7pm
$15 ($10 students)
Chicago Danztheatre Ensemble is a multi-disciplinary
arts organization originally founded in 2001 as Adler Danztheatre
Project. Inspired by the German Expressionist movement Tanztheater,
this collaborative group creates socially conscious works by fusing
elements of world literature and traditional western theatre with
contemporary dance, visual art, and multimedia to tell original
and compelling narratives. Voices 2007: Chicago has at
its core true stories collected by Chicagoans; these pieces reflect
the diversity, strength, and warmth that is the backbone of our
city’s culture. Created and directed by Ellyzabeth Adler,
Morgan Christianson, Lindsey Marks, and Beth Czechanski.
www.danztheatre.org
Artistic Director Ellyzabeth Adler received
a BFA in Performing Arts from Roosevelt University in 1997. She
received a MA in Directing and Movement from UIC in 2000, focusing
on movement-based theatre; especially Pina Bausch, Anne Bogart,
Martha Clarke, the Wooster Group, and Goat Island. In 2000, she
founded Project Danztheatre Company and later reorganized the company
into Adler Danztheatre Project (ADP) and Kids Project. In the fall
of 2006, ADP started The Voices Project, with an emphasis
on sociopolitical theatre. Recently ADP became Chicago Danztheatre
Ensemble, which better reflects the company’s mission and
collaborative methodology.
The imagination and industry invested...by director Ellyzabeth
Adler and Danztheatre Project are impressive - Mary Shen Barnidge,
Chicago Reader
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Asimina Chremos/Silverspace
Red Swan Red Swan
Friday & Saturday, December 14 & 15, 8pm
Sunday December 16, 7pm
$10
Red Swan Red Swan is a new evening-length solo by Asimina
Chremos that frames the dancer’s body as a meeting place between
sensual and ethereal qualities. The work is inspired, in part, by
the biography of legendary ballerina Margot Fonteyn, particularly
the artistic renaissance late in her career that came about through
her partnership with Rudolph Nureyev. Red Swan researches
how the practice and performance of dance can bridle, efface, liberate
or transform desire.
Asimina Chremos had intensive early training in
classical ballet and later forayed into studies with postmodernists
such as Simone Forti and Ishmael Houston-Jones. Recent influences
on Chremos’ practice include regular practice of vinyasa-style
yoga, Klein/Mahler Technique and contact improvisation. www.asiminachremosdance.net
A strong, elegant, long-limbed dancer who moves with a sense
of stark drama and genuine lyricism - Chicago Sun-Times
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Asimina Photo by William Frederking
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Drake/Zerang image by Mark Pokempner |
Hamid Drake & Michael Zerang
Seventeenth Annual Winter Solstice Percussion Concerts
Friday-Sunday, December 21-23, 6am
$15 Advance tickets from BOOKWORKS,
3444 N. Clark St. Chicago, IL 60657 (773) 871-5318
Hamid Drake and Michael Zerang
present the Seventeenth Annual Winter Solstice Percussion Concerts,
an hour-long ritual performance that utilizes a wide array of percussion
instruments from North Africa, the Middle East, and East India,
as well as western orchestral instruments. Drake and Zerang also
use the Frame Drum that has its origin in ancient Mesopotamia, and
a variety of hand drums, including the dumbek, tabla, rukk,
conga, djimbe, and tambourine, concentrating on long
rhythmic cycles and structured improvisations. Both are veterans
of Chicago’s world music, new music, and jazz scenes and have
performed together nationally and internationally for the past 17
years. The Winter Solstice Percussion Concerts have grown in popularity
over the years, from a single show in 1990 to three annual shows
for the last several years.
[Drake and Zerang have] an extraordinary understanding of one
another—the sort of working friendship in which music has
created a deeper kind of communication than conversation ever could-
Chicago Reader
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