Performance

Sleep is the second performance in Seattle choreographer Pat Graney’s Faith Triptych. Combining 3 iconic performances that investigate the lives of women and that were created over the span of a decade (1991-2001), the triptych creates a mini retrospective of Graney’s work. Faith (1991), Sleep (1997) and Tattoo (2001) were each originally commissioned by On the Boards and feature 12 of the original cast members.

Tattoo is the third performance in Seattle choreographer Pat Graney’s Faith Triptych. Combining 3 iconic performances that investigate the lives of women and that were created over the span of a decade (1991-2001), the triptych creates a mini retrospective of Graney’s work. Faith (1991), Sleep (1997) and Tattoo (2001) were each originally commissioned by On the Boards and feature 12 of the original cast members.

A modernist cabinet of curiosities becomes the grounds for a work created by l’enfant terrible Christian Rizzo and inspired by famed European dancer Julie Guibert. Rizzo manipulates the sleek stage as Guibert performs stylized gestures that explore the harnessed energy of a dancer and the 16th century sculpture, The Nymph of Fontainebleau. Featuring lighting designer Caty Olive and original music by Gerome Nox.

Integrating live music and vocal work into dance, Heaven is a collaboration between choreographer Morgan Thorson and musicians Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker of the indie band Low. Heaven considers each of its participants equally in solo, duet and choral arrangements to evoke an emotional and physical ecstasy more commonly associated with religious practice. Formed in 1993, Low has garnered a worldwide cult following for their minimalist soundscapes and achingly beautiful harmonies. 

Known for its radical and reckless theatricality, avant-garde New York troupe Radiohole's newest work is a star-spangled American meta-melodrama inspired by film director Douglas Sirk's 1950s potboilers and Milton's epic Paradise Lost. Our heroine is an all-American "Eve" who must save her home from an evil-doer while struggling to find fulfillment in a lasting relationship with a supposedly good man who looks like god. Radiohole's newest synthesis of cultural flotsam is sure to be bawdy, silly, possibly transcendent, and a touch disturbed. 

Humorous, fierce and poignant, Allen Johnson draws from his experience as a visual artist, poet, truck driver and boiler mechanic to create a solo performance exploring the recklessness and vulnerability needed for an intimate encounter with God, a lover, or oneself. Directed by Sean Ryan, Another You is a series of brutally honest, interwoven monologues exploring our primal need for intimacy.

Named after a place that everyone knows but no one has been, Alaska is a sensual dance theater portrayal of memory. Choreographer Diana Szeinblum uses dark humor, extreme physicality, original music and a minimal set to create a beautiful spectacle that gravitates between uneasy stillness and violent frenzy.

NYC’s genre-bending Temporary Distortion mines the worlds of Japanese ghost stories and J-Horror in Americana Kamikaze. Inside one of Temporary Distortion’s signature box structures, an East-meets-West psychological horror story unspools, complete with vengeful spirits, impossible physical manipulations, elliptical storylines, nightmarish cinematography and stunning visuals. Temporary Distortion has been making new works that seamlessly blend theater, cinema and installation since 2002. Their work has been presented in the US, Canada, France and Austria.

Playwright and director Young Jean Lee and a cast of 5 African-American performers create an unsettling terrain of well-trodden stereotypes that dare audiences to laugh as they consider their own preconceptions about race and culture. One of the leading and most provocative voices in American contemporary theater, Lee pushes herself to new artistic heights as she confronts her fear about creating an ethnic identity play through the lens of a “black identity politics show.”

construct, the final project by the late Australian choreographer Tanja Liedtke is a tongue-in-cheek look at the act of making performance and the connection to building a home, a relationship and a life. In a charged theatrical setting, 3 highly-skilled dancers depict a strange love triangle with simple props, sound by DJ TR!P and breakneck movement. After performing with DV8 in the UK and Australian Dance Theatre, the 29-year-old Liedtke was appointed the coveted position of artistic director of the Sydney Dance Company in 2007 before her death later that year.