Past
In conversation with Jaclyn I. Pryor, Anthony Hudson / Carla Rossi (Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde) shares insights into the TBA performance Looking for Tiger Lily (Solo), including how the performance serves to queer acenstral storytelling practices, artistic and pop cultural references, and stereotypes of Native identities. * This conversation will be ASL interpreted
Learn morePartner Program Co-presented with Northwest Film Center and JUDY SHAKEDOWN is the story of Los Angeles’ black lesbian strip club scene and its genesis. Owned and operated by women, underground and illegal in nature, the club Shakedown is the darker, faster, younger iteration of this dance culture. The film is a window into this world. Shakedown emerged from a post-RIOTS, post-OJ, post-integration but still very racially divided Los Angeles. In this divided city Shakedown is an independent, all black and all female cash economy. SHAKEDOWN chronicles the explicit performances and personal relationships of the party’s dancers and organizers including Ronnie-Ron, Shakedown Productions’ creator and emcee; Mahogany, the legendary “mother” of the community; Egypt, their star performer; and Jazmine, the “Queen” of Shakedown.
Learn moreTBA:19 Roland Dahwen THE OVERSEAS BANQUET
Learn moreVisiting curator Adela Demetja is joined by Portland-based writer, curator, and artist Lucy Cotter, and collaborating artists from Europe and the U.S. In dialogue, they’ll share more about their residency time in Portland, the contexts and landscapes in which they each live and make work, and their collaborative TBA performance project.
Learn moreEiko Otake presents a screening of a specially edited version of A Body in Fukushima a film created by the artist to be shown either with or without a photo exhibition and/or Eiko's live performance.
Learn moreExperimental composer and improvisor Kara-Lis Coverdale plays an acoustic solo concert on the pipe organ at First Presbyterian Church, co-presented with Variform Gallery.
Learn moreA panel discussion with PICA’s Artistic Directors and other curators and arts administrators to consider how art institutions host, celebrate, and make people feel welcome in their spaces. Moderated by Spencer Byrne-Series, PICA's Exhibitions Director, and curator of TBA:FOOD.
Learn morePDXBall presents The Back to School Kiki Ball, a thrilling competition that shows a glimpse of Portland's dynamic Kiki ballroom community. The Kiki ballroom scene is a subculture of the mainstream ballroom world and was created to practice walking or competing in the many ‘categories’ of the international ballroom arena. The theme "Back to School" will influence the decor, competitive categories, and attire of the participants. Spectators and first-time ball attendees are welcome to join in the fun by dressing to the theme. If it is your first time at a ball, you are highly encouraged to attend and cheer on the competitors who have trained for each category. Join us in celebrating a powerful and inspiring community that uplifts and centers queer and trans black, indigenous land, people of color.
Learn moreSix Latinx performers map an elusive choreography of obsessive and perverse action within an unstable terrain of bodies, materials and sounds. Inspired by This Bridge Called my Back - an anthology of feminist essays that explore identity and critique white feminism. West Coast Premiere
Learn moreAn all-levels voguing workshop facilitated by members of Portland’s PDXBall. Come learn and have fun, or practice in preparation for PDXBall’s TBA Late Night kiki ball competition!
Learn moreWith varied natural and urban instrumentation, including violin, Apache violin, piano, electric guitar, keyboards, and pedal steel guitar, Laura Ortman showcases the wide range of her practice as a composer and visual artist.
Learn moreWith varied natural and urban instrumentation, including violin, Apache violin, piano, electric guitar, keyboards, and pedal steel guitar, Laura Ortman showcases the wide range of her practice as a composer and visual artist.
Learn moreWater Will (in Melody) is a devised choreographic work for four performers, using melodrama as a point of departure. Wrestling with language and notions of 'the will,' this dystopian fantasy becomes a space for negotiating desire, imagination, and feelings of an encroaching end. Unfolding with playful inventiveness, a wet and cavernous landscape becomes host to a fiction that invites instability, recreation, and catastrophe.
Learn moreChoreographer Mia Habib has created a 50-person, community performance that examines and reflects the physical embodiment and witnessing of protest, demonstration, and critical mass. In conversation with Roya Amirsoleymani, PICA’s Artistic Director & Curator of Public Engagement, the artist discusses the development of the indoor and outdoor Portland iterations of this emergent, participatory, public intervention through its political, conceptual, and choreographic lenses.
Learn moreA convocation for all! Our inaugural and first-ever TBA Block Party BBQ is a chance for artists, audiences, neighbors, and staff to kick off the festival over a casual, celebratory meal, featuring legendary barbecue from Po'Shines. In years past, the Opening Night Dinner was a lovely but exclusive affair. Now celebrating the third year in our home on NE Hancock St., the Block Party BBQ is open to all, an accessible and welcoming shared meal—all are invited!
Learn moreTender Table is a series of stories about food, family, and identity told by femmes of color and nonbinary people of color. For each event, storytellers prepare a dish connected to the experiences they’ve shared. Audiences are invited to listen generously, spend time communally, and sample the food.
Learn moreThis performance takes the form of a slow walk through a section of the city. All are welcome to participate. Please contact the TBA Box Office for any questions about or requests for mobility or accessibility accommodation. Audience will be asked to remove their shoes during parts of this performance. Please that this performance is not able to be ASL interpreted or have other accommodations for Deaf and Hard of Hearing audiences.
Learn moreJUDY is a queer, femme, and non-binary-centered party that materializes every last Saturday night of the month at a dive bar in Portland, Oregon. Run by queer women and exclusively featuring female identified, trans, and non-binary DJs, JUDY was started in 2014. Each month, JUDY features hand-drawn flyers of community members, party people, and over-the-top queens, with the ritual of crowning a new “Judy” at every party.
Learn moreUS PREMIERE With spare aesthetics and focused intensity, choreographer Nacera Belaza invites the audience into an immersive experience through her vision and artistic process. Compagnie Nacera Belaza takes us on a journey through a trio of introspective, meditative and transcendent dance works, (whose titles translate as as The Night, The Crossing, and The Wire), revealing the evolution of her work as one would experience viewing three different paintings by a single artist in a gallery. Belaza’s hope is for each piece to become something new in the audience's imagination, that one’s gaze is sharpened when let in on the inner workings of the artist’s mind.
Learn moreUtopian Visions Art Fair (UVAF) is a platform for artists, gallerists, and curators to present projects that are speculative and working towards possible futures.
Learn moreLoosely based on the original turn-of-the-century play by Maurice Maeterlinck, Pelléas et Mélisande is about love, silence, and the ineffable nature of human emotion. It bears the fluctuating trait of tragicomedy (funny/sad), and involves timekeeping, constant weeping, and the symbolism that epitomized the original play. As Pelléas et Mélisande engages a mystery it does not understand, the writers hope their audience might slip into this mystery, to find a new and surprising way to commune.
Learn moreSounds et al presents an electroacoustic collaboration from duos Caspar Sonnet/Kozue Matsumoto, and Kaori Suzuki/John Krausbauer.
Learn moreUS WEST COAST PREMIERE ALBUM is an evening-length solo performance that researches my herstory from a tableaux of personal narratives, a product of approaches that compound ethnography, memoir, and choreography. Uniting text, song, and dance inside of the content of an album― a picture album, a song album, an autobiographical album, a herstorical album― the work finds ways to be an archive, or altar, for my body. My relationship to urbanity, vampires, love, and marginality arise with equal importance, as I orbit around the primary curiosity: I'm not sure who will write a herstory about me, so I'm starting now so that they can have good notes. In ALBUM, I make visible the surround, a chorus of influences that have shaped who I am.
Learn moreS.E.C.R.E.T.S. presents Prince Romeo the Crow, a theatrical performance of the eponymous album that explores the duality of love and fear, and the forces that shape our actions and fates.
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