Past
Narcissister talks performance, dance, video art, photography, and activism across popular and experimental media with TBA Guest Scholar Ariel Osterweis, whose critical research and writing closely consider race and movement in Narcissister’s practice.
Learn moreCreators of Portland's very own House of Aquarius - William Ylvisaker, Grace Eucker, and Akela Jaffi - bring you a Saturday morning dance workshop for connecting with your own personal movement. Beginning with a guided meditation focused on waking and moving the body's individual pieces, the class will provide a blueprint for the freedom to move the way that best suits you. The intention of this class is to create the same freedom and confidence in learning choreography as with improvisational movement. There will be space to learn, share, play, interact, and heal.
Learn moreWomen artists of color are at the forefront of Portland’s expanding cultural and nightlife scenes, producing multidisciplinary exhibitions, performances, readings, screenings, dialogues, and dance nights that foreground Black and Brown bodies, voices and perspectives and insist on the intersection of art and social justice.
Learn moreNew to contemporary art but curious to learn more? Enjoy sharing thoughts and perspectives with other audience members? Ready to deep-dive into the ideas and themes in an artist's work? Field Guide is a unique opportunity for facilitated dialogue and exchange among a small group of festival-goers eager to discover and explore a particular exhibition or performance in more depth, including an artist's social, political, cultural, and aesthetic influences. Join TBA:16 Guest Scholar Ariel Osterweis for a pre-show workshop with presentation and discussion, group viewing of Narcissister's Narcissistic Advance, and post-show conversation over light refreshments. No prior contemporary art or performance experience required. Bring a friend!
Learn moreJoin esteemed Portland choreographer and TBA:16 Guest Scholar Linda K. Johnson for a unique Field Guide workshop on Morgan Thorson's Still Life, to include exercises in close observation, light movement, and deep discussion to enhance our experience with repetition, duration, and other elements of ephemeral performance. No prior experience necessary. Bring a friend!
Learn moreIn a spirited launch of this year's TBA, artistic directors of leading national and international art and performance festivals speak to the concentrated time, space, and place of “the festival” as an unparalleled platform for artistic presentation, audience experience, curatorial research, political engagement, and cross-cultural confluence of people and ideas. With Angela Mattox (TBA Festival, Portland); Silvia Bottiroli (Santarcangelo Festival, Italy); Helen Cole (In Between Time Festival, Bristol, UK); and Melissa Levin (River to River Festival, NYC). Moderated by Stephanie Snyder, Anne and John Hauberg Director and Curator, Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College.
Learn moreTBA opening night artist Juliana Huxtable discusses her multidisciplinary practice across music, poetry, performance, and the politics of race and gender with TBA Guest Scholar, Sampada Aranke (Asst. Professor, History and Theory of Contemporary Art, San Francisco Art Institute).
Learn moreDANCE/MOVEMENT: Get warmed up for Critical Mascara's "A Post-Realness Extravaganza" with legendary Father Stephaun Blahnik. In this workshop, we will cover voguing basics, then apply those skills to progressively challenging drills and battles. Ideal as an introduction to voguing or for those wishing to improve techniques and stamina. Come ready to sweat! Will you ring the alarm, or throw in the towel!?
Learn moreStrut out your powerful Runway, Waacking, goddess realness! This 90 min "pumps optional" adventure through dance will leave you feeling physically empowered with a new sense of self confidence. Learn exciting Heels & Waacking foundation paired with sexy beats and exciting exercises to get you ready for the Waacking battle at Critical Mascara, or just acquire some new moves to impress friends at the club! With favorite local artists and performer, Isaiah Tillman, and renowned Waacking dancer, choreographer, and artist Kumari Suraj.
Learn moreFor this culminating conversation, join PICA's Creative Exchange Lab artists will share their experiences and interpretations of the festival and residency, including TBA as a platform for interdisciplinary collaboration, critical inquiry, creative research, and community. Moderated by Kristan Kennedy, Visual Art Curator, PICA.
Learn more2015 marks 20 years of PICA. Join us along the TBA Festival Flight: Local Legacies & Landscapes to reflect on our current context, and shifts in the local landscape, with a focus on how to continue nurturing thought-provoking contemporary art in Portland and ensure that our artists thrive.
Learn moreOne of two TBA Festival Flights, Identity & The Body reflects a range of artists from diverse disciplines who work across dance/choreography and interdisciplinary performance to engage the embodied politics and poetics of race, ethnicity, gender, culture, and their intersections.
Learn moreBorn from Bronx street gang culture in the 1970's, Breaking became a worldwide dance style by the ‘80's. Fever One of NYC's legendary Rocksteady Crew has lectured on Hip Hop history, theory, and culture and taught Breaking around the world, including top universities. Wear comfortable clothes and be ready to explore hip hop history as well as Breaking basics. Movement; All Levels.
Learn morePICA’s signature public engagement program continues to cross disciplines and explore new thematic territory with five Festival Field Guides facilitated by leading local and visiting artists and scholars. Each small-group session creates context around contemporary performance and a particular artist’s social, political, cultural, and aesthetic influences through a pre-show workshop with lecture and lively discussion; group viewing of a TBA performance; and post-show conversation over food and drink. For this session join Lisa Jarrett, Artist and DePriest Visiting Professor of Art & Ethnic Studies at Portland State University, in exploring artist Dana Michel's practice and her work Yellow Towel. Online artist interviews and media supplement learning and engagement. Anyone curious about contemporary art welcome. Bring a friend!
Learn moreIn light of rapid economic development in West Coast cities, how are local artists and cultural institutions faring? What opportunities and challenges have arisen? How do race, class, and other factors influence our experiences? How do intergenerational artists and arts leaders recount Portland’s past and imagine its future? What can we learn from other cities’ shifting landscapes? Featuring Victoria Frey (PICA, Portland); Andre Middleton (Black Creative Collective and RACC, Portland); Julie Phelps (CounterPulse, San Francisco) and more. Moderated by Ethan Seltzer, Professor of Urban Studies & Planning, Portland State University.
Learn moreDana Michel discusses complex performance work Yellow Towel and its explorations of race, gender, body politics, and their intersections. With Lisa Jarrett, Artist and DePriest Visiting Professor of Art and Ethnic Studies, Portland State University.
Learn moreJoin PICA and Know Your City as we look back on PICA’s 20-year history through a tour of central Portland! Together, we’ll see sites that shaped our colorful past; share memories of intimate moments and outrageous spectacles; and consider the city’s arts, urban, and economic landscape through the lens of PICA’s pioneering itinerant model. We’ll visit our place of origin; venues for groundbreaking exhibitions and performances; infamous parties and costume balls; early TBA sites transformed from raw warehouses to magical festival hubs; and more. Guest speakers will share unforgettable stories of how PICA and Portland have evolved—and what it means to our future as artists, an arts institution, and a city.
Learn morePhilippe Quesne and Vivarium Studios creates a technical theatre lab that modifies genre conventions to generate an ambiguous universe. The work eschews mastery in favor of curiosity through humor, malaise, questioning, and an upended world vision. In this workshop, we will consider the importance of space and set through Quesne’s rigorous practice. Theatre Performance; All Levels.
Learn morePICA’s signature public engagement program continues to cross disciplines and explore new thematic territory with five Festival Field Guides facilitated by leading local and visiting artists and scholars. Each small-group session creates context around contemporary performance and a particular artist’s social, political, cultural, and aesthetic influences through a pre-show workshop with lecture and lively discussion; group viewing of a TBA performance; and post-show conversation over food and drink. For this session, join Choreographer and Performance Artist Keith Hennessy in exploring the practice of Radhouane El Meddeb and his work Au temps où les arabes dansaient... Online artist interviews and media supplement learning and engagement. Anyone curious about contemporary art welcome. Bring a friend!
Learn morePhilippe Quesne shares the unique artistic vision of innovative theatre lab Vivarium Studios and their TBA project, La Mélancolie des Dragons . With Kate Bredeson, Assoc. Professor of Theatre, Reed College.
Learn moreIn this workshop, we will create short, original solo performance works with built-in coping mechanisms for the inevitable accident of live performance. We will employ/practice inexperience, loopholes, Fibonacci, plagiarism, idiosyncrasies, performance scores, and anything else we want. Please bring one problematic object from your world. Theatre / Movement / Performance; All Levels.
Learn morePICA’s signature public engagement program continues to cross disciplines and explore new thematic territory with five Festival Field Guides facilitated by leading local and visiting artists and scholars. Each small-group session creates context around contemporary performance and a particular artist’s social, political, cultural, and aesthetic influences through a pre-show workshop with lecture and lively discussion; group viewing of a TBA performance; and post-show conversation over food and drink. For this session, join Seattle-based dance, theatre, and performance critic Omar Willey in exploring artist Amy O'Neal's Opposing Forces. Online artist interviews and media supplement learning and engagement. Anyone curious about contemporary art welcome. Bring a friend!
Learn moreSeattle-based dance and theatre critic Omar Willey joins Amy O’Neal and collaborators to discuss Opposing Forces through the lenses of gender, race, hip hop, and aesthetic experiments with Breaking.
Learn moreIn this provocative performative lecture, renowned artist, curator, and educator Marc Bamuthi Joseph uses poem and image to catalog his arc from working on issues of environment in West Oakland to premiering a 6-week installation for Creative Time in New York City's Central Park. The 7-year journey in between describes an individual and collective prototype for uncovering narratives of black joy in these American hours of chaos. Along the way, Bamuthi will touch on the ethics of hip-hop generation organizing; as the true frontline organizers of the current Black Lives Matter movement are women, gender neutral, or queer, we are faced with the question of how the politics of the dance floor become inert when exposed to the politics of social liberation.
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