Past
Here was a deeply intellectual experience of consciousness conveyed through physicality. Across the synapses between sensation and thought, the animal and the human, the ecological and illogical, the participants in Super Nature roared, howled, tingled, and leapt, flinging themselves over to feel out the distance and, for a moment, close the gap between the animal spirits and what it means to act naturally. — jkramer.net
Learn moreTHEESatisfaction are artists that blend elements of hip-hop, electronic, and dance. They’re positive energy. Black energy, black women leaping oceans and continents at a single bound. With positive strength of purpose. Even crowds with nary a right foot between them find the steps when faced with THEESat’s unorthodox but right-on-time rhythms. Synchronized, sinewy and sensuous, the regal Stas and Cat channel the higher, whipping like waves of space-borne radiation onstage, leaving a trail of glowing observers abuzz like Geiger counters. THEESatisfaction, the Queens Supreme. Bring yourself!
Learn moreMSHR presents a cybernetic system made up of hand-built analog synthesizers and digitally fabricated hieroglyphic sculptures. Light, sound, and shape are pulled through nested feedback eddies as the system unfolds. Visitors become part of the feedback cycle, steering its course through their intentional engagement and ambient presence.
Learn moreNacera Belaza’s mesmerizing choreography commands attention with its spare aesthetics and focused intensity. In this one-night-only duet with her sister, Belaza concentrates on the starting point of her work, looking inwards and moving out from the intimate to the surface, until the movement disappears. It is a simple idea, and an endless and vital one.
Learn morePICA’s new Field Guide program will take off during TBA, offering up new avenues for you to explore, experience, and discuss concepts and forms in contemporary dance. Join guest Field Guide faculty Tonya Lockyer (dance artist/educator and Artistic Director of Velocity Dance Center in Seattle) for a casual, guided workshop and conversation about Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People's performance of And lose the name of action.
Learn moreA show performed by its audience. Taking the form of a theatrical “read-through,” attendees will pick up their scripts and navigate a text collectively, to create and perform a community. In the temporary microcosmic society that’s established over the course of the reading, everybody slowly but surely gets his or her role. WE ARE STILL WATCHING is a play in which the idea of “spectacle” slowly shifts to where we least expect it.
Learn moreDance, words, and scrap lumber are the raw materials for One with Others, an examination of who we become due to the choices we—or others—make.
Learn morePICA’s new Field Guide program will take off during TBA, offering up new avenues for you to explore, experience, and discuss concepts and forms in contemporary dance. Join guest Field Guide faculty Keith Hennessy (choreographer and TBA alum) for a casual, guided workshop and conversation about Bouchra Ouizguen's Ha!.
Learn moreSince the early 90s, Daniel Barrow has developed a unique style of “manual” animation, layering and manipulating his intricate drawings on overhead projectors. With The Thief of Mirrors, Barrow returns to TBA with the story of a jewel thief who wears the mask of a sad clown.
Learn moreKim Gordon (CKM, Sonic Youth, Free Kitten, etc.) and Bill Nace (X.O.4, Vampire Belt, Ceylon Mange, etc.) will bathe THE WORKS in sound and film for the Portland premiere of their new band Body/Head.
Learn moreMoroccan choreographer Bouchra Ouizguen draws inspiration from the writings of the famed Persian poet and Sufi mystic Rumi to probe the obsessions lurking in each of us. In Ha!, she shares this exploration with her collaborators Fatima El Hanna, Fatima Aït Ben Hmad, and Naïma Sahmoud—a trio of Moroccan aïtas, traditional cabaret singers who are both celebrated and scorned for their performing tradition on the margins of society.
Learn more“Nacera Belaza practices the detail drawing, the imperceptible nuance, the painting of a slow-moving body with a play of light and shade. She is to the dance what Bresson is to the cinema...” —RTBF
Learn more“The professional insights of Erdal, who at times operates the lighting from the stage [...] illuminate his story, becoming a metaphor for his experiences and for life’s big questions... he uses the medium he knows so intimately [...] to present theatre with universal resonance.” —The Globe and Mail
Learn more“Pensotti has a fine facility with irony, with the fine balance between comedy and tragedy.” —British Theatre Guide
Learn more“In the beginning, Georg said, let there be no light. And there was dark. Silky, womb-like India-ink blackness. No emergency lighting in theaters, nada, nothing. And it was good. Mind-blowingly good.” —Los Angeles Times
Learn moreAnd lose the name of action balances neuroscience, improvisation, and paranormal investigations to explore the ghostlike traces that dance leaves on the mind and body.
Learn morePICA’s new Field Guide program will take off during TBA, offering up new avenues for you to explore, experience, and discuss concepts and forms in contemporary dance. Join guest Field Guide faculty Zoe Scofield (TBA alum and choreographer/dancer of zoe |juniper) for a casual, guided workshop and conversation about Laura Arrington & Jesse Hewit's ADULT.
Learn moreIn ADULT, grown-up friends Laura Arrington and Jesse Hewit exorcise and exhaust their collective fantasies about death and dying.
Learn moreThe Blow returns to TBA in its new collaborative incarnation between founder Khaela Maricich and conceptual/installation artist Melissa Dyne.
Learn moreThrough the lens of Harlem ball and postmodern dance, New York choreographer Trajal Harrell performs a study of Antigone from Sophocles’ tragedy.
Learn moreThree Trick Pony is an intimate face-off between performer Linda Austin and a sculptural installation by David Eckard.
Learn moreInternational kamikaze cabaret sensation Meow Meow returns to Portland to take the symphony by storm!
Learn morePICA’s new Field Guide program will take off during TBA, offering up new avenues for you to explore, experience, and discuss concepts and forms in contemporary dance. Join guest Field Guide faculty FRONT (a local dance newspaper published by Robert Tyree, Danielle Ross, Tahni Holt, and Noelle Stiles) for a casual, guided workshop and conversation about Trajal Harrell's Judson Church is Ringing in Harlem (Made-to-Measure)/Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at The Judson Church (M2M).
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