Past
Indie electronic musician and vocalist Shannon Funchess has had her feet firmly planted in the fertile underground scene for two and a half decades. Also a DJ and sometime dancer for the likes of The Knife, Funchess is a multidisciplinary performance artist with a gravitation toward the synthesis of dark, angular sound, and visual bisection.
Learn moreRinde Eckert has been writing, composing, performing, and directing evocative and haunting performance pieces and plays that have pushed at the edges of recognized theatrical form since the early 1980s. My Fools: A Life in Song combines song, dramatic monologues, lecture, and video from his archive. Beginning with a montage of visually striking moments from his shows across the decades, My Fools is a series of variations on a smart, slightly cock-eyed Everyman who begins his journey with a pure sense of mission and descends into the maelstrom.
Learn moreDeep Under Ground (DUG) and Young Gifted & Brown (YGB) have been curating safe spaces for brown folks to congregate, express themselves, share stories, love one another, and move their bodies since early & mid-2015.
Learn moreItalian artist Alessandro Sciarroni returns to Portland with a performative reflection on the passing of time. Continuing his trilogy that began with Folk-s, will you still love me tomorrow (TBA:15), Sciarroni now focuses on another traditional artform comprised of repeated actions: juggling. By remixing the pacing and sequence of gravity-defying moves (under the leg, under the arm, above the head, etc.), there is an almost endless combination of patterns to explore. Each repetition abstracts the performers’ movements, opening the possibilities of seeing the larger picture: flight, failure, kinetic potential.
Learn moreWhere lies the boundary between the body and the machine? In an empty space, illuminated only with cold light, Geumhyung Jeong explores the potential of the human: the sensuality, power, and mutability of the body. In seven peculiar “duets” with mundane objects (ranging from household appliances to mannequins), Jeong bestows a bizarre and disconcerting life to the inanimate through an intense and risky interaction with her own body, Combining dance, puppetry, and a technical mastery of theatrical conventions, the result is a moving choreography of the body and mind, crossing the dividing line between the human and inhuman, hallucination and reality.
Learn moreUS PREMIERE: French/Moroccan author and director Mohamed El Khatib presents a solo lecture presentation on loss and remembrance, drawing from documents from his family’s past—newspaper clippings, emails, phone messages, scraps of exchanges with the father, recorded transcripts, videos. These snapshots of life evoke family, nationality, native language, memory, mourning and shift between documentary and fiction.
Learn moreReferencing the psychedelic light shows of the ’60s and ’70s as well as the harsh noise performances of contemporary avant-garde rebels like Bruce McClure, the Cinema Project collective, along with Portland-based musician Matt Carlson and friends, will create a momentary light and sound environment—a temporary dynamic installation in which to immerse audience members both wandering and still. Several 16mm projectors will run simultaneously and light beams will appear in the round. Moving images of man, woman, animal, landscape, or simply sheer color and light from analog loops and reels will overlap and penetrate one another, covering any and all surfaces possible, and manipulated live by human hands. The mechanics of cinematic experience will be laid bare and at times it will be very very loud.
Learn morePart lecture, part choreographic exposition, better to be alone than to wish you were is a solo performance that affirms the anticlimactic futility of lust, from its first intoxicating charge to its subsequent, stumbling pursuit. While slyly humorous, Hankins unabashedly exploits and strips her body of its poetic nature as it is offered up for consumption, judgment, and of course: desire. Created with an all-female production team, better to be alone… weaves seduction, stand-up comedy motifs, and forced voyeurism in an attempt to exhibit the extraordinary and cumbersome illogic of love and sex.
Learn moreUS PREMIERE: a woman under the influence of a woman under the influence of a woman under the influence of a woman under the influence of a woman under the influence until it has no name A live video essay that arrives through a base note, a vanishing point, an other history of orientations.
Learn moreSacha Yanow’s solo performance is an intimate psychological portrait of the artist’s father, her internalized dad, and patriarchy in general. For one night only, “Dad” covers and lip-syncs to his favorite songs from the ‘50s and ‘60s, shares footage of his 1970s winning appearance on the To Tell the Truth game show, presents motivational speeches, and more. His button-down shirts become his costumes, his yellow notepad usually reserved for stock market details contains his set list, and his Agatha Christie novel collection and Wall Street Journal become his props.
Learn moreUS PREMIERE: Lebanese choreographer Ali Chahrour explores the practice of Islamic Shiite religious ritual through dance and the body. In this performance, Chahrour takes the stage with two musicians and Leila, a professional mourner whose role it is to deliver the lamentations and honor the departed at a funeral. Woven from traditional Ataaba song verses and the plaintive cries of bereavement, the work is a poetic elegy to a fading cultural heritage. Leila’s Death addresses the relationships between the body and religion, the mourner and the deceased, the sacred and the performed.
Learn moreBlind Coven will feature Portland-based songwriter, songstress, and actor Amenta Abioto. Abioto’s work is on the cutting edge of all that is musical, theatrical, and literary. Her music is boldly mystical and soul-fired, and her raw improvisational live performances invoke elements of both theatrical surprise and magic through ancient African diasporic sounds and stories. She brings to the music scene funky academia while skipping vocally from soul-shaking gospel and smooth jazz to hip hop rhythms wrapped in West African beats. The performance will feature a boutique designed 10-channel surround sound system as well as correlating lighting and visuals from artist DB Amorin.
Learn moreAU’s new collaboration with the Camas High School choir is an explosive, joyful expression of community and creativity that blurs the lines between propulsive art-pop and avant-garde choral soundscapes. This concert is the summation of a yearlong project that found AU’s Luke Wyland working directly with Camas students to produce an entirely new body of music. In addition, Wyland worked closely with Camas Choir Director Ethan Chessin and the trailblazing arts education nonprofit Young Audiences of Oregon & SW Washington to craft a curriculum that exposed Camas students to varying aspects of the music business via members of the local industry.
Learn moreWelcome to the Neighborhood Live! expands the reach of the weekly radio broadcast bringing the very best from the northwest to the stage! DJ Klyph curates a night of hip hop featuring some of Portland’s finest including DJ/Producer/MC Omega Watts of Mello Orange, Oakland transport MC Brookfield Duece, NW MC Matty, and Producer Trox, plus familiar elements of the WTTN broadcast. Expect a great night of music and surprises.
Learn moreIt’s time we said it, 2016 has been rough. Every passing month has added yet another weight on our collective heads making it harder and harder to keep them up. We’re in the middle of a contentious election year that feels like never-ending satire. We’re getting yelled at by talking heads spouting propaganda, grandiose statements, and empty promises. All while our social media reverberates a never ending echo chamber of opinions on pretty much everything from systemic racism to Pokemon Go.
Learn moreNo No Soliciting will feature several of Portland’s most talented and respected musicians and songwriters performing songs specifically written for the event. Each songwriter will take several different directives from the audience regarding form, key, tempo, melody, instrumentation, and lyrical content to compose a song in 15 minutes. Once the song is written, they will return to the ensemble, walk the band and audience through the composition, and then perform the song while the following songwriter is composing the next song.
Learn moreWEST COAST PREMIERE: In Thomas’ most recent project, Distance is Not Separation, she takes us back to what it means to be a femme black person growing up playing on the street corner, waiting till the street lights came on, the street lights being a signal for the darkness coming. Both a symbol and warning sign for ones safety. The last moments before the call and response between mother/parent/queer family and child: “It’s time to come home, I’m coming.” Thomas investigates the black femme body in relation to the athletic body, thinking about value and skills. Thomas rethinks and rebalances how we see and observe sports imagery, the labor and value of craftsmanship, the hairdresser, the janitor, the ‘exotic’ dancer, and how language constructs and transcribes symbols onto the black femme body.
Learn moreCritical Mascara, “A Post-Realness Drag Extravaganza,” returns for its fourth year serving a wild hybrid of dance, vogue, and drag competition unlike any other! Critical Mascara celebrates community and creativity through competition and now collaboration. Producer and Hostess Pepper Pepper with DJ Zaq Desfleurs are joined by celebrated choreographer Kumari Suraj as MC and Portland’s luminaire Isaiah Esquire. Together they curate and judge the Pacific Northwest’s largest, queerest, and most fabulous extravaganza.
Learn moreWEST COAST PREMIERE: On May 23, 2014, Elliot Rodger killed six people and injured 13 in Santa Barbara, California, in a rampage motivated by his lack of success with women—a fixation he had detailed in a series of confessional and defiant YouTube videos. New York City multimedia artists Royal Osiris Karaoke Ensemble respond to this wound to the body of Love with a modern-day ritual performance suffused with humor and experimentation. Mining source material ranging from self-help dating advice to confessional shopping videos, the group unpacks, isolates, and rearranges contemporary romantic mythologies and situates Rodger’s actions within a broader collection of found love stories and online video content. Within the sacred space of the performance, this “musical priesthood” will lead a group meditation on insecurity, longing, and masculinity, performing humanity’s common search for Love as we misunderstand it.
Learn morePICA COMMISSION: In Meg Wolfe’s lushly physical New Faithful Disco, belief is made manifest as energy. A queer-love power-trio of dancers—taisha paggett, Marbles Radio, and Wolfe—feel and feed on that energy, remixing it as they prepare to take on something BIG. Is it Love? Faith? Impermanence? Pleasure? Power? Propelled by nature sounds and fresh rhythms, the dancers build communal energy into an accumulated whirlwind wrought with awkwardness and contradiction. New Faithful Disco opens up time, triggers fading histories, and confronts who we are now.
Learn moreUS PREMIERE: In the darkness of a cinema space, the audience sits blindfolded. Behind each row of audience members is a row of children who in hushed voices describe a film only they can see. Accompanied by the soundtrack (which has no dialogue), the whispered descriptions are a fragile, fragmentary and at times struggling but courageous attempt by the children to make sense of what they see projected on the screen.
Learn moreA weekend-long, build-it-ourselves outdoor modern art museum, artist Libby Werbel orchestrates an exhibition in the heart of the city, inviting an impressive roster of performers to engage with the space. PMOMA draws a direct link between Portland’s lack of a major contemporary art museum and the impressive output of our creative community. Do Portland’s quickly shifting economic demands endanger the cultural equity essential to maintaining the quality of any major city? Is it possible to have a museum without an established infrastructure to support it? What does a museum look like when fashioned through our ideal ethical processes?
Learn moreThe Portland Museum of Modern Art curates a night of powerful and joyful performances. PMOMA creator Libby Werbel presents a selection of performers who will activate the PMOMA exhibition in Pioneer Courthouse Square throughout the weekend. Tropic Green (Oakland, CA) incorporates reggae, house, spirituals, and Afrofuturist themes in her rhythmic performances, Dynasty Handbag (Los Angeles, CA; previously part of TBA:15) emcees with her absurd mix of improv, comedy, and movement, and radical trio Strange Babes (Portland, OR) offers an eclectic DJ set. Video works by Julia Calabrese. PMOMA at the WORKS is a wild sampling of what PMOMA has in store for a jam-packed weekend in the Square. Surprise performances will abound!
Learn moreWEST COAST PREMIERE: Bulgarian performer Ivo Dimchev is known for breaking taboos in his provocative and boldly physical pieces. While his work blends performance art, dance, theater, and visual art, Dimchev’s enormous musicality and his remarkable vocal gift are at the center of each of his productions. For this live musical event, he has selected 15 songs from his past performances to present as independent, individual opuses. Accompanied on the piano by Dimitar Gorchakov, Dimchev displays his prodigious talent in a stirring concert that leaps between the feral and the virtuosic.
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