Past
Welcome 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.
Learn moreOpposing Forces utilizes tropes of contemporary performance to expose fears around the feminine in our culture through the hyper masculine dance style of Breaking. With curiosity, vulnerability, and power, five world-class B-Boys uncover binary perceptions of gender using a range of dance contexts: battling, commercial dance, and cyphering. Featuring Fever One of Rocksteady Crew, Brysen "Just Be" Angeles of Massive Monkees, Alfredo "Free" Vergara of Circle of Fire/Soul Shifters, Mozes Lateef Sa'Leem of Circle of Fire/Soul Shifters, Michael O'Neal Jr of Beat Hippies/CHPT 1, an original score played live by WD4D, stage design by Ben Zamora, and lighting design by Amiya Brown.
Learn moreSeminal French director and TBA alum Philippe Quesne returns with the large-scale theater work La Mélancolie des dragons. Filled with Quesne’s disarming wit and hints of magical realism La Mélancolie is set amid a snowy landscape of classic rock and medieval recorders where a band of metalheads is on a quest to build an amusement park devoted to hard-rock. To create his works, Quesne employs a domino effect—the last scene of a work falls into the first scene of the next. La Melancolie was born at the end of his celebrated work L’Effet de Serge (TBA:08). With an ingenious hand for reinventing the conventions of theater, Quesne smartly constructs La Melancolie into a work that celebrates the absurd and finds the profound joy of friendship.
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 moreGood Morning Evening Feelings with Dynasty Handbag (DH) is a live, conceptual, one-hour hybrid morning / late-night / children’s show for adults, hosted by everyone’s favorite no one, Dynasty Handbag.
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 moreBEACON SOUND brings to TBA:15 an experimental night of music featuring performances by Benoit Pioulard, Bardo:Basho, and Apartment Fox. Together these artists, occupy a different yet complimentary place near the nexus of experimental, electronic, and ambient music. The night will be tied up by DJs Liz Harris and Beacon Sound.
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.
Learn moreFranco-Tunisian choreographer Radhouane El Meddeb illuminates cultural, historical, and aesthetic influences including complex explorations of gender, ethnicity, and the body. With Angela Mattox, Artistic Director, PICA.
Learn moreWe will focus on the performer’s presence in space when light (natural or artificial) designs or denies vision. A series of reflections will be initiated around the body and its relationship to memory. We will discuss the problem of translating the performer’s inner experience during research and development into something readable to the outside.
Learn moreDisoriented Comedy is the first-ever nationally-touring stand-up comedy showcase featuring the fresh voices of a (mostly) female, Asian American lineup. Since 2012, Disoriented Comedy has presented over 40 standup comedy and storytelling shows at independent theaters and clubs throughout the country. Beyond Asian American female-identified comics, Disoriented Comedy features up-and-coming talent of diverse races, sexuality, and gender rarely seen on mainstream comedy stages.
Learn moreFrench-Tunisian Choreographer Radhouane El Meddeb carefully observed his mother and his aunts preparing couscous and the national dishes served at his family’s gatherings from marriages to circumcisions to mourning rituals… In Je danse et vous en donne à bouffer, El Meddeb expresses his love of preparation, and the sensuality of food in a form of sacredness and performative sharing. In this performance, El Meddeb is immersed in his loves of dancing and cooking. Seated before his couscous maker, he performs and prepares couscous with generosity and poetry.
Learn morePreparation for the Obsolescence of the Y Chromosome attempts to prepare for the end of men. Simultaneously committed to conservation and archival efforts, Preparation for the Obsolescence works in the tradition of ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax and the performative lecture / demonstration format. Utilizing absurdist humor, web technology, a male gaze simulator, choreography, token cultural gestures, and MIT data points, this work both combats and stirs rumors about the implications of the Y chromosome's reputed demise.
Learn moreInterdisciplinary artist and choreographer Alessandro Sciarroni sheds light on FOLK-S, Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?, including its process, cultural context and tradition, and unique commitments to durational artist/audience experience. With choreographer Linda K. Johnson.
Learn moreInterdisciplinary artist Dawn Kasper (Whitney Biennial 2012) leads an interactive performance workshop exploring our physical and psychic engagement with space, time, movement, sound, objects, and states of mind. Artists of all disciplines are encouraged to participate. Performance; All Levels.
Learn moreTBA favorite Ten Tiny Dances (TTD) returns to the Festival this year! An experiment in confined space, TTD is dedicated to fostering inventive dance / performance art and providing an exhilarating performance experience for a diverse audience, all on a 4×4-foot stage. Since 2002, the small stage of TTD has been the crucible for an ever expanding catalogue of creation and performance: Over 300 artists, 24 engaging venues, and 9 cities across the country.
Learn moreAkio Suzuki & Aki Onda "ke i te ki" American Tour is organized by ISSUE Project Room. The project is supported by the Asian Cultural Council.
Learn morePortland-based Lu Yim brings to TBA:15 a solo work of mourning and melancholia. From here they depart, measuring the distance within body, thought, language, and feeling; as portal / continent / object / subject / memory / tool. Actions of voice, sound and movement turn the internalized outward. This is not my body performing but where my body has gone suspended in a place where a question repeats.
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 Tonya Lockyer, Artistic Director at Velocity Dance Center, in exploring artist Lucy Yim's practice and her performance of Devastation Melody. Online artist interviews and media supplement learning and engagement. Anyone curious about contemporary art welcome. Bring a friend!
Learn moreInterdisciplinary artists Dawn Kasper (NY), Jibade-Khalil Huffman (LA), and Lucy Yim (Portland) discuss formal and conceptual influences across their complex practices in performance, dance, writing, visual art, and poetry. With Erin Boberg Doughton, Performing Arts Program Director, PICA.
Learn moreS1 is an artist-run project space in Northeast Portland. Since the summer of 2014, S1’s dedicated staff works closely with local, national, and international artists to organize visual art exhibitions, performances, and late-night dance parties. For one night, S1 pulls its diverse artists and projects out of the basement for S1 Presents at THE WORKS. S1 Presents will feature DJ sets, live performances, installations, and interactive video art. Celebrated avant-pop explorer Zola Jesus performs a rare DJ set, Coast2C displays her voracious enthusiasm for worldly electronic music with an expansive dance journey, and US Hard / Contemporary performs live, taking command of his machines to summon focused experiments in minimal beat music. Visual artists from around the globe—selected by S1’s curatorial staff—will be featured on and off stage for an immersive experience.
Learn moreA solo creation at the intersection of theater, dance, and visual art installation, Bronx Gothic gives palpable force to the charged relationship between two girls on the verge of adolescence in the 1980s—where Newports are bought in singles at corner bodegas, and sex saturated notes are passed in class.
Learn moreTyondai Braxton is known for experimenting with music in a way that feels like a game of coloring outside the lines—tracing patterns that unexpectedly jet sideways. Braxton brings to TBA:15 a solo performance featuring modular synthesizer and samples. Braxton will be performing pieces from HIVE1 his first album in six years and his Nonesuch Records debut.
Learn moreHolcombe Waller sheds light on the development of Requiem Mass: LGBT / Working Title, including aesthetic constructs, conceptual underpinnings, public engagement, and partnership experiences across faith-based and queer communities. With community choir participants. With Roya Amirsoleymani, Community Engagement Manager, PICA.
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