by Vanessa
I arrive via bus, I'm prepared for a variety of feelings, of sights and sounds. I'm excited. Many friends will be there, many friends are sharing their work I've seen grow and develop and solidify and clarify and discussed over so many months. The work has now become and I can't wait to be audience to it.
I sit like a sandwich in the middle. The Studio space full and lots of familiar raisins in this cookie.
I have a new friend on one side and a longstanding friend on my other side. We watch, we sigh, we open our windows sometimes sniffing at the sweet pie odors at other times wincing at the pain we imagine:
movement phrasing, rhythms in new music, death by hypothermia, the piercing sound of a referee whistle in a grueling competition that might be pointless, the relief of collapsed wrestlers, and the unwinding of a taped-torso and
…..this year IT is endurance
How long will I close my eyes?
...
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by Eric P
Making play of men's competitive nature, Elia Mrak sets four dudes in a brash tumble about the stage, illustrating the elemental dynamic of the eternal male engine. Dressed in the iconic uniform of white t shirts and jeans they're put to task in flashes of raw energy, bouncing between and repelling off one another in a stepped-up action cartoon of yang inflected sparks. Their boyish glee harnessed and flung about, it could almost resemble the dance between healthy corpuscles, each individually swimming with intent in their routine of marshalled aide specific group think, exercising their nature to combat and conquer outside influence and to coax vibrant new life.
As counterpoint, Allie Hankins parades a stylized quartet of women in a refracted lens view of body-conscious oddity. Their fleshy unitards augmented with various lumps and bumps, they enact a promenade of awkward exposition; their...
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by Marlo
I am left with a memory of one work in particular after leaving the 30th Annual NWNW….los samurai by Elia Mrak.
Elia Mrak, thank you. Thank you for creating a work that was compelling from the first moment. A work that was unabashedly physical, vulnerable, and emotionally charged. Thank you Elia, for offering a work that brought me to tears because I simply felt…I felt something while watching dance, while watching art, I felt connected to the story, I felt deeply empathetic for the ghost of the dialogue, my heart ached and soared. I cannot begin to explain how good it felt to be effected in this way. I needed it so badly. Thank you Elia for bringing together your four fellow performers who danced as themselves. There was no shred of pretense or false persona, no acting or delivering for an audience. Rather five men standing in their own skin playing, engaging, competing, enjoying movement, and becoming deeply entrenched in their...
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by Doug
I enjoy watching professional sports as sort of a guilty pleasure. Any qualms about exploitation for my entertainment and crass commercialism are set aside when I step into hallowed OtB performance spaces.
<scrrreeeeech>
Enter week one of NW New Works, the studio showcase:
Competition leads to discovery; athleticism is dance is athleticism. Sexuality and physical intimacy (sometimes) forces opposing wills into spectacular collisions. <pause to refill whiskey> Humans pitted against the elements provide damn good stories and a baffling mystery frozen in time, captured in action shots worthy of Sports Illustrated. The will to win, suffering for greatness, and the pain of defeat are on full display.
This 30th incarnation of NW New Works kicks off (pun intended) with a sporting good showcase. If you have tickets, you already win.
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by Jessica
Waiting lists will start on the day of each event and only in person at the box office. On Friday the waiting list will begin for that evening’s show at 7pm. On Saturday it will begin at 3pm.
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by Madeline
Whoa! Check out this celebratory trailer starring artists from OtB's NW New Works Festival 2013!
Trailer shot and edited by Guy Staley with original music by Barry Sebastian composer for The New Animals!
Festival dates: Fri - Sun, Jun 7 - 9 & 14 - 16, 2013
Tickets on sale now!
More info @ ontheboards.org
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by Jed M
While the grand title might suggest a turn to things ancient and eternal—and, on some registers, of course, it does—Saint Genet's Paradisiacal Rites, like Jean Genet himself, demands that we attend to the present and the particular, to dirt and blood and saliva and breath, to small, shared intimacies and cruelties and the large, sweeping movements in which they are played out and repeated, just beyond our control.
In a famous passage in The Thief's Journal, Genet writes of being abused by Spanish police when they discover a tube of vaseline in his pocket. The little “sign of abjection” that reveals he has sex with men is vested with a strange power: it brings him violence and ridicule, but he is convinced “it would be able to exasperate all the police in the world; it would draw upon itself contempt, hatred, white and dumb rages.” Meditating on the strength of that symbol—a symbol that is thoroughly material, that holds a sticky substance...
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by Jessica
The Sunday, May 19th performance of Saint Genet’s Paradisiacal Rites is SOLD OUT. A cash only waiting list will be started at 7pm in our upstairs lobby for any seats still not claimed at show time.
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