Interactive Space Design

For this piece I designed a sculptural interactive set that the performers inhabit and I maintain/manipulate throughout the duration of the show as a kind of t e c h f o r m e r. It has been a challenge, but incredibly fun to make some of the delightfully monstrous installations.
When We Were Beautiful and All That Came After is a movement theatre performance by Control Group Productions. The work is a meditation on the sculptural/geological process of aging: Decaying surfaces, facades wearing slowly away, and the gradual revelation of the underlying resilient form.

APRIL 28 29 30
doors at 740pm show at 8pm








at the
BINDERY | SPACE
2180 Stout Street
Denver, CO 80205
Behind Mercury Cafe

www.controlgroupproductions.org
$15 at the door | $12 in advance at:
www.brownpapertickets.com/event/168798

Photography by Heather Gray
http://grayareadance.blogspot.com/

UP: Wisconsin Protests, State Budgets, Federal Budgets...

This Unknown Protest Series piece focused on the union protests and demonstrations in Wisconsin and also touched on state and federal budgets, all the week of facing the possibility for a government shutdown.

These photos document the evenings experiment. I decided to work with more sculptural material for the evening and step back from the space.

The small figures are made out of clay and came from a workshop I led in the past inspired by Antony Gormley's field series. I gave participants a large hunk of clay and had them break of bits and hold it at arms length and simply squeeze the clay slightly with both hands, leaving a negative impression on the small body of clay, and then make two small indentations for eyes. Some of you may recognize them.

Libya Sculptformance

These photos are taken from video documentation of the Unknown Protest Performance that occurred at Denver Performance Research Saturday April, 2 2011. I am currently editing a short film based on my experience during the performance.

S O U N D: The piece included a sound-scape composed of between representations from the extreme left, right, and center political positions on the US involvement with recent protests and rebel fighting in Libya. The sound-scape also includes a field report and interveiws with the rebels that describes their struggle to defend their livelihood. Furthermore, all these bits of the talking heads is interspersed with an recording of the ocean, African village chants, and selected pieces from Wendy Sutter's performance of selected Philip Glass compositions.

P E R F O R M A N C E: Built upon a solid foundation of regular improvisational practice, I entered the work completely unrehearsed and unscripted. It was my endeavor to allow a window into an individuals responses and digestion of the subject matter by allow for pure improvisation. This included spoken text, both linear and abstract logic, sound, movement and periods of stillness. By bridging listening with kinesthetic expression I came away from the experience feeling I could better understand the gravity of the events in Libya and the US's relationship to it and gain a visceral sense for what people may be going through in that part of the world.

S C U L P T U R E: The material I used to play with is made up of an enormous amount of strips of fabric. Working with the sculptural material allowed me to explore a relationship between an outsider and a landscape: I was the outsider, representative of the US sometimes, and the sculptural material represented the landscape of political problems in Libya.

I expect to have the film done soon and will share it on the blog.