ALCHEMY + New Expressive Works = PDX A.I.R.
The culminating performances by 7 artists-in-residence at 2 venues

Performance Works NW presents
ALCHEMY : : : : alembic artists showcase:

Celebrating the inspired outcomes of months of studio practice by Portland-based Alembic Resident Artists Luke Gutgsell & Grace Hwang and a shorter but more intensive month by Visiting Artist Blake Beckham.

Alchemy :: Alembic Artists Showcase:
Blake Beckham with Catherine Egan & Paige McKinney
Luke Gutgsell with Fatha Green & Special Guests
Grace Hwang
September 26-28 at 8pm
Performance Works NW  *  4625 SE 67th Ave.  *  Portland

Studio 2@Zoomtopia presents
New Expressive Works
Nancy Ellis || Suniti Dernovsek || Muffie Connelly || Dar Vejon Jones
September 26-28 at 7:30pm
Studio 2@Zoomtopia  *  810 SE Belmont  *  Portland

Single tickets: $12 || Pass for BOTH performances: $20.
Single tickets for ALCHEMY or PDX A.I.R. passes HERE
For single tickets for N.E.W. visit Studio 2@Zoomtopia HERE.

Visiting artist Blake Beckham is a choreographer from Atlanta, GA. She is the founder and director of The Lucky Penny, a production outlet for Beckham’s performance work and a presenting organization dedicated to experimental theater and dance. Blake’s choreography blends visceral emotion with tender-hearted physicality to reveal the stunning sincerity of the moving body. Her ambitious works blend cinematic imagery with striking production design to create richly layered, immersive theatrical experiences. For Alcehmy, Beckham will show choreography adapted from her most recent work, Dearly Departures, which recently premiered in Atlanta to critical acclaim. Inspired by the evocative imagery found in spaces of travel and transit, the piece is a plaintive and haunting meditation on distance and connectivity, leaving and loss. With Portland dancers Jamuna Chiarini, Catherine Egan and Paige McKinney.

Luke Gutgsell is a recent transplant to Portland from New York City where he danced in companies such as Tiffany Mills Company and David Dorfman Dance. He earned a BFA in Dance from the Ohio State University and trained on scholarship at the Merce Cunningham Studio. Gutgsell is currently fascinated with nonviolence in dance and solo improvisation. Child of the Sun Justin Leon Johnson, aka ‘Fatha Green’, has been a messenger of truth, love, strength, freedom, perseverance, and light—a truly gifted soulful singer/songwriter/performer with the heart of a child and a smile that could light up a black hole. He is a very empathic spirit and quite obviously born to entertain. Enjoy Yo Self!!!

Luke Gutgsell and Fatha Green pair Modern Dance and Soul Music to create a work that is at once improbable and highly intuitive. In this improvisational event, Gutgsell matches Fatha Green’s sexy and provocative singing with impeccably-timed movement that embodies states ranging from a sinewy ferocity to a fluid delicacy.

Grace Hwang is a multidisciplinary artist and educator whose movement practice is fueled by improvising new forms through ensemble work and the medium of rule-based play. Often working with performers of different disciplines, she is deeply invested in the relationship between agency and collectivity in collaboration. Her work in the form of teaching, performance, exhibition and experience making has been included at Portland Art Museum, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (OR), Open Engagement Conference (OR), Southern Exposure (SF), Center for Architecture Foundation (NY), SALT art space (NY), Museum of Modern Art Education Center (NY). She holds an MFA in Art and Social Practice from Portland State University. For Alchemy, she will present a series of performance collages that juxtapose popular, political and personal references collected during her two years in Portland.