November 12, 13, 14, 2015 at PWNW || 4625 SE 67th
TWO PROGRAMS
THREE NIGHTS OF PERFORMANCE
FIVE ARTISTS

PWNW brings you a wildly diverse weekend of performance in mid-November: Judy Dunaway + Linda Austin on November 12, and Nancy Ellis, Dora Gaskill & Stephanie Lavon Trotter in it’s really hard:: Alembic Artists Showcase on November 12 & 13.

TICKETS for each show are $12 in advance or $15 at the door. Upon purchase of an advance ticket, you get a discount code for an $8 ticket for the other show!
Arts for All Tickets can be reserved by emailing info at pwnw-pdx dot org

Judy Dunaway + Linda Austin
November 12 at 7:30pm
Advance Tickets HERE 

Judy Dunaway performs avant-garde compositions and free improvisations on amplified latex balloons played as musical instruments. She is known internationally as a “virtuoso of the balloon.” She plays a variety of shapes and sizes of balloon instruments, each with its own special qualities, pushing the extremes of both pitch range and artistic limits. Her large rubbed “tenor” balloon gives Jimmy Hendrix’s guitar a run for the money and her giant balloon pulsates into the depths of the subaudio. Her abstract music and sounds are difficult to equate with other forms, and, depending upon the perception of the individual, resemble the images seen in fire or clouds.

Linda Austin performs A head of time,  a solo version of a 2012 ensemble work that the Portland Monthly described as “a multimedia feast for the senses, where dance is but a part of a multifaceted journey.” This new iteration, which premiered last summer in Morelia, Mexico for the XVIII International Festival of Contemporary Dance of Michoacán, sifts movement, text, video, objects including blankets, a balloon and a hammer, and sound by Seth Nehil, into a piece that is part ritual and part poetic-scientific examination of loss, mortality, and the shifting landscapes of time.

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it’s really hard :: Alembic Artists Showcase
November 13 & 14, 2015 at 8pm
Advance Tickets HERE

Performance Works NorthWest presents it’s really hard :: Alembic Artists Showcase on November 13 & 14, 2015 to share results of studio residencies by our 2015 Alembic Artists. Nancy Ellis will share Mid Me, an investigation of her present, inspired by poetry and pink camouflage lingerie. Mid Me follows Nancy’s NANCY in her series of performer self-portraits. Dora Gaskill will share Sooner Than Already There, an attempt to cancel out the most stubborn of her conditioned roles by dancing, writing, and lighting her self out of existence. Stephanie Lavon Trotter is reclaiming the word Opera. She will present a short Opera in three acts that strives to understand Gender, Voice, and the presentations of oneself. (SEE ARTIST BIOS BELOW)

ARTIST BIOS:

NOV 12
Judy Dunaway has presented her works for balloons at many major venues and festivals throughout North America and Europe, including Academy of Media Arts Cologne (Cologne), Avant-Garde Schwaz Festival (Austria), Alternative Museum (NYC), Bang on a Can Festival (NYC), Everson Art Museum (Syracuse), Fylkingen (Stockholm), Frau Musica Nova Festival (Cologne), Guelph Jazz Festival (Canada), Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors (NYC), New Museum of Contemporary Art (NYC), Performance Space 122 (NYC), Podewil (Berlin), Roulette (NYC), CEAIT Festival (Los Angeles), Seltsame Musik Festival (Krems, Austria), SoHo Arts Festival (NYC), STEIM (Amsterdam) and Zentrum fuer Kunst und Medientechnologie (Karlsruhe). She has also performed on balloons with many outstanding musicians including Roscoe Mitchell, Jennifer Walshe, John Hollenbeck, Yasunao Tone, and the FLUX Quartet. CDs of her works for balloons have been released on the CRI (Composers Recordings Inc) and Innova labels, among others.

Linda Austin delights in and is provoked by how her dance practices and obsessions contradict each other. She has been choreographing and performing, often with a strong visual component and a commitment to original music, for more than 3 decades–in New York City, Mexico and throughout the Pacific Northwest. Her most recent honors: a 2014 award of $20,000 as a RACC Fellow in the Performing Arts; performing alongside Lucy Yim at a dance festival in Morelia, Mexico; and working with the performers of her ongoing project, (Un)Made. Austin is co-founder (with lighting wiz Jeff Forbes) and director of Performance Works NorthWest, celebrating 15 years of avid experimentation in the live arts at its Foster/Powell location.

NOV 13 & 14
Nancy Ellis is a performer based in Portland, Oregon.  She has worked extensively with New York City-based artists Yanira Castro, Maura Nguyen Donohue, and Annie-B Parson & Paul Lazar among others. Since moving to Portland in 2006, she has performed with choreographers including Tahni Holt, Linda Austin, Katherine Longstreth and Dawn Stopiello. Nancy began making her own work in 2014, with support from the N.E.W. Residency program with Fieldwork at Studio 2. She recently presented her first solo, Nancy’s NANCY, at On the Boards’ NW New Works Festival in Seattle and at the 2015 Risk/Reward Festival of New Works in Portland.

Dora Gaskill dances, performs, practices yoga, loves backpacking, and does stagecraft for a living. She occasionally teaches some of these things. She has an MFA in Choreography from Roehampton University (London) and an MA in Literature from the Middlebury Bread Loaf School of English (Vermont).

After dismantling her vocal practice and piecing it back together, Stephanie Lavon Trotter is reclaiming Opera; forming its unknown contours into something her own. She holds a MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard College (2014), and a B. Mus. in Vocal Performance from Cornish College of the Arts (2008).