After more than a year’s hiatus, Cabaret Boris & Natasha is back!
(more photos here)
This salon-style evening features a lively constellation of short works by some of our region’s most inventive performers: a time-manipulating trio by Seattle-based dance artist Alyza DPM; a Beckettian solo by theater artist Amanda Boekelheide, sound experiments by the duo PANTING (evan Spacht + davis Hooker) a series of vignettes by writer/curator Stacey Tran, and a work-in-progress glimpse into an upcoming work by TopShakeDance.
And of course, no Cabaret is complete without a dance by that revolving gang of the most famous (un)talented untrained male (non)dancers in the universe: the Boris & Natasha Dancers. For this event, they are Tom DeBeauchamp, JAH Justice and Padraic O’Meara, wrangled by PWNW Director Linda Austin. Austin also acts as MC via video intros filmed in absurd and awkward positions inside the wardrobe, in the bathtub, and under the sink.
$12 in advance || $15 at the door || ADVANCE TICKETS HERE. || Arts for All $5 available for Oregon Trail Card holders.
TWO DIFFERENT SHOWS FOR $20! Upon purchasing your ticket, you’ll get a code to buy a discounted ticket for GHOSTS + Snake Talk on Feb. 26 & 27.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS & THEIR WORK
MC Linda Austin is director of Performance Works NorthWest. Besides her work with PWNW supporting the growth of other artists, Austin has performed her own original dance & performance in New York, Mexico City, Seattle and Portland, at venues such as Danspace Project, PS 122, On the Boards and PICA’s TBA Festival. Awards include Fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Oregon Arts Commission and, most recently in 2014, the prestigious Regional Arts & Culture Council Performing Arts Fellowship.
The Boris & Natasha Dancers consists of a revolving gang of untrained but game male performers who are whipped into some semblance of a dance troupe by Linda Austin in one to two short rehearsals. This iteration: Tom DeBeauchamp, JAH Justice & Padraic O’Meara.
Alyza DPM is a Seattle-based dancer and choreographer, seeking to brighten her surroundings with splashes of whimsy, human connection and goofy possibilities. Known for her quirky, non-sensical non-sequiturs and character-ridden theatrics, Alyza believes that dance can burst bubbles and repurpose awkward into awesome. Her work has been performed at Seattle International Dance Festival, Evoke Productions, enROOT and On the Boards’ Open Studio. She is an ensemble member with Dangerswitch, and has recently performed work for Alice Gosti, Lucia Neare’s Theatrical Wonders and Amy Johnson. Please visit www.alyzadpm.com for more information.
In The Ticking Tocks of Jumbled Time, three tinkerers find themselves transported into a new world with a whole lot of time on their hands. Literally, in this place, the seconds are thick as putty on their hands, clingy like the wooly pills on your well-worn sweater, and as varied as a house of mirrors. Time flies by. Time stops completely. Here, the pendulums swing off-beat, you wake up as soon as you fall asleep, and you may find yourself in a deja-vu loop in the blink of an eye. Our three chummy tinkerers Minni, Oor and Eckmond, invite you to join them on their cooky adventure. Collaborators: Lorraine Lau and Jan Trumbauer
Amanda Boekelheide’s performance work evidences a disparate range of influences from Indonesian and Nepalese classical dance, to acting with Shakespeare or Beckett text. In PDX, she’s enjoyed a long-term association with Liminal Performance Group, performing and directing with them since 1997. She graduated with her MFA from Columbia University in 2006, and creates movement pieces with text, physical exactitude, sound, and an underground heartbeat of longing. NYC & PDX alternately feel both like hinterland and home, and Amanda is grateful to PWNW and Linda Austin for this opportunity to experiment with Turn on the West Coast.
In a Beckettian landscape, Boekelheide’s Turn explores the ways we turn toward and away from one another. Solitude, and the actions we take when left alone are revealed. With animal heads. Snacks. Recycled gestures.
PANTING is currently exploring acoustic & psychoacoustic principles through sound spatialization, instrument building, and recording experiments and can be found periodically performing pieces of new music in North America.
davis Hooker and evan Spacht met over a chessboard at Mother Foucault’s bookshop in the winter of 2014. Interest in the games began to dwindle as the conversation turned to “new music” and a shared excitement for exploring noise in a crucially more refined way.
Hooker introduced Spacht to four-track tape loops. Quickly this formed a sonic and structural foundation for which to construct, deconstruct, and mutate by other means. Materials salvaged from live performances, improvisations, and field recordings are often recycled, collaged and superimposed to create foreign aural scenarios. All variables of the duo configuration are considered.
Stacey Tran is a writer, artist, curator, editor, child of Vietnamese immigrants currently living in Portland, OR.
Thinking about Groceries is a series of quick vignettes written and performed by Stacey Tran about milk, marbles, table manners, and superstitions.
Jim McGinn, founder and director of TopShakeDance began creating dances in 1993 with Spitting Dimes. He has danced for several Portland area choreographers. In 2010 he founded TopShakeDance. With TopShakeDance, he has completed the following works: Gust in 2011, Jamb in 2012, Float in 2013, and a-Bout in 2014. Since February 2015, TopShakeDance has been working on Interview with a Zombie, to be performed in August 2016.
TopShakeDance will perform “Promenade”, a work-in-progress excerpt from Interview with a Zombie, which peeks into cults of body modification––taking inspiration from considering what is it is like to be forever alone, invisible to society, and driven to create a religion for a future life. With dancers Kelly Koltiska, Celeste Olivares, Jim McGinn and music by Loren Chasse.
Performance Works NW || Linda Austin Dance 