REDCAT's annual Festival continues with three projects that explore the theater as a space of light and shadow, a container for both presence and absence, and a three-dimensional canvas where lived experience unfurls. 

CHRISTINE MARIE & ENSEMBLE: GROUND TO CLOUD

Seamlessly integrating projected shadows, live actors and an innovative sound score, Christine Marie and her collaborators draw on the history of electric light to manifest a flickering world of natural phenomena and human intervention. Large-scale imagery from simple handheld lights and props takes on mythological proportions as scientific discovery, religious folklore and magical trickery blend into an incandescent work of expressionist theater. 

"Christine Marie's shadow design conjures a literal ocean of surprise." —Los Angeles Times

RAE SHAO-LAN BLUM & TASHI WADA: SYSTEMS OF US

Through interdependent movement and musical scores, three dancers and five musicians build a work of spontaneous elegance as they delve into the complexities of intimacy interrupted. Choreographer Rae Shao-Lan Blum and composer Tashi Wada lay out intersecting compositions that weave repetition, disruption and transformation into a vigorous exploration of the nuanced negotiations that keep relationships alive. 

“Her sensitivity to phrasing creates an image of raw emotion, with contortion and line functioning as feeling." —The Dance Insider

RAPHAEL XAVIER: BLACK CANVAS

Raphael Xavier is a finely tuned master of Breaking whose continued innovation has led the vanguard of hip-hop dance theater, first as a member of Rennie Harris Puremovement, then as choreographer and co-founder of olive Dance Theatre. In Black Canvas, Xavier shifts the rhythms of Rap and propels narratives through Breaking to draw parallels between the performer’s body, which is inscribed by life’s experiences, and the stage itself. 

“Xavier abstracts the Hip-Hop vocabulary, loosening it from its usual musical moornings."
—Dance Magazine

New Original Works Festival 2010

Week One | Week Two | Week Three