KATE BERGSTROM (GSF): WHOLED

Drawing elements from Alexander Haig's infamous 1981 press conference, Kate Bergstrom's interdisciplinary work threads sound, image, text and figure in collaboration with video artist Stephen Wren and performer/vocalist Elizabeth Hayhurst. As the live performers enact a foreboding, internalized male presence, contrasting video imagery plays into the male gaze, together invoking failed attempts to transcend vulnerability.

 

LIVE THEATRE BLOG: SOVIET WINE

Playwright Eric Czuleger transforms his current experiences as a Peace Corps volunteer in Albania into a funny and insightful theatrical travel blog—performed stateside by Deven Simonson and streamed live for audiences everywhere. This mash up of new media and classic storytelling culminates with true stories from Batumi, Georgia, where playwright and performer are currently journeying through the post-Soviet playground once dubbed the "Soviet Rivera." 

BULBS: TACHYONS

Multimedia duo Jon Almaraz and William Sabiston merge electronic percussion and processed guitar with projection mapping technology to generate a site-specific improvisations that respond to the venue's architecture. Their synesthetic approach builds on evolving technologies, including analog and digital video synthesis, Pure Data and Ableton Live, to elicit visual polyrhythms as they experiment with duration, after-images and optical mixing.

Named one of this year's 25 To Watch by Dance Magazine, choreographer Melinda Sullivan leads an ensemble of seven boot-clad women in a blend of percussive footwork and emotionally expressive movement. Drawing on tap, sanding and other contemporary forms, Sullivan's dancers employ their full bodies, and their full selves, to influence the sound coming from their shoes and to give expression to the emotional core of the dance.

KENDRA WARE: NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND

In a compellingly crafted and potently honest tale, writer/performer Kendra Ware offers up a harrowing work of autobiographical solo theater that touches on parallels from the autobiographies of Assata Shakur and Angela Davis. Unfurling a tragic turn of events that forced a face-to-face encounter with the inequities of the U.S. judicial system, Ware details her fight for survival as an artist, and as young black woman, put on trial.

 

THE WRECKING CREW DANCE COMPANY: FROM BODIES AND MOUTHS THIS WORK ARRIVES

Choreographic co-directors Anya Cloud and Jes Mullette explore the boundaries of their knowledge of one another, both as movers and as individuals, in a tightly structured duet that merges gesture, contact improvisation, ballet, release technique and theatricality. In close proximity, these two women steadily negotiate each other's timing—moving swiftly from accord to dissonance—as repetition gives way to heightened senses and layers of meanings.