I waited for about an hour last Friday for my turn to see Super Nature. I waited at The Works, reading about the finer points of carving carousels to the sound of MSHR’s installation (which, after an hour, sounds like a jackhammer that has been auto-tuned) in the background. Super Nature is 15 minutes long. […]
Performance
Posted inTBA
Performing Gender in Duet Love
Eugenie Frerich Portland choreographer Tahni Holt‘s Duet Love begins with iconic images of heterosexual couples, and breaks down those images over the course of the evening. The show opens with four dancers, two women and two men, striking and holding poses in the silent theater. These establishing shots let the audience know we’re dealing with […]
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Watching Tanya Tagaq Watch Nanook of the North
Pat Moran Every year at TBA, one or two performances leave an indelible mark. Gob Squad’s Andy Warhol-inspired Kitchen. Sam Green’s documentary The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller, live-soundtracked by Yo La Tengo. Rude Mechs’ Method Gun. Reggie Watts at the Someday (RIP). Tanya Tagaq in Concert with Nanook of the North is one […]
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Review: Nacera Belaza, Le Cri
Agathe Poupeney Arm swinging. Lots of arm swinging. It can feel like there is a lot of pressure to understand and celebrate all the really unusual and challenging work presented at an art festival like TBA, especially as a reviewer. After all, it’s very carefully curated, and many of the artists have won international awards […]
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Ivana Müller’s We Are Still Watching: Who Needs Actors?
Sanne Peper Yesterday I sat in a theater full of people I’d never met before, having a conversation. We were supposed to be seeing a play called We Are Still Watching, by the Croation-born, Paris-based artist Ivana Müller. Instead, we walked into a theater without a stage, sat in our assigned seats, and waited. It […]
Posted inMovies & TV
Review: Daniel Barrow, The Thief of Mirrors/Looking for Love in the Hall of Mirrors
Daniel Barrow “The new creed of the obscenely rich: sorrow for sorrow’s sake alone.” Daniel Barrow’s The Thief of Mirrors is a wry takedown of the upper class, positing that “crying is a class privilege.” The wealthy victims of the story’s protagonist, a harlequin “kissing bandit,” wake one morning to find that they’ve been robbed […]
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Review: One with Others
Jeffrey Wells “This feels like a really interesting experience,” says performer Jeffrey Wells during One with Others, “a really interesting, almost satisfying encounter,” he follows up. He’s referring to the performance itself; It’s partly sarcastic. It’s partly a challenge. One with Others, a trio choreographed by Minneapolis-based Karen Sherman, is “meta” and self-aware in a […]
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Review: Bouchra Ouizguen’s Ha!
Image courtesy of the artist Bouchra Ouizguen’s opening show was cancelled on Wednesday. Luckily the show opened instead on Thursday, to a packed theater. It was beautiful. And moving. It was moving in how intense it was, yet spare at the same time. One of my favorite kind of performances is one that can do […]
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Review: How to Disappear Completely
Emily Cooper Itai Erdal is a lighting designer, not an actor. He explains this to the audience right away during his one-man show How to Disappear Completely—he’s just a good storyteller who’s had an interesting life. Born in Israel, Erdal moved to Canada as a young man. When his mother got lung cancer, he flew […]
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Mariano Pensotti’s Sometimes I Think, I Can See You
Imager courtesy of the artist Mariano Pensotti’s project Sometimes I Think, I Can See You is just a screen at the PSU Urban Center Plaza. It’s just white text on a black background. It doesn’t even make a sound. And yet, people will just sit there for hours and stare at it. I sat for […]
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Tonight at TBA: Kim Gordon, Sad Canadians, and More
Tonight at the Works, former Sonic Youth bassist Kim Gordon takes the stage with her new project Body/Head, a collaboration with Bill Nace; their debut album Comic Apart came out last week on Matador. She’s performing at the Con-Way warehouse tonight—can’t say it enough, check out this venue before it turns into a New Seasons—followed […]
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Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People: And Lose the Name of Action
“I’m getting a little bit of ASMR,” my husband leaned over to whisper to me about half an hour into last night’s performance of Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People’s And Lose the Name of Action, giving me a thumb’s up. ASMR stands for “autonomous sensory meridian response,” and is defined as “a recently described […]