This is a great year for solo performance at T:BA. It’s weak on women, but the men they’ve got are telling important stories, and telling them well. Daniel Beaty’s Resurrection is a perfect counterpoint to Lemon Andersen’s County of Kings. While Lemon told his own story of trying to fulfill his potential when the odds […]
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Ten (okay, 8) Tiny Dances
Last nights Ten (8) Tiny Dances at the Works was mesmerizing, as always. But it was also cramped, hot as hell and just a tad less creative than I have seen in the past. Standouts were Hot Little Hands, Furfey and Hansen, and Michelle Fujii. What follows is a little photo essay of the event […]
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Geisha: Vocabulary Lesson
Dancer Jye-Hwei Lin stands on stage, clad only in a pair of tight blue jeans. She looks at the audience as her ribcage expands and contracts as if instead of ribs, she had the wings of a large bird trapped inside her chest. Suddenly, her body bursts into motion. Geisha, choreographed by Lee Sher and […]
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The Yes Men: Nothing Wrong With a Little Social Engineering
Which is to say: A little lying doesn’t necessarily hurt anyone, especially when it’s done in the service of satire… and a good cause. The Yes Men are “a loose-knit association of some 300 importers worldwide” (according to the PICA handbook) but there are two main men behind what could be referred to as the […]
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Neal Medlyn at the Works
Courtesy of AllenInk, here’s a video of the hot sweaty mess (in a good way!) that was Neal Medlyn’s Beyonce recreation at the Works on Friday, plus some photos. I took an immediate, violent dislike to Ice Rod and did not stay for his show. Did anyone see it/like it? While he was onstage humping […]
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Art Inside Art Inside Tim Crouch’s England
Tim Crouch’s England is a two-person performance art piece set inside the Elizabeth Leach gallery. At the door, we are instructed to “go in, look at the art… it’s part of the show.” So we mill around for a while, looking at Sean Healy’s installation, until a man and a woman begin talking: Crouch and […]
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Lemon Anderson’s Beautiful Struggle
Review by Temple Lentz Lemon Andersen is a hell of a performer, and the press pictures and descriptions for this show just don’t do him justice. He’s a hard-edged, roughneck kid from Brooklyn, more at ease on the streets than in a theater seat, and gifted with a silver tongue and a way with words […]
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Genius and Frustration in Reggie Watts’ Transition
If you saw Reggie Watts perform Disinformation at TBA last year, you’ll probably be disappointed by his new show. Transition isn’t bad–in fact, parts of it are amazing–but it’s more produced, more conceptual, and less immediately gratifying than last year’s jawdropper. Disinformation was an absolutely riveting introduction to Reggie’s bag of tricks: the beatboxing, the […]
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Antony and the Slow Reveal
The stage lights remained dark during the first song of last night’s devastating performance from Antony and the Johnsons, in collaboration with the Oregon Symphony. Though I was completely entranced by the lilting vocals and the rich thrum of strings, I had an awful feeling that this would be it: some sort of “conceptual” show […]
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Opening Night at the Works
TBA’s opening night celebration at the Works last night was a lot of fun. Music, drinks, schmoozing, and an art-filled building to explore. Read all about it on our TBA blog, and check out this YouTube video of the evening, courtesy of AllenInk, which gives a pretty good sense of what the crowd and the […]
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Justin Gorman
One of the coolest things happening at the Works is the ongoing project by Justin Gorman. Gorman creates large signs of painted text that he erects in various city locales. They are a bit like temporary, truth-searching billboards, and they’ll be popping up around Portland over the next week. Instead of creating his signs in […]