Events from April 1 to April 30
Experimental Los Angeles performing artists offer adventurous new works and works-in-progress in this ongoing series. This edition of Studio was curated with guest curators Laurel Kishi and Melanie Rios Glaser, and features works by Alexx Makes Dances; Brian Getnick; Brzytwa, Lewis & Robinson; Lux Aeterna Dance Company; Pappas and Dancers; and Alexander Vassos.
Poet, essayist and filmmaker Abigail Child sees her creations as a curious and particular intersection, often humorous, sometimes alchemical, between sound and image. Bodies, fetishes, symbols, icons and relics are reinvented and refitted to new realities and new desires. Child’s film cycle, Is This What You Were Born For (1981–89), is a landmark of contemporary avant-garde cinema.
With an incongruous movement style that incorporates gestures from professional sports and ’70s television, celebrated choreographer and director Dayna Hanson blends live rock music, idiosyncratic dance and inventive theatrics to smartly remix events that set a country in motion, and the motivations and meanings that continue to be debated today.
Artist/filmmaker Sharon Lockhart positioned her camera in the wild coastal landscape of Seal Cove, Maine, to follow the backbreaking efforts of clam digger Jen Casad. The film unfolds in two uninterrupted takes to capture the rare phenomenon of “double tide”—when low tide occurs twice during daylight hours.
Brilliant musicmakers are allied with fantastical robotic instruments in this paradigm-shifting performance that invokes “samsara”—the Sanskrit concept of the cycle of birth, life, death, and reincarnation. Directed by Ajay Kapur and Michael Darling, the Machine Orchestra offers musical interpretations of several traditional Indian fables, along with special guest artists including the legendary kinetic sculptor and musician Trimpin.
With knowing humor and carefully considered allusion, My Barbarian’s ongoing Post-Living Ante-Action Theater (PoLAAT) project translates counterculture theatrical forms of the ’60s into slyly subversive music-theater of the moment. The irreverent trio of Malik Gaines, Jade Gordon and Alexandro Segade collaborates with a team of local performers to stage Post-Paradise, Sorry Now.
Nathaniel Dorsky’s work celebrates the essence of cinema, creating profound experiences that explore the world through images of extraordinary beauty and a use of montage that subverts the descriptive to awaken mystery. This program includes the world premiere of August and After along with other recent films.
Master musician Richard Nunns, the world’s foremost authority on Māori music, is the special guest artist for a two-day celebration of New Zealand contemporary chamber and orchestral works and music for ngā taonga pūoro—traditional Māori instruments—featuring compositions by Christopher Cree Brown, James Gardner, Ross Harris, and more.
The 3rd annual ONE Queer Film Fest is a celebration of the diversity, culture and history of queer communities. Both historic and contemporary films are screened within the festival to address the growth and transformation of the LGBT community, as well as current cultural and political trends.
Since The Film of Her (1996), award-winning filmmaker Bill Morrison has poetically and rhythmically reworks archival footage in various stages of preservation or decomposition. With The Miners’ Hymns, he teams up with Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson to celebrate the culture and political struggles of the Durham collieries, in northeastern England.
Explosively inventive Dutch theater ensemble Wunderbaum merges with rock trio Touki Delphine to create a theatrical superband in this fantastical concert event inspired in part by Werner Herzog’s Encounters at the End of the World. Six performers present a song-cycle based on their childhood dreams and hopes with humorous and touching lyrics, performed in English.
Since 1980 Maureen Selwood’s hand-drawn animations have taken viewers into the strange, beautiful, and sometimes terrifying lands of the mind. Her first solo show in Los Angeles presents a selection of more recent pieces, including the haunting black-and-white imagery of Hail Mary (1998); the expressively rendered Drawing Lessons (2006) and more.
