Blog - Page 11 of 12 - RISK / REWARD

VIEW A WORK SAMPLE OF THE LETTING GO

Posted in 2014 | Tagged

Laura Heit (Portland, OR) – The Letting Go

Laura’s work transcends the word “puppetry;” her work, seen through the wide lens of film or as small as a circus of matchboxes, is always a surprise. We can’t wait to see what Laura will bring to Risk/Reward Festival next week!

BIO

Laura Heit is a Puppetry artist and experimental filmmaker who has been making puppet

shows/performance work and films nationally and internationally for over 15 years. Disquieting and evocative, her films and performances seamlessly cross genres to unfold poetic visual narratives. Heit employs a strong handmade aesthetic, an irreverent sense of humor, drawing, puppetry and animation, to bring together ideas and stories about phantoms, ghosts, love, loss, and invisibility.

PERFORMANCE SYNOPSIS

The Letting Go is a performance that includes live puppetry combined with projected shadows, animation, and sound. My intention is to build a performance that is constantly transforming our perceptions between live/recorded and the living/departed to create new perpetually shifting in-betweens. I want the audience to leave mindful of the things in our world that we cannot explain and to reawaken our curiosity in the things we cannot see.

VIEW A WORK SAMPLE OF MANIFESTO

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ilvs strauss (Seattle, WA) – Manifesto

When we heard the words “California Red Sea Cucumber,” we were intrigued. ilvs strauss (pronounced “Elvis”) is a majorly multi-disciplined artist, working in just about every form of art possible. We are really looking forward to what ilvs brings with her solo performance, Manifesto!

BIO

ilvs strauss (b. 1979) is a Seattle based writer, dancer, musician, performance artist whose work ranges from haiku poetry, to anamorphic outdoor sculptures, to illustrated storytelling (aka Slide Shows), to narrated dance performance. She gravitates towards topics of identity (gender, bi-racial, queer), nature, life purpose, spirituality, sense of place and perspective.

sHe enjoys playing with language: the structure of, the building blocks of.

shE works to infuse her art with heartfelt humor and sincerity.

PERFORMANCE SYNOPSIS

Manifesto is a solo show that employs a California Red Sea Cucumber as a vehicle for exploring the topic of womanhood. With no set, minimal costumes and a few handmade, larger than life props, ilvs performs a subtle, detailed dance to the tune of a clear, concise voice over narrative.

VIEW THE RISK/REWARD FESTIVAL 2014 TRAILER

Posted in 2014 | Tagged

The Neutral Fembot Project (Portland, OR) – Untitled #______

Collaboration is the bread and butter of theatre. By bringing these three devisors together, (Grace, Camille, and Anne – established artists in their own rights), we see collaboration in action as these artists push us in and out of our comfort zones. Risk/Reward… Get ready!!

BIO

Untitled # ______ is a performance project created in collaboration with theater artists Grace Carter, Camille Cettina and Anne Sorce, with composer Ron Mason Gassoway. Individually they bring over ten years of experience as actors, directors, writers, devisors and producers.

PERFORMANCE SYNOPSIS

Untitled # ______ explores the work and process of visual artist Cindy Sherman from a performative perspective. What are the moments in between images? How does disguise reveal vulnerabilities, iconic personas and the “real self?” Through physical language, Untitled # ______ illuminates these themes using posture, gaze, and… wigs! Of course.

VIEW A WORK SAMPLE OF DEVASTATION MELODY

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Lucy Lee Yim (Portland, OR) – Devastation Melody

Dancer/choreographer Lucy Lee Yim’s works provoke thought, invite you to meditate on an idea. And the Northwest performance world is excited about her – very excited. Her works have been seen all over Portland, the Northwest, and beyond. We can’t wait to see what she’s created for the Risk/Reward Festival this year!

BIO

Lucy Lee Yim is a dance artist who has performed locally and nationally since 2005. Unreliant on old methods of story making, Yim insist on new ways, presenting in‐the‐moment, sensation‐born fragments of thought and imagery. The collaged identity of her work has been described as a marbled fantasy-fable with degrees of fatty narrative intentionally trimmed; a body in constant conversation with the parts that are culturally confused, oppressed, and gendered. Her work nods to more traditional and virtuous forms of dance, but a stranger, more bizarre paradigm is the ultimate objective. Identity is complex; so is our experience of it.

PERFORMANCE SYNOPSIS

Devastation Melody looks into sadness and sorrow as if they were provocative objects. The dance starts with one action that evolves with time, rarely resting, even in stillness. Performed by the choreographer herself, Devastation Melody shifts from moments of meaning to moments of wonder, producing a memory, much like a song.

WATCH A VIDEO TRAILER FOR LOSS MACHINE

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Kyle Loven – Loss Machine

We’re incredibly excited to welcome Kyle Loven and his team back to Portland for our first full-length presentation by a former Risk/Reward Festival artist! Kyle performed a short piece of his epic Moon Show 143 at the 2011 Festival and it premiered in his hometown of Minneapolis’ at the prestigious Guthrie Theater in late 2013.

BIO

Kyle Loven is a Seattle-based performance and visual artist. His work combines puppetry, projections, objects, sound, and other art forms with the human presence. His live performances (B, my dear Lewis, Crandal’s Bag, Loss Machine, Moon Show 143) have been seen in Amsterdam, Taipei, New York, Minneapolis, Seattle and other US cities. Kyle is the recipient of grants from the Jim Henson Foundation, 4Culture, Artist Trust, and the Seattle Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs. Awards include a 2011 Spotlight Award from Seattle Magazine and the Innovation in Puppetry Award at the 2013 National Puppetry Festival. Ham Sandwich will premiere this June as a part of On the Boards’ NW New Works Festival.

PERFORMANCE SYNOPSIS

Part installation, part image-driven theater, Loss Machine unearths a world of lost items, misplaced thoughts, and fractured journeys all housed within an intricately detailed set.

In a tower filled with life’s debris, a collection of characters move through an ever-changing apparatus with their shared emotional journey driving the mechanical process forward. This intimate one-man show combines puppetry, objects, light, sound, and original music in a visual exploration of loss and discovery.

WATCH A VIDEO WORK SAMPLE OF COME.GET.TO.THIS

Posted in 2014 | Tagged

Shannon Stewart – Come. Get. To. This.

Shannon made Portland her home for a short time in 2011-12 while working with local dance group tEEth. We also got to see her own choreography at Conduit as part of their Sea/Port series during that time. Shannon is a rigorous artist, dedicated to her craft with incredible intensity and drive. She is a frequent collaborator with many other artists in Seattle and we’re happy to finally be able to work with her for this year’s Risk/Reward Festival!

BIO

Shannon Stewart (choreographer) is a dance artist with a proclivity for the enigmatic, dark, nuanced, delicate, comedic, architectural, durational and highly physical elements of dance. She veers towards the inherently unresolvable in an attempt to make performance that feels constructed but not heady; that peels away artifice.

PERFORMANCE SYNOPSIS

Come.Get.To.This is an exploration of permeability in performing, viewing and participating. it is an ensemble that is embedded in a solo. It lacks production value and costumes. It was made while thinking about community, the economy, virtuosity, and moshing.

VIEW A SAMPLE OF A PAST SATORI PRODUCTION

Posted in 2013 Risk/Reward Festival | Tagged

the Satori Group (Seattle, WA) – The Land is Always Known

The Satori Group are one of the most energetic and consistent theater ensembles in the Northwest. They always bring serious production values to the table, with strong visual style and a variety of creation methods to suit the material they’re tackling. Add in the Bengsons, a soulful folk duo from San Francisco to create an original musical? BRING. IT. ON.

BIO

The Satori Group is a regionally recognized and critically acclaimed theatre ensemble, dedicated to the creation and production of new work and collaborative exchange. We create and present theatrical events, host interdisciplinary forums, and share evolving methods of training and workshop. The twelve Company Members and five Associate Artists invest themselves fully in creating and supporting innovative theatre.

PERFORMANCE SYNOPSIS

A theatrical collaboration between the Satori Group and musical duo The Bengsons, The Land is Always Known is a rollicking musical attempt to create a new American mythology and help reconfigure our troubled DNA. What if we consider ourselves first generation non-violent? We are refugees from a culture of violence. Our new heroine is the dam- a bridge between our violent past and present- what may happen when we let her speak?

VIEW A VIDEO SAMPLE OF A PAST LANCELIFE PERFORMANCE

Posted in 2013 Risk/Reward Festival | Tagged

LANCELIFE 4

LanceLife (Portland, OR) – We’re not Here to Play Games

The LanceLife crew are more well-known in the comedy circuit than the contemporary art world, which is what made us so excited to receive their application for the Risk/Reward Festival. We’re expecting some whip-smart insights into the realm of personal empowerment and a subversive glance at our culture of winning at all costs. Following in the footsteps of past festival favorites who often perform in clubs (like Janet Pants, Joe Von Appen and Angela Fair), LanceLife is a real wildcard in this year’s lineup – which is exactly what we love to see. Here’s some more info on LanceLife to whet your appetite…

BIO

Wallace Fessler and Joshua David Fisher have spent over a decade exploring the nexus between comedy and semi-realist performance art. Our evolution can be tracked from Portland’s first fake, but not fake, not televised, but then televised late night talk show (The Famous Mysterious Actor Show), through absurdist sketch comedy (The Portland Oregon Them), and on to our current project, an examination into the nature of ‘homage’, The LanceLife Comprehensive Total Life System.

PERFORMANCE SYNOPSIS

Created by internal power mentor and global inspiration pioneer Lance Banks, The LanceLife Comprehensive Total Life System changes lives for the best though the positive of power thinking.

LanceLife will show you how to stop being a pawn by doubling down and swinging for the fences until your life hits the jackpot in the presentation of “We’re not Here to Play Games”.

VIEW A SNIPPET OF A PAST WORK BY ALICE AND ANH

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AJA (Seattle, WA) – slugs do it real slow and pretty

AJA (the A’s are silent) are an exciting new group from Seattle. These artists have worked together in the past, but never under their own moniker and artistic endeavor. We can’t wait to see what they create for the Risk/Reward Fest.

BIO

AJA is a new collaboration between Anh Nguyen, Jessica Robinson and Alice Gosti. Anh and Alice met in college at the University of Washington and have been working together since 2007 – first under the acronym of DAKA then in the Spaghetti CO. project. Jessica re-meet Alice and Anh in the Spring of 2012. Quickly inspired by their frustration the three have decided to join forces in the creation of a new live performance piece under the working title of Snails do it real slow and pretty.

PERFORMANCE SYNOPSIS

Drawing from the games of our adolescence and the dynamics between the sexual relationships we have had throughout our lifetimes, AJA presents slugs do it real slow and pretty, a theater/dance/performance/experimental/multi-sensorial experience that lets you fall back into exciting first kisses, the heaviness of losing love, and the thrills of flirting and one-night stands.