Wednesday, November 14, 2012

11/27: Yvette Martínez-Vu

Please join us for our next Chew on This

Yvette Martínez-Vu
Tuesday, November 27 at 12pm
Kaufman Conference Room 160

Surrogated Objects and Cultural Performances in Rosi’s Botánica

Among Latino communities in southern California, multiple botánicas offer immigrant populations ways to create and sustain support systems through object-centered syncretic practices. My investigation will focus on the ways that glass candles sold in my mother’s botánica are continually surrogated to set in motion a series of performances that produce spaces of cultural and economic capital as well as communities of female solidarity and survival.

Yvette Martínez-Vu is a PhD student in Theater and Performance Studies at UCLA, where she also holds a Bachelor’s Degree in English. Her research investigates the role that ceremonial objects in contemporary Mexican and Chicana performance play in manifesting nonwestern forms of knowledge production and transmission. As an undergraduate, Martínez-Vu was awarded the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Research Fellowship and for two years now she has served as a Mellon Mays mentor and program coordinator through UCLA’s Undergraduate Research Center. At the moment, Martínez-Vu is thrilled to be co-organizing Hemi GSI Convergence 2013, an interdisciplinary conference among activists, artists, and scholars across the Americas, which will be hosted at USC and UCLA.

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

11/13: Chew on This: Laurel Tentindo

Please join us for our next Chew on This

Laurel Tentindo
Tuesday, November 13 at 12pm
Kaufman Room 280
Freedom through Systems of Choreography: Trisha Brown's Early Works

Judson Church transformed the aesthetics of contemporary dance by redefining the value system and movement vocabulary dancers employed from then on.  In Chew On This I will focus on Trisha Brown's (a member of the Judson Church) Early Works - performed on rooftops, parks, and on the sides of buildings.  Trisha described herself as a brick layer with a sense of humor.  These pieces are methodical and often involve a rule game.  I will show how these pieces allowed Brown to develop a basic language that she then took to the proscenium stage to create pieces like Glacial Decoy, Set and Reset, and her current work.  I am asking questions about form/freedom, the preference for abstraction, the source of movement vocabulary and about what our generation's relationship is to the discoveries of the Judson Church.  

Laurel Jenkins Tentindo’s dances are energetic drawings on which costumes, objects, and puppets ride to evoke aesthetically rich and emotionally resonant worlds.  Laurel’s choreographic and dancing practices are deeply influenced by the Skinner Releasing Technique, Improvisation, and Trisha Brown’s movement vocabulary.  As an acclaimed member of the Trisha Brown Dance Company from 2007-2012, she performed repertory spanning Ms. Brown’s 40-year career, and developed original roles in Brown’s three most recent pieces.  Laurel also worked closely with choreographers Vicky Shick, Sara Rudner, and Liz Lerman.  She appeared in Harry Partch’s opera, Delusion of the Fury, directed by John Jesurun at the Japan Society, NYC, and The Mad Dancers, Washington DC.  Laurel developed choreography for Poe (and the museum of lost arts), directed by Elise Kermani.   Laurel’s independent choreography has been performed internationally and in NYC at Danspace St. Marks Church, Movement Research at the Judson Church, Dixon Place and Joyce SoHo.  Working with puppet theater director Luis Tentindo since 2007, Laurel has collaboratively created two evening length experimental puppet theater pieces exploring the interaction between bunraku puppetry and dance.  Would You Still Be You? and The Mud Angels received support from the Jim Henson Foundation. This spring 2012 Laurel was a guest faculty member at the New School and created an original dance with the students inspired by the underlying principals of Trisha Brown’s choreography.  Laurel is a certified Skinner Releasing teacher. 

More information
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCQhi_7xa9s&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocIg5y_4ZRY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ru_7sxvpY8&feature=related

Monday, November 5, 2012

11/06: Chew on This: Emily Beattie


Please join us for our next Chew on This

Emily Beattie
Tuesday, November 6 at 12pm
Kaufman Conference Room (160)
A Feminine Reflex: Emily Beattie's performance work in 'Gone with the Wind: Remixed"

A Feminine Reflex is the name of a work-in-progress dance and technology performance that Emily Beattie created for a performance in UCLA's Theater, Film and Television Department in the Spring 2012. After an overview of the course that led to this performance, and a brief discussion about the process for the dance work, Emily will share documentation of"A Feminine Reflex". She would like to open a discussion surrounding the choreographic strategies employed for media integration in this performance.

Emily Beattie (Fredericksburg, VA) makes performance work for site, stage, and film. She collaborates with composers, filmmakers, multimedia artists, poets, and performers to create work that critically addresses the effect of technology on live arts and global communities. Her performance work has been featured nationally in Boston, New York, and Los Angeles, and internationally in Ecuador and Japan. Emily received her training at the Boston Conservatory where she earned her BFA in contemporary dance. Currently, Emily is pursuing her MFA in the World Arts and Cultures/Dance department. Her thesis dance work shadow is commissioned to perform in Brown University’s Spring Festival of Dance in 2013. As a performer, Emily is in development on projects with David Rousseve/Reality, and Lionel Popkin with premiers starting in 2013.