Wednesday, May 29, 2013

6/5: Emily Beattie

Please join us during WEEK 10

CHEW ON THIS
WEDNESDAY, 6/5, 12-1p
Kaufman Conference room 160
Talk followed by light refreshments and snacks

Presenter: Emily Beattie
shadowline: Playing with the edges in performance and technology 

In rehearsal periods in the Fall and Winter, I was given the opportunity to set work on students in a pre-professional dance company at Brown University. The piece I set was called shadowline, which is a performance work that featured projected animations, dance, and an original score. I chose to include projections as a way to visually address the storyline of the piece, which features a piece of technology that creates a fatal connection for the main character. The actual integration of this component posed many questions for me and my process. Performer interaction with the projections provided some challenges and some benefits for the performers as well as the experience of the viewer. By looking at earlier versions of the work, explaining how the animation is now activated, and showing the final work, I hope to discuss some of the implications for dancemaking with technology that I found.
Emily Beattie is originally from Fredericksburg, Virginia and currently works as a performer and choreographer in both Boston and Los Angeles. As a performer, Emily has been honored to participate in the works of Stephen Koplowitz, Edisa Weeks, Donald Byrd, Sara Rudner, Jennifer Monson, Simone Forti, Lionel Popkin and several national companies. Since 2003, her interest in collaborative performance and technology interventions has been supported and performed both nationally and internationally by organizations such as Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater, Los Angeles, Pieter Performance Space, Brown University, Boston CyberArts Festival, Green Street Studios, Somerville Arts Council, Glouchester New Arts Festival, Oberon Theater, World Arts Music/Crash Arts, Support Women Artists Now Day Inc., Kyoto Cultural Festival 2011 Renku Poetry Conference and Festival, and Rhodopi International Theater Lab.  Emily extensively collaborates with composer and designer Eric Gunther who founded the design and performance studio sosolimited. emilybeattie.com

Monday, May 27, 2013

5/28: Dr. David Shorter | 5/30: Yehuda Sharim

Please join us for TWO Chew on This sessions, this week!

Tuesday, 5/28, 12-1pm
*Kaufman Room 208*
Presenter: Professor David Shorter
Going Glocal: Collaborating with Indigenous Language Learners on Globalizing Technologies

Thursday, 5/30, 12-1pm
*Kaufman Room Conference*
Presenter: Yehuda Sharim
Yehuda will present on his dissertation.

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

5/21: Sharna Fabiano | 5/24: Laurel Tentindo & Kevin Williamson

Please join us for TWO Chew on This sessions next week!

Tuesday, 5/21 at 12pm,
Kaufman Conference Room

SHARNA FABIANO
Prawns a la Indigo: Tango as Physical Theater

AND

Friday, 5/24 at 12pm
Kaufman Room 200

LAUREL TENTINDO and KEVIN WILLIAMSON
Neanderthal vs Cyborg

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Tuesday, 5/21 at 12pm, Kaufman Conference Room
SHARNA FABIANO

Prawns a la Indigo: Tango as Physical Theater

In February and March, I had the honor of collaborating with the Czech company Spitfire on a new project: Prawns a la Indigo. Spitfire refers to its own work as “authorial theater” and often seeks to combine genres and styles of live performance. In this session, I’ll give a guided tour of some rehearsal footage and speak about how we assembled physical material generated 1. through tango movement principles, 2. in response to surrealist images, and 3. following an original script, which describes four women who meet in a cafĂ© to start a revolution.
Sharna Fabiano is an internationally recognized tango artist. She was a member of the NYC-based all-woman company TangoMujer from 2003-2006, and ran her own performing group in Washington, DC from 2006-2010, investigating the fusion of tango with contemporary dance and theater. While living in DC, she also founded the nonprofit organization Tango Mercurio, which created outreach programs for urban youth and elders and an all-volunteer tango orchestra for social dancing. In 2008, Sharna was named to Dance magazine's "25 To Watch" list and featured as an emerging artist in the Washingtonian. In addition to her performance work, she also co-founded the Global Milonga, an international benefit for reforestation that links simultaneous tango events through online streaming audio and video, and the Women’s Tango Retreat, a national gathering for women who dance both roles.

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Friday, 5/24 at 12pm, Kaufman Room 200
LAUREL TENTINDO and KEVIN WILLIAMSON

Neanderthal vs Cyborg

Neanderthal vs Cyborg is a sci-fi dance experiment.  Parallel histories morph in and outside of the studio to reveal the absurd and vulnerable.  It is an imagined dance where two people make a show about making a show. Through the vastness of the incomprehensible universe, these two characters are magnetically pulled together.  The responsibility to make an intelligible piece weighs on them.  These fallen heroes exploit one another and themselves while engaging in theatrical impulses,   genre-bending, and improvised dance.  They search for authenticity.  This performance transforms into a party - if everything goes right.   Laurel and Kevin are using Chew on This as an informal opportunity to share this process with the UCLA community and to experiment with technical elements (Thanks to Arsenio!).  The final performance of Neanderthal vs Cyborg will take place at the Electric Lodge in Venice on June 7th at 9 pm the event is FREE.

Laurel Tentindo (laureltentindo.com) and Kevin Williamson(http://kdubdance.org/) are dancers, choreographers and educators, both currently in their first year of the MFA program.

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

5/14: Doran George

Please join us at our next Chew on This
Tuesday, May 14 at 12pm
Kaufman Conference room

DORAN GEORGE

Tearing down The Final Curtain: Performing Communities of Radical Pleasure.

My editorial for the last of Britain’s Dance Theatre Journal focuses upon the influence of sex radical culture on performance and dance in San Francisco. I argue that prudish art praxis became so entrenched throughout the 20th century that working with sex takes labor, and erotic performance and dance struggle to achieve the status of art. Yet independent alternative sexual practice is crucial for performance now that state and commercial interests have appropriated feminist and queer representational strategies. Critical attention to the Bay Area sex/art community is important because as alternative sexual practice has appeared to enter the mainstream, patriarchal heterosexual ideals have replaced rank and file critical cultures. In broad strokes I compare key influences in San Francisco with emphases in London dance performance that impose a chaste culture. Yet I suggest that if sexual experimentation is seen as a queering of the pioneer narrative, complex racial and national discourses that cut across California are erased.

Doran George is a scholar and artist completing a doctorate on ‘Somatics’ in contemporary dance. His scholarship is published in dance, film, and art journals including chapters in forthcoming Oxford University press volumes, and his artist’s images and writing is found in art publications. Doran has chaired academic conferences, presented symposia, as well as programmed performance, all with a focus on identity deconstruction. He has been funded as an artist by: L.A. Cultural Affairs, London Arts Board, Arts Council of England, British Council, Finnish Arts Council and others. Doran has danced for various choreographers, works as a professional mentor, and leads participatory projects such as working with people diagnosed with terminal illness and those experiencing bereavement. He teaches in art colleges, universities and professional arts contexts in Europe and the US. Doran trained at the European Dance Development Center (NL) and completed a Feminist Performance MA at Bristol University (U.K.)

NEXT Chew on This

Tuesday, 5/21: Sharna Fabiano
Conference room

Friday, 5/24: Laurel Tentindo and Kevin Williamson
Room 200