May 21 – August 10, 2019
Pavilion
Closer to You inaugurates a new and vital partnership between the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art WSU and On the Boards (OtB), a renowned Seattle-based arts organization. Both institutions incubate and support artists’ boldest experiments and biggest ideas. At the forefront of contemporary performance, OtB works with preeminent international artists who are defining the future of dance, theater, and music. OtB’s partnership with the WSU Schnitzer is it’s first with a museum, and it will bring today’s best contemporary performance films by today’s most provocative artists to the WSU community. These individuals are prestigious award winners—MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellows—and influential contributors to heralded exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, and the Venice Biennale.
The exhibition Closer to You, features three groundbreaking live works, available to subscribers of OtB’s innovative film subscription service. The films are unique, extraordinarily crafted creations constructed to bring you as close as possible to the live experience. After selecting a performance, OtB works collaboratively with a professional filmmaking company, the hosting venue, and the artist to plan the details of each shoot. Live performances are captured with four to five high-definition cameras positioned in the audience. After filming, the video is edited, in consultation with the artist, to determine the best representation of the artist’s work. Closer to You intimately connects our audiences to these exquisite projects embodying the best in life-enriching, forward-thinking art.
May 21 – June 15, 2019
Pavilion
Faye Driscoll
Thank You for Coming: Attendance
73 minutes
Performance: January 9, 2015 at Danspace Project, New York, NY
Thank You for Coming is a Faye Driscoll trilogy of works reflecting “how we are all wrapped up in each other, whether we like it or not.” In Attendance, the first of the series, performers pass through ever-morphing states of physical entanglement, building new bodies, new stories, and new ways of being. How do we perceive ourselves as participants in the co-creation of our reality? Through performance can we collectively create a new vision of society?
Faye Driscoll is an award-winning choreographer and director whose work is rooted in an obsession with the problem of being ‘somebody’ in a world of other ‘somebodies’ and all of the conflicts and comedy born in our interactions with others. Her works include: Wow Mom, Wow a postmodern/pop musical/death metal fantasy (2007); 837 Venice Boulevard (2008; Bessie Award), an autobiographical work set in a theater within a home; There is so Much Mad in Me (2010), an exploration of ecstatic states; and You’re Me (2012) a duet distorted by props, paint, and manic costume shifts. Driscoll has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Creative Capital Award, a Doris Duke Artist Award, and a US Artists Doris Duke Fellowship, and she is the recipient of the 2018 Jacob’s PIllow Dance Award.
Created: Faye Driscoll in collaboration with the company
Performers: Giulia Carotenuto, Sean Donovan, Alicia Ohs, Brandon Washington, Nikki Zialcita
Visual Design: Nick Vaughan and Jake Margolin
Sound Design and Original Composition: Michael Kiley
Lighting Design: Amanda K. Ringger
Choreographic Assistant: Nadia Tykulsker
Stage Manager: Lillie De
Production Assistant: Alex Romania
Costume Construction and Alteration: Sarah Thea Swafford
June 18 – July 13, 2019
Pavilion
Kyle Abraham in collaboration with Abraham.In.Motion
When the Wolves Came In
64 minutes
Performance: March 4, 2015 at The Moore Theater, Seattle, WA
When the Wolves Came In draws from the triumphs of civil rights and asks how much progress has truly been made toward racial equality? In developing the project, artistic director Kyle Abraham took inspiration from jazz composer Max Roach’s iconic protest album We Insist! Freedom Now Suite, 1960, which celebrated the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, and shed light on the growing civil rights movements in South Africa and the United States.
Kyle Abraham began his dance training at the Civic Light Opera Academy and the Creative and Performing Arts High School in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He received a BFA from SUNY Purchase, and an MFA from NYU Tisch School of the Arts. He was New York Live Arts Resident Commissioned Artist for 2012–2014. In 2012, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater premiered Abraham’s work, Another Night, at New York’s City Center. That same year, Abraham was named the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award recipient and USA Ford Fellow. In 2013, Abraham was named a MacArthur Fellow, and in 2016 he received the Doris Duke Artist Award.
Performers: Matthew Baker, Tamisha Guy, Hiroki Ichinose, Catherine Ellis Kirk, Jordan Morley, Penda N’diaye, and Connie Shiau
Music: Nico Muhly
Costumes: Reid Bartelme
Lighting and Visual Design: Dan Scully
Scenic Design: Glenn Ligon
Sound Editing: Sam Crawfords
Production Manager: Matthew Baker
Choreographic Associate: Alessandra Calabi
Rehearsal Assistant: Tamisha Guy
July 16 – August 10, 2019
Pavilion
Rashaun Mitchell, Silas Riener, and Charles Atlas
Tesseract˚
50 minutes
Performance: May 19, 2017 at On the Boards, Seattle, WA
Dance enters a new dimension in Tesseract˚, a daring collaboration between two former Merce Cunningham dancers and a pioneering filmmaker and video artist. Ways of seeing evolve in real-time as Rashaun Mitchell’s and Silas Riener’s powerfully physical and precise choreography is mixed and projected live by artist Charles Atlas. The resulting performance tests the boundaries of how bodies and machines can create art that is multidimensional, and it forges a link between human ritual and technological magic.
Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener co-create projects which continually push dance research. Since 2010, Mitchell and Riener have created dance in response to complex and active spatial environments, often merging elements of fantasy, absurdity, and quiet contemplation. Their work takes many forms; site-specific installations, improvisational dances, traditional proscenium performances, and highly-crafted immersive experiences. Their work has been presented at MoMA PS1, The Chocolate Factory, New York Live Arts, Baryshnikov Arts Center, the Vail International Dance Festival, REDCAT, and ICA Boston, among others.
Charles Atlas is a pioneer in film and video, and has worked at the intersection of the moving image, visual art, and choreography for over four decades. Since his earliest collaborations with choreographer Merce Cunningham, Atlas has led the development of “media dance” or performance made expressly for the camera. His work has come to define a vivid cinematic language for articulating dance on screen, using an active, mobile camera to mediate the experience of movement in space. Atlas has consistently fostered collaborative relationships with artists and performers such as Marina Abramović, Yvonne Rainer, Mika Tajima/New Humans, Antony and the Johnsons, and most notably Merce Cunningham, for whom he was in-house videographer from the early 1970s through 1983. In 2017, Atlas’ work was included in the 57th Venice Biennale.
Choreography: Rashaun Mitchell + Silas Riener
Video: Charles Atlas
Music: Mas Ysa
Performers: David Rafael Botana, Eleanor Hullihan, Kate Jewett, Cori Kresge, Rashaun Mitchell, Silas Riener, Kayla Farrish (understudy)
Lighting Design: Davison Scandrett
Costume Design: Rashaun Mitchell + Silas Riener with Mary Jo Mecca and Yvette Helin
Steadicam Operation: Ryan Thomas Jenkins
Assistant to Charles Atlas: Lazar Bozich
Assistant Camera: George Macleod
Stage Management: Dani Prados
Costume Construction: Yvette Helin and Mary Jo Mecca
General Management: Katy Dammers
About On the Boards and OntheBoards.tv:
Founded by artists in 1978, On the Boards, Seattle, consistently introduces audiences to artistic innovators who define the future of the performing arts. As one of the leading performance organizations in the United States, On the Boards produces unique projects by leading artists and creates one-of-a-kind experiences for its audiences. On the Boards makes significant investments in the performing arts community to help increase the quality of new work created. On the Boards contributes to the vitality of arts and culture by helping launch and continue the careers of some of its most promising artists while growing audiences for experimental performance.
In 2010, On the Boards launched OntheBoards.tv, radically expanding access to contemporary performance through a growing catalogue and membership program. To date, On the Boards has reached audiences in all 50 U.S. states and over 152 countries in the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia. OntheBoards.tv subscribers are avid arts fans, intrigued browsers, students and arts professionals. Over 92 higher education institutions in the US, Europe and Australia are subscribers including Princeton, Yale, Ohio University, School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Amsterdam.
Faye Driscoll:
Thank You for Coming: Attendance
Website
Kyle Abraham in collaboration with Abraham.In.Motion
When the Wolves Came In
Website
Rashaun Mitchell, Silas Riener, and Charles Atlas