Artists Archive
Melanie Valera (Tender Forever) was born in Southwestern France in 1977. 3 albums (on K Records) and 800 shows later, she’s now pursuing multimedia projects for venues including La Cité Internationale (Paris) and the Whitney Museum (New York). Though she lives today in Portland, OR, her pop project leaps towards a world where we can close the gaps between countries, ideologies and, ultimately, hearts.
Learn moreTesar Freeman is an artist and amateur historian whose work is concerned with the revision of history and the physical vessels of ideologies. He currently lives and works in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Peripheries
Learn moreFrom capturing environments, architectural structures, sound, light and human behavior, the source of Umeda’s work ranges widely. Working actively both in and outside of Japan, the artist remodels installations out of daily products, engages viewers with his interactive performance pieces, and collaborates with musicians using his own originally-produced implements. He has held a number of significant solo exhibitions including “Criterium 73: Tetsuya Umeda”, Contemporary Art Gallery, Art Tower Mito (2008), “Hotel New Osorezan”, Ota Fine Arts Singapore, Singapore (2013), “Age0”, Breaker Project, Osaka (2014), and “Science of Superstition”, SonicProtest Festival, Montreuil (2015). Umeda has also participated in the “1st Aichi Triennale 2010: Arts and Cities”, Nagoya (2010); “Double Vision: Contemporary Art From Japan”, Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Moscow / Haifa Museum of Art, Haifa (2012); “Simple Interactions. Sound Art from Japan”, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Roskilde, Roskilde (2011); and is recently featured at “RhythmScape”, Gyoenggi Museum of Modern Art, Gyoenggi (2015) and “Sounds of Us”, Trafó Gallery, Budapest (2015-2016).
Learn moreMELISSA DYNE is a conceptual, installation and performance artist, with a focus on the physics of sound and light. Her large scale installations have shown at The Museum of The City, in Mexico City, and Para/Site, in Hong Kong. Her installation, Glass, in which a window from a skyscraper balanced for three months on a gallery wall, was exhibited at The Museum of Contemporary Craft in 2008. She studied optics at UNAM in Mexico City, art at College of Santa Fe, NM and completed a degree in accoustics at SAE Institute in New York. Dyne has been peforming and collaborating with The Blow since 2009, and recently officially joined the band, expanding her investigations of sound waves into the field of popular music. melissadyne.com
KHAELA MARICICH is a performance artist, writer and pop musician. Under the name, The Blow, she has made albums and narrative performance works, interweaving the elements of one within the framework of the other. At TBA 2004 she performed the pop opera Blue Sky vs. Night Sky, as well as a fictional corporate presentation about a mental health maintenance system called Remosch. She has presented her work nationally and internationally in a broad range of venues, from art centers to house parties to concert halls, including such venues as The Kitchen, On The Boards, Henry Fonda Theater, and Great American Music Hall. She lives and works in New York City. khaelamaricich.com
Since coming together in collaboration on The Blow in 2009, Dyne and Maricich have performed at The Wexner Center, Joe's Pub, and The Warhol Museum. They have lectured on their collaboration at PICA, The Henry Gallery, Seattle, and Residency Unlimited, in Brooklyn, NY. Their new album, The Blow, is being released on Kanine Records in October 2013.They first met at the TBA festival in 2004. theblow.org
The Delicate Art of Not Giving a Fuck, Khaela Maricich, The Stranger, June 26, 2013.
Learn moreJacob Ciocci is an artist; a current Eyebeam Fellow; one third of the American art collective Paper Rad; and a prolific producer of music, installations, websites, and animations. David Wightman is completing a PhD in Music Composition at UC San Diego where he is a Lecturer of Pop Music Studies. Some of his many musical projects include Fortress of Amplitude, Powdered Wigs, and Chariots of Fire. Together, Jacob and David connect like Voltron in the high-NRG electronic music band Extreme Animals. They have toured the country every summer for the past 8 years presenting their music, videos, and art.
Selected Press
Eleven Evocations (For Paper Rad), Ed Halter, Rhizome, September 2, 2009.
Learn moreThe Javaad Alipoor Company (TJAC) is a contemporary theater company that makes work for a changing world and a global audience. Rooted in experimental and multiplatform practice, their work asks the most pressing questions we all face. With a commitment to internationalism, complexity, diversity, and fun, they make work for the twenty-first century, transforming what people think theater can be and what it can do.
Learn moreSTEW: Guitars/Vocals, Text/Music
THEATER: Book, Co-Composer and Lyricist for Passing Strange (2008 Tony—Best Book, 2-time 2007 Obie (Best New Theater Piece and Best Ensemble ), Family Album (2014 Oregon Shakespeare Festival), Notes of a Native Song (Spring 2015 Harlem Stage), Wagner, Max! Wagner! (Fall 2015 Kennedy Center) The Total Bent (Public Theater 2016), Making It (Spring 2010 St. Anne’s Warehouse), Brooklyn Omnibus (Fall 2010 Brooklyn Academy of Music) Resurrection City (2016 Studio Theatre), Chicago Omnibus (Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago 2012) FILM: Spike Lee’s Passing Strange. ROCK AND ROLL: Stew and The Negro Problem. Albums: Post Minstrel Syndrome, Joys and Concerns, Guest Host and The Naked Dutch Painter (both called Album of the Year by Entertainment Weekly), Welcome Black, Something Deeper than These Changes, Making It and the cast album of Passing Strange. Numerous Lincoln Center appearances, United Nations, Symphony Space.: Guest Host and Album of the Year by Entertainment Weekly TV: Stew is co-composer (w/ Heidi Rodewald) of “Gary Come Home,” for SpongeBob SquarePants. ARTS EDUCATION: Doctor of Humane Letters, Oshkosh University, Wisconsin; California Inst. of the Arts; New School; Stanford; University of Wisconsin, Madison; University of the Arts, Philly. Stew is a Sundance Institute Alum and currently teaches at Sarah Lawrence.
Heidi Rodewald is the Tony Award nominated, Obie Award winning co-composer of the musical Passing Strange, which transferred from The Public Theater to Broadway in 2008. Rodewald composed music for Karen Kandel's Portraits: Night and Day (2004); Brides of the Moon by The Five Lesbian Brothers (2010); and co-composed music for Shakespeare's Othello and Much Ado About Nothing and Romeo and Juliet (2010-12). Rodewald joined the band The Negro Problem in 1997, where she began a longtime collaboration with singer songwriter, Stew. She has collaborated with him in a range of capacities -- as a co-composer, producer/arranger and performerSheis. the co-composer with Stew of the musical Family Album which premiered at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival during the 2014 season, Notes of a Native Song, at Harlem Stage in 2015, Wagner, Max! Wagner!! at the Kennedy Center in 2015, and The Total Bent at The Public Theater,May 2016.Heidi is the composer of The Good Swimmer, with librettist Donna DiNovelli, presented by Prototype Festival January 2016 at the space HERE in NYC,and scored her first film I Dream Too Much, which had it's world premiere at the 2015 SXSW Film Festival.
Learn moreWith legendary bits like their signature audience participation costume changes and Guns n Roses trapeze act, The Wau Wau Sisters are widely recognized by their peers for revolutionizing circus aesthetics and carving out a new niche for circus events – where high physical skill, comedy chops, burlesque and outright nudity mix with just the right splashes of chaos and irreverence are so close and palpable you can see the tear in their fishnets, the sinew of their muscles and the sweat on their skin! Don’t miss them as they fly through their trapeze routines with all the adrenaline and abandon of a rock concert, deconstruct the humor and paradigms of country and heavy metal music, while playing matching guitars and barely sitting on one another’s shoulders! They do it all in a festive, freewheeling hour that keeps the audience guessing every second, who’s in control and for how long?!
They have made appearances at these fantastic festivals and venues: The World Famous Spiegeltent,(VAC, Edinburgh, Auckland, Sydney, NYC), Lincoln Center (NYC), The Mayan Theater (Los Angeles), The Roundhouse (London), Olivia Cruise Lines, Feast Festival (Adelaide), Soho Bar (London), El Cid (Los Angeles), The Grammys (Los Angeles Staples Center), Irving Plaza (NYC), The Palms (Las Vegas), CBGB’s (NYC), The Hammerstein Ballroom (NYC), Joe’s Pub (NYC), The Bowery Ballroom (NYC), The Henry Fonda Theater (Los Angeles), The Pica Festival (Portland, OR), Edinburgh Fringe Festival/The Pleasance (Scotland), The Jermyn St. Theater (West End, London) , The Art House, Crown & Anchor (Provincetown, MA), Philadelphia Fringe Festival (Philadelphia, PA), Sydney Festival, Auckland Festival among countless other cities and venues!!
They’ve been profiled or featured in the pages of: The Village Voice, The New York Post, Time Out New York, Time Out London, The New York Times, Jane, BUST and New York Magazine, The Guardian, Metro, VENUS, The Sun, LA Weekly, GONYC, French Vogue, Spectacle, The Australian, The Times (London, Scotland), Sydnay Morning Herald and countless others!
Television & Film exploits include the feature film “Shortbus” by John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig and the Angry Inch), the film “Who’s the Top?” by Jenny Livingston (Paris Is Burning), ABC Australia’s “Sideshow”, Nipon TV’s “Good Morning Japan”, “The Isaac Mizrahi Show” w/ Rosie Perez, NPR’s “The Next Big Thing”, “Live From Downtown”, “The Sharon Osbourne Show”, and “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
Learn moreThe Wooster Group is an ensemble of artists who make new work for the theatre, dance and media. The Group has created over 40 pieces since its first in 1976.
Elizabeth LeCompte, a founding member of The Wooster Group, has directed all of the company's works. Her honors and awards include a NEA Distinguished Artists Fellowship for Lifetime Achievement in American Theater, a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a US Artists Fellowship and a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
Selected Press
Two Experimentalists Under One Roof, Roslyn Sulcas, The New York Times, March 26, 2010.
Learn moreTran is a visual artist living in Brooklyn, New York. For five years, she worked with all her best friends in front of and behind the camera as host and creator of FOOD PARTY, the cutest imaginable, 4:20-friendly TV show about food. FOOD PARTY ran for five episodes on YouTube and 26 episodes on the Independent Film Channel. Tran has been named one of Paper Magazine’s Most Beautiful People and has been featured in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and ABC News for her work.
Learn moreTiago Guedes studied music at the Regional Academy of Tomar (Portugal) and then at the Dance Academy of Lisbon. He collaborated with RE.AL as an associate choreographer from 2003 to 2007. As a choreographer since 2001, Guedes has created the following works: A Show with an Announced Opening, October 2002; Trio, April 2005; Matrioska, January 2007; Ópera, July 2007; and Wonderful Things, February 2008. Guedes is resident choreographer at the Théâtre Le Vivat, Armentières, France, and at ZDB Gallery in Lisbon.
Tiago Guedes’ work has been presented in several festivals and theatres in Portugal, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Greece, Slovenia, Belgium, Switzerland, Brazil, Austria, Netherlands, UK and Hungary. He is the artistic director of Materiais Diversos, a cultural association that aims to produce and spread artistic creations in dance and drama.
Learn moreTim DuRoche is a jazz and sound artist living in Portland whose work ranges from live performance to installation, including projects with Tere Mathern Dance, Linda K Johnson, and Cydney Wilkes.
Learn moreTimothy White Eagle is a mixed race artist. He graduated from the University of Utah with a BFA in theater. His art practice rises from a decades-long exploration of traditional ritual and embodiment practice. His preferred mediums include objects, photography, durational performance, storytelling, and installed space.
He has served as an artist-in-residence at Town Hall and On The Boards in Seattle, as well as La Mama ETC in NYC. Timothy was the recipient of the WAA/AIP Launch Pad award in 2019 as well as a Seattle City Artist award in 2020.
Timothy toured internationally as one of the artistic directors and a performer with MacArthur Fellow Taylor Mac’s Pulitzer Prize finalist “A 24-Decade History of Popular Music.”
Timothy’s new ritual performance work, “What To Do When The Air Returns,” will premiere at LaMama in November 2021.
Learn moreTim Smith-Stewart is a queer interdisciplinary artist based in Seattle who uses text as his primary medium for creating installations, performances and zines. For the past seven years, Tim has primarily been creating work in collaboration with artist/electrical engineer Jeffrey Azevedo. They are currently developing Salvage Rituals: a dance set on six piezoelectric tiles to premiere in the fall of 2019. Visual and durational iterations will be presented at various locations including Seattle University in the fall of 2018.
Most recently they premiered Awaiting Oblivion—Temporary Solutions for surviving the dystopian future we find ourselves within at present at On the Boards in February 2017 and The Perpetual Insurrection of Claude Cahun at the Henry Art Gallery in October 2017.
Selections of Awaiting Oblivion... have been presented at: On The Boards NW New Works festival (SEA), Risk/Reward Festival (PDX), Velocity Dance Center (SEA) and Fresh Oysters Performance Research (MSP). Tim and Jeffrey have presented multiple installations including their video/paper tapestry installation Queer City Lost at New Tomorrow, Erasure (curated by the Lion’s Main Art Collective), and the Velocity Dance Center Big Bang. They also presented Stained glass in my replacement church at the 2014 Lofi Arts Festival.
From 2010-2013 Tim & Jeffrey co-created The Eternal Glow Project—a four part performance/installation which premiered work at The Seattle Center Next50 (The Eternal Glow of Electric Hearts), On the Boards NW New Works Festival 2013 (Ω<1),and Lofi Arts Festival 2013 (Less than red, more than violet).
Learn moreHalf Straddle is an Obie-winning, Brooklyn-based ensemble of performers and designers that makes plays, performances, videos, and music led by Artistic Director Tina Satter. This critically acclaimed company began in 2008, and has toured its shows to cities throughout U.S., Europe, and Asia.
Tina Satter is an American writer, director, and Artistic Director of the Brooklyn-based, Obie-winning theater company Half Straddle. She is a recipient of a 2016 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Award; a 2014 Doris Duke Impact Award, and was named an Off-Off Broadway Innovator to Watch by Time Out New York. She has written and directed 9 full-length shows and a number of smaller performance and video pieces with Half Straddle that have premiered in New York City. Tina’s work has been presented at theaters and festivals in Europe, Asia, Australia, and other U.S. cities. Tina has had residencies at Yaddo, Headlands Center for the Arts, LMCC, The Performing Garage, Kitchen L.A.B., MASS MoCA, and New Museum for Contemporary Art. She’s been a visiting artist at Princeton University, Carnegie Mellon University, New York University, Sarah Lawrence College, Reed College, and Fordham University—and a visiting playwriting professor at the University of Michigan. Drawing on her recent teaching work, Tina has been developing and leading generative writing and directing workshops to participants from a range of backgrounds and experience. Tina attended Mac Wellman’s graduate playwriting program at Brooklyn College and received an M.A. from Reed College and a B.A. from Bowdoin College. Her first collection of plays, Seagull (Thinking of you), was published by 53rd State Press in 2014.
Learn moreTiona Nekkia McClodden is a visual artist, filmmaker, and curator whose practice explores and critiques issues at the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality. McClodden has exhibited and screened her work at many institutions and galleries, including the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; The Museum of Modern Art; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and more recently, Performance Space New York. The recipient of many awards and fellowships, she most recently awarded the 2018-2019 Keith Haring Fellowship in Art and Activism and won the 2017 Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award. McClodden also curated the exhibitions A Recollection. + Predicated. featured within Julius Eastman: That Which Is Fundamental, presented in collaboration with Bowerbird in Philadelphia in 2017 and The Kitchen in New York earlier this year.
Learn moreTonya Lockyer is the Executive/Artistic Director of Velocity, Seattle’s premier arts center and essential incubator dedicated to contemporary dance and movement-based art. Lockyer has overseen the significant artistic expansion of Velocity including: the development of Velocity’s first humanities programs, initiating an Artist-in-Residence program; commissioning and developing more than forty new works of performance, installation and film; and the presentation of over a hundred contemporary performances by established and emerging artists including zoe | juniper, Keith Hennessy, Faye Driscoll, Jennifer Monson, Ralph Lemon, Miguel Gutierrez, Amy O’Neal, Danielle Agami.
As an educator Lockyer has taught inter/nationally with a focus on her research at the intersections of performance, embodiment and social action. Lockyer is an Affiliated Faculty Member of Cornish College of the Arts since 2001. She has taught Art & Social Justice, Interdisciplinary Collaboration, Movement Analysis, Somatics; as well as Dance Technique, Choreography, Improvisation, History, and Choreographic Culture since 1960. In 2010, Lockyer coordinated Cornish’s yearlong, citywide Merce Cunningham Project. Her course "Live Art and Choreographic Culture Since 1960" was an inaugural course of the Center for Performance Studies at The University of Washington. She is published in international journals, exhibition catalogues and the book Vu du Corps: Lisa Nelson Movement et Perception. Her essay "Quiet Riot: Modern Dance as Embodied Feminism" is required reading in the curriculums of Texas Women's University and Cornish College of the Arts.
Lockyer is an accomplished artist with more than twenty-years experience commissioned and presenting her work internationally. She has received awards and commissions from Arts International, The Canada Council, The Banff Center, Artist Trust and On the Boards among others, for projects including inter-cultural collaborations, 24-hour improvisations, and large-scale site-specific performances. She holds an MFA from The University of Washington, is a Certified Movement Analyst, and participated in the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance/Wesleyan.
Learn moreTrajal Harrell’s work has been presented in New York and across the US at venues including New York Live Arts, The Kitchen, American Realness Festival, ICA Boston, Danspace Project, Dance Theater Workshop, P.S. 122, and Walker Arts Center, among others. Internationally, his work has toured in France, Switzerland, Portugal, Japan, Holland, Belgium, Austria, Germany, Poland, Croatia, Brazil, and Mexico, and has shown his performances in visual art contexts such as Performa, Fondation Cartier (Paris), The New Museum, The Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, and Art Basel-Miami Beach, as well as galleries in Tokyo, Berlin, and New York. His latest works have been seen in 2013 at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and MoMA PS1.
Learn moreTravis Stewart is a contemporary Northwest artist of Chinook, Rogue River, and Kalapuya descent. He lives in Grand Ronde, Oregon, and works in a variety of mediums to depict stories defined by the cultural landscape and design of the Willamette Valley and Columbia River people. He also works as a curator at Chachalu Museum and Cultural Center (Grand Ronde, OR) and has devoted his life to the preservation of the art and culture of the tribes of Western Oregon. Travis is a founding member of the Shawash Ili?i Kanim Tilixam, which is a nonprofit cultural preservation group and canoe family that works to impart traditional teachings to at-risk tribal youth through song, dance, language, and art.
Learn moreTyler Wallace is a Portland-based artist working in video, installation, and performance to investigate concepts of identity and personal history. Nicole Dill is a Portland-based artist whose work interrogates the function of celebrity culture in contemporary society through photography, performance, audio, sculpture, and installation. Both Wallace and Dill recently defended their theses at the Pacific Northwest College of Art, and received their BFAs in May 2009.
"Between Us," Leah Bobal, PNCA UNTITLED.
Learn moreTyler White is a young, black, De La Salle North Catholic High School student, community organizer, blogger and cultural enthusiast. White has spent his last year interviewing Portlanders, exploring the nuances of gentrification and recently, producing a show with OPB, The Future of the American Dream. He formally holds the titles of Project Coordinator and Chief Blogger for the I Love This Place Project, Youth Outreach Coordinator for the CENTER (part of Catlin Gabel’s PLACE program), along with being a member of many other organizations and boards.
Learn moreUNIVERSES is a national Ensemble Theater Company, of multi-disciplined writers and performers of color, who fuse theater, poetry, dance, jazz, hip hop, politics, down home blues and Spanish boleros to create moving, challenging and entertaining works for the stage. The group breaks the traditional theatrical bounds to create its own brand of theater. Founded in The Bronx, New York in 1995, the members of UNIVERSES came together in the urban poetry and music scene of the late 1990s; quickly moving through the “down town” performance scene to built a home for themselves in American Theatre. In their 24 years, UNIVERSES has performed at venues throughout the United States and toured extensively worldwide.
Learn morevanessa german is a self-taught citizen artist working across sculpture, performance, communal rituals, immersive installation, and photography, in order to repair and reshape disrupted systems, spaces, and connections. The artist’s practice proposes new models for social healing, utilizing creativity and tenderness as vital forces to reckon with the historical and ongoing catastrophes of structural racism, white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, resource extraction, and misogynoir.
A visual storyteller, german utilizes assemblage and mixed media, combining locally found objects to build protective ritualistic structures known as her power figures or tar babies. Modeled on Congolese Nkisi sculptures and drawing on folk art practices, they are embellished with materials including beading, glass, fabric, and sculpted wood, and come into existence at the axis on which Black power, spirituality, mysticism and feminism converge.
Based in Homewood, Pittsburgh, german’s artistic practice is intertwined with and inextricable from her dedicated role in activism and community leadership. In 2011, german founded the Love Front Porch, an arts initiative for the women, children, and families of the local neighborhood that began after she moved her studio practice onto the front steps of her home. Three years later, in 2014, german opened the ARThouse, which combines a community studio, a large garden, an outdoor theatre, and an artist residency.
Upholding artmaking as an act of restorative justice, german confronts and begins to dismantle the emotional and spiritual weight imposed by the multi-generational oppression of African American communities. As a queer Black woman living in the United States, german has described this as a deeply necessary process of adventuring into the wild freedom that the inhabitation of such identities demands. This activist instinct emerges in german’s work to postulate powerful narratives of freedom and love.
german has been awarded the 2015 Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant, the 2017 Jacob Lawrence Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the 2018 United States Artist Grant and, most recently, the 2018 Don Tyson Prize from Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
Her work is held in private and public collections including the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the West Virginia University Museum, Everson Museum of Art, Figge Art Museum, Flint Institute of Arts, Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, David C. Driskell Center, Snite Museum of Art, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, and Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College. german’s fine art work has been exhibited widely, most recently at the Figge Art Museum, The Union for Contemporary Art, The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia, Flint Institute of Arts, Mattress Factory, Everson Museum of Art, Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Studio Museum, Ringling Museum of Art and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
Learn moreBorn in Harlem in 1986 to Dominican-Ecuadorian parents, Venus X grew up in Washington Heights and has recently made a name for herself in NYC’s underground music and art scene. She’s been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, Vibe, ArtForum, Modern Painters, V Magazine, and Fader for her multi-faceted sounds. She performed at various New York Fashion Week after-parties and composed soundtracks for runway shows (earning the title of “Fashion Week’s Most Extreme DJ” from Rolling Stone for her Gerlan Jeans set), scored a performance by K8 Hardy for the Whitney Biennial, and has performed various times at MoMA, the New Museum, and other similar institutions. She has toured with Gang Gang Dance and Theophilus London, starred in music videos for A$AP Rocky, and worked as a researcher and consultant for Shakira.
Selected Press
Venus X: I don't like pretending to be stupid,
Sampling Rap, Salsa, and Al Jazeera, Alex Hawgood, The New York Times, April 18, 2012.
The X Factor: Meet Venus, Fashion Week's Most Extreme DJ, Colleen Nika, Rolling Stone, September 19, 2011.
Learn moreVictoria Fortuna is Assistant Professor of Dance at Reed College. Her teaching and research interests include Latin/x American concert and social dance, dance as a mode of political and community organization, collaborative creation methods, and cultural histories of dance in transnational perspective. Victoria is currently working on a book that examines the relationship between Buenos Aires, Argentina based contemporary dance practices and histories of political and economic violence from the 1960s to the present. She is trained in modern and contemporary dance techniques and collaborates with several Buenos Aires based dance collectives. She has received grants and awards from Fulbright, the Society of Dance History Scholars, the American Society for Theatre Research, and the Latin American Studies Association. Victoria holds a PhD in Performance Studies from Northwestern University.
Learn moreVictoria Hunt is an Australian-born Maori performance artist. Her ancestral affiliations are to Te Arawa, Rongowhaakata, Kahungunu, Irish, English and Finnish. She works to reinstate the power of Indigenous creativity and knowledge into contemporary staging, exploring liminal spaces through provocative interdisciplinary and intercultural collaboration. Victoria has a BA (Photography, Griffith University 1996) and First Class Honours in Performance Studies (UNSW 2016). Since 1999 she has trained and worked with BodyWeather pioneer Tess de Quincey as a founding member of De Quincey Co performing in over 40 productions. Her work has been presented at Liveworks Festival (Syd); Dance Massive (Melb); Origins Festival of First Nations (Lon/UK); Ecocentrix: Indigenous Arts, Sustainable Acts (UK); In-between Time Festival (Bristol/UK); IMPACT 15 (On/CA); Scène Contemporaine Autochtone, Festival TransAmériques Arts Centre (Montreal/CA); Biennale of Sydney; Ngiyagina Festival (Wagga); Gathering Ground (Syd); and Peats Ridge (Syd) among others.
Learn moreVivian Phillips is Director of Marketing and Communications for Seattle Theatre Group, the largest performing arts organization in the Puget Sound Region, where she serves as chief spokesperson and oversees all marketing and communication functions for more than 750 annual events presented by STG. Vivian chairs the Seattle Arts Commission and previously served as Director of Communications to Seattle Mayor Paul Schell, overseeing citywide public information and emergency operations communications functions including WTO.
As a seasoned broadcast professional, Vivian produces and hosts award-winning arts programming for King County television, and previously hosted public affairs programs for the ABC and PBS affiliates in Seattle. She regularly hosts/moderates live conversations, most recently moderating a conversation with best-selling author Ta-Nehisi Coates for a sold out crowd of 2900. Other noted interviews/conversations, live and for television, include: Harry Belafonte, Ruby Dee, Sherman Alexie, Magic Johnson, Charles Johnson, Alex Rodriquez, Mechell Ndegeocello, Dan Savage, Terry McMillan, Jesmyn Ward, Gloria Steinem, Eve Ensler, Congressman John Lewis, among others.
Vivian has represented the Seattle Theatre Group to the Africa Consortium for 11 years.
Learn moreAlthough the Magnolia Housing Projects have long been demolished, a light post still stands at the corner where youth like Vockah Redu (Javocca Davis) gathered to rap and create beats. The light post marks one of the birthplaces of Bounce music, a genre of rap specific to New Orleans that has invigorated crowds throughout the South. Vockah Redu and the Cru animate the stage with their dynamic revival of dance, music, and art from the street corner to the club. More than your typical hip-hop act, this theatrical performance sets the stage for a sweaty, hands-down, booty-up good time, transforming any party, bar, or dance floor in your neighborhood.
The original Cru formed in 1997 and was composed of the Ave Girls: Joi Jadah (Joi Denise Sessions), Teedy Booh (Tasha Marie Butler), Ninny (Shanita Davis), and Grahonda Pooh (Madonna Melissa Oliver). Currently the Cru is composed of Shortee Whop (Glendell Weir), Energyzah (Clarence Mosley), and Taveion Rodeo (Donte Brown). The Cru dominates the stage with electrifying choreography, costumes, skits, and superb street style.
Learn moreW.A.G.E. (WORKING ARTISTS AND THE GREATER ECONOMY) WORKS TO DRAW ATTENTION TO ECONOMIC INEQUALITIES THAT EXIST IN THE ARTS, AND TO RESOLVE THEM.
W.A.G.E. HAS BEEN FORMED BECAUSE WE, AS VISUAL + PERFORMANCE ARTISTS AND INDEPENDENT CURATORS, PROVIDE A WORK FORCE.
W.A.G.E. RECOGNIZES THE ORGANIZED IRRESPONSIBILITY OF THE ART MARKET AND ITS SUPPORTING INSTITUTIONS, AND DEMANDS AN END OF THE REFUSAL TO PAY FEES FOR THE WORK WE'RE ASKED TO PROVIDE: PREPARATION, INSTALLATION, PRESENTATION, CONSULTATION, EXHIBITION AND REPRODUCTION.
W.A.G.E. REFUTES THE POSITIONING OF THE ARTIST AS A SPECULATOR AND CALLS FOR THE REMUNERATION OF CULTURAL VALUE IN CAPITAL VALUE.
W.A.G.E. BELIEVES THAT THE PROMISE OF EXPOSURE IS A LIABILITY IN A SYSTEM THAT DENIES THE VALUE OF OUR LABOR.
AS AN UNPAID LABOR FORCE WITHIN A ROBUST ART MARKET FROM WHICH OTHERS PROFIT GREATLY, W.A.G.E. RECOGNIZES AN INHERENT EXPLOITATION AND DEMANDS COMPENSATION.
W.A.G.E. CALLS FOR AN ADDRESS OF THE ECONOMIC INEQUALITIES THAT ARE PREVALENT, AND PROACTIVELY PREVENTING THE ART WORKER'S ABILITY TO SURVIVE WITHIN THE GREATER ECONOMY.
W.A.G.E. ADVOCATES FOR DEVELOPING AN ENVIRONMENT OF MUTUAL RESPECT BETWEEN ARTIST AND INSTITUTION.
W.A.G.E. DEMANDS PAYMENT FOR MAKING THE WORLD MORE INTERESTING.
Learn moreWa Na Wari is committed to the ideas of Black artists from all over the diaspora and partnering with TBA in 2021 offers us the opportunity to work even more closely with Black femme artists who are lifting up Black joy, Black resistance, and Black power.
TBA has long been the reason Seattlietes have traveled down the I-5 corridor to experience performance art from all over the world. This year is no different. Our work together will be to hold space for intense conversations about Black land and autonomy, Black bodies and historical erasure, all while combating the physiological and psychological effects of gentrification on Black people all over the Northwest
Learn moreWeekend Leisure was founded in Vancouver, BC, in 2004 by graduates of Emily Carr Institute's Integrated Media program, to satisfy their mutual love of karaoke videos. Bridging their backgrounds in video and installation work with their involvement in design, music, and the art collective Norma, the group’s repertoire has expanded to include video art, short films, original music, and music videos, while critically analyzing the power each medium has over its audience. Their activities range from gallery exhibitions to weekly karaoke nights in Vancouver, BC.
Learn moreWendy Red Star was born in Billings, Montana just outside of the Crow Indian reservation where she was raised. She grew up in a multi-cultural family. Her mother is of Irish decent, her father a full blood Crow Indian and her older sister is Korean. Wendy left the Crow Indian reservation when she was eighteen to attend Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana where she studied sculpture. She then went on to earn her MFA in sculpture at UCLA. Wendy has worked as an adjunct professor of fine art at Portland State University for five and a half years. In 2012 to 2013 Wendy was the manger of Chief Plenty Coups State Park located within the Crow Indian Reservation in south-central Montana. The park preserves the log home, sacred spring, museum, and farmstead of Chief Plenty Coups and is a National Historic Landmark. Wendy is currently the Program Associate for the Native Arts & Cultures Foundation.
Wendy Red Star’s work explores the intersection between life on the Crow Indian reservation and the world outside of that environment. She thinks of herself as a Crow Indian cultural archivist speaking sincerely about the experience of being a Crow Indian in contemporary society.
Her work has been shown at the Missoula Museum of the Arts, Missoula, MT, Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Salt Lake City, UT, Bockley Gallery, Minneapolis, MN, Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, Indianapolis, IN, Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe, NM, The Fondation Cartier L’Art Contemporain, Paris, France, The CSULB gallery, Long Beach, CA, Research & Development, Chicago, IL, The Museum Tower at MOCA, Los Angeles, CA, And/Or gallery, Dallas, TX, The UCLA New Wight gallery, Los Angeles, CA, The L.A. Municipal Art gallery, Los Angeles, CA, The Domaine De Kerguehennc, Brittany, France, The Hudson D. Walker gallery, Provincetown, MA, The Plush Gallery, Dallas TX, The Laura Bartlett Gallery, London, England, The Luckman gallery, Los Angeles, CA,The Volitant gallery, Austin, Texas, Eiteljorg Museum of Native American & Western Fine Art, Yellowstone Art Museum, and Museum of Contemporary Native Arts. Studio Visit with Wendy Red Star in Portland Oregon from Amelia winger-bearskin on Vimeo.
Learn moreWhite Rainbow is Portland, OR electronic music producer Adam Forkner. With a storied past in the experimental/psychedelic/electronic underground, White Rainbow explores the full spectrum of psychedelic sound production.
Learn moreWhoop Dee Doo is a non-profit community project led by artists living and working in Kansas City, Missouri. The group has created commissioned projects for organizations including the Bemis Center for contemporary Arts (Omaha), Deitch Projects (New York), the Smart Museum (Chicago), The Kemper Museum for Contemporary Arts (Kansas City), Loyal Gallery (Sweden), and others.
Selected Press
Interview with Jaimie Warren of Whoop Dee Doo, Jacob Gaboury, Rhizome.org, August 25, 2010.
Role Model, Marisa Meltzer, NYLON, March 30, 2010.
Learn moreBasinski has been working in experimental media in New York for over 25 years. His epic 4-disc masterwork, The Disintegration Loops, was chosen as one of the top 50 albums of 2004 by Pitchfork and Artforum selected The River, his transcendental 2-disc shortwave music experiment as one of the top ten albums of 2003. His concerts, installations, films made in collaboration with artist-filmmaker James Elaine have been presented internationally, most recently at The Venice Biennale of Music. Basinski's latest albums, 92982 and Vivian & Ondine were released in 2009 on 2062/USA and distributed internationally. The Wire selected 92982 as one of the top 50 releases of 2009.
Learn moreWill Rawls is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice encompasses choreography, dance, video, sculpture, works on paper, and installation. Rawls is best known for his choreographic work that employs repetition to explore the limits of language and gesture as tools for staging performances of black presence and becoming. Rawls has created a solo exhibition for Adams + Ollman Gallery (2022) and a multi-part installation at the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle, Everlasting Stranger (2021), as well as presenting work at the Museum of Modern Art, the Hirshhorn Museum, Performa 15, Danspace Project, The Chocolate Factory Theater, High Line Art, REDCAT, the 10th Berlin Biennale, and the Hessel Museum at Bard College. He has received fellowships and residencies from the Guggenheim Foundation, The Alpert Foundation, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Mellon Foundation, United States Artists, the Rauschenberg Foundation, Creative Capital, New England Foundation for the Arts, National Performance Network, MAP Fund, the MacDowell Colony, Headlands Center for the Arts, and Movement Research. Rawls recently joined UCLA’s Department of World Arts and cultures/Dance as an Associate Professor of Choreography. In 2016, Rawls co-curated Lost and Found—six weeks of performances at Danspace Project that addressed the intergenerational impact of HIV/AIDS. His writing has been published by the Hammer Museum, MoMA, Museu de Arte de São Paolo, Dancing While Black Journal, Brooklyn Rail, and Artforum.
Learn more at will-rawls.com
Learn moreWoodrow Hunt is a Klamath, Modoc, and Cherokee artist who was born and raised in Portland, OR. Woodrow's film practice is focused on documentary and experimental forms. His experimental work explores the functions and relationship between digital video and memory and the ways digital video can communicate issues related to the Native community. Woodrow’s films have screened at the Portland Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, MoMA Doc Fortnight, and other festivals internationally. His work has been featured in Artforum, Boston Art Review, and Hyperallergic. Woodrow is a featured artist of COUSIN Collective and was a 2022 Sundance Institute Non-Fiction Intensive Fellow.
Learn moreWoolly is an aesthetically-inclined, trans-pop-culture, dance-therapy performance group formed in Portland, OR in 2006. They have performed in venues ranging between burned-out buildings, black box theaters, Mexican bars, fields of llamas, cowboy dance halls, and downtown alleyways. Traversing between hilarious absurdity and a dark intensity, they bring audiences to the precipice of tantalizing confusion.
Selected Press
Ultra Q: Woolly Mammoth Comes to Dinner, Lisa Radon, ultrapdx.com, January 14, 2008. (PDF)
Learn moreYemenwed is a collaborative project series, which brings together an expansive cast of artists from varied disciplines. Through video, performance, sculpture, and musical instrumentation, Yemenwed explores abstracted concepts of displacement and detachment, fluid identity, domesticity, and the peripheral. Yemenwed has participated in exhibitions and performances at MoMA P.S.1, Performa 09, Fake Estate Gallery, 179 Canal, John Connelly Presents, and Gavin Brown's Passerby. Their publications have been distributed by Ooga Booga (Los Angeles), Printed Matter (New York), Quimby's (Chicago), United Bamboo (Tokyo), and Midway Contemporary Art (Minnesota).
Selected Press
Yemenwed's Fantasy Architecture, Michael Bullock, Interview Magazine, December 1, 2008.
Art Collective Yemenwed Visits Mars, Emma Pearse, New York Magazine, November 25, 2008.
Learn moreYGB Portland formed in 2015 to provide healing space for Black and Brown people in Portland. It has since grown from the parties at Killingsworth dynasty to create more community-based activations. YGB alongside DUG (Deep Under Ground), Gentrification is Weird, and Friends of Noise made sure displaced artists got paid through the “Art Saved My Life” residency. YGB also collaborated with Deep Under Ground to run Young Gifted Artists, which brings art education to youth during the summertime free lunch program at McCoy Park. YGB curates the entertainment for My People’s Market, which has been happening in different parts of Portland since 2017.
Learn moreYOKO HIGASHINO is the artistic director and choreographer for Baby-Q. Her productions depict emotional ups and downs, impulses in the human body, and the true nature of mankind. Her body-based performances combine various dance elements and present her strong and vivid viewpoint of the world. She received the prestigious Choreographer of the Next Generation at the Toyota Choreography Awards in 2004 and Yokohama Prize for Brilliant Future in the group dance category in the Solo/Duo Competition in 2005. As a solo artist, Higashino collaborates with many musicians. Sometimes she appears in clubs, bars, or galleries, naming herself as “Kemumaki Yoko,” an unclassifiable avant-garde dancing body.
Yoko Higashino, Mariko Takei, SHIFT, April, 2009. Learn moreYo La Tengo is a critically acclaimed indie rock band from Hoboken, New Jersey. They’ve recorded twelve studio albums, written soundtracks to the films Junebug, Shortbus, and Old Joy, and provided a score for the surrealist aquatic films of Jean Painlevé.
Learn moreYOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES is yhchang.com. It is also Young-hae Chang and Marc Voge. They have made work in 17 languages and presented much of it in major art institutions, including Tate London; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; and the New Museum, New York. Selected Press "DISTANCE, HOMELESSNESS, ANONYMITY, AND INSIGNIFICANCE": AN INTERVIEW WITH YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES", Thom Swiss, The Iowa Review, December 15, 2002. Interview with Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, Hyun-Joo Yoo, dichtung-digital, February, 2005. Selected Video
Learn moreYOUNG JEAN LEE (Artistic Director) is an OBIE award-winning playwright and director who has been called “the most adventurous downtown playwright of her generation” by the New York Times and “one of the best experimental playwrights in America” by Time Out New York. She has written and directed nine shows in New York with Young Jean Lee's Theater Company and toured her work to over twenty cities around the world. Her plays have been published by Theatre Communications Group (Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven and Other Plays, The Shipment and Lear) and by Samuel French (Three Plays by Young Jean Lee). She is currently under commission from Plan B/Paramount Pictures, Lincoln Center Theater, Playwrights Horizons, and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. She is a member of New Dramatists and 13P and has an MFA from Mac Wellman's playwriting program at Brooklyn College. She has received grants from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Creative Capital, NYFA, NEA, NYSCA, the Jerome Foundation, the Greenwall Foundation, and the Rockefeller MAP Foundation. She is also the recipient of two OBIE awards, the Festival Prize of the Zuercher Theater Spektakel, a 2010 Prize in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 2012 Doris Duke Artist Award.
Learn moreYUKIO SUZUKI studied butoh at the Asbestos-kan (Asbestos House) from 1997 and danced in the works of Ko Murobushi and other artists. In 2000 he started the Yukio Suzuki Company. He gained attention in the dance world for his documentary style of directing and choreography that uses compelling placement of dancers with a strong emphasis on their physical presence. In recent years he has expanded his activities with projects like choreographing for dancers of the Tokyo City Ballet Company. With a highly sensitive consciousness of the body, he conducts programs around the country aimed at creating dancer-specific works. In 2008, he received the prestigious Choreographer of the Next Generation (Grand Prize) at the Toyota Choreography Awards.
Learn moreOberzan is an original member of Nature Theater of Oklahoma, based in New York City. With Nature Theater, he has collaborated and performed in productions including Poetics: a ballet brut, the Obie-winning No Dice, and the one-man show, Rambo Solo. His latest theater/film work, Your brother. Remember? premiered at Brussel's Kunstenfestivaldesart. Oberzan has also released two albums of original music, most recently Athletes of Romance. He has performed with the Wooster Group, Richard Foreman, and is currently collaborating with the Dutch group Kassys.
Selected Press
Rambo Solo: Zachary Oberzan's Flooding With Love For the Kid, Matt Zoller Seitz, The L Magazine, January 6, 2010.
Rambo redux, as a homemade, one-man, no-budget movie, Ben Walters, Guardian.co.uk, June 17, 2009.
Learn moreZan Yamashita was born in OSAKA, 1970, started to dance at the age of 19. He studied modern dance and classical ballet at several dance studios, while giving street performances in Osaka.
In 1990, Yamashita joined a performance group, Monochrome Circus in Kyoto as a dancer.In 1993, he choreographed his first piece "Music" for the Monochrome Circus, which was performed at the ALTY Buyoh Festival of Kyoto Prefectural Hall. He choreographed this piece as if composing a piece of music through body movements of 6 performers without using any music.
In 1994, he directed a performance work "The poetry reading" first time as an artistic director, and presented it for the Kyoto Performance Carnival. This piece was presented in a gallery space with its entire walls covered with books where the performers and the audience were placed in a nested structure. Yamashita created scenes from precisely depicting performers' subtle and detailed behaviors, movements, and the incidents that happened simultaneously throughout the space as each performer read his favorite books.
Yamashita began his career as an independent artist in 1995. His first project was "Family" in 1995, a year long project performed in the former Meirin Elementary School, the forerunner of the Kyoto Art Center (Kyoto), Toyoshina Modern Art Museum (Nagano) and Art Space Mumonkan (Kyoto). In this project, he brought the interaction with close people to the stage without altering what were already among them. After the "Family" tour, he continued to present various experimental works at theaters and galleries mostly in Western Japan.
In 2002, Yamashita presented "It is written there" at the Itami Ai Hall (Hyogo), with which the trilogy working on the relationship between language and body began. In this piece, the audience were constantly invited to turn the page of the book given at the entrance, as the stage host called the page number backward, and to enjoy switching their gaze between what was going on the stage and written on the page.In 2004, Yamashita created "Invisible man", which was presented at the Tokyo International Art Festival. And in the same year, he received the Kyoto Art Center Theatre Award for "It is just me coughing", the last piece of the trilogy.
He made an actor debut in the theater piece, "Can you hear.....?", written and directed by Shogo Ohta in 2005.
In thinking of reproducibility of the choreography, Yamashita presented "The sailors", in 2005. The performance took place on a raft-like stage shaking under the weight of 4 performers at the BankART(Yokohama) and the Kyoto Art Center (Kyoto).
In 2007, he presented "Animal Theater", a choreography focused in freedom and restriction, produced by the Kyoto Art Center Theatre Project.
In 2008, Yamashita remade and performed "It is written there" at the Kyoto Art Center Theatre Project (Kyoto), Fukuoka Theatre Arts Series (Fukuoka), KunstenFESTIVALdesArts (Belgium).
In 2009, he presented 'It is just me coughing' at Annex Garelly in Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), and 'It is written there' at Istanbul International Contemporary Dance & Performance Festival (Turkey).
In 2010, he performed'It is just me coughing' at Postmainstream Performing Arts Festival (Tokyo). In February 2010, he performed as an actor in 'Ikishima - breath island' directed by Yukichi Matsumoto, produced by Seika theatre (Osaka). In April 2010, he choreographed and presented a new performance‘Daikouzui’ at St Spot Yokohama. In August 2010, he performed a remake of “Yokohama Stay” in the TBA Festival in Portland after a month of creative residency there. Yamashita performed in a perfomance by Pichet Klunchun which was presented in the Kyoto International Performing Arts Festival in Novemever 2010. In 2011, he performed, “It is just me coughing” and “Yokohama stay” as a double-bill performance at the Esplanade theatre studio(Singapore). Experimenting in original forms of communication through words and body, Yamashita presented his new performance, “It is something like a garden,” co-produced by Itami Ai Hall, Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media (YCAM) and St Spot Yokohama.
Yamashita received a Senior Fellow Grant from The Saison Foundation in 2011,2012.
Learn moreVisual artist Juniper Shuey and choreographer Zoe Scofield began their collaboration for On the Boards’ NW New Works Festival in 2005. Since then, they have been commissioned by On the Boards and, in 2007, they choreographed a music video for Dave Matthews. Scofield and Shuey co-founded the Secret of Gold Festival, with Morgan Henderson, an annual art festival in Arlington, WA. The duo’s photographic and video collaborations have been shown at the Howard House, the 8th Northwest Biennial at Tacoma Art Museum, Arts Center/SOFA Gallery (New Zealand), and PONCHO Gallery.
Selected Press
Zoe|juniper's abstract 'Crack' offers dance in multi-dimensions, Janine Parker, Boston Globe, July 23, 2011.
zoe | juniper @ Jacob’s Pillow, 7/20/11, Tresca Weinstein, Times Union, July 21, 2011.
Zoe | Juniper dance explores 'A Crack in Everything' at Jacob's Pillow, Tresca Weinstein, The Times Union, July 15, 2011.
A confounding, memorable 'devil,' Karen Campbell, The Boston Globe, February 24, 2009.
Learn moreZoe Scofield (she/her) is a 2015 Guggenheim Fellow and a dance and visual artist based in Seattle, WA, and Los Angeles, CA. Zoe is the co-artistic director and founder with Juniper Shuey of zoe | juniper, a dance and visual art company since 2005. Her work has been commissioned and presented by Jacob’s Pillow, New York Live Arts, Portland Institute for Contemporary Arts, On the Boards, RedCat, MASS MoCA, The Frye Art Museum, The Joyce Theater, PS 122, Carolina Performing Arts, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, among others. Zoe works in performance, video installation, photography, opera, and film. She has received funding from the Mellon Foundation, the Princess Grace Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New England Foundation for the Arts, the National Performance Network, and more. Zoe’s current piece, Tell the truth and shame the devil, is a live dance and music collaboration with Xiu Xiu. Zoe has an MFA in Dance from the University of the Arts.
Learn moreZvonimir Dobrovic is the founder and artistic director of Domino, one of the major independent art NGOs in Croatia. In that capacity he is responsible for curating several festivals in Croatia and internationally – most notably Perforations – week of live art and Queer Zagreb. Through different platforms he curates over 100 performances annually, staged all over the world, many of them commissions and produced specifically for these and other festivals. He has served on numerous panels and boards, juries and committees in the field of performing arts and film. Zvonimir has also edited dozens of books, magazines and written articles on performance. He regularly holds lectures and workshops on curating and art management.
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