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Performances:
[v1.1]
AudioVisual Concert | Chapel Performance Space, Seattle WA.
February 22nd, 2008
Curated by Kamran Sadeghi.
[v1.0]
12 Minutes Max | On the Boards, Seattle WA.
February 17th - 18th 2008.
Curated by Scott Lawrimore (Owner, Lawrimore Project) & Julie Tobiason (Former Principal Dancer, PNB).
In Residence is a constantly evolving work that explores the potential to perceive another individuals reactions to time and space. It is a series of experiments in various forms - audiovisual performance, installation, and CD/DVD publication. In Residence is constructed from photographs and recordings, collected during three consecutive residencies in fall of 2007, and selected for their unbiased documentation of the surroundings. Through computer manipulation, both photographs and recordings were abstracted. What remains is a translation of experience, from the literal to the romantic, presented as pure experience without ties to original subject-matter. Each iteration of In Residence slowly refines itself as a way to more accurately present itself.
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Collaborator: Jamie Drouin
Performances:
[v1.1]
Mutek 2007 | Society for Art and Technology, Montreal QC.
June 1st 2007
[v1.0]
Auditorium | The Henry Art Gallery, Seattle WA.
Novenber18th 2006
Info:
Auditorium is a live sound collaboration between Seattle artist Yann Novak and Victoria artist Jamie Drouin. The two artists first met on a panel discussion hosted by Seattle’s 2006 Decibel Festival at the Henry Art Gallery, and both immediately recognized a connection between their two bodies of soundwork; using altered field recordings and sharing a mutual interest in exploring the ability of sound to alter the atmosphere of spaces we inhabit—physically and emotionally.
Two months later, the two artists met once again at the Henry Art Gallery to perform Auditorium, which uses the performance space itself as a sonic point of departure. Recordings made by Novak of the empty space were amplified and layered to create a singular, modulating drone which enhanced the particular ‘fingerprint’ of the space. Drouin’s approach was to define the space with a more scalpel-like hand, inserting sonic pings and rhythms which called attention to the depth and scale of the auditorium, and to interject more textural sounds which would occassionally push the listeners attention outside of the building, reminding them of the thin membrane between the inside/outside worlds.
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Collaborator: Crispen Spaeth Dance Group
Involvement: Score
Shows:
[v1.1]
T.B.A. Festival, Portland OR.
September 15th - September 17th 2006.
[v1.0]
Western Bridge, Seattle WA.
February 17th - March 4th 2006.
Production Credits:
Original Cast: Heather Budd, Drew Elliott, Kathy Lawson, Chay Norton, and Jules Skloot
Choreographer: Crispin Spaeth
Composer: Yann Novak
Production Director: Jon Harmon
Costume Designer: Etta Lilienthal
Info:
Performed in a lightless room for a small audience equipped with night vision apparatus, Dark Room turns military technology into an intimate tool, revealing a world completely unavailable to the naked eye. Flanked by audience, five dancers navigate a tight, pitch-black arena through touch and sound, moving with passionate, risk-filled innocence and uncanny skill.
The night vision apparatus puts the power in the hands of the audience – allowing a partially anonymous freedom while demanding active authorship on the part of the viewer. The dancers usher us beyond military, surveillance, and amateur porn applications of night vision technology. Stripped of the normal trappings of theater, the dance is absolutely central, an up-close world of trust, fear, sex, and compulsive, blind pursuit of human connection.
Dark Room is “lit” by a low-profile infrared system, and is accompanied by a dark, space-shifting electronic music score.
Dark Room was originally commissioned by the contemporary arts center, Western Bridge, and premiered as part of the show Crash.Pause.Rewind February - March of 2006. Following its sold-out premiere run at Western Bridge, Dark Room was invited to appear as part of Portland Institute of Contemporary Arts Time Based Arts Festival in September of 2006. www.pica.org
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Collaborator: Crispen Spaeth Dance Group
Involvement: Score
Shows:
Consolodated Works, Seattle WA.
March 18th - April 2nd 2005.
Production Credits:
Choreographer/Director: Crispin Spaeth
Scene Designer: Etta Lilienthal
Composer: Yann Novak
Light Designer/Production Manager: Jon Harmon
Costume Designers: Rigmor Vohra and Kristina Olsen
Performers: Heather Budd, Yuki Enomoto, Kathy Lawson, Chay Norton, and Julia Skloot
Info:
FADE is a lush and layered exploration of the moment vision falters: a tumble forward through time, a ravishing ode to liminality, when things are not what they were, but not yet what they are becoming. Featuring a talented cast of young collaborators and the powerful vision of CSDG, FADE is a vibrant mix of movement, color, light and sound – from a company whose work was touted as “ineffably bracing and smart” by Seattle’s alternative weekly, The Stranger.
Framed by a stunning visual environment, the dancers begin on a stage covered in black visquine, lonely survivors on a dark and crackling sea. As the black floor recedes, it reinvents the stage-scape, revealing a sharp and elegant white square — a boxing ring, an arena, a blank canvas -- which is mirrored by a luminescent vertical backdrop. This simple and breathtaking transformation sets in motion a chain of shifting events. Heroes are made, tragedies survived and intimate secrets play out as the dancers constantly test the limits of their changing circumstances, embracing big, off-balance movement, muscled, passionate partnering, and delicate time-altering solo work.
Through a brutal game of Marco Polo, a highly flirtatious meditation on social dancing, and a thoroughly blind solo, “childlike games are subverted by a strictly adult sort of play.” (Brangien Davis, Seattle Times) The final image, a red neon OPEN sign interrupts the show, deleting the stage image, on, off, no fade, the end, and underscores the refreshing lack of sentimentality in this work. Performed by a troupe with a wide range of character and relationship to gender, FADE is intelligent, sexy and uncompromisingly modern in its vision -- an alchemy of the collaborative forms in which dancing is central, even as it pushes at the defining edges of performance and visual art.
