Clogged Currents Dance at Sub Zero Festival

Last Friday was the Sub Zero Festival in San Jose. I created three large banners that were displayed outside the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles. Visitors added elements to the banners throughout the evening and at 9:00pm and 10:00pm dancer Christina Braun danced to music created by composer Scott Perry. This is the second time that we three have worked together and Christina has named our collaboration efforts "Nectar".

The Sub Zero event was a lot of fun and later I was told that over 1,200 visitors entered the Quilt Museum. We were stationed outside so even more passed by. Below are images at the beginning of the evening. The event ran from 6 to midnight.














































Here are some images of the set up and the visitors beginning to come and participate in the visitor activity which was creating diatoms from recycled plastics and attaching them to the water banners. Rob Bell of Zomadic made these beautiful stands. For the craft activity I had the help of Susan Suriyapa, a grad student at San Jose State. She was really fantastic and full of energy(back to camera in black).























Below:Visitor elements beginning to be added.























I am glad that I got a chance early on to see what else was at the festival. I love this car. I had actually seen it in the Mission District of San Francisco a few weeks prior on Portrero and 26th.


















The ball below was one of two spinning around flashing lights and emitting music. I loved the way it looked with the scattered Jacaranda flowers that happened to have fallen from the trees lining the street. It looked like purple confetti and at first I thought the flowers were intended elements of the display.


















Below: Christina Braun before getting dressed for the performance. She was wonderful helping getting the lights and booth set up and she even made a diatom. I loved how relaxed and happy she was. I would have been totally stressed if I was about to perform!























Below: Scott Perry getting the music set up for the dance performance. He brought all his own equipment and the necessary black tape to hold the cables down. He, too, was super adaptable. He came expecting the performance to be inside (I had mentioned it might be inside if it rained), but was ready to set up outside and I am sure had to lug his equipment from a few blocks away at least as the streets were blocked off in the area of the festival.























I love this jellyfish like creation by a visitor. This is right before the first dance performance started at 9:00 pm. There was a large crowd around for both performances.























Christina showing Anna (Scott's girlfriend) how to use her camera before the performance.























Here is a description of the performance Clogged Currents:
Enveloped in plastic grocery bags and an illuminated diatom hat, San Francisco butoh artist Christina Braun will dance two performances centering on the water themed tapestries of Corinne Okada Takara. Her eerie and playful movements will reflect upon plastic bags clogging waterways and algae blooms flourishing in the stagnation. Contemporary music representing sludge, filth, and pollution in nature created by composer Scott Perry. Costuming will be elements which remove from Takara’s large water tapestries in front of The San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles.
The performance begins!














































Below: A short video snippet of early portion of dance performance.

































































A video snippet of a later portion of the performance:

More on Tenderloin National Forest Butoh Performance

Here is more on the interesting process behind the Butoh piece for the Tenderloin National Forest Grand Opening.

This is Christina Braun's brief outline of her collaboration with composer Jeffrey Scott Perry
for their improve piece that will be performed at 5:45pm on Saturday:
Butoh dance score by Christina Braun inspired by Mayan hummingbird legend and Emily Dickinson for new site specific performnce: Nectar 1, May 9, 2009, San Francisco Tenderloin National Forest Opening Event:
Jeffrey Scott Perry's music begins.
I become the poem/myth/music.
I accept the transformation.
Flutter-by into the waving soundscape.
Sit at the music maker's feet.
Listening with smal secret gestures.
Flower petals fall.
Spiders weave.
The sun groom glows and dazzles,
the red bride answers with an exquisite vibration.
United, we return, erase.






















Christina at location of site specific performance.

I am providing an Asian food wrapper flower hat for costuming.

Christina Braun Butoh Costume Test at Tenderloin National Forest

Today I met with the butoh dancer Christina Braun at The Tenderloin National Forest to test out some of my hats on site to see what would work for her performance. She will be dancing for the grand opening of Tenderloin Natioinal Forest on May 9th. Her butoh improve piece will be in collaboration with the musician/composer Jeffrey Scott Perry who will play electric guitar. Christian has named our group collaboration Nectar.
Here is info on the space and grand opening:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/04/13/DDOM16LICU.DTL
























I really enjoyed photographing her against the vibrantly colorful murals. It was also interesting to see how she changed her moods with each different hat. I know that when she has her white make-up on it will be a very dramatic pairing of costuming with movements. She may be wearing a different garment but I am glad I got a chance to photograph her in this old kimono from my grandma. I think it is from the 1950's and I like that it has some patchwork on it. It has a rich hidden past life. I also thought the kimono pattern and color went well with Rigo's blue and white tile pathway.
























I was curious about the process of creating a butoh improve piece with music. Christina told me that she will give Mr. Perry a sort of outline of moods and gestures for every few seconds of her movements, like " 2-5 seconds-watches flower petals fall" With this outline, I think Mr. Perry will roughly compose a piece and email it to her and then she will practice a few time to that. I don't think they will be rehearsing together at all and will create the piece live on site for the festival. Such an interesting way to collaborate! The music will respond to Christina's rough outline of movements and moods and center on a theme about a humming bird using feedback, digital effects, and downright virtuosic performance technique on electric guitar.
Here is Mr. Perry's website: http://www.jspguitarsoundstudio.com/index.html
























My children loved this image below and can't wait for the performance. They both have been practicing this expression in the mirror all evening and entertained themselves to no end.































































Christina found a dead potted plant in the corner of the benches and created this poignant gesture below. I have posted more images on my Flickr site:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/corinne_o/sets/72157617282165404/















































I look forward to working with Christina on this project and on The SubZero water dance piece in June (see earlier postings). Here is her bio:

Choreographer Christina Braun's collaborations with composers have been presented regularly since 2002, including the Thailand International Butoh Festival "New Generations" 2006, and the West Wave Dance Festival "World Forms" 2007. Christina has danced with Katsura Kan since 2004, Koichi and Hiroko Tamano's Harupin-Ha since 1998, and Mary Sano and her Duncan Dancers since 1997. Christina choreographed the 2007 Woman's Will theatrical production of Mac Wellman's Antigone.

Christina’s project SF Butoh LAB's mission is to promote peace through art exchange by producing new dance performances, symposia and workshops. In 2008, Christina co-created BUTOH San Francisco, whose purpose is to foster the growth of the Bay Area Butoh artist and audience communities. Christina curates an ongoing Saturday movement class, the Berkeley Butoh Experience. As a facilitator to creativity and performance training, Christina gratefully utilizes the teachings of Butoh masters Akiko Motofuji, Yumiko Yoshioka, Akira Kasai, and Yoshito and Kazuo Ohno.

Butoh Water Dance Concept

I was asked by a San Jose museum to brainstorm on ideas for a public participatory activity that tied into Bay Area water issues and textiles for the SUBZERO Festival in June.

I have been thinking of a project that would incorporate small amounts of local water into a very large dramatic outdoor hanging “tapestry”. The tapestry would be composed of hundreds of recycled snack sized clear ziplock bags folded and partially filled with water. Each bag would suspend from an earring hook that is pre-attached to a large metal grid. At night this hanging “tapestry” could be lit up really fantastically. The project would work like this:

1. Visitor receives a zip lock bag.

2. Visitor cuts out a water related shape (ie: fish) from recycled scraps of fabric. Maybe writes something about water conservation?

3. This small shape is placed into the bag.

4. Visitor partially fills bag from water provided (buckets will be there labeled with what the source was)

5. Bag is folded in half and hung from an earring hook on large outdoor vertical grid.

I thought it would be also interesting to create a dramatic garment composed of local water filled baggies (recycled baggies) that a butoh dancer wears and breaks as she moves to music concrete made up of sounds from water sources in the Bay Area. Maybe part of the garment would be plastic bags reclaimed from creek and Bay water clean ups.

Butoh dancer I am thinking of is Christina Braun. She is a choreographer/producer of SF Butoh LAB and Co-producer of BUTOH SanFrancisco's "80/08" Butoh Dance :
http://www.flickr.com/photos/goodlux/246283848/in/set-72157594472240023/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/goodlux/173103389/in/set-72157594472240023/

I envision the tapestry illuminated at night, but not at a high cost so I have been thinking of solar options. The dance performance I would like to be in the evening as well or at least at dusk.

Possible solar lighting options:
Solar Glowing Globes by Frontgate: $49.99 each (shifts through different colors)


















I really enjoy these round floating lights as they remind me of the old Japanese glass fishing floats so prized in Hawaii when my dad was growing up. After big storms these glass floats would sometimes wash ashore unbroken. I remember at my grandma's house on Maui there were a few of these precious finds nested away in the garage.

Solig Solar lights from IKEA $7.99 each. Man, good price!














I need to see how luminous these are at night and I need to find out if they are study enough to be among foot traffic during the festival days.

It would be great to have a combination of each type of light...

Dance Collaboration Project

I am very interested in learning about set design and have one piece I created for the de Young exhibit that I would like expand into sets with a dance group and perhaps a taiko group. I am kind of just brewing ideas. The Fortune Tapestry above is inspired by the intersection of histories of Japanese American families, the Japaenese Tea Garden of Golden Gate Park and the creation of the Fortune cookie.

The interment tag elements and the fortune cookie tag elements hang form the ceiling and dangle. The barbed wire hanging structure cast strong shadows on the ground. I will be posting more thoughts on this later.
























Below are some amazing images from a butoh performance titled Kagemi by the group Sankai Juku. Here is an article on the performance. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/11/16/DDGBHMCVDM1.DTL

I just am so inspired by the imagery.