CULTUREPHILE: PORTLAND ARTS

TBA 2010: Young Jean Lee on The Shipment

A conversation with playwright Young Jean Lee about the filmed version of her controversial stage play.

Posted by: Claudia La Rocco on Sep 17, 2010 at 09:00AM 0 Comments

Image from The Shipment , which was performed last year at TBA09.

Last year, TBAers got to see Young Jean Lee’s play The Shipment. This year, you all get to see it again; on the screen, not the stage, courtesy of OntheBoards.tv.

Lee’s bracing, elegant work takes a hard look at race relations, with plenty of uncomfortable moments for its audience. It’s liveness is an essential component: here we all are, sitting in a theater together, for once staring straight at the elephant in the room.

What will it mean for a work like this to transfer to the screen? Lee (always a thoughtful interviewee), was kind enough to chat about it.

CLR: For me, such a part of watching The Shipment was watching the audience, and keeping tabs on how my responses did and didn’t line up with other people’s, especially across racial and gender lines. And you talked about this as well, if I remember, particularly how upsetting it could be for you at times. The liveness of the work seems essential to this, and so I’d be curious to hear whether you feel The Shipment is or isn’t changed by video, and what it’s like for you to watch a recording vs. the live work.

YJL: I think the audience is more anonymous in the darkness of a movie theater and therefore less uncomfortable (also they don’t have live actors staring directly at them). But I think the discomfort aspect will always be there as long as there is any racial diversity in the audience at all. I think people will still be uncertain whether they “should” be laughing or not, and be aware of the responses of the people around them. A public viewing in a movie theater is definitely much closer to the “live” experience than watching it alone at home on your computer.

CLR: Did you adapt the production for the screen in any way?

YJL: No. But we worked with the editors to try to give it the feel of watching something in a theater, as opposed to watching a film or sitcom. I asked them to cut way down on the close-ups.

CLR: I’m told that Portland audiences were really moved by the work last year; what do you remember from those performances?

YJL: Portland was one of the best audiences we’ve ever had. People were dying to ask those questions about race, to be challenged in that way. Everyone was weirdly grateful. They kept coming up to us and saying, “Thank you for making me feel so fucked-up.” They were also just a really fun and enthusiastic audience—those people LOVE the arts, it’s crazy. It’s almost like they’re not American.

CLR: Along those same lines, I’d be curious to hear what the experience of touring this work has been for you, and to what extent you’ve shaped and edited it as you and the actors have spent more time with it. Are there things now about the recording you wish you could change?

YJL: The actors get better with every show. I’m adamant that they not get bored, so they’re always doing crazy things to surprise each other onstage. Sometimes I get scolded by my production team. They’re like, “The actors are getting too out of control!” There’s an element of danger to it. Also we frequently have to replace actors for any given tour, so the addition of a new person in the room changes everything and people really have to stay on their toes. The only adjustment we made to the text was adding a rant about Europeans after our first European tour when people kept telling us, “It is strange that Americans still have these race problems. We do not have such problems here in Europe.”

CLR: One gentleman told me that the opening monologue made specific reference to Portland’s racial history; is this so, and if so how did you reach that decision to adapt the piece specifically for its setting?

YJL: He must have seen the show in Europe—we only do that in venues outside of the U.S. Although the standup comedian does reference local sports teams and stuff wherever we go, since that’s a typical standup trope.

For more information on TBA events, visit PICA. A more comprehensive list of upcoming events can be found at our Arts & Entertainment Calendar.

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Tags: Theater, Film, TBA, TBA 2010

TBA 2010: Flooding With
Love For The Kid

Oberzan’s homemade Rambo redo is a little
rough around the edges, but it still kills.

Posted by: Aaron Scott and Anne Adams on Sep 15, 2010 at 03:00PM 0 Comments

Okay, Zachary Oberzan, we hear your title’s implicit wish: that we flood with love…for you. I know, I know, the phrase is in the original dialogue of the novel/Rambo film First Blood, which you’ve faithfully recreated alone in your tiny New York apartment. But over and over your movie presents us with variations of–well, you. And one of the you’s, as a matter of logistical necessity, eventually professes love for the other you. And we’re just supposed to roll over and follow your lead.

Well, I may be wise to you, Kid–but I’m still gonna fall for it. This film is one of those undertakings that earns accolades regardless of the product because:

a) you thought of it, and,
b) you did it.

Luckily, there’s more to recommend this movie. In the context of the home-film revolution, The Kid is a beacon of inspiration. Amid a million self-serving webcam rants that channel Stuart “good enough, smart enough” Smalley, Kid’s ambition challenges other no-budget filmers to think and work harder. “We may not have the money, honey,” it seems to say, “but we’ve sure got the time.”

Rambo suffers. These days, we would call his malady PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). A vagrant vet whose military service has left him in the lurch, in First Blood, Rambo the stoic war hero is harassed to the breaking point by Teasle the reactionary small-town sheriff. The relevance of veteran reassimilation in modern America needn’t be explained beyond this exchange:

Teasle: “I don’t kill for a living.”
Trautman: “No, you tolerate a system that does it for you. And when they get back from the war, you can’t tolerate the stench of death on them.”

Oberzan fully inhabits both the character that suffers, and the character that torments, even as the plot progresses and Rambo becomes the assailant and Sherriff Teasle the victim. (Meanwhile, Oberzan also portrays all the other poor bastards on the scene: deputies, woodsmen, state police, and special forces). It’s a multi-faceted exercise in empathy–indeed, love–for all the flawed but well-meaning men pitted against each other in the fray.

Speaking of flaws, here’s what Oberzan’s much-boasted $95 budget didn’t buy:

A dialect coach. A couple of Oberzan’s accents, most notably the southern twang he uses to play Sheriff Teasle, are inconsistent. Fortunately, even a badly-done accent helps differentiate one character from another so the attempt ultimately proves useful. But when Oberzan acts so well, you wish he could sell the accents a little better.

A musical score. The credits don’t attribute the music to anyone so I’m guessing the budget didn’t cover it. Musical moments seem sparse and short, and some of them are choral–so maybe Oberzan has lawfully used public-domain works and short samples. Still, as a scrupulous producer he should tell us what we’re hearing.

One thing that the promos don’t do justice, is how heroically Oberzan attacks his “action sequences”, crawling all over his apartment, rustling tree-branches around, wearing bloody (not ketchuppy) wounds and painful (not putty-like) scars. At one point he even snares and skins a small teddy bear for survival food. With his quick cuts between characters and apt suspense, you almost get swept up enough in the action to forget that it’s all one guy.

All in all, you can’t help but love Oberzan, and The Kid, for conquering against all odds.

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Tags: comedy, Film, drama, Oberzan, indie, solo,

TBA 2010: Atlas/Basinski
vs Reeves/Sverrisson

Culturephile compare-contrasts
two non-narrative film-music collabs.

Posted by: Anne Adams on Sep 14, 2010 at 06:00PM 0 Comments

Photo: Courtesy of PICA

Atlas/Basinsky film bares almost all.
(Photo courtesy of PICA.)

View Slideshow » Photo: Courtesy of PICA

Atlas/Basinsky film bares almost all.
(Photo courtesy of PICA.)

View Slideshow » Illustration:

Skuli Sverrisson plays along—or sometimes doesn’t—with Jennifer Reeves’ When It Was Blue.
(Photo courtesy of PICA.)

They say lighting doesn’t strike in the same place twice. But on Friday, and again on Monday, two layered, strobing, hyperstimulating art films lit up The Works–and resonated with stirring soundscapes by modern maestros.

Friday’s film, an untitled live video mix by venerated filmmaker Charles Atlas, was accompanied by experimental-trance demigod William Basinski. Monday’s epic,When It Was Blue, was created collaboratively between director Jennifer Reeves (Sundance, Princeton, MOMA) and Skuli Sverrisson (Lou Reed, Blonde Redhead).

Palette
Both pieces layered textural stills, over clips of live footage—and in both, the overlaying textures were so fast-changing, they created a film-strip-style flickering effect. In A/B, many of these foreground textures were speckles, and some were digitized fractal patterns (think screensaver). In R/S, however, the textural elements had a more naturalist feel. Many featured multicolor plashes of watercolor paint, some, the parched craquelure of dry soil. To say that one was naturalist, and the other modern, would be broadly appropos.

Both pieces interspersed black-and-white footage, with color, though Blue seemed to cover more of the spectrum, with some sections as resplendent with rainbow hue, as the paintings of Pavel Tchelitchew.

Themes
Several seeming themes emerged in A/B: Beauty. Alienation. Torture. Control. Impending doom. Manifested doom. An interlude of brotherhood, the self, humanistic triumph—followed by more doom. Black-and-white film heriones with electrodes hooked to their heads, the iris of an enormous eye, and much later, the mushroom cloud of an atomic bomb—each took center-screen. The sheer volume and intensity of images, stimulated this watcher to the point of universal numbness. Buddhist enlightenment, or sociopathic detachment? Hard to say. But that mushroom cloud seemed light-years away.

In contrast, by the end of R/S, I was irrepressibly weeping. Maybe after all the footage of brooks and rivers and oceans, my ducts simply succumbed to suggestion. But I remember being gripped by an inarticulate, sentimental, transcendent sort of grief. “Ocean big,” I thought. “Green and deep and sad.”
“Seals swim so smooth, make me cry,” thought eye.

Musical Maneuvers (In The Dark)
Both musicians tethered their explorations to long, low, ambient synth strains, and both scores wafted ephemerally alongside their respective films. But in A/B, Basinski’s musical compositions seemed strictly ex machina—-emanating from a laptop he’d brought on stage. Meanwhile in R/S, Sverrisson played live guitar as the rest of the prearranged score piped in via the PA.

Please Note: If I got this wrong, I’m not surprised. Both musicians sat in dim light, while the audience squinted and strained to see what gear they were using. Sverrisson had a dappled lighting effect, so it seemed like he was amidst trees.

While Basinski kept his music—albeit varied—flowing throughout, an uncanny twist to Sverrisson’s performance, was that he (and all music) sometimes stopped as the footage continued to play, with its own ambient bird-calls and water-whooshes. Conversely, there was a long period when the film went black and silent, and Sverrisson continued to play in darkness ’til it resumed. The remarkable thing was—it took a while to notice these changes. Like a master magician, Sverrisson marshalled audience attention wherever he wanted it to go.

Sense of Humor
A/B: A reclining Daffy Duck, and later a rotating Mariah Carey, could not possibly be taken without a chuckle.
R/S: None. Inasmuch as it’s possible, this film was a totally introverted, asocial experience. The closest the piece came, to a joke, was a brief flash of educational animation, with expanding concentric circles referencing an earthquake’s epicenter. But humor would have seemed particularly pointless, in such a stunning profusion of nature. Jackdaws don’t need jokes, to cackle.

Readers, did you watch these two perfect storms? What did you take away?

For more information on TBA events, visit PICA. A more comprehensive list of upcoming events can be found at our Arts & Entertainment Calendar.

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Tags: performance, Film, performance art, TBA, TBA 2010, The Works

TBA 2010: The Wooster Group

There is still Time… Brother

Posted by: Anne Adams on Sep 14, 2010 at 01:00PM 1 Comments

Illustration: Courtesy of PICA

Planning on seeing Wooster Group’s mindboggling media experiment? Well, There Is Still Time…Brother. And I recommend that you do.

A sensory smorgasbord of live characters, screens-within-screens, furniture, trash, and even dioramas (including toy dinosaurs, which seem to be surfacing everywhere as a postmodern icon), this Wooster Group masterpiece is inexpressibly novel and unflinchingly provocative—but it also sets the technical bar at a level that most “interactive explorations” can’t possibly step to.

In case you didn’t read guest blogger Claudia La Rocco’s rather glowing synopsis, the device is thus: Viewers are surrounded almost 360° by a giant curved screen (there’s a slight gap at the room’s entrance), and swiveling stools provide all-around viewing. The entire wraparound tableau hosts several “shows,” each with its own actors and audio, but all are knit together, and occasionally a character will break frame and move into another “show.” All the action is playing at once, but most of it is blurry and muted, most of the time. But one bright spot gives the audience full audio and picture—literally, a focus.

Now here’s the wilder part: the audience member who sits on the centermost stool, decides by swiveling, which scenes snap into focus, and which ones melt back into the shadows. There’s plenty to choose—anything from Paris Hilton porn, to a chip-bag being crinkled, to a monologue in progress. Audiences respond, then, not only to the action, but to the lead audience member’s choice of content. When they move, do you wish they had lingered? When they linger, do you wish they would move already, and switch the scene? This engagement is the piece’s true theme.

SPOILER ALERT: I now want to touch on content. If you don’t want to know ’til you see it, then swivel away.

The Wooster Group is so confident that no one can match their mastery, they have a character expose their tricks, both philosophical and technical, as part of the piece. On screen, a ginger-haired man very energetically explained how a cluster of twelve outward-facing cameras, filmed an inward-facing set that encircled them (see photo). He went on to touch on a profound truth: third parties always curate what parts of the world we see.

For example: the “show” that most consistently showed war, was an innocent plastic diorama of soldiers in a forest, and it was placed at the screen’s far edges, straddling the spot where the screen cracked—implying that some central aspect of the coverage could be missing entirely. In the diorama, villagers were replaced with soldiers; forestation, with devastation. The man stationed across from the tiny tragedy, was revealed to be shooting at it with a toy gun. “How many casualties?” he yelled to an offscreen presence.

I stayed long enough to see certain parts of the piece twice, and even thrice—but oddly enough, I never got to see the female character complete a thought. (And ironically, I didn’t try to take the center spot and make it happen.) Evidently an opinionated internet radio show host, she launched into the occasional prattle, between lots of “downtime” applying makeup, sighing, and staring into space. At one point, she fellated a partner. But whenever she would open her mouth to speak, the swiveler would tune her out, in favor of the war-hobbyist, the friendly casual guy, or one of the other background happenings. While I don’t want to apply the rigors of feminist philosophy here, it did feel disturbing to see the audience “turn off” the female character, presumably because she seemed like a nattering hag, and then “tune in” to her sexual exploits, as well as the Hilton porn, and even the friendly guy’s crude drawing of a naked woman. Combined Wooster and audience choices, painted women as a distraction—tongue-wagging in various dismissible ways, while foreign nations are bombed and burned. Another illustration of exculsionary curation at play.

It’s hard to leave Brother, and the minute you recoup, you want to go back until you’ve seen it all. When you consider that there are at least five fields of view, each containing 20 minutes of footage, it entails a minimum of 100 minutes of commitment. And that doesn’t account for the pesky center-stager flipping channels—which could easily quadruple that. At which point, you resign to the cruel truth: you’re never gonna see the whole picture. Just like life.

For more information on TBA events, visit PICA. A more comprehensive list of upcoming events can be found at our Arts & Entertainment Calendar.

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Tags: performance, Film, performance art, TBA, TBA 2010, Wooster

TBA 2010: Shirin Neshat

Women Without Men

Posted by: Claudia La Rocco on Sep 14, 2010 at 09:00AM 1 Comments

Photo courtesy of P.I.C.A

I still remember my first direct encounter with one of Shirin Neshat’s video installations: Tooba, in 2003 at the Asia Society. I was blown away by the combination of its sheer sensuality (at once lush and stark) and biting political indictment. How could such an otherworldly fable speak so directly to the world?

Yesterday, I finally watched Women Without Men, the Iranian artist’s feature-film debut (Tonight is the final showing). I was blown away all over again, and intrigued to realize that it and Tooba have the same source material, the eponymous Shahrnush Parsipur novel. It makes sense; this film feels like something its maker has sat with for a long time, turning it over and over in her head and heart until its many separate layers have yielded something new and mysterious.

Women Without Men, which follows the interwoven stories of four heroines, is set in Iran in 1953, and is dedicated to “those who lost their lives in the struggle for freedom and democracy in Iran, from the Constitutional Revolution of 1906 to the Green Movement of 2009.” Neshat’s political urgency is an unmistakable driver; but it never fully consumes her art, so that meanings remain marvelously ambiguous. (In my mind, the film is in total conversation with the Wooster Group’s TBA offering.)

Last night at dinner (Nostrana, hurray!), a colleague and I spent at least a half hour puzzling over its multiple strands, teasing out possibilities and interpretations—and then simply delighting in Neshat’s virtuosic camera. We gushed over individual scenes like they were delicacies (the fallen Garden! the long empty road under a big sky! one character’s ghostly “baptism”!). A true feast.

For more information on TBA events, visit PICA. A more comprehensive list of upcoming events can be found at our Arts & Entertainment Calendar.

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Tags: Film, TBA, TBA 2010

TBA 2010: Zachary Oberzan

A Few Things You Should Know About “Flooding with Love for the Kid”

Posted by: Claudia La Rocco on Sep 13, 2010 at 09:48AM 0 Comments

Zachary Oberzan in his one-man movie adaptation of First Blood.

Photo courtesy of P.I.C.A

What do you get when you mix one man, a driving obsession and a 220-square-foot studio apartment in New York?

An epic film, of course: Flooding with Love for the Kid, Zachary Oberzan’s adaptation of First Blood (the David Morrell novel which gave us Rambo). The film will be screened tonight through Wednesday, and I strongly urge you to check it out. Oberzan is one of the original members of Nature Theater of Oklahoma, where he helped to create the related theatrical production, Rambo Solo, which hopefully will make it out to TBA before too long. He has also performed with the Wooster Group and is currently touring his own work. He’s got serious acting chops, and the mere fact that he was mad enough to make this film makes me smile (let alone that he pulled it off, and how).

But enough about what I think you should know about Zachary. Here’s what he thinks you should know:

Eleven things I want you to know

1. There were 3 rules I set at the beginning of the project.

2. The first rule was I had to do everything myself, just as Rambo had to wage his one-man war by himself.

3. The second rule was that the whole film would be shot in my apartment, using only things that already existed in my apartment, just as Rambo only had what was at hand out there in the Kentucky woods.

4. The third rule was that it was a completely accurate transposing of written word to film. Every scene in the book is in the film, and nothing else, every line of dialogue in the book is in the film, and nothing else.

5. I bent the second and third rules very very slightly. I brought in some pine branches from the park. And I changed a few words. But the first and most important rule remained intact.

6. First Blood is a really great book. I’ve read it more than any other book. It’s my favorite. I think my second favorite is The Catcher in the Rye, or maybe Breakfast of Champions.

7. I thought it would take a year to make my film, but I became very obsessed with it. In a good way. It was so much fun. So it only took about 7 months. I made it in 2007, when I was 33.

8. Most of the budget went to tapes. I spent $60 on 12 mini dv tapes.

9. I didn’t expect anyone to see it.

10. You can watch the Making Of documentary, I Shot Him and All at Once I Didn’t Hate Him Anymore online at my website.

11. I’m going to make a 50 million dollar version, on location in Kentucky. I’ll probably play Teasle.

Flooding with Love for the Kid

For more information on TBA events, visit PICA. A more comprehensive list of upcoming events can be found at our Arts & Entertainment Calendar.

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Tags: Film, performance art, TBA, TBA 2010, Oberzan

TBA 2010: Charles Atlas

With Merce: A Few of my Favorite Things

Posted by: Claudia La Rocco on Sep 11, 2010 at 07:27PM 2 Comments

Photo: Courtesy of PICA

Rifling through an artist’s scrapbook is always fun—especially when that artist is the adventuresome filmmaker and video-artist Charles Atlas, and his collaborator is the great Merce Cunningham. This afternoon’s With Merce screening was a selection of excerpts from films made with and about Cunningham, several of them rarely seen. It was especially poignant to see footage of the choreographer in his final, frail years, and to remember that, with the Cunningham company even now on its legacy tour, these marvelous Atlas films will be one of the chief ways in which he and his art are remembered.

Here are a few highlights from the event:

1. “Just Dancing:” Cunningham alone in his studio, making his rickety way in big black orthopedic shoes to dance at a barre in the room’s center. The music? House, naturally, perfectly fitted to Cunningham’s fluttery, vaguely vogueing arm and torso movements. Even his white nimbus of hair got a little funky. This baby was made for YouTube.

2. Later, during the Q&A, someone asked if MC went out dancing much. Atlas answered: “He did when he was young. He’d tell me stories about going up to Harlem. I always wanted to take him out but he never wanted to stay out that late. But he was great at the disco. In Greece one night, he was kind of drunk [and we all went out]. He didn’t remember it the next day.”

3.What fun to catch glimpses here and there of the former Cunningham dancer Cédric Andrieux, who is performing an eponymous solo by Jérôme Bel at TBA this year. It’s not to be missed. Seeing him today in these films after listening to him last night, it felt like seeing a much-loved friend or relative.

4.In one breath-catching instance, Atlas slipped into present-tense when talking of collaborating with Cunningham. It was easy to pretend for that moment that MC was still among us.

5.It’s nice to know even brilliant artists make lousy home videos; Atlas showed a few snippets of the fuzzy, totally manic camcorder footage Cunningham recorded when he first started making recordings.

6. And, always, the swooping, decisive eye of Atlas’ camera. How lucky, for us, that he and Merce Cunningham found each other.

Charles Atlas

For more information on TBA events, visit PICA. A more comprehensive list of upcoming events can be found at our Arts & Entertainment Calendar.

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Tags: performance, Film, performance art, TBA, TBA 2010

The Mirror

Tarkovsky’s shimmering masterpiece

Posted by: John Chandler on Sep 03, 2010 at 12:00PM 0 Comments

Film geeks are generally of two minds about Russian auteur Andrei Tarkovsky: there are those who bask in his lengthy and lyrical works, savoring each lingering shot like a sip of Chateau Lafite. And there are others who argue that his movies are dull, meandering, plotless, slideshows whose hidden meanings are too obscure to be divined. What’s for certain is the late Tarkovsky had a poet’s eye and an enviable gift for visual composition. This weekend, armchair critics can shuffle over to Clinton Street Theater for a gander at a sparkling new 35mm print of Tarkovsky’s most autobiographical film, The Mirror. In a nutshell, it’s a stirring collection of vivid memories from the mind of a dying man. No hermetic secrets, no secret codes. Just a cascade of unforgettable images.

For a more comprehensive list of upcoming events, visit the Arts & Entertainment Calendar!

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Tags: Film, Russian

Three-Minute Film Festival

Clinton Street Theater presents the fruits of filmmakers’ month-long labors.

Posted by: Anne Adams on Aug 20, 2010 at 10:58AM 0 Comments

Three-Minute Film Festival
They’ve kind of started without you, but it’s not too late to enjoy the fruits of local filmmakers’ labors. A month ago, they signed up to complete a three-minute short film in 30 days, and now you’ve been invited to two red-carpet screening of their snippets. The first, at 3pm, will showcase submissions by the under-18 crowd. The second, at 6, will feature adult films—no, not that kind of adult—but films made by ripe old over-18’s. The Clinton Street Theater suggests you dress to impress, in “creative black tie.”

For a more comprehensive list of upcoming events, visit the Arts & Entertainment Calendar!

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Tags: Film

Local Music Videos

Eye and ear candy, to placate your Monday stupor.

Posted by: Anne Adams on Aug 16, 2010 at 12:00PM 4 Comments

Happy Monday. How much coffee have you had? Enough to track the tricks of this impressive local yo-yo-thrower? Set to the equally dexterous and energetic Hoop + Wire by Portland’s own Boy Eats Drum Machine, Clifton B. proves he’s “just swift enough.”

I know what you’re saying. Those were some radical yo-yo moves, man, but where is the actual wire that the song title implies? Oddly enough, it’s wound its way around Little Beirut’s “Last Light,” which features intricately detailed stop-motion-animated sequences, conceived by band-members who daylight as LAIKA talent.

Culturephile can’t help but wish they’d stuck with the stop-mo motif for the whole piece, despite the art form’s notorious time-consumption. (See Culturephile coverage of Fred, by Misha Klein and Billygoat’s Dioscuri.) But, with an upcoming album release for the band, we suppose the show must go on.

Finally, the following piece, recently released by Portland Cello Project, features marionette puppetry in a scale set, and then not-to-scale live locations. Telling the tragic tale of a displaced shrimp in a big cruel world, this short points up the gulf-pollution crisis in a poignant, accessible way.

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Tags: Portland Art, music, Film, Animation, LAIKA, video, puppet

Weekend Picks!

Ballet dance, barn dance. Opera film, phantom film. And a few tasteful nudes.

Posted by: Anne Adams on Jul 23, 2010 at 12:00PM 2 Comments

Uprising! of OBT
Sat-Sun 7pm Chamber-folk veterans Weinland and Laura Gibson will fuse their reedy croons with the swoops and leaps of ballet dancers from OBT, to elevate both art forms into a swoon-inducing crescendo. While these folk-fusion events are myriad lately in Portland—in the world, they are relatively rare. Get over to The Aladdin Theater and catch one while you can.

Here’s soom footage of a prior Uprising! event, which featured the music of Horsefeathers:

Sauvie Island Barn Dance
Sat 5:30pm If the aforementioned ballet-folk-fusion proves too “cityfied” for your down-home style, take a short scenic drive to Sauvie Island, for the Annual Barn Dance. This time-honored summer event provides a live hootenany band (think fiddles, banjos, possibly some washboard/jug-type claptrap) and all the hay-bale authenticity you can handle. Can’t dance? Not to worry. They’ll have a competent square-dance caller, to help you do-si-do it.

Filmusik: Gulliver’s Travels
Fri 7pm The cheeky opera-kitschfilm collab is back, this time syncing not only song, but also voice acting and Foley (aka, film noisemaking) to the 1930’s animated feature film. Originally penned as a parable about bureaucracy and small-mindedness, this story has taken on a more whimsical life as a fairy tale. Filmusik will likely lighten it up even further.

Backspace Gallery
Through July 31 There doesn’t have to be good art on the walls, for me to enjoy my coffee. Coffee shops know this, and so often when they see me coming, they whisk all the good art off the walls and tack up something unremarkable. However: yesterday as I happened into Backspace, I noticed several starkly beautiful pieces by Alexandra Becker-Black. Large expanses of white space and delicate splashes of monochromatic watercolor combined for surprisingly fresh depictions of the most classic subject: the female nude. Part of a show that will disappear at the close of July, these works seem worth visiting—even if you aren’t looking for a latte.

Fred?
Sun, 11:30am According to its creator, brand-new stop-motion film Fred will premiere at the Living Room Theaters this Sunday at 11:30 am. But when reached by phone, the box office could not confirm the screening. LAIKA (Coraline) alum Misha Klein, whose credits also include Celebrity Deathmatch and Robot Chicken, spent 10 years tinkering with the film, but wrapped it in at Portland’s Studio 13 last winter, and then allegedly took a long-deserved nap on the floor. The lead puppet, Fred, is a reluctant stage performer, harried by an angry boss and riddled with his own self-doubt. With the comic pathos of a hobo clown, Fred anguishes over his stage-fright and awaits his cue. Will the show go on?

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Tags: Art, stop motion, Misha Klein, ballet, chamber, Film, Weekend Plans, Dance, Theater, life drawing

Weekend Picks

Last chances, last dances, and an all-around hoot.

Posted by: Anne Adams on Jun 04, 2010 at 10:30AM 3 Comments

OBT’s Bolero

“If you want to see OBT perform this summer, you’ll have to buy a plane ticket to Korea,” warns artistic director Christopher Stowell. While that may be an option for some, it’s probably easier to catch the season’s last dance, Bolero, this weekend at the Keller. For this program, Ravel’s passionate masterpiece is juxtaposed with the exuberant Russian classicism of Raymonda and the delicate harp-accompanied intimacy of Hush.

Siren Nation’s Dolly Hoot

Tonight, Siren Nation presents its fifth annual Dolly Hoot fundraiser, a Dolly Parton tribute show in which Portland music’s creme femmes (Rachel Taylor Brown, Stephanie Schneiderman, etc.) bring their own interpretations to the iconic smart blonde’s songs.

Best Of The 36th Annual Northwest Film And Video Festival

If you missed last November’s Northwest Film And Video Festival, don’t despair—a new rainy weekend ushers in another chance to go in for some of the Fest’s best entries. And, who knows; a diverse barrage of ideas and themes, may prove a perfect distraction from the same old rain.

Educating Rita
Bag & Baggage Productions’ season closing play, the My Fair Lady-like story of a working-class hairdresser seeking help from an English professor in a quest for refinement, explores the meaning of higher education.

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