New Genre Festival draws repeat performances
By James D. Watts Jr., 10/01/2000
Living Arts of Tulsa's current home, east of downtown on Kenosha Avenue, is a little off the beaten path, a place you're not likely to just happen to find.Which, in a sense, is perfectly appropriate.
"Before we moved out here in February, we took a survey of our patrons," said director Steve Liggett. "We were concerned, because our (former) location on Brady Street was a little more obvious and easier to find.
"But the one comment we got back from these surveys, time and again, was that wherever we ended up, our patrons would find us," he said.
The same thing seems to be true of the artists who will be participating in Living Arts' eighth annual New Genre Festival. This is one of the few times in the event's history that the majority of performers are making encore appearances.
Despite the encouraging words of that aforementioned survey, Living Arts plans to make it a little easier for its patrons to find the sort of cutting-edge visual and performance art featured at New Genre.
"We've got so much more room in the new space that it's opened up new windows of opportunity for us," Liggett said. "But at the same time, we're also trying to get more of what we do out into the community. This is our homebase for now, but we don't want to confine ourselves to this one place."
So events for New Genre Festival will be held at three other venues: the Tulsa Performing Arts Center, the Nightingale Theater and the Philbrook Museum of Art.
In addition, many of the artists at this year's festival will be holding workshops in their given disciplines.
"There is a good section of our audience who want to go beyond just watching a performance or looking at the work of art," Liggett said. "The workshops are a perfect opportunity for that."
Although the New Genre Festival does not officially begin until Thursday, the first event is a workshop at 11 a.m. Wednesday by Spitting Image, from Seattle, Wash. Franklin Joyce, the video half of this duo (the other member is metal sculptor Gerard Tsutakawa) will give a presentation on the technical aspects of Spitting Image's planned installation for New Genre. The workshop will be held in room 211 in Phillips Hall at the University of Tulsa, Fifth Place and College Avenue.
The opening of that installation, titled "Remember When We Thought Television Was Flat & the Center of the Universe?", will also mark the official opening of the festival, 5 to 8 p.m. Thursday at the Living Arts Space. Three curved translucent screens surround a cylindrical screen; the still images projected onto the outer screens are choreographed to the sound and video coming from the central cylinder to create a 360-degree video environment in which viewers can experience and explore multiple narrative techniques. This exhibit will remain on display through Oct. 31.
At 8 p.m. Thursday will be the performance by Seaberg Acrobatic Poetry and Verbal Sculpture. The husband-and-wife team of Steve and Ronnog Seaberg first presented this work during the 1996 Olympic games in Atlanta. The couple -- both in their late 60s -- strike a series of acrobatic poses calling for strength and balance, while Ronnog reads original poetry and Steve, on occasion, plays a saxophone.
Even Liggett agrees this act is "quirky, to say the least. But the Seabergs have gained quite a reputation over the years, especially in the Southeast. We've been getting all sorts of calls from people wanting to know when they will be appearing here."
Serving as master of ceremonies for the Friday and Saturday events will be performance artist Kelly Cresap. Cresap, who holds a doctorate in English literature from the University of Virginia, has worked as a freelance artist, musician, teacher and journalist, and now heads Healing Coyote Ministries. Cresap also will conduct a workshop on how to "Invoke the Inner Coyote," about finding creative ways to counter adversity, 4 to 6 p.m. Saturday at Living Arts.
Video-performance artist Dan Kwong returns to Tulsa to present his latest multi-media work, "The Night the Moon Landed on 39th Street," 8 p.m. Friday in the Liddy Doenges Theater of the Tulsa Performing Arts Center, 110 E. Second St.
"The Night the Moon Landed on 39th Street" is about the wonder and innocence of childhood, represented by some unique phases of the moon -- the image of it so large and low in the night sky that it seems you could touch it, and the thrill of watching men fly rockets to it and walk on its surface.
The Los Angeles Times, in a review of this work last year, said, "In a complicated staging that features oodles of video clips and a variety of hilariously low-tech effects, Dan Kwong bridges the gap between performance art and family entertainment. It's a virtuosic showing."
Friday at 10 p.m. will be the opening of two exhibits at the Nightingale Theater: Tulsan Patrick Marcoux's "Diogenes Slept," and Norman artist Chris Wollard's kinetic sculpture,"The Loki Ball." These two exhibits will remain on display at the Nightingale through Oct. 26.
Also at 10 p.m. Friday at the Nightingale Theater will be the performance of "White Noise," by the a.k.a. performance group. This group of award-winning women performance artists created a sensation last year with their work, "Body Counts." The piece the six members will perform this year is having its world premiere in Tulsa.
"White Noise" deals with all the manifestations of -- and possibilities that might arise from -- the hum and buzz that underlie modern life. a.k.a will also conduct a workshop in performance, "Shock and Annoy in One Easy Lesson," from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Living Arts Space.
Ela Lamblin and Leah Mann -- who together make up LelaVision -- make their third Tulsa appearance under the auspices of Living Arts 8 p.m. Saturday at the PAC's Doenges Theater, with their presentation of "The Banging Bamboozles." LelaVision creates its own unique instruments -- like the Live Wire (a 35-foot horizontal harp) and the Rumitone (a tubular sit-and-spin sculpture) -- that the player must use his or her body to operate, so that playing the instruments becomes a kind of dance. LelaVision's workshop, titled "Interplay," will be 1 to 4 p.m. Thursday at the Living Arts Space.
The video arts group NNeng, whose works have been shown at past New Genre Festivals, will present "The Vertical Highway from Fatal Lightning Series," a live improvised video/audio performance, 10 p.m. Saturday at the Nightingale. The group's workshop on cutting edge video techniques will be 5 to 8 p.m. Sunday at the Nightingale. New Genre Festival conclude with the traditional New Video Matinee, featuring "The Best of the Dallas Video Festival," 2 p.m. Sunday at the Philbrook Museum of Art. The four works to be show are "Nest of Tens" by Miranda July, "Pony Glass" by Lewis Klar, "History of Glamour" by Theresa Duncan and "Verso Negro" by Ben Levin.
The New Genre Festival is made possible with the assistance of the Oklahoma Arts Council, the Arts and Humanities Council of Tulsa, the Kravis Foundation, Tulsa Performing Arts Center Trust and the Philbrook Museum of Art.
Eighth annual New Genre Festival, presented by Living Arts of Tulsa
When: Thursday through Oct. 8
Where: Living Arts Space, 308 S. Kenosha Ave.;
Nightingale Theater, 1416 E. Fourth St.;
Tulsa Performing Arts Center, 110 E. Second St.;
Philbrook Museum of Art, 2727 S. Rockford Road;
University of Tulsa, 660 S. College Ave.
Tickets: Festival pass, $35;
tickets for individual events, $5-$12 per person;
workshops, $15 per person.
Available through Living Arts, 585-1234, and the PAC ticket office, 596-7111 or www.tulsapac.com.