Razor's edge
JAMES D. WATTS JR. World Scene Writer, 10/04/2003
(Top) The three faces of Falk -- Jeff Falk, that is. Falk's performance art piece "Life's Rich Pageant" employs a variety of masks and props to create stories that find the bizarre within the mundane. Below: LelaVision's Ela Lamblin sets stones a-singing as he and partner Leah Mann endeavor to express the "Rhythm of the Landscape." Both works will be presented Saturday as part of the Living Arts of Tulsa New Genre Festival. Bottom: Robert Bubp's created a site-specific installation about Tulsa for the New Genre Festival that is on display at the Alexandre Hogue Gallery at the University of Tulsa. Courtesy photos
New Genre Festival presents artistic works with a sharper bite
Just about everything the 11th annual New Genre Festival offers those seeking art with a sharper edge is to be had Saturday, at venues throughout Tulsa.
The three major performance-art works at this year's festival, which is sponsored by Living Arts of Tulsa, will be presented Saturday evening.
The Nightingale Theater, 1416 E. Fourth St., is hosting a performance art extravaganza Saturday, beginning at 8 p.m. with "Annotations," a trilogy of works by dancer-choreographer Helena Thevenot and video artist Benton-C Bainbridge.
Thevenot is one of the world's leading butoh artists, a modern form of movement art developed in Japan in the 1950s, that was conceived as a reaction both to traditional Japanese dance and theater and Western dance forms. It is the search for a very ancient form of art in which ritual and artistic creation are combined seamlessly.
"Tulsa has never seen butoh before," said Living Arts Director Steve Liggett.
"It's an incredibly powerful experience, and combining this with the real-time video work of Benton-C Bainbridge, who's probably the world's top VJ, makes this something not to be missed."
The three works that make up "Annotations" include "The Moment Prior," in which Thevenot performs to a live electronic music score and video projections manipulated by Bainbridge. The second act is a real-time video by Bainbridge. The show concludes with Thevenot's solo piece "Xochitl (Flower)."
Following this performance will be "Life's Rich Pageant," the full-length performance-art work by Jeff Falk, which combines costumes, masks and odd props to present stories that take events from the artist's life and transform them in strange yet compelling ways.
"Life's Rich Pageant" begins at 10 p.m. Tickets for it and "Annotations" are $12 for each show ($6 each for students), and will be available at the door.
"Rhythm of the Landscape," the latest creation by the duo LelaVision, will fill the Liddy Doenges Theater of the Tulsa Performing Arts Center, Second Street and Cincinnati Avenue. The performance begins at 8 p.m. Saturday, and tickets are $15 adults, $6 students (call 596-7111 to reserve seats).
"Rhythm of the Landscape" is one of LelaVision's "Physical Music" works, integrating music and movement in a unique way.
Ela Lamblin is a musician and inventor, while Leah Mann is a dancer and choreographer. Together they invent instruments that require the player to use his or her entire body to create sound, so that the "choreography" becomes the "music."
Exactly how Lamblin and Mann achieve this synthesis will be the subject of a special workshop Saturday afternoon, beginning at 3 p.m. in the Kaiser Rehabilitation Center's second floor activity room, 1125 S. Trenton Ave.
"Physical Music and Rhythms in the Body" is designed for students and adults. It will explore polyrhythms in the body within the context of the cycles in nature, sound and movement, as well as express the LelaVision philosophy that "one must never let the fear of being 'bad' at something stop them."
On Sunday will be the New Genre Festival's New Video Matinee, featuring a dozen of the best videos from the Dallas Video Festival. It will be from 1 to 5 p.m. in the Williams Conference Center of the Philbrook Museum of Art, 2727 S. Rockford Road. Tickets are $7 and available at the door.
Also on display are the festival's two major visual arts installations, Tanya Synar's "The Sea," on display at the Living Arts Space, 308 S. Kenosha Ave., and Robert Bubp's "Build/Place/Construct," at the Alexandre Hogue Gallery in Phillips Hall of the University of Tulsa, Fifth Street and College Avenue.
For more information about New Genre Festival, call 585-1234.