Wanted to share this article with y'all from Bomb Magazine online. Many of the DiverseWorks dance junkies should remember Michelle Boule who danced in Donna Uchizono's Approaching Green and Miguel Gutierrez and the powerful People's Difficult Bodies at DiverseWorks a couple of years back. Last year she performed with that same show with MG&PP at Austin's Fusebox Festival (going on now! check it out.) She also has danced in Deborah Hay's work If I Sing To You that I saw at the 2008 Melbourne Festival. In all of these works (and in real life), Michelle is outstanding. I love how in the article she talks about her own growth through others' work, the intersections of dance/theater and developing her own choreographic voice. Can't wait to see what she's up to next. -Sixto
We’re thinking big and planning accordingly. DiverseWorks has recently launched a strategic planning process that will chart the organization’s course for the next three to five years. With financial support from the Houston Arts Alliance and the Andy Warhol Foundation, DiverseWorks has hired Callahan Consulting for the Arts to facilitate a planning process that is national in scope. This process will involve input from staff, board, artists, funders, audience members, and collaborative partners in an effort to focus the organization’s energies around mission-driven goals and plans for managed future growth. What this really means is that we get to set aside time to really talk about what we do and why we do it. DiverseWorks was founded to serve artists. 27 years later, service to artists remains at the core of what we do. We’re excited about what the next 27 years holds for our organization, for the arts in Houston, and for our national cultural growth and evolution. We see this strategic planning process as a time for both introspection and serious brainstorming regarding DiverseWorks’ role in the national arts ecology. We’d love to hear from you regarding things you love about DiverseWorks, things you would like to see more of, or things you think we could do better. Let us know what you think. Believe me, we’re listening.
Diane Barber Co-Executive Director & Visual Arts Curator DiverseWorks ArtSpace
The idea of Texas has been firmly etched in James and my memories since 2005 when we began talking and thinking about Westerns. It seemed to occupy a space in both our minds and it seemed so familiar….heat, long shadows, cowboys and fake blood. Despite never having set foot in the US, let alone Texas we made a show about Westerns, or rather, a show about the memory of an imagined Western.
The first word of the piece is “Texas”. Every time we perform the piece it’s in Texas (where else could it be?!), so we wondered what would happen when we did it in Texas for real. In the show Texas has always been a faraway TV screen, in the same way the blood is made from ketchup and the scenes are generic and the guns are just the audience making gun shapes with their hands and shouting ‘peow’. Now the eruption of the Icelandic volcano has stopped us travelling I can really feel the 3000 miles between us and the real thing (if, in fact, it is real. All my favourite Westerns were filmed in Spain, masquerading as the Wild West).
It seems ironic that we were/are so close to performing in Houston and Austin, but we can’t quite make it over- first our visas didn’t arrive in time, then the Icelandic volcano stopped all air travel in and out of Europe- so Texas is still on the horizon but all we can do it imagine how it is, and we imagine it to be hot, dusty, all the men are cowboys or undertakers or bartenders or law men. We keep drifting into Westerns.
So we’re still here, on the other side of the Atlantic with our suitcases packed, trying to get to the place we’ve been thinking of for so long, waiting. Maybe Texas is destined to be only a memory for us, but I hope not. We want to say “Texas” at the start of the show and mean it for real this time.
-Gemma (pictured above)
Action Hero is Gemma Paintin and James Stenhouse. They are UK based artists making performance. www.actionhero.org.uk
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Hey Folks, The Yes Men are coming!! That's right, the fly in, all that's wrong w/ the world's, ointment will be setting up shop(for five weeks) at DW... And we need your help! We need 3 male Mannequins ( which are not easy to come by apparently). Oh, and with heads! If any of you have any leads PLEASE contact Jon: jread@diverseworks.org
Also.. We are having a painting party on April 18th+19th. Its going to be a blast. Trust me! We'll be painting the entire from black to white. There's nothing like it. Again, if you are interested, drop me a line. Xoxox-Jon
This week, we'd thought we'd let our interns blog. So here's what one of our interns, Abi Semtner, has to say.
So I’m sitting here trying to think of what to write because I’ve never done one of these things. Ridiculous…I know.
Being an artist is hard work. Recently I’ve been struggling with going in a new direction with my own artwork. Partly because some teachers have pushed me towards it and partly because I know I need to. That’s what this is all about right? How boring would it be to do the same painting your whole life!?! I’m realizing how important connections and experiences are to my own work. People connecting with other people, and mainly me connecting with other people (I’m trying to stop being such a painfully shy person). Since I started interning at Diverseworks I've been able to define the new direction I want to take in my artwork easier. A performance by a group called SO Percussion at Diverseworks really brought this idea home for me. See how Diverseworks has already helped in my crusade against shyness! The performance brought me to tears. Seriously!
I guess you could call it their closing piece; it involved one of the four members Josh Quillen making connections with certain audience members. It’s hard to explain but Quillen ran to these certain audience members and politely asked them to yell “I Love You Jason” as loud as possible to try and get Jason Treuting (another SO Percussion member) attention. While said audience members were trying to profess their love the other three members (Jason Treuting, Adam Sliwinski, and Eric Beach) were only paying attention to the piece they were playing that gradually got louder and louder and louder. So if you can imagine an audience yelling at the top of their lungs (which did happen because Quillen eventually recruited the whole audience) at one performer “I Love You Jason”, it was kind of an epiphany for me. How often do I ignore possible connections? So thank you Diverseworks and SO Percussion!
Abi Semtner is a graduate student, studying painting and drawing at the University of Houston.
DiverseWorks members do it with style, contemporary flair and more importantly they do it at DW. What you might ask? See amazing programs, support an fixture in the Houston arts scene and, of course, have a ball. Where else can you get up close and personal with an elephant, be openly invited to peek into a room, get all dolled up for Debutante Ball and see dancing zombies? At DiverseWorks that's where. So if you are a current member, thanks for all your support and we love to see your happy mug around DW. Not a member or you have let your membership lapse, we'll let me make it easier for you (just click here.)
Wow. It's been a few weeks since our last post. Yikes! Sorry for the lack of posts but it's been a crazy couple of weeks at DiverseWorks with the Debutantes Run Wild Gala, Allison Hunter's Zoosphere and Kelly Richardson's Twilight Avenger. The staff of DiverseWorks has been busy but hopefully we will return to a more steady blog schedule very soon.
Recently I have been trying to investigate which artists and art organizations have been using video/social media in an interesting and creative way. My focus over the last few weeks has been primarily on You Tube/Vimeo. However, I am discovering more and more avenues to share your work (For example, The Yes Men On Babelgum). Although there is lots of research to be done, I figured that I would share some of my favorite discoveries.
Michelle Ellsworth -Hamburger Sex
Michelle Ellsworth has performed at DiverseWorks a few times and most recently with The Objectification of Things. Maybe you remember "Can I give a Shout-out to Carbon?"Probably one of the wittiest performers that you will ever see, Michelle Ellsworth created this video for her performance and it still makes me giggle. Please be advised-If you are a vegetarian or vegan, this might be a little unsettling.
Dance Theatre Workshop- Twitter Choreography
DTW creates a video every few weeks with themed choreography from Twitter suggestions.On Tuesdays, they ask for the suggestions, then they pull together the responses, find an awesome person(Ursula Eagly, Gang Dance, Ashley Tyler and many more) to perform them and film it.
http://www.dancetheaterworkshop.org/blog/2010/01/20/twitter-community-choreography-20-part-1/
Creative Time's Holiday Message Creative Time joined forces with a great young magician named chris k to create this video/trick. It's a creative fundraising technique to raise money for Creative Time.I would love to know how much money they raised.
Live! from PantsuitLand I'm not sure if this visual /performance piece is still happening but I always enjoyed it. The host PJ Chavez (in real life artist Jill Pangallo) takes this piece around to various art events and interviews attendees.
Zoe Juniper-the Devil you know is better then the devil you don't
Performing artist Zoe Scofield and visual artist Juniper Schuey posted small clips of their work online. I saw a performance by Zoe Juniper at the National Performance Network conference in Seattle a few years ago and I still think about it.The video does not do justice to how beautiful this performance was but it is a lovely reminder.
