Abby Crain – Elephant
Elephant is a study in folding and enfolding, appearing and disappearing, and the space between surfaces. Conceived and constructed by Abby Crain with inspiration from the performers Raha Behnam, Harold Burns, and Olive McKeon. Sound by Adam Sonderberg
Jan 17+ 18, 2014 – 8:30pm
KUNST_STOFF arts
1 Grove Street, SF, CA 94102 [map]
Tickets are $15 – $20 (sliding scale) at EventBrite
Artists Bios
Jess Curtis has created a body of work ranging from the underground extremes of Mission District Warehouses with Contraband and CORE (1985-1998) to the formal refinement and exuberance of European State Theaters and Circus Tents with Compagnie Cahin-Caha (1992-2002) and Jess Curtis/Gravity (2000-present). Along with numerous fellowships and funding awards, his work has been recognized with the prestigious 2011 Alpert Award in the Arts for choreography, a total of six Isadora Duncan Dance awards, the 2011 Homer Avila Award for Physically Diverse Dance, and a Fringe First Award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Curtis teaches Dance, Contact Improvisation, and Interdisciplinary Performance throughout the US and Europe and is currently a Ph.D candidate in Performance Studies at the University of California at Davis focusing on embodiment and performativity in movement-based performance.www.jesscurtisgravity.org
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Abby Crain is an Oakland based artist who makes dances and teaches. She has shown work in NY, SF, and LA. She has worked extensively as a performer, most notably with Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People and Sara Shelton Mann. Her writing and interviews have been published by Itch Performance Journal (LA), PAPER FRONT (Portland), Critical Correspondence (NYC), and the Off Center (SF). She recently curated an event called the NO THANK YOU SHOW, which asked artists to represent or stage work that has been rejected by granting organizations, theaters, collaborators, or even the artist herself. She will be in residence at the Milk Bar in Oakland this March in collaboration with the poet David Buuck, and is engaged in an ongoing polymorphous teaching and research project with Margit Galanter called Art Workouts. www.artworkouts@wordpress.com
Performing with Abby Crain are:
Adam Sonderberg (b. 1978) is a composer working predominantly with concrete-based compositions utilizing the computer as a discreet processing and assembly tool. His selected discography includes over a dozen releases, both solo and ensemble work, published by a number of different labels including: Crouton, Tonschacht, Cathnor, Compost and Height, Entr’acte, and Longbox Recordings. He is one-third of Haptic and the former co-director of Dropp Ensemble.
More info: aporiaberg.tumblr.com | entracte.co.uk/haptic
Olive Mckeon is a doctoral student at the University of California, Los Angeles, writing a dissertation on historical materialism, feminism, and dance studies. She is a member of SALTA (Oakland) and the Sunland Dancers (Los Angeles). Born in San Francisco, she is a northern bird who has been south for too long.
Raha Behnam – Raha is a native of Iran, a citizen of Canada and a current resident of Oakland. She studied dance and anthropology at the University of Maryland and now works at The Exploratorium. Raha is excited to be dancing with Abby again and has developed a newly-found love for elephants.
Harold Burns is a dancer and a student.
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Laura Arrington – Laura Arrington prefers being called Larry. She is currently working on ADULT a collaborative duet with Jesse Hewit through 2013. The piece is being workshopped through residency support from Headlands Center for the Arts, Kunst STOFF Arts, and Ponderosa Tanzland. It will preview at Berlin’s Doc 11 and Cork’s Firkin Crane in July. Adult will premiere at Portland Institute for Contemporary Arts’s TBA festival in September 2013. Larry’s choreography has been seen locally at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Z Space, The Lab, CounterPULSE, ODC, The Garage, Cell Space, Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory, Supperclub, backyards, living-rooms, and in New York at The American Realness Festival. She has been an artist in residence at Headlands Center for the Arts, CounterPULSE, Kunst STOFF Arts, the Garage, and through ODC’s Sandbox Series. She created/curates SQUART, a show that gathers artists to create spontaneous performance works. In two years, SQUART had over 140 participants. Including artists like Big Art Group, Meg Stuart, Keith Hennessy, and Annie Sprinkle. She’s been a guest artist in the University of San Francisco’s Dance and Social Justice Department, an artist for YerbaBuena’s Bay Area Now Festival. She is a core member of Keith Hennessy’s Turbulence. She has choreographed for the Cutting Ball Theater, where her work was nominated for a Bay Area Theater Critics Circle Award. She has collaborated with Big Art Group, Erika Chong Shuch, Axis Dance/David Dorfman, Jess Curtis, Keith Hennessy, Amara Tabor Smith, and with many others in contexts that range from drag to video art . She has a BFA in dance from The University of North Carolina at Greensboro where she focused on choreography, art, and gender studies Her work has been supported by The MAP Fund, Rainin Foundation, Zellerbach Family Foundation, New Stages, Dancer’s Group Lighting Artist in Dance Grant, and Theatre Bay Area’s CA$H grant.
