Dance Review: Alembic Artists in performance
April 14, 2024
The 10th cohort of Alembic Resident Artists presented their new experimental dance pieces to a sold out crowd of fans, friends, and family at Performance Works NW.
The 10th cohort of Alembic Resident Artists presented their new experimental dance pieces to a sold out crowd of fans, friends, and family at Performance Works NW.
The contemporary dance company presented the world premiere of works by three internationally recognized guest choreographers, each of whom explored the theme of secrets in distinctly different ways.
The group exhibition, curated by Cleo Davis and Nina Amstutz, brings together works by artists and organizations that highlight histories of oppression and resistance. Recounting and engaging with the past allows for the imagining of a more equitable future.
The new center, whose name means “butterfly,” seeks to create a “microscopic utopia” for artists who are often dispossessed.
“Las Vegas Ikebana” celebrates five decades of friendship between Maren Hassinger and Senga Nengudi. On view are individual works, collaborations, and ephemera that reveal the richness of their creative intertwining.
In its enrapturing show, ‘I Didn’t Come to Stay,’ this acclaimed tap and live music company celebrated the depth and virtuosity of tap’s Afro-diasporic roots.
Seven of Portland’s local dancers come together for an evening of solos, duets, trios, quartets, and quintets that reflect love and camaraderie.
Melding dance, videography, music, poetry, and even virtual reality, ProLab Dance world-builds with ocean.
“BREATHING-LIGHT,” on view at Oregon Contemporary, offers viewers the chance to surround themselves with the surface of the sun. Hannah Krafcik contemplates this perspectival flip.
The sculptor’s show is the second offering in the collective’s ‘After Image’ series. Herrera’s multi-colored, abstract sculptures made from found materials reflect on the cultural resonance of discards.
For this dance teacher and Contact Improvisation devotee, gender and movement are fluid: “We are in constant motion—that’s life. We’re constantly evolving. We are the transition.”
Community organizer Nik Portela embraced The Dalles as their home, tipping the rural town’s local culture toward more LGBTQIA2S+ acceptance.
Hannah Krafcik speaks with three gender-nonconforming folks about how it is possible to feel thousands upon thousands of years old and very young all at once.
In the latest installment in the ‘Gender Deconstruction’ series, Hannah Krafcik talks with Oregon Coast resident Daphne Sprinkle about transfeminine identity and community embrace.
Portland Center Stage Actor Treasure Lunan and Associate Artistic Director Chip Miller discuss gender in theater.
Through music, movement, and history, this ambitious endeavor affirmed that we all have power to levy in the collective quest for racial justice.
In the latest installment of ArtsWatch’s Gender Deconstruction series, game designer and self-described “science communicator” Olive Marion Gabriel Joseph Wick Perry talks passion projects, day jobs, and making it all work.
The retrospective “Bonnie Lucas 1978-2023” is the first show in ILY2’s new Pearl gallery space. Hannah Krafcik considers the coded meanings of the bejeweled and bedecked compositions.
A nonbinary child and their parent discuss identity formation, harmful stereotypes, and trans joy.
Landscape designer Crow Lauren and metalworker Carson Terry discuss their trades.
The first artist profiled in ArtsWatch’s new Gender Deconstruction series reminds us that things are never as they seem.
Hannah Krafcik kicks off a new series of essays for ArtsWatch about gender nonconforming and trans experience.
Faculty transitions open up a new position and the opportunity to transform how the department teaches dance at the intersection of social, political, and creative movements.
The fall production reflected Shaun Keylock’s continued commitment to preserving Portland’s history of dance while finding his own niche as a choreographer in its future.
The artist’s fall show “SENSITIVE CONTENT” explores censorship, art history, and societal collapse in full-gallery installation of interrelated mediums.
Muffie Delgado Connelly and Tahni Holt’s collaboration invites audiences into a world of imagination in this time-shifting production.
Singer/actor Susannah Mars and friends are creating a film that explores grief, loss, love, and the connections they forge.
A co-founder of Ori Gallery, Vivas has stepped away from arts administration and organizing in order to focus on their studio practice. Vivas discusses their art and “finding the playground at the end of the world” with Hannah Krafcik.
The group of sculptures at PICA resists easy categorization but Hannah Krafcik finds multiple points of entry to consider.
Hannah Krafcik speaks with Takahiro Yamamoto about the creation of his latest performance work.
Taylor’s show “Breathe when you need to” opens June 10th and explores the concept of masking through portraits. Hannah Krafcik visited the artist in their studio to learn more about the works’ multilayered inspiration.
Jenn Sova’s exhibit probes the failed hopes and expectations of fatherhood by juxtaposing remnants, personal effects, and organic materials.
Dancer and writer Hannah Krafcik takes us inside a two-year project by youth and adult dancers to create a piece inspired by children’s games.
“These dancers fit together with a perfectly nonsensical logic”: Two seasoned choreographers dig into surrealist influences at Performance Works NW.
The Portland company dives into new work by choreographers Yin Yue, Ihsan Rustem, and Joseph Hernandez.
The storied veteran dance artist makes connections as she creates a memorial to colleagues who’ve passed on.
“Rosalie Knox: Conversation with the Last Unicorn” features abstract compositions inspired by the club scene and the unexpected medium of nail polish.
Artist cooperative Physical Education’s DIY exhibition weaves the history of their collaboration into personal gift shop memorabilia.
Seasoned choreographer Faye Driscoll’s new exhibition at PICA invites audiences to reimagine relationships.
The Shaun Keylock Company returns to the stage after two years to perform the hits of Gregg Bielemeier, a beloved Portland choreographer.
Hannah Krafcik reviews the Serbian artist’s first solo show in the United States.
In Aki Onda’s exhibition at PICA, the collections find their spirit and fly toward the future.
Subashini Ganesan’s pandemic-extended tenure as Creative Laureate still has one final project.
The Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. School Museum of Contemporary Art has faced a difficult year, but it has adapted to the pandemic and kept its students engaged.
Renee Sills created Embodied Astrology to connect with herself, her clients and to make sense of the world.
Local artists Roz Crews and Ralph Pugay plan a symposium for the times at the Crowne Plaza Hotel.
Mariana Valencia discusses her performance work, Album, opening today as part of the Time-Based Art Festival
A project fosters creative dialogue between incarcerated artists in Portland and photographers from around the world
Tidal Rock—a green space in Astoria, Oregon, formerly overgrown and obscured from the public eye—has received a makeover courtesy of three artists, Agnes Field, Brenda Harper, and Jessica Schleif, who have rallied their community to create a space for public art in
This past April, I had the pleasure of interviewing artists kiki nicole (they/them) and ariella tai (they/them) about their work through the first and the last—an experimental film/video and new media arts project. This endeavor offers a platform to amplify and support
Give to our GROW FUND.