HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE: THE WORLD PREMIERE OF GEORGE HERMS' FREE JAZZ OPERA DEBUT U.S. PRESENTATIONS FOR VANCOUVER-BASED ARTIST GEOFFREY FARMER AND DUBLIN-BASED ARTIST JESSE JONES U.S. PREMIERE OF NEW ZEALAND-BASED DIRECTOR/CHOREOGRAPHER LEMI PONIFASIO'S TEMPEST: WITHOUT A BODY AT THE MILLION DOLLAR THEATER THE SIXTH ANNUAL REDCAT INTERNATIONAL CHILDREN'S FILM FESTIVAL GUTBUCKET CHAMBER ORCHESTRA'S WEST COAST DEBUT
Los Angeles - Building on the momentum of a successful autumn that featured heralded new commissions and daring Los Angeles premieres in both the theater and gallery, today REDCAT Executive Director Mark Murphy and Gallery Director/Curator Clara Kim announce the second half of REDCAT's eighth season. Included in the international program are world premieres from celebrated luminaries in the arts as well as bold bold new voices sure to enrich the creative landscape for years to come. Tickets for the majority of these events will go on sale this Friday, December 17 through REDCAT's box office, by phone at 213.237.2800 and online at www.redcat.org.
"This new calendar announces ambitious and international programs that feature influential artistic voices from more than two dozen countries," remarks Mark Murphy, Executive Director of REDCAT. "Our theater, gallery and lounge will be lively this spring, making an exciting contribution to the evolution of contemporary visual, performing and media arts." REDCAT's eighth season continues to span the globe, bringing together diverse cultural traditions and new innovations, while highlighting artists who are pushing the boundaries of genre and artistic expression.
An exemplary project is the U.S. premiere of Tempest: Without a Body, which will be presented by REDCAT at the historic Million Dollar Theater in downtown Los Angeles. "This is a first for us," remarked Murphy. "I knew I had to bring this prodigious work to Los Angeles, and that it's scale demanded a larger venue, so we are heading a few blocks east to the Million Dollar Theater, a perfect home for this celebrated production." Created by the Samoan-born, New Zealand-based director/choreographer Lemi Ponifasio for his company MAU, this visually stunning and awe-inspiring work entwines formally precise dancing with elements of theater, Polynesian ritual and social activism.
Earlier in the season, REDCAT hosts Show Your Face!, a collaboration between Slovene physical-theater troupe Betontanc, Latvian object-theater masters Umka.lv and the Latvian pop-electronic group Silence. This award-winning project is a virtuosic layering of puppetry, physical theater and dance with live music. Dance artists featured in the new year include South African choreographer Vincent Mantsoe, groundbreaking collaborative duo Eiko and Koma, celebrated Seattle-based choreographer Pat Graney, and Los Angeles' own Meg Wolfe.
Throughout the coming season genre-defying performance works spring from the minds of musical legends. Founder of California assemblage and an influential figure of the Beat generation, George Herms premieres a free jazz opera titled The Artist's Life. Co-founder of the seminal goth bands Bauhaus and Love & Rockets, David J finds new mythic dimensions in the rise and eventual drug and vodka-fueled crash of Andy Warhol muse Edie in Silver for Gold (The Odyssey of Edie Sedgwick). Other musical offerings include Gutbucket Chamber Orchestra, Mark Dresser Trio, John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble, Kasper Toeplitz, Emanuele Arciuli, and Ostad Abbos Kosimov. Also in the new year is an in-depth four program view of the career of Sofia Gubaidulina, one of the great living composers, as well as the return of several REDCAT favorites including Danny Holt, The Harry Partch Ensemble, and California E.A.R. Unit.
In the gallery, the provocative research studio Decolonizing Architecture presents an engaging exhibition on the use of architecture to create an "arena of speculation" about the future of Palestine through February 6, 2011. In February Vancouver-based artist Geoffrey Farmer transforms the gallery into an evolving installation/theatrical stage, in a "sculpture play" where found and composed objects, props, and costumes are altered on site with local collaborators. In April, Kim Beom's characteristic deadpan humor and subversive antics are brilliantly embodied in an installation of related sculptural tableaux called Educated Objects shown with his blueprints, matchsticks drawings and recent video. Finally, in the summer of 2011 Dublin-based artist Jesse Jones presents recent film/video works alongside a newly commissioned work developed during a residency period in Los Angeles that retrieves the artifacts of cultural history and revolutionary politics through the lenses of performance, music, and film.
The Jack H. Skirball Screening Series also continues to break new ground in 2011 with a diverse program of experimental film, video, and animation highlighting the work of Barbara Hammer, Martha Colburn, Fred Worden, Nancy Andrews, Michael Robinson, Betsy Bromberg, and Hartmut Bitomsky, among others. In addition to screenings devoted to individual artists, the series presents a program surveying the influential experimental films created in the San Francisco Bay Area between 1949–1959, as well as a group show curated by Erika Vogt that places the film/video work of visual artists, originally intended for galleries and museums, into a theatrical context. In addition to the Monday night screenings, REDCAT presents a remarkable four-night series that explores new independent Chinese cinema through six feature-length works.
Families and film lovers have learned to anticipate the return of the annual REDCAT Children's International Film Festival. The sixth edition of this beloved festival kicks off on March 26, and over the course of three weekends offers filmgoers of all ages a mind-expanding collection of short film programs from around the world.
ART
Through February 6 | Decolonizing Architecture
Set up as a studio/residency program in Beit Sahour, Bethlehem and recently re-established as the Decolonizing Architecture/Art Residency (DAAR), the studio focuses on the highly contested territories of the West Bank and the use of architecture to articulate the spatial complexities of decolonization within the region
February 18–April 10 | Geoffrey Farmer
For his first solo exhibition at a U.S. institution, Vancouver-based artist Geoffrey Farmer directs a "sculpture play," an evolving installation of found and composed objects, props, and costumes altered on site by the artist and a host of collaborators throughout the course of the exhibition.
April 22–June 19 | Kim Beom
Through a wide range of work that spans drawing, sculpture, video, and artist book, Seoul-based artist Kim Beom explores tension between internal psychology and external reality with a recent series of sculptural tableaux called The Educated Objects (2010) that playfully and subversively unpacks social education and developmental psychology, shown alongside drawings and recent videos. A catalogue focusing on the artist's extensive body of drawings made since the mid-1990s will be published.
July 1–August 28 | Jesse Jones For her first solo exhibition in the U.S., Dublin-based artist Jesse Jones, whose work focuses on the political and social history of cinema, presents a selection of recent film/video works alongside a newly commissioned work that takes as its point of departure the Russian constructivist theater director Vselov Meyerhold's etudes on biomechanics and its influence on popular culture a la Busby Berkeley.
DANCE
January 13–16 | The A.W.A.R.D. Show!
The Joyce Theater Foundation comes to Los Angeles for a SoCal edition of The A.W.A.R.D. Show!, its wildly successful dance event that offers an alternate definition of "public funding" by granting $10,000 to a regional choreographer with the help of the audience's vote.
February 9–13 | Association Noa-Cie Vincent Mantsoe: San
Inspired by the journeys and spirits of the Khoi-San people of Southern Africa, Mantsoe's newest work brings together five dancers of different cultures, in a powerful piece dance that traces the history of a people forced from their land, silenced and subjected to continued brutality.
February 15 | Kasper Toeplitz and Myriam Gourfink: Breathing Monster
Polish/French composer and electric bass player Kasper Toeplitz teams with dancer and choreographer Myriam Gourfink to create an evening of abstracted, hypnotic movement and sound that explores the frontiers between pitch, noise, oscillations and stillness.
March 2–6 | Eiko & Koma: The Retrospective Project
Collaborative partners for more than 40 years, Eiko & Koma, venerated for their ground-breaking dance works, offer a powerfully moving triptych that traverses their early career and delves into dark worlds to elicit a profound contemplation of the unyielding forces of nature and human desire.
April 1–2 | Lemi Ponifasio/MAU: Tempest: Without a Body
From its ominous beginning to its shattered conclusion, this visually stunning work is a ferocious and awe-inspiring reflection on personal liberty and our current world that entwines formally precise dancing with elements of theater, Polynesian ritual and social activism.
April 28–May 1 | Pat Graney Company
Thanks to a national "American Materpieces" program, Alpert Award-winng choreographer Pat Graney is restaging works from a rich span of her creative life, and offering a chance to experience her sumptuous visual language, that uses qualities of time, light and ritual to sculpt powerful meditations on human action and culture.
June 3–5 | Meg Wolfe: trembler.SHIFTER
Full-out dancing collides with a destabilized sonic environment as Los Angeles choreographer Meg Wolfe's latest full-evening work propels a quartet of dancers through unsustainable acts balancing—with the joy, anger, angst, sweat and hell of bodies as its volatile fulcrum.
FILM/VIDEO
January 17 | Radical Light: Experimental Film in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1949–1959
Joining forces with Los Angeles Filmforum, UCLA Film and Television Archive and other venues, REDCAT celebrates the publishing of Radical Light: Alternative Film And Video In The San Francisco Bay Area, 1945–2000 with a series co-curated by the book's editors Steve Anker, Kathy Geritz and Steve Seid.
January 24 | Barbara Hammer: Experimenting in Life and Art
Widely celebrated throughout the world as a pioneer of queer cinema, Barbara Hammer has made over 80 films in a career that spans 40 years. This screening presents two of Hammer's recent works, Generations (2010) and A Horse Is Not A Metaphor (2009).
February 14 | Animating Mayhem: Collage and Painted Films by Martha Colbur
Martha Colburn's handcrafted animations explode with an energy, concentration and a rapid-fire torrent of ideas. Always startling in her use of disparate techniques and free association, Colburn creates films unlike any other, and the screening spans 16 years of filmmaking with 16 films.
February 21 | Body and Mind: The Primordial Cinema of Fred Worden
During the past twenty years New York-based Fred Worden has redefined cinema with his film and digital works, creating concentrated and transcendent experiences for both body and mind. Films include The Or Cloud (2001), Here Amongst the Persuaded (2004), 1859 (2008), Possessed (2010), and others.
February 22 | In Focus: The Humorous, Recent Video Art from Israel, Japan and Mexico
Exploring both differences and commonalities with a special emphasis on the humorous, three consulates, each with a rich tradition in Los Angeles, join together to present an array of video works from their respective nations, curated by Paul Young in association with Gabriel Ritter and Yoshua Okon.
February 28 | The Artist Theater Program
Film/video/installation artist Erika Vogt curates this group show, inviting visual artists who make use of film and video to present their work within the context of a theatrical exhibition venue, opening a dialogue between divergent communities of active makers that have historically overlapped.
March 8 | The Birdwoman and Her Dreams: Animated Works by Nancy Andrews
With characters and stories synthesized from sources including history and autobiography, Nancy Andrews works in a hybrid form that combines research with storytelling, documentary, puppetry and vaudeville. The program presents a selection of shorts along with two of her latest animated works.
March 10 | COINTELPRO 101
Claude Marks of the Freedom Archives screens his film that exposes illegal surveillance, disruption, and murder committed by the U.S. government in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, followed by a moderated discussion with SF8 defendant and organizer Hank Jones and legendary author and activist Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz.
March 26–April 3 | REDCAT International Children's Film Festival
Presented in partnership with Northwest Film Forum, the 6th festival rolls out the red carpet for a mind-expanding collection of short film programs from around the globe, each crafted with care to appeal to the next generation of movie-lovers.
March 28 | Michael Robinson: Victory Over The Sun: Films and Videos by Michael Robinson
Recently listed as one of the top ten avant-garde filmmakers of the 2000s by Film Comment, Michael Robinson has created a singular body of work in film and video over the past decade that explores the poetics of loss and the dangers of mediated experience.
April 4 | Betzy Bromberg's Voluptuous Sleep Series
An active filmmaker since 1976, Betzy Bromberg returns to REDCAT with Voluptuous Sleep Series (2011), her first film in five years and a mesmerizing two-part 16mm meditation on the nuances of light, sound and feeling evoked through the poetic artifices of cinema.
Apr 6–8 | Between Disorder and Unexpected Pleasures: Tales from the New Chinese Cinema
Three days of curated programs reflect the virtual explosion of independent Chinese cinema has experienced in recent years by reaching beyond nostalgia and social protest to plumb surprising corners of Chinese reality with humor that is at times light, dark, saucy, dry, raunchy or conceptual.
April 18 | Eija-Liisa Ahtila: Where is Where?
The Finnish multimedia artist screens several shorts and her critically lauded experimental narrative Where is Where?, in which a four image split-screen evokes and deconstructs the murder of a young French boy by two Algerian playmates during the Algerian War of Independence in the 1950s.
May 2 | Specks of Existence: Hartmut Bitomsky's Dust
Through a web of interviews, poetic ruminations and cinematic investigations, Hartmut Bitomsky's Dust (2007) serves as a philosophical, factual and fanciful examination of the smallest objects that can be perceived, particles that permeate every aspect of life.
MUSIC
January 19–23 | Betontanc and Umka.lv: Show Your Face!
A virtuosic layering of puppetry, physical theater, dance, and music, this contemporary parable follows Little Branko, a faceless snowsuit transformed by puppeteers into a modern-day Everyman, on a dark odyssey through the 20th century.
Jan 28-30 | CEAIT Festival: Iannis Xenakis: Now and Tomorrow Celebrating the way Iannis Xenakis forged new paths of hearing and seeing, three scintillating concerts feature new pieces by composers inspired by the legendary pioneer of music and architecture along with many of the artist's own acoustic and multi-channel electronic works.
February 3–5 | George Herms: The Artist's Life
Known as one of the founders of California assemblage and an influential figure of the Beat generation, George Herms premieres a new free jazz opera that features large-scale sculptural instruments, live and recorded video and a seven-piece orchestra led by jazz legend Bobby Bradford.
February 7 | Mark Dresser Trio
Double bassist Mark Dresser Trio is joined "hyperpianist" Denman Maroney and flautist Matthias Ziegler to push their shared artistic obsessions to even greater depths, making use of unconventional amplification and extended techniques to explore new worlds of sound and intuitive collaboration.
February 15 | Kasper Toeplitz and Myriam Gourfink: Breathing Monster
Polish/French composer and electric bass player Kasper Toeplitz teams with dancer and choreographer Myriam Gourfink to create an evening of abstracted, hypnotic movement and sound that explores the frontiers between pitch, noise, oscillations and stillness.
March 7 | John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble
Acclaimed for its rich, panoramic orchestral textures that retain the power of its members' individual voices, Hollenbeck's twenty-piece ensemble performs a daring mix of pure, heart-on-sleeve lyricism and robust rhythmic propulsion expressing emotions well beyond swing-era clichŽs.
March 9 | Piano And, featuring Danny Holt
Known for his no-holds-barred style and current Piano/Percussion Project that places the pianist amid an array of percussion instruments, calling for acrobatic feats of multi-instrumentalism, Danny Holt performs works by Andrew Tholl, Sarah Seelig, Oscar Bettison and Liza White.
March 24 | Emanuele Arciuli
An evening with Italian pianist Emanuele Arciuli featuring the monumental Concord Sonata by Charles Ives, paired with James Tenney's meditation on the sonata, as well as works by Native American composers Barbara Croall and Raven Chacon.
April 5 | Ostad Abbos Kosimov
Awarded the title of Honored Artist of Uzbekistan in his homeland, Ostad Abbos Kosimov is joined by the CalArts Persian and World Percussion Ensembles and his own Abbos Ensemble for an evening of traditional Uzbek and Tajik percussion music and dance.
April 10 | California E.A.R. Unit
Visually, theatrically and electrically charged compositions form the latest evening from Los Angeles' adventurous new music ensemble, highlighting composers Miguel Azguime, Chris Tonkin, David Dvorin and Shaun Naidoo.
April 14–17 | David J: Silver for Gold (The Odyssey of Edie Sedgwick)
Part delirious one-woman show, part avant-garde rock concert, this production written and directed by David J, co-founder of the seminal goth bands Bauhaus and Love & Rockets, finds new mythic dimensions in the rise and eventual drug and vodka-fueled crash of Andy Warhol muse Edie.
May 8 | Idyllwild Arts Academy Orchestra: What's New?
In celebration of the school's 25th anniversary, the young virtuosi of the Idyllwild Arts Academy Orchestra are joined by world-renowned jazz bassist and composer Rufus Reid to perform world premieres by Reid, Peter Askim, Pierre Jalbert and Jan Radzynski.
May 9 | Gutbucket Chamber Orchestra
The twelve-year-old Brooklyn-based quartet pushes composer-driven, art-rock-tainted chamber jazz into new terrain and boldly proclaims its voice. Gutbucket's West Coast debut celebrates their most recent recording Flock.
May 15–17 | Sofia Gubaidulina
Four programs present a kaleidoscopic view of the career of one of the great living composers, Sofia Gubaidulina. Now in her 79th year, Gubaidulina makes a rare U.S. appearance to share an intensity unrivaled in today's contemporary music scene.
June 10–11 | Partch
Under the direction of John Schneider, The Harry Partch Ensemble and an amazing array of custom-built instruments return to REDCAT"s stage for a concert and film screening that celebrates the inimitable music of American composer Harry Partch.
THEATER
Jan 19-23 | Betontanc and Umka.lv: Show Your Face!
A virtuosic layering of puppetry, physical theater, dance, and music, this contemporary parable follows Little Branko, a faceless snowsuit transformed by puppeteers into a modern-day Everyman, on a dark odyssey through the 20th century.
February 3–5 | George Herms: The Artist's Life
Known as one of the founders of California assemblage and an influential figure of the Beat generation, George Herms premieres a new free jazz opera that features large-scale sculptural instruments, live and recorded video and a seven-piece orchestra led by jazz legend Bobby Bradford.
April 1–2 | Lemi Ponifasio/MAU: Tempest: Without a Body
From its ominous beginning to its shattered conclusion, this visually stunning work is a ferocious and awe-inspiring reflection on personal liberty and our current world that entwines formally precise dancing with elements of theater, Polynesian ritual and social activism.
April 14–17 | David J: Silver for Gold (The Odyssey of Edie Sedgwick)
Part delirious one-woman show, part avant-garde rock concert, this production written and directed by David J, co-founder of the seminal goth bands Bauhaus and Love & Rockets, finds new mythic dimensions in the rise and eventual drugs and vodka-fuelled crash of Andy Warhol muse Edie.
More Here...
episodes in the doomed star's life. The band includes David J (vocals / guitar), Michael Berg (guitar/backing vocals), Ysanne Spevack (violin/viola) and Dave Raven (percussion). To listen to hear some of the music click here 
