How do you deal with the weight of breakthroughs made by your aesthetic forebears? Linda Austin meets them head on in the great Paired Spectacular: a performance diptych in honor of Deborah Hay & Yvonne Rainer, her two-and-a-half part dance work that opened last night at Performance Works NorthWest (4625 SE 67th).

In “Part One: Universe,” Austin, Richard Decker and Linda K. Johnson improvise movement, responding to one another and to the everyday objects that litter the stage before moving into a sophisticated game of follow the leader. Things are awkward, things are oddball. Movement is frenetic or low-key, comic and always done with the utmost sincerity sans wink or nudge. Austin has worked with Deborah Hay, to whom this section is dedicated, and many of the hallmarks of a Hay performance are here. Whatever the Hay-inspired internal process of the dancer, the viewer notes goofy vocalization, unusual use of unusual body parts (like tongues, say), undancerly movement, and use of props. One would be hard pressed to find three performers more unlike, and their choices in improvisation highlight their differences which can be distracting. But ultimately these differences in style create both dynamic displacements and subtle balance.

Throughout, the small moments of recognition (when a sound becomes another sound) or cohesion as when movements by Austin and Decker, say, briefly dovetail before phasing again are the hinges that hold Paired together as it unfolds.

As my partner in crime noted, Austin is probably the best sound artist in Portland, her sensitivity to the sounds of the everyday (one section is performed to the sound corn being popped in an electric popper) allowing her to mine simple sounds a body makes when it comes in contact with common objects to surprising and sometimes refreshingly comic effect. With a couple of contact microphones, Austin turns a length of dental floss into a wonderful 20 foot long single-string instrument.

“Part Two: Mutt,” the title referring to Marcel Duchamp’s urinal-as-art that blew the doors off what visual art could be, is Austin’s take on the readymade of Rainer’s “Trio A,” her well-known work (performed last year at MoMA) that turned most conventions of choreography and movement upside down. Following Rainer’s self-imposed rules for composing “Trio A”—beads on a string (no repetition), even pacing, don’t look at the audience—Austin composed her own sequence of movements, or what she called an “ersatz” version of “Trio A.” This sequence is performed thrice, the third time by an ever increasing number of dancers who enter at intervals, joining the movement at whatever point it is in the sequence, eventually dropping out to lean head-first on the back wall. In this clown car moment, the only sound is the swish of clothing or sound of foot or body on floor…with the occasional owl hoot from the back wall. It’s like watching a brush stroke executed again and again; it’s familiar and different every time, and it is spectacular.

Paired Spectacular continues tonight, Saturday, with performances at 7 and 9 PM, and one more on Sunday at 7 PM. Tickets: $12 – $15 sliding scale.

If I could introduce you to the work of Portland-based choreographer/dance artist Linda Austin with any performance of hers sight unseen, I’d choose Paired Spectacular: a performance diptych in honor of Deborah Hay & Yvonne Rainer opening Friday, June 18 at 7 PM with performances June 18-20, Friday and Saturday at 7 PM and 9 PM and Sunday at 7 PM at Performance Works NorthWest (4625 SE 67th).

Austin stands out among Portland choreographers as her solo and group works generally extend further into performance to include interaction with mundane props, the use of voice, body-triggered sound, and uniquely: humor. They are less about movement as movement, and yet they don’t wander off the contemporary path into the reactionary world of narrative. The reason Paired Spectacular will be a great intro to Austin is that it finds her addressing the work of two influential dance makers, so you’ll get an intro to the work of Hay and Rainer in addition to Austin’s work, while witnessing one of our best dig into her own influences.

As Austin puts it, “Paired Spectacular is a love letter in the form of a performance diptych, dedicated to Deborah Hay and Yvonne Rainer, two dance pioneers whose work continues to resonate in the bodies and minds of dance experimenters today. Each half of this hinged work pits choreographer [my] own history, compositional inclinations, and processes against that of the two iconic figures.”

Dancers Linda K. Johnson and Richard Decker join Austin for “Part One: Universe,” in which each performer makes an exacting effort, a la the practices of Deborah Hay, to navigate ephemeral states of consciousness, summoning up an unpredictably arcane universe from mundane objects and dancing that remains stubbornly unfixed to any strict pattern.

“Part Two: MUTT” is an homage to, and ersatz version of, Yvonne Rainer’s seminal 1966 work Trio A. After performing a continuous series of highly specific, multi-layered movement tasks as a solo, and then as a duo with Richard Decker, Austin is joined by a mob of 14 Portland dancers in ruffled shirts for a chain-letter version of the piece. Threaded throughout both halves is Austin’s penchant for revealing the magic in everyday materials—dental floss—popcorn—paper bag—brick—used in unfamiliar ways. Even more magic is revealed via the expertise of lighting wizard Jeff Forbes. MUTT features Linda Austin, Jin Camou, Richard Decker, Nancy Ellis, Anne Furfey, Dora Nicole Gaskill, Bonnie Green, Rebecca Harrison, Paige McKinney, Kaj-anne Pepper, Chelsea Petrakis, Danielle Ross, Robert Tyree, Fawn Williams and Taylor A. Young.

Tickets: $12 – $15 sliding scale. Reserve at 503-777-1907.

One of Portland’s more riveting contemporary dancers takes a turn as choreographer. Keely McIntyre, who has danced with Mary Oslund, Tere Mathern, and Hot Little Hands, premieres “Subplot” this weekend, June 10-12 at 8 PM each night at The Headwaters (55 NE Farragut #9). Performed by McIntyre and Jessica Hightower “Subplot” “will explore the presence of darkness as a motivating, obstructing or complicating force” with a score by Jay Clarke.

The evening will also include McIntyre’s “Drift” (2009) with Noel Plemmons of POV Dance who not long ago moved to Portland from the Bay Area, and “High Seas, Wind Easing” (2000) by guest artist Katherine Longstreth who recently moved to Portland from New York where her work was presented by Dance Theater Workshop, David Parker/The Bang Group, the Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Context Theater, the Festival of Independent Dance Artists in Toronto and Piccolo Spoleto in Charleston.

Making kaleidoscope of dance, the horizontal mirrored panels that wrapped Disjecta‘s performance space multiplied Tahni Holt’s dancers in colorful hoodies as Holt’s Culture Machine (in progress) played out. As dancer Kaj-anne Pepper says during the segment he begins by announcing, “Hi, I’m Tahni Holt,” Culture Machine is truly in-progress and will debut in October.

So what did we see? Pepper’s monologue, multiple takes on the artist introducing Culture Machine, employed a device used throughout the evening, once to near brilliant effect. The earphone-wearing Pepper was clearly repeating what he was hearing, including oddball sounds between the takes, and Pepper’s just the kind of charismatic performer that can pull this sort of thing off.

Holt, as always, is a mesmerizing mover, and if at times her choreography for her corps drifted, it mattered little as the mirrors captured and doubled any upper body gesture against the visible rows of audience, making for fascinating form as well a clever self-reflexive viewer experience. And truly, the audience participation element, a kind of insta-choreography that I’m not going to spoil for you, go see it today…which was as funny (at the Friday show) as it was smart, combined with the active, on-stage, intrusive-in-a-good-way presence of videographer and performer Dicky Dahl, made clear the mirroring/echo, live/recorded direction of this developing piece that I think is going to be a strong one. Holt is one few NW choreographers whose ideas are as strong as her movement. She’s dealt before with ideas around viewer/performer/re-performer. I am looking forward to seeing where she goes with this.

As the blond-maned, mic-wielding Thomas Thorson said to the camera, “Did you get that?”

There is one more performance of Culture Machine today at 4 PM at Disjecta.

The issue raised a piece on artinfo.com today, Can Dance be Performance Art? – ARTINFO.com, of the blurring of lines between dance and performance art puts the Portland2010 Biennial at the center of the conversation. Curator Criss Moss has included Tahni Holt‘s Culture Machine in the biennial, with performances this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at Disjecta.

The artinfo piece points to dancers making performance work (notably Tino Seghal), artists including dance in their works, and choreographers inviting artists to choreograph. It’s a chocolate-in-my-peanut-butter/peanut-butter-in-my-chocolate situation that leaves curator Ralph Lemon asking just, “what’s the difference between the performance art and the performing arts?”

PICA’s TBA Festival has long included contemporary dance and performance pieces that blur lines between dance and performance and theater. But the Oregon Biennial never included time-based anything, so Portland2010 is bold and refreshing (in more ways than one).

I was wowed by a preview of work-in-progress Culture Machine Tahni did with Thomas Thorson at Valentine’s for Through the Lens. She told the Mercury’s Matt Stangel that Culture Machine was inspired by, “Werner Herzog’s short documentary, The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner,” in which the Herzog “[blurs] the lines between director, documentarian and character.” You will want to see this. Three performances: April 23, 6 PM; April 24, 5 PM; April 25, 4 PM at Disjecta.

Death & Taxes by Paige McKinney. Pictured: Beth Rankin Loy, Leah Wilmoth, Bonni Stover, Esther LaPointe, Taylor Young

Death & Taxes
Performance Works Northwest
4625 SE 67th
April 15-17 at 8:00 PM, and April 18 at 3:00 PM
$12-$15

This weekend, appropriately, Death & Taxes by Portland-based choreographer Paige McKinney concerns itself with, “how we confront uncertainty and negotiate the fraying edges of the things we hold dear.”

We couldn’t watch McKinney developing the work in the studio, but we can watch her think through the process as she writes several versions of program notes for Death & Taxes on her newly-minted blog. This is my favorite:

From a short list of common human behaviors, like walking, talking, looking around, and a compendium of gestures both mundane and rococo, I culled a movement vocabulary expansive enough to provide fodder for an evening (albeit a short one) of dance performance, yet conceptually flexy-bendy enough to lend itself to recombination, extension, abbreviation, and all the varieties of loving mutilation we inflict on our material in the dance studio.

Even though these sometimes deeply personal gestures have undergone many rounds of abstraction and de-personalization, they are a little shy around strangers. Performing this vocabulary, this movement-language, is like whispering in your ear: you might hear it, you might not, but the important thing is that you leaned in close to hear it at all.

The sensational Rikki Rothenberg does a solo performance tonight, Sunday, April 11 at 7 PM at NATIONALE (811 E Burnside, Suite 122…round back). You’ve seen Rikki dance with Woolly Mammoth Comes to Dinner. It’s an event for “members” of May’s gallery/specialty shop/mini performance space, but becoming a member for a month costs only $6.

The next in the Alembic series at Performance Works NorthWest (4625 NE 67th), over_here: now, choreographed & directed by Richard Decker opens tonight with performances tonight and tomorrow night March 12 and 13 at 8 PM. Decker collaborated on this interactive performance with photographer Chelsea Petrakis and lighting designer Dora Nicole Gaskill. According to the release, Decker “sculpts a transformative, ritual space with latex tubing and intense physicality, blurring the lines between dance and installation art. With philosophical and spiritual questions in mind, over_here: now utilizes lighting, still image and video technology to explore the connection between performer and audience, humans and their environment.”

POV Dance is going to dance the Ford Building (2505 SE 11th), its stairwells, walls, windows, and rails. What’s the Ford Building you say? You know it as home of Gallery HOMELAND.

Mandy Christiansen, Noel Plemmons have choreographed an evening-length work called “The Ford Building Project” in which their nine dancers will move from one end of the building’s ground floor to another, making a moving landscape of architecture, bodies, light and sound. $15 at brownpapertickets.com

Note: The performance runs approximately 65 minutes with no intermission. Seating is extremely limited and options include sitting or kneeling on the ground, with the option of standing. All performances are ADA compliant.

Portland-based choreographer Linda Austin is the final artist to perform “The Metaphysics of Notation” today at noon at Portland Center Stage on the Mezzanine, Gerding Theater at the Armory.

Performance series “The Metaphysics of Notation” finds abstract notation interpreted through a kaleidoscope of methods: theater, movement, music, and sound poem. Third Angle and Portland Center Stage have invited a number of artists from different disciplines to interpret “The Metaphysics of Notation,” an epic, 72-foot graphic score by Mark Applebaum currently installed on the mezzanine at the Gerding Theater at the Armory.

The series is in anticipation of Third Angle’s concert “Chance/Perchance: A Musical Happening,” on Friday, March 5 — featuring work by David Schiff, Terry Riley and Mark Applebaum — at the Hollywood Theatre.