Dance: Knife’s Edge

[August 19th, 2009]

SHARP PAIR: Musician Seth Nehil and dancemaker Linda Austin. IMAGE: Christine Taylor

“So, we do hootchie coo, hootchie coo, and then gorilla—BIG gorilla?” the reedy, bleached-blond-haired man asks. “And when does the shaving start?”

His group of fellow dancers freeze and all look toward a slight woman with blunt-cut bangs shot through with wisps of silver who hops up to guide them through the next part of the choreography. After all, it’s Linda Austin’s own language—idiosyncratic, goofy, thought-provoking body language—and she knows how to translate it better than anybody else.

For the past decade, the home base for this Oregon-born veteran of New York’s experimental art scene has been a barrel-ceilinged former Romanian Orthodox church in the Foster-Powell ’hood dubbed Performance Works NW. It’s the space where she’s hosted everything from her own quirky multimedia works to the annual Richard Foreman Mini-Festival and talent show Cabaret Boris Natasha. In the process, she’s ended up fostering other local talent, too. “There are so many people who say [PWNW] was their entry into the dance community,” says Seth Nehil, an experimental musician who started attending Austin’s Holy Goats! improv dance and music sessions in 1998. “It’s the consistency that [makes it] work.”

Austin’s latest project, Bandage a Knife, a wild stew of video footage, power struggles and slo-mo death scenes, is actually a collaboration with Nehil, who is also hard at work developing Pacific Northwest College of Art’s first Sound Art class.

The inspiration is Seijun Suzuki’s absurdist 1967 cult Japanese yakuza film Branded to Kill—a flick in which contract killers shoot bullets through water pipes and rice is used as a sex aid. “A couple of years ago, Seth mentioned, ‘Oh, this movie reminds me of you,’” Austin says, grinning. Now the pair is deep into rehearsal, Nehil tinkering with a new, live-audio mix of fight-scene grunts as Austin experiments with the work’s five dancers.

It’s a familiar scene at PWNW, one the guttering economy hasn’t hampered too badly: “We don’t have any paid positions to lose,” Austin says with a shrug. “We’re too small to fail!” chimes in PWNW co-founder and local lighting designer Jeff Forbes.

That might not always be the case. The pair is trying to secure funding to expand PWNW next year. But until then, they’ll just keep on refining gorilla moves and turning yakuza movies into modern dance. It’s the consistency, you know.

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GO: Bandage a Knife at Performance Works NW, 4625 SE 67th Ave., 777-1907. 7 and 9 pm Friday-Saturday, Nov. 13-14 and 20-21. 7 pm Thursday, Nov. 19. 7 pm Sunday, Nov. 15 and 22. $10-$15 sliding scale. Reservations or advance tickets required.

^Dance Listings

Locust: Crushed

“Dance isn’t about just being in the studio,” Seattle choreographer Amy O’Neal explained in an interview with a Washington cable-TV channel. “It’s about...the way you walk down the street, the way you wash your dishes, the way you put your clothing on, the rituals you have to feel like yourself as you go throughout your day.” That viewpoint holds true with locust, her live/video collaborations with musician Zeke Keeble, which pingpong from pedestrian to fantastical and back again. The pair’s new work for this year’s T:BA Festival (read our full T:BA guide Wednesday, Sept. 2) is all about the “notion of being blindsided.” If that means we get to be caught unaware by O’Neal’s sinuous mix of hip-hop and modern dance, that’s just great, thank you very much. T:BA Festival’s The Works at Washington High School, 531 SE 14th Ave. 6:30 pm Monday-Tuesday, Sept. 7-8. $15-$20. Info and tickets at T:BA Central Box Office, 224 NW 13th Ave. or at pica.org.

Oregon Ballet Theatre 20th Anniversary Retrospective

The city’s favorite newly revived ballet company opens its 20th season with a retrospective blowout of works plus video footage from the past two decades. The bill includes bits from Bebe Miller and Trey McIntyre to newer works from Julia Adam, Yuri Possokhov and artistic director Christopher Stowell, among others. Before you ask, former OBT head James Canfield’s name ain’t on that list. The choreographer—who made dances for OBT about the Doors, insane asylums and vampires during his tenure—declined to participate. Which is a damn shame. Still, we can also look forward to James Kudelka’s Almost Mozart and thecompanypremiere of another Balanchine chestnut—this time it’s the Frenchified Emeralds. Keller Auditorium, 222 SW Clay St., 274-6560. 7:30 pm Saturday, Oct. 10, and Friday, Oct. 16. 2 pm and 7:30 pm Saturday, Oct. 17. 2 pm Sunday Oct. 11. Call 222-5538 or visit obt.org for tickets.

Hofesh Shechter Company

You could close your eyes and toss a dart at White Bird’s 2009-10 program and come up with a dynamite dance experience. The fall lineup already includes Aspen Santa Fe Ballet, Shen Wei Dance Arts and an evening with Ana Laguna and Mikhail Barysh—OMG!—nikov. But for our bucks, the most exciting entry is a full night of works from explosive Israeli choreographer Hofesh Shechter.

The former Batsheva dancer has been racking up the accolades the past few years for his strong, athletic movement. Portland will get an eyeful of his ferociously physical man-brawl Uprising as well as a newer work, In Your Rooms, both performed to the thrum and boom of the company’s live, onstage touring band. Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 SW Broadway. 7:30 pm Wednesday, Oct. 21. $20-$50. Visit ticketmaster.com or whitebird.org for tickets.

ExpecTUtion

Katrina O’Brien isn’t just playing with what her dancers do onstage—she’s tearing up the surface they move on…with help from Montavilla’s Mr. Plywood. The local choreographer worked with seven carpenters to construct a massive, skateboard-parklike floor for her curiously named new work ExpecTUtion, which will take over IFCC this November. A flock of movers will explore the 12-foot dips, rises and slopes of their new world—answering the question of how “our actions depend on the delivery of what we do or do not expect” in the process. Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center, 5340 North Interstate Ave., 823-4322. Thursday-Sunday, Nov. 19-22. Price TBA.