Donna Uchizono

Last night, PICA hosted an informal get-together to let people know how the upcoming Time-Based Art Festival is shaping up. It was a quick and casual affair, but Mark Russell, Kristan Kennedy, and Erin Boberg Doughton still managed to get us all excited for the 10 days of experimental and challenging programming. Russell said that ‘07 would be “all about surprises” and “completely different than last year, although he didn’t say exactly how. (He did admit that he was surprised last year to realize that Portland audiences could handle “just about anything.” [Golly, thanks! The feller in the back turtleneck says we’re durn near as sofisticated as them audiences back east!])

The bulk of the mini-press conference was them throwing out little soundbites for for the bigger acts, which I will try to decipher from my notes after the jump (lots o’ content):

Russell kept labeling the acts the "blank" moment of the festival, as such:

The "Beauty" moment will come via the Donna Uchizono Dance Company, whom Russell described as the "Trisha Brown of our generation."

The "Funk" moment will be delivered by Marc Bamuthi Joseph, national poetry slam champion and former backup dancer for Savion Glover.

The "Challenge" moment will occur one seventh of the way through the Elevator Repair Service performance of Gatz, a marathon reading of the Great Gatsby, complete with dinner service. (It has to be mentioned that Andy Kaufman did this exact same bit at college campuses in the '70s, reading Gatsby until the audiences gave up and went home. One of his biographies said that he made it all the way through the book once at a school. I still contend that Kaufman was the best performance artist of the 20th century.)

The "Mystery" moment = the Dutch theater collective Kassys, who will be presenting a work on the topic of grief that's half film, half performance.

At this point, they mercifully dropped the "moment" delivery.

Also on hand: A group of Canadians who will spend a week training 10-year-olds how to cut hair. A the end of the festival, you can get a trim from a 5th grader.

On opening night at Pioneer Square, Rinde Eckert will coordinate multiple Portland choirs to create a ginormous chorale event in the middle of the city. (If you're in a choir, and want to participate, contact PICA directly.)

Andrew Dickson will return after the triumph of Ebay Powerseller to deliver a new, semi-autobiographical piece called Sellout, about his foray into the world of advertising.

Seattle choreographer Zoe Scofield's style was described as "feral ballet," which sounds cool.

Hand 2 Mouth Theatre will be performing their edgy musical piece Repeat After Me, which is actually running in Portland right now, through April 29.

And finally, it was announced that the late night Works programming would be held at Wonder Ballroom this year, which is an interesting choice. (It's a tough thing to manage, as most of the audience just wants to drink and mingle, while a substantial chunk of the audience is there to see a performance. Thus, it usually looks like the crowd doesn't give a shit about the performance, which sucks for the performer and the audience. Since the Wonder is basically one huge room, it'll be interesting to see how this plays out.) The Works artists mentioned included Anna Oxygen, YACHT, Cartune Xprez, BARR, Greasy Kid Stuff, Fred Frith, and a bunch of Japanese noise artists, including Aki Onda.

Whew. That's a lot of linkage. Check out next week's issue of the Mercury for a preview of TBA's visual art programming, which was very smart and exciting last year.