(Community Matters) FuseBox Festival – Friday: At Salvage Vanguard, Julie Thornton’s TestPeformanceTest presented the LeeSaar the Company’s Geisha.
Lee Sher and Saar Harari created the company and are now based in NYC (originally from Israel). Their work is beautiful – as are certainly their bodies – and their movements refined. I’m never good at interpreting dance; I need cheaters – hints, others’ perspectives, or preferably conversation with the artists. My guest for the evening & our current roommate, Luke Hayes, immediately got the tensions of serving as a Geisha.
I love that the the company has been providing training and a residency program in Austin the last two weeks – fantastic leveraging of visiting talent. Thanks a million to Julie.
I’m still perplexed by the juxtaposition of careers – Saar was a combat commanding officer in the Israeli special forces and is now a dancer/choreographer. Lee is also an actress & playwright. They received Guggenheim and New York Foundation fellowships last year.
This Portland-based company is outrageous, fun and great. After they were on stage for only 10 or 15 minutes, I wanted to know these guys. Lucky to have found them at the Late Night Party and spent a few minutes talking with the company founders and four of the dancers.
Completely unexpected. While watching, I was thinking back to Yakov Sharir’s early work with “technology” which while then cutting-edge was – at least in hindsight – low tech. Nevertheless, how visionary Yakov was in the 90s.
Wish I would have invited the company to Amy’s & Kirk’s brunch this morning. Good gosh, who else did I invite last night – hmmm? At least Graham & Shawn. I think a few others. Wondering if I ought to pick up a few egg mcmuffins 🙂 to supplement the fare. Ahhh, I have a couple of chilled magnums of champagne – they always buy forgiveness.
Seated just behind Graham & Shawn – and introducing them to Luke – we started a conversation about the voices of artists in politics. Coincidently, Graham and Reggie had a similar conversation earlier in they day. I’m looking forward to following up on this. ABPorter.org is all about supporting art and conversations that build community; that’s why we’ve underwritten this year’s FuseBox Festival. Wouldn’t it be terrific if it furthered the conversation into a meaningful political voice for artists who haven’t previously expressed themselves. hmm, and President Obama’s Texas OFA director (Luke) engaged in this conversation as well?
Community Matters 