August 18, 2014

 

REDCAT, CalArts’ Downtown Center for Contemporary Arts,
Announces the Fall 2014 Season of Events

Highlights include new work from:
GOB SQUAD, ELEVATOR REPAIR SERVICE, L-E-V, RASHAUN MITCHELL and STEPHIN MERRITT, HYUNG SU KIM and HYO JIN KIM, ANDY MILNE, JACE CLAYTON and AMY KNOLES, DAVID ROSENBOOM and WILLIAM WINANT, GLORIA COATES, ROBERT FENZ, DAVID OREILLY, REBECCA BARON, ADELE HORNE, JESSE LERNER, LESLIE SCALAPINO, ANDY WARHOL, MATI DIOP, SAMUEL DELANY, ALEXANDER WEHELIYE, KERSTEN GEERS, MARC VIVES, ANNA CRAYCROFT, HÉCTOR BOURGES, BENJAMIN SORER and more.

(Los Angeles, CA)—REDCAT, CalArts’ Downtown Center for Contemporary Arts, located in the Walt Disney Concert Hall Complex is renowned for its innovative visual, performing and multimedia arts programming. In the Fall of 2014 REDCAT begins its second decade presenting the most influential artists from around the world, as well as Los Angeles’ own creative voices. In the tradition of its parent organization the California Institute of the Arts, REDCAT’s programming encourages experimentation, discovery and lively discourse. REDCAT will present over thirty theater, dance, music, film, media, literary, and gallery events in the Fall of 2014. Highlights and a list of short descriptions with links to webpages are grouped by discipline below.

Always committed to offering audiences the opportunity to experience new innovative developments in the arts, REDCAT continues to ensure that regular ticket prices remain affordable and offers member, student, and community discount programs. Individual tickets can be purchased online at www.redcat.org. Group discounts are available by contacting the box office at 213-237-2800, or in person at 631 West Second Street, 90012, on the SW corner of the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex (corner of West Second Street and Hope.)

Members of the press are encouraged to contact Kelly Hargraves for more information, to arrange interviews, features, and review opportunities. [email protected] | 213-237-2813.

---

THEATER

The internationally renowned German/UK theater ensemble Gob Squad spends two weeks at REDCAT, presenting their acclaimed project Super Night Shot (Sept 11-14) which starts with a welcoming celebration for four heroic filmmakers as they return from their unpredictable twilight mission of shooting videos on the streets of downtown L.A. In week two (Sept 17-20), Western Society creates an unruly, high-styled romp that is also a sublimely intimate multimedia snapshot of the American family, set to irresistible live music.

New York’s brilliant and provocative ensemble Elevator Repair Service, who famously turned The Great Gatsby into the stage epic Gatz now brings the U.S. legal system to the stage in pure absurdist fashion in Arguendo (Nov 5-9) as they depict verbatim the U.S. Supreme Court case Barnes v. Glen Theatre, a 1991 suit brought by a group of go-go dancers who claimed a First Amendment right to dance totally nude.

Winter 2015 Theater highlights include: The Wooster Group (Jan 21-Feb 1)returns, this time under the direction of Kate Valk, to present Shaker Spirituals featuring dance and songs performed by Cynthia Hedstrom, Elizabeth LeCompte, Frances McDormand, Bebe Miller, Suzzy Roche and Max Bernstein, Matthew Brown, Modesto Jimenez, Bobby McElver, Jamie Poskin and Andrew Schneider.

Argentine writer-director Mariano Pensotti (Feb 12-15) presents his“filmic drama” Cineastas, performed by a handful of actors seamlessly switching characters using a “split-screen” effect on a multi-level stage set that allows for fluid shifting between the characters’ lives and the films being shot,

DANCE

L-E-V (Nov 20-23)presents their passionate and high–voltage dance event House created by collaborators Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar who have firmly established themselves as potent forces in the international performance community, energizing a new generation of audiences.

Dec 4-7 brings the intoxicating choreography of former Merce Cunningham dancer Rashaun Mitchell and the music of Magnetic Fields singer-songwriter Stephin Merritt in a visual design by installation artist Ali Naschke-Messing, inspired by a Richard Avedon quote.

MUSIC

Music highlights include the return of the Angel City Jazz Festival (Sept. 21 – 26); The Julius Eastman Memorial Dinner, with Jace Clayton and Amy Knoles (Oct 11); the Jazz Bakery Moveable Fest (Oct 16 – 18) features Cyrille Aimee, Greg Osby Quartet and the Jacky Terrasson Trio; Strings and Serpents, (Oct 26) performed by Crystal Magnets, a collaboration of jazz pianists Andy Milne (Dapp Theory) and Benoît Delbecq, partner with the Japanese koto duo TsuguKaji-KOTO, amid the swirling washes of projected animation based on Rainbow Serpent mythology; David Rosenboom and William Winant perform Zones of Influence (Nov 1) featuring the percussion and computer/electronics that introduced new virtuoso performance techniques; and a very rare performance of the chamber works of American Composer Gloria Coates (Nov 13); Piano Spheres continues its new Satellite Series of emerging pianists (Dec 16) with Aron Kallay, an award-winning solo and chamber musician.

FILM-VIDEO

New films by LA’s Rebecca Baron, Adele Horne (Sept 22);a double bill of Leandro Katz along with Jesse Lerner, Sandra Rozental considering the debate over artifacts(Sept. 27); Konrad Steiner’s film version of Leslie Scalapino’s poem way;16mm films of Robert Fenz, a revival of Chelsea Girls by Andy Warhol (Oct 25);as well as, Iranian films questioning Iranian women’s complex relationship with Islam (Oct 27-28); the return of The Black Radical Imagination II (Nov 10); the 3D animated films of David OReilly (Nov 24); and the drama-documentary of Mati Diop (Dec 8).

CONVERSATIONS

For the President’s Forum It Takes a City: Artists and Collectives in Los Angeles, CalArts’ Steven D. Lavine welcomes a panel of compelling local arts organizers to discuss the challenges, and rewards, facing emerging artist collectives (Oct 15); a multimedia talk by writer and scholar Alexander Weheliye, professor of African American Studies at Northwestern University, the launching keynote for a multi-event conference focusing on Black digital culture entitled R&B’s Technologies of Humanity (Nov 14);CalArts Writer in Residence Samuel R. Delany (Nov 15), the pathbreaking, taboo-busting titan of literary science fiction since the New Wave of the 1960s.

GALLERY

Small Museum for the American Metaphor, a group show co-curated by Kersten Geers and Ruth Estevez in which the gallery is divided into “rooms,” creating a cabinet of curiosities with a variety of artworks, architectural models, drawings and other objects, that blur the distinction between object and representation. (Sept 27 – Nov 30)

A lecture/performance by Héctor Bourges, a member of the Mexico City-based theater/performance art ensemble Teatro Ojo, that combines a series of gestures with images of historical events that have influenced the Mexican national identity project. (Oct 29)

---

THEATER

Gob Squad: Super Night Shot
Sep 11 to Sep 14
The L.A. version of Gob Squad’s most acclaimed project starts with a celebration to welcome the heroic filmmakers back to the theater as they return from their unpredictable twilight mission shooting four 60-minute videos on the streets of Downtown L.A.

Gob Squad: Western Society
Sep 17 to Sep 20
Richly adorned in bling, Gob Squad creates an unruly, high-styled romp that is also a sublimely intimate multimedia snapshot of the American family, set to irresistible live music.

Elevator Repair Service: Arguendo
Nov 05 to Nov 09
New York’s brilliant and provocative ensemble Elevator Repair Service, who famously turned The Great Gatsby into the stage epic Gatz at REDCAT, now brings the U.S. legal system to the stage in pure absurdist fashion.

Hyung Su Kim/Hyo Jin Kim: Madame Freedom
Oct 02 to Oct 05
A stirring fusion of live interactive dance and a sumptuous media installation that incorporates black-and-white footage from a famous 1956 Korean melodrama Jayu buin (Madame Freedom).

---

DANCE

L-E-V: HOUSE
Nov 20 to Nov 23
The passionate and high voltage dance events created by collaborators Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar have firmly established them as potent forces in the international performance community, energizing a new generation of audiences.

Rashaun Mitchell and Stephin Merritt: Performance
Dec 04 to Dec 07
The intoxicating choreography of former Merce Cunningham dancer Rashaun Mitchell meets the fanciful musical stylings of Magnetic Fields singer-songwriter Stephin Merritt in a beguiling visual design created by installation artist Ali Naschke-Messing with lighting design by Davison Scandrett.

CalArts Winter Dance 2014
Dec 12 to Dec 13
Three world premieres by Herb Alpert Award winner and tap dance phenom Michelle Dorrance, CalArts alum and Hubbard Street Dance Chicago’s Jonathan Fredrickson, and CalArts faculty member Laurence Blake, mark this year’s December concert from The Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance.

---

MUSIC

Angel City Jazz Festival 2014
Sep 21 to Sep 26
The 2014 festival includes two nights at REDCAT featuring Satoko Fujii, Natsuki Tamura, Allison Miller, BOOM TIC BOOM!, Master Toshiko Akiyoshi, Paul Gill, Aaron Kimmel, and Eloise Klein Healy.

The Julius Eastman Memorial Dinner
Oct 11
Conceived for twin pianos, live electronics and voice, this exhilarating sonic exploration led by Jace Clayton, a.k.a. DJ /rupture, brings fresh insight to the artistic legacy of the late Julius Eastman. Preceded by a solo electronic-percussion interpretation of Eastman’s Crazy Nigger by Amy Knoles using a system of loops to play the parts of the four players.

Crystal Magnets with Tsugukaji-Koto and Saki Murotani: Snakes and Strings
Oct 26
Plying rhythmic forms and sonic colors in a shared language of improvisation, jazz pianists Andy Milne and Benoît Delbecq partner with the Japanese koto duo TsuguKaji-KOTO, amidst the swirling washes of Saki Murotani’s projected animation.

David Rosenboom: Zones of Influence
Nov 01
First written 30 years ago, David Rosenboom’s Zones of Influence is a landmark concert-length work for percussion soloist, live computer-generated electronics, and auxiliary keyboard and glissando instruments.

Piano Spheres: Richard Valitutto
Nov 11
The acclaimed Piano Spheres Series of music for pianos marks its twentieth anniversary by launching a new Satellite series at REDCAT with an inaugural concert by Los Angeles-based Richard Valitutto, including the premiere of new works by Nicholas Deyoe and by Valitutto.

Gloria Coates Portrait Concert
Nov 13
A prodigious composer of orchestral and chamber works since the 1960s, Gloria Coates is acclaimed for uncanny music that is part microtonal-expressionist, part postminimalist—at once turbulent and serene.

Piano Spheres: Aron Kallay
Dec 16
An early pioneer of laptop performance—creating work written for networked chamber ensembles and re-engineered consumer products—composer and media artist Mark Trayle is joined by Casey Anderson and Scott Cazan in a program of new multichannel pieces for mixed instrumental and electronic ensembles.

---

FILM-VIDEO

The Seen and Unseen: New Films by Rebecca Baron and Adele Horne
Sep 22
L.A. independent film favorites Rebecca Baron (okay bye-bye) and Adele Horne (Tailenders), both known for intimately observed essay films, also produce visually nuanced works on the role of perception in cinema.

Monumental Ambiguities: Pre-Columbian artifacts under the spell of the (in)visible.
Sep 27
A double bill followed by a panel discussion that considers the debate over artifacts, cultural property and historical stewardship in Mesoamerica.

Leslie Scalapino & Konrad Steiner: Way
Oct 06
San Francisco filmmaker Konrad Steiner took 12 years to complete a montage cycle set to the late Leslie Scalapino’s most celebrated poem, way.

The Camera in the World -16mm Films by Robert Fenz
Oct 13
Duly hailed for his exquisite compositions and sympathetic feel for the rhythms of his cinematographic subjects, peripatetic filmmaker extraordinaire Robert Fenz also brings a keen contextual understanding to his lyrical 16mm explorations of the human condition around the globe.

China Onscreen Biennial
Oct 20 to Oct 24
REDCAT is one of several L.A. venues for this three-week, multi-city showcase that surveys the rich multiplicity of voices making China such a dynamic film and media environment. The program ranges from the latest internationally acclaimed auteur films to crowd-pleasing homages to major figures of Chinese cinema, from experimental media to online microfilms.

Chelsea Girls: Revival Screening of the Film by Andy Warhol
Oct 25
On a Velvet Underground tune, these fragile divas of the fifteen-minute fame are forever young, glamorous, iconic and radically transgressive.

Crystal Magnets with Tsugukaji-Koto and Saki Murotani: Snakes and Strings
Oct 26
Plying rhythmic forms and sonic colors in a shared language of improvisation, jazz pianists Andy Milne and Benoît Delbecq partner with the Japanese koto duo TsuguKaji-KOTO, amidst the swirling washes of Saki Murotani’s projected animation.

A Woman is Worth a Thousand Questions
Oct 27 to Oct 28
Two powerful, eye-opening programs deconstruct and recontextualize women’s complex relationship with Islam in Iranian culture and society.

The Black Radical Imagination II
Nov 10
Focusing on stories from the Black diaspora, this second installment of The Black Radical Imagination stresses of short films and videos about communing with the spiritual realm as a historical practice and point of collective memory.

Beyond 3D: The Animated World of David OReilly
Nov 24
Having popularized stripped-down graphics and glitch effects, David OReilly opened up the aesthetic horizons of 3D animation with richly imagined lo-fi absurdism and a surprising soulfulness.

Mati Diop: The Dawn of a Thousand Suns
Dec 08
Since first drawing attention for her stunning performance in Clair Denis’ 35 Shots of Rum (2008), Diop has emerged as an adventurous filmmaker who mines the edges between drama and creative documentary.

---

CONVERSATIONS

Alexander Weheliye; Feenin’: R&B’s Technologies of Humanity
Nov 14
This lively multimedia talk by writer and scholar Alexander Weheliye, professor of African American Studies at Northwestern University, is the launching keynote for a multi-event conference focusing on Black digital culture.

Samuel R. Delany
Nov 15
A pathbreaking, taboo-busting titan of literary science fiction since the New Wave of the 1960s, Samuel R. Delany is a member of the Science Fiction Hall of Fame and holds four Nebulas, two Hugos, and the Bill Whitehead and Lambda awards for lifetime achievement.

---

GALLERY

Small Museum for the American Metaphor
Sep 27 to Nov 30
The mythical imagery of the American West, especially when considered from some European perspectives, conjures an idealized fiction rich with a sort of Technicolor endlessness.

Héctor Bourges
Oct 29
In this lecture/performance in the REDCAT Lounge, Héctor Bourges, a member of the Mexico City-based theater/performance art ensemble Teatro Ojo, combines a series of gestures with images of historical events that have influenced the Mexican national identity project.

Benjamin Seror: The Marsyas Hour
Nov 18 to Dec 02
Over three Tuesday evenings in the REDCAT Lounge, he develops and performs a new version of his latest project, The Marsyas Hour, an impromptu script for a TV pilot that recounts everyday life on Mount Olympus through the eyes of the young satyr Marsyas.

The Wilson Exercises
Dec 13 to Feb
What if an art exhibition were an exercise, and the preparations toward a process of common exercising between artists, ideas, hosts and curators? Would it shift how we understand development and time—the time of making and of experiencing?

---