Extraction is in the works

Extraction Chinese Character
Extraction Cast and Crew

After two years of research and planning, Theatre Conspiracy is digging into the creation of the documentary-style play Extraction. Our international cast and team of theatre artists are in residence at The Cultch in Vancouver for the next couple of weeks to experiment before a work-in-progress presentation at Your Kontinent: Richmond International Film & Media Arts Festival on July 21. Continue reading “Extraction is in the works”

The Cultch presents Extraction

Here’s a little taste of the show I’m working on for Theatre Conspiracy.  Our workshop performances will happen in July at the Cultch and at the Richmond Int’l Film & Media Arts Festival.

The Cultch presents Extraction – YouTube.

“Through the biographies of four performers, the bilingual, documentary-style play Extraction looks at lives transformed by the rapid growth of Beijing and Fort McMurray, Chinese investment in Alberta’s tar sands and the evolution of Canada/China relations.

Extraction, directed by Amiel Gladstone, will run March 5-9, 2013, as part of the season at The Cultch in Vancouver. Theatre Conspiracy was presented with the annual Rio Tinto Alcan Performing Arts Award, a $60,000 prize that will support the development and production of Extraction.”

The Fine Line: Twisted Angels at Woodwards

I’ve just polished up the multimedia projections on this new dance work for Dancers Dancing.  I’ve been working with Judith Garay for years as a videographer and now as a projections designer.

For this show I’ve been using Isadora with Osculator, to allow Wii controllers in the dancers’ costumes to affect the projections.  I’ve played with a little animation, and I have an infrared camera doing a some motion detection.  It will be an awesome experiment for me and the dance, music, costumes and lighting are beautiful.

Please come and check it out!

The Fine Line – twisted angels

May 23-26, 2012 | 8:00 PM
$25 Adults | $15 Student/Seniors

Studio D, 2nd Floor
Goldcorp Centre for the Arts

Dancers Dancing and SFU Woodward’s Cultural Programs
present, as part of the SFU Woodward’s Faculty Research Series, the world premiere of

The Fine Line ~ twisted angels
A multi-media dance work inspired by perception, revelation and change

Performed by Cai Glover, Vanessa Goodman and Bevin Poole of Dancers Dancing.

Choreographed by Judith Garay, Artistic Director of Dancers Dancing
Music by Patrick Pennefather
Costumes by Margaret Jenkins
Lighting Design by John Macfarlane
Video Design by Flick Harrison

A PERFORMANCE TALK BALK WILL BE HELD AFTER THE SHOW ON THURSDAY, MAY 24TH.

The Fine Line ~ twisted angels explores in movement, sound and image how we experience, perceive, relate to and react to our internal and external worlds. Ephemeral, sometimes transformative, the moments between perceiving, sensing and cognition create a rich tapestry of somatic images. The work engages with the fragility of our existence and risks the deep and dark journeys necessary to project the internal experience directly onto the stage.

Since 1999 Dancers Dancing has mounted productions both in Vancouver and on tour. The company is known for its passion and technical excellence, and for reaching diverse audiences. The press has called the company “…truly exciting…” and a recent production “Bursting with energy from the moment the curtains open, this powerhouse of a show was a delight from beginning to end…” Artistic director Judith Garay has been choreographing professionally for over three decades starting in New York where The New York Times called her “A choreographer with a sure inventive touch” and more recently in Vancouver where The Georgia Straight said “Garay has an incredible ability to boil down relationships to simple gestures that are loaded with meaning.”

 

Signal Out: Remote Artist Talk from Newfoundland!

So without much more than a crashed Macbook to slow us down, Something Collective‘s first presentation of “Signal Out” went off great.   Liz Solo and the Black Bag Media Collective presented Flick Harrison‘s films in St John’s, Newfoundland while we showed Liz’s music-video and machinima work here at our studio at Moberly Cultural Centre.

After the screenings, we did live Skype chats so the audience could Q & A.  I spoke a lot about Final Cut Pro vs Adobe software and the future of independent video editing. Liz, for her part, talked about Second Life and the combination of joy and horror she feels in that phantasmagoric shopping mall.

Liz got to bed VERY late – the time difference is 4.5 hours – and a good time was had by all, at both ends of this giant country.

 

War Torn Man – new video with Rodney DeCroo

This is my new music video for Rodney Decroo!

A good review in the Georgia Straight:

“Let’s hope this collaboration between acclaimed (but not acclaimed enough) singer-songwriter Rodney DeCroo and filmmaker Flick Harrison isn’t the last. ”

When I first heard this song, I thought it was a fictional story about Iraq. But it’s actually the true story of Rodney’s dad after the Vietnam war.

I used the Collateral Murder video as my model for this, and I suppose I was thinking of the video for Brothers In Arms by the Dire Straits as well.

 

    War Torn Man – YouTube.

 

Louis Laberge-Côté on SunTV and Margie Gillis

 

On June 1, 2011, SunTV broadcast an interview with veteran Canadian dancer and choreographer Margie Gillis see link below, which quickly turned abusive towards the guest. In a message on his facebook page, Canadian dancer Louis Laberge-Côté, currently a teacher at Nationaltheatre Manheim in Germany, offered this assessment.

In response to the Sun News Network interview with Margie Gillis

By Louis Laberge-Côté

Contemporary dancer / choreographer / teacher / arts lover / taxpayer

If by attacking dance artist Margie Gillis on the Canada Live show aired on June 1st, Krista Erickson, anchorwoman for the Sun News Network, intended to publicly insult a well-respected artist on a sensationalist broadcast news channel, she certainly achieved her goal. Of course, Miss Erickson is allowed to have her own opinions and she has the right to express them. But when it comes to journalism, shouldn’t it be somewhat of a moral obligation for the reporter to put aside her personal opinions to look at a situation from different perspectives, gather information from different sources and, obviously, allow her guest to express her point of view? Isn’t it ridiculously unprofessional and profoundly inhumane to invite a woman such as Margie Gillis just to publicly bully her, with no possibility for real discourse, in the name of a few minutes of “great television”?

via On SunTV and Margie Gillis : Canada’s online magazine: Politics, entertainment, technology, media, arts, books: backofthebook.ca.

Gathering free TV’s for Macbeth: nach Shakespeare

Imagine if, ten years ago, you could drive around collecting free, working televisions until you filled several carloads, then finally had to abandon dozens more because you had no room.

That’s where we’re at today, as the dominant technology of our living room becomes obsolete practically overnight. HDTV is sending those heavy, awkward boxes out to the curb, to be replaced with newer, more expensive, and quicker-to-obsolescence machines.

I’m designing media for a new theatre show – Macbeth: nach Shakespeare by Heiner Muller. I’m building a throne of televisions that will show piles of corpses whenever the King sits on it… I thought it might be easy to gather free TV’s through craigslist, but I never imagined how quickly the cathode-ray sets were being discarded.

This class-warfare Macbeth takes the moral clarity out of the story: Instead of Macbeth murdering a wonderful King out of pure bloody ambition, we start the play with Macbeth committing murders for the King’s benefit. Peasants strung up for not paying rent, rebellious lords skinned alive for disloyalty. So when Macbeth decides to murder up instead of murdering down, the moral leap isn’t that big: what’s one more dead body on the pile?

Continue reading “Gathering free TV’s for Macbeth: nach Shakespeare”