Tuesday January 29, 2008

08:00 PM : Diana Szeinblum's ALASKA @ PSU

Performance / Theater Flyered by kmikeym

PICA presents Argentine choreographer Diana Szeinblum and her new show Alaska

Event Information
Alaska
January 29-30, 2008, 8:00 pm
Portland State University Lincoln Hall
1620 SW Park (between Mill & Market)
$25 General / $20 Members
Tickets available at www.pica.org beginning January 1, 2008 or at the door the night of the performance

ALASKA
Argentine Choreographer Diana Szeinblum returns to the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art with her company of musicians and dancers and their dance/theatre work Alaska. Szeinblum last presented her work in 2003 at PICA with the acclaimed and popular Secreto y Malibu.

Diana Szeinblum's new work explores the relationships between four characters and the concept of "interior space”—a place where experiences, sensations, emotions and memories are stored in the body. Each of the four characters desperately try to reveal their interior space through physical expression. The title Alaska "speaks of that place that we all recognize, but nobody ever went."

Alaska features expressive, gestural/pedestrian movement on athletic bodies, complex relationships between characters developed through movement rather than language, live original music, a spare minimalist set and an abstract or surreal narrative structure. It is raw, sexy, brainy, mysterious and darkly funny.

Also during their stay in Portland, Diana Szeinblum and the company will conduct workshops for the Latino community and master classes for Portland-area dancers. Please contact PICA at 503.242.1419 for more information on these events.

Diana Szeinblum
Diana creates her work with a new group of performers selected for each project rather than working with the same company for each show. Through an intensive, lengthy and improvisatory rehearsal process she draws out the experiences and personal movement styles of each of the performers to create a unique vocabulary of movement for each piece. Rather than starting with a narrative or script, she builds each "play" as she goes in the studio, investigating ideas through the body rather than language or story.

While one can clearly see the Argentine influence in her work—especially with references to music and literary traditions—Diana Szeinblum is equally a product of her European training. She studied extensively and performed with Pina Bausch, Susanne Linke and others at the Folkwang Tanz Schule in Germany, the home of Tanztheater (dance theatre).


Alaska is funded in part by an Opportunity Grant from Regional Arts & Culture Council (RACC), National Performance Network (NPN) Performing Americas and Jason Saunders and Stephanie Kelly of Morgan Stanley.