BODY WEATHER LABORATORY

 FLOWER OF THE SEASON 2021

“That People Get Together”

Sunday, November 14, 4:00PM

PROGRAM

Body Weather Laboratory presents Flower of the Season 2021. Continuing a 19-year tradition of minimal yet encompassing use of space and theatricality, this year’s performances will feature Los Angeles Choreographers Chenhui Mao, Michelle Shiu-lin Lai, Jay Carlon and experimental vocalist Carmina Escobar.

Michelle Shiu-lin Lai - Tidals

Carmina Escobar, UNFURLING IRIS

Chenhui Mao - When “I” becomes “It”

Jay Carlon - WAKE (excerpt / work in progress)

MICHELLE SHIU-LIN LAI - TIDALS

Ancient Rain is a Tidal Being. live sculpting layers of text using a looper and solo dance

I meditate on "Ancient Rain" -  a phrase and title from bob kaufman's prophetic poem - and use it as a guiding mantra to unfold the poetic risings from my own landscape of being- body, voice, texture, image. I explore the idea of the "ancient rain" as a tidal being... generational and omnipresent.... periodically rising and falling... flowing or ebbing.. arriving and departing... We enter this space together as an offering and become TIDAL, washed of old structures.

Music: Loryn Napala (live Kora) Zenji Oguri(Modular synthesizer)

Michelle Shiu-lin Lai is a Los Angeles based interdisciplinary performance artist/poet and practicing architectural designer. She received her BA in Architecture from USC in 2007. Lai is interested in coming in touch with and expanding her awareness of the potential of the body/mind and to challenge her sense of what dance could be through a culmination of various practices. She explodes adjacencies in the present moment through an improvised process of live poetic sculpting and movement both in individual and group settings. Lai investigates the primal poetics of space through a process-based extraction of text through body memory/history, & butoh influenced sensitivity training. Lai recently shared her Subtle Body Workshop in Friday Harbor, WA, 2020. Lai traveled to Merida, Mexico January 2018 writing and presenting new poetry works at MEL as part of the USPIM conference. She is ever in awe working (2009-present) with Oguri & Roxanne Steinberg’s Body Weather Laboratory witnessing the deepening change and curiosity in her body experience year after year while witnessing the change in body, presence, and expression of those whom she practices with. She has performed with Lightning Shadow in works: "Caddy, Caddy, Caddy!" - Hammer 2016, Grand Performances: "Mare Imbrium"- CA Plaza 2015, "Kalpa" - Getty 2012, "Falling Water" Indianapolis museum of Art 2011 and more.

Lai is an Alexander Technique Teacher in Training at ATI-LA.

Music: (Kora) Loryn Napala, Born in Virginia, Loryn moved to Los Angeles to study architecture at The University of Southern California. Since 2007 she's been part of Los Angeles-based design studio Commune. A group who values the strength of the collective mind, believing that authentic creativity and innovation come from collaboration. In 2012 she started learning Kora, a West African harp, under master jali Amadou Fall. Looking to blur the line between performer and audience, her recent works are improvised and collaborative, woven together by a composition of sound and scents. Most recent projects include site specific installations with performances at The Architecture & Design Museum, The Underground Museum and Motherland Music.

CARMINA ESCOBAR - UNFURLING IRIS

I SHINE IN FIRE - II FEATHERS - III BLOOM

a ritual for the wheel of eternal cosmic movement around a mystic and orienting center.

Carmina Escobar is an extreme vocalist, improviser, sound and intermedia artist from Mexico City currently based in LA. Escobar investigates and expresses emotions, politics, states of alienation, and the possibilities of interpersonal connection through voice performances, installations, and video pieces that seeks to challenge our understandings of musicality, gender, queerness, race, the spoken word, and the foundations of human communication. She has presented her work in Mexico, Cuba, Europe, USA, and Canada in festivals and venues such as PST:LA/LA, Fabrica de Arte (HVN), CTM Festival (BRL), RedCat, The Broad, The Kitchen, among many others. Escobar has been an artist in residence in Montalvo, STEIM, Binaural Portugal, OMI, Electroacoustic Music Studio in Krakow, Fonoteca NacionalMX, Indexical, The MacDowell Residency, and in late September of this year at the BEMIS Center in Nebraska. Carmina has received three Endowment of The Arts in Mexico, the USArtist International Award with the project Estamos Ensemble, Master Scholarship of NALAC, the 2020 FCA Artist award in Music/Sound, and the NPN 2020 Creation Fund Artists with the project SHAMANA DE CABARET. She is co-founder of LIMINAR ensemble; HOWL SPACE radical/experimental pedagogical voicehub, and BOSS WITCH PROJECTS, an artistic production company focused on the interconnection of experimental scenic works, sound/video art, interdisciplinary/intermedia works within natural landscapes, launching on 2021 with scenic piece BAJO LA SOMBRA DEL SOL, and VOX CLAMANTIS a trilogy of vocal recordings with Ron Athey, all produced in various ecosystems of California. Currently she is a faculty member of the VoiceArt program at CalArts. In sit amet felis malesuada, feugiat purus eget, varius mi. Vivamus sit amet semper lacus, in mollis libero.

CHENHUI MAO - WHEN “I”BECOME “IT”

When “I” become “It” is a performance work created and performed by Mao. It is also bodily research towards body in mundanity, digital other and the subject of time. 

Mao is a movement-based performance maker from China. Mao’s practice draws on improvisation, de-contextualization and daily mundanity to create performance works that explore the body’s response to constant and absurd flux. Her experiences include working with Sankai Juku, Dimitri Chamblas, Julie Bour, Rubberlegz, Oguri, Sam Wentz and many more in a wide range of performances across Japan, France, China and the United States. Currently an MFA pursuer at School of the Art Institute of Chicago, she hopes to continue testing the sense of boundary, practicing “un-do,” creating works with a gentle sense of humor.

JAY CARLON - WAKE (WORK IN PROGRESS / EXCERPT)

What if grief was my collaborator?  how do i discern loneliness from solitude? have i ever truly been independent?  these are the questions that fuel me right now.  WAKE is an entry point to confront them.

Jay Carlon is an artist based in Los Angeles and NYC. His work is inspired by growing up the youngest of 12 in a Filipino, Catholic, and agricultural migrant-working family, and is committed to connecting his art practice to sustainability and his personal and collective journey of decolonization. Jay’s work has been presented in Los Angeles at REDCAT, The Broad Museum, L.A. Dance Project, Annenberg Community Beach House, Union Station, Los Angeles Performance Practice, homeLA; in New York at 92ndY and The CURRENT SESSIONS; in Phoenix at Breaking Ground Festival; in Monterrey, Mexico at Espacio Expectante; and in Bangkok, Thailand at Creative Migration. Jay is a performer and directing associate with aerial spectacle theatre company Australia’s Sway Pole, where he has performed at the 2014 Olympics, the 2016 World EXPO, and the 2018 Super Bowl. Carlon has also performed with the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center, Palissimo, Oguri, No)one. Art House, Rodrigo y Gabriela, Solange Knowles, and choreographed works for Kanye West and Mndsgn.

Flower of the Season 2021 production team:

Lighting Designer: Carol McDowell is an interdisciplinary dance artist, collaborator, lighting designer and teacher. McDowell received a 2002 Lester Horton Award and a 1985 BESSIE for her lighting design of dance projects by Victoria Marks and John Bernd. Lighting design collaborations include works by alexx shilling, Jmy James Kidd, Simone Forte & Carmela Hermann Dietrich, Kevin Williamson, Nickels Sunshine, Laurel Jenkins, Wilfried Souly, Asher Hartman, Dan Froot & Dan Hurlin, Johanna Went, Karen Finley, Mary Overlie, Nina Martin, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Fred Holland, Yoshiko Chuma, Pooh Kaye, and Kei Takei in theaters, galleries and alternative venues locally, nationally and abroad. McDowell is a co-founding member of the Gold Collective/Gold Series and the Encounter. In the past she co-directed and co-founded max10 at the Electric Lodge in Los Angeles and the Mariposa Collective in Boulder, CO. She is very happy to work with the artists of Flowers of the Season.

Music: Zenji Oguri graduated from Bennington College in 2015 where he studied architecture and its intersections with anthropology and music. His main interest has been architecture as experience and its non-visual qualities. His fascination with recorded audio stems from its ability to create aural soundscapes unrestricted by our physical world and its effect on our perception of space. The relationship between sound, space and movement is an integral part of his artistic consciousness and he continues to explore the ways they each develop and influence each other. He is a junior architect at Rees Studio in Santa Monica. He is a participant of BWL Workshop

Co-Artistic Director: Roxanne Steinberg dances to transcend familiar vocabularies and bring about a heightened sense of perception, connectivity and flow of primordial associations. A graduate of Bennington College, she has taught Body Weather Laboratory since 1988. She performs worldwide as a soloist and with her partner Oguri, sister Morleigh Steinberg, and composers Yas-Kaz, Paul Chavez, Kenta Nagai, Tatsuya Nakatani, Leon Mobley, Myra Melford, Alex Cline, Pheeroan Aklaff, Motoko Honda, Will Salmon. She has worked with dancers Min Tanaka and Amagatsu of Sankai Juku, and artists Hirokazu Kosaka, Carole Kim and Bill Viola. Roxanne has taught at UCLA, Cal Arts, Cal State Los Angeles, Sci Arc, Pomona College, and Harvard Westlake, among others. She is artist-in-residence  at the Electric Lodge in Venice. She is a 2020 DCA COLA Fellow

Co-Artistic Director: Native of Japan, Oguri’s inspiration to dance came after meeting Butoh founder Hijikata Tatsumi. He started training/performing in 1985 with famed dancer Min Tanaka's company, Mai-Juku and participated in founding Body Weather Farm. Oguri also began performing solo dance in the avant-garde scene in Tokyo. He also designed the lighting for Min Tanaka’s choreographies. He practiced traditional organic farming, experiencing the rhythms and cycles of this most human lifestyle. This connection of the human body to nature is a foundation of Oguri’s dance. 1991- Oguri moved to Los Angeles and formed Body Weather Laboratory LA with Roxanne Steinberg. For over 30 years, Oguri has been teaching, creating and producing dance and multi-media works incorporating his own large-scale set/sculpture installations and his dramatic, often chiaroscuro lighting in formal theater settings and site-specific venues worldwide. He continues to investigate the relationship of dance to environment and the boundaries between performer and audience. He has developed collaborative projects with musicians, sculptors, painters, and poets, using literature, daily life imagery and simple materials to transform space and time with dance. He actively brings dance to the wider community. Since 1998, twice a year, Oguri produces “Flower of the Season”, a series of workshops and performances, giving national and international emerging and master dance artists opportunities to develop and present work. In 2011, Oguri formed ARCANE Collective with Morleigh Steinberg, touring full productions and live concepts. Oguri has received grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, California Arts Council, The Annenberg Foundation, the New England Foundation for the Arts, National Dance Project, the Rockefeller Foundation, The City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, The Getty Center, the James Irvine Foundation/Dance USA, Japan Foundation, United State Artist Doris Duke Fellow 2018, among others.

Production assistant : Audrey King

Video: Hsuan-Kuang Hsieh and Keiden Oguri

Special thanks: Lori and Joel Shapiro, Johanna Wolf Petersen, Eleni Merari, Paul Chavez and Destefano DeLuise

These performances are made possible in part by City of Los Angeles, Department of Cultural Affairs, Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture, California Arts Council, Electric Lodge and our donors.

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