FLOWER OF THE SEASON 2022
born from, and returns to…
Los Angeles’s 4 choreographers
Friday October 28, 8:00 pm
Saturday July, 29, 8:00 pm
Sunday July, 30 3:00 pm
Dani Lunn, STARLIGHT BLOOM
a flowering memory of alchemical stars
Biography:
Dani Lunn is a Los Angeles based intercultural and multidisciplinary artist whose current work explores the interrelationship between sound and movement. Holding a certification in Deep Listening®, her practice is grounded in dance, ritual theatre and music, including a BFA in Dance at CalArts and independent study in Bahia, Brazil. She is currently co-facilitating Rainbow Body Matrix in residence at the Electric Lodge in Venice, CA and grateful to be part of the Deep Listening community.
Hyoin Jun, BLOOM TO FALL
The piece expresses a human's lifetime. By showing a human's childhood to death,I hope the audience can reflect on their lives and remember how beautiful and valuable they are.
Biography:
Hyoin Jun is a co-artistic director of Goblin Party, a dance performing group, and actively working as a freelance dancer, choreographer, and dance instructor.
Jun has finished the Experimental Choreography program (MFA) at University of California, Riverside (UCR) in December 2017. Jun also received an M.A. degree in Physical Education (in 2014) and a B.A. degree in Dance (in 2012) from Chung-Ang University (CAU), Korea.
Jun has actively attended and won in international dance competitions, including Jury Award, Sibiu International Dance Competition, Rumania (2011); Bronze Medal, Novosibirsk International Dance Competition, Russia (2010); and Gold Medal, Berlin International Dance Competition TANZOLYMP, Germany (2010). Furthermore, Jun has performed on both international and local stages, such as the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Closing Ceremony on behalf of Korea National Contemporary Dance Company, at the Olympic Stadium, Sochi, Russia.
DaEun Jung, KKOT (꽃)
Kkot (꽃) is a low-key solo dance that shares the process of patterning and varying gestural movements informed by the style and principle of classical Korean dance. In the cyclized sequence improvisation, Kkot allows tendency, curiosity, and emotional spontaneity of the contemporary body.
Words in the sentences below excerpted from Yun Dong-ju’s Korean poem “Flowers Bloom in the Garden” prompted Kkot’s vocabulary.
코스모스가 홀홀히 떨어지는 날 우주의 마지막은 아닙니다.
It's not the end of the universe when the cosmos flutters and falls.
하나의 꽃밭이 이루어지도록 손쉽게 되는 것이 아니라 고생과 노력이 있어야 하는 것입니다.
A flower garden is never planted easily; it requires hard work and effort.
한해 동안을 내 두뇌로써가 아니라 몸으로써 일일이 헤아려 세포 사이마다 간직해 두어서야 몇 줄의 글이 이루어집니다.
A few lines of poetry can finally be written not by my brain, but through my body with each cell chewing over the whole year.
나는 세계관, 인생관, 이런 좀 더 큰 문제보다 바람과 구름과 햇빛과 나무와 우정, 이런 것들에 더 많이 괴로워해 왔는지도 모르겠습니다.
I may have been tormented not by the lofty philosophy or worldview, but by the wind, clouds, sunlight, trees, and friendship.
봄이 가고, 여름이 가고, 코스모스가 홀홀히 떨어지는 날 우주의 마지막은 아닙니다.
Spring passes, summer passes, the cosmos flutters and falls, but it’s not the end of the universe.
Biography:
DaEun Jung is a Los Angeles-based choreographer/dancer who interlaces forms, principles, and methods of her ancestral and contemporary performance practices. Jung’s work has been supported by Los Angeles Performance Practice (LAPP), REDCAT, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, CultureHub LA, Pieter Performance Space, Highways, Electric Lodge, Movement Research at Judson Church, and Korea Foundation. She has been awarded residencies from L.A. Dance Project, Brockus Project Dance, Camera Obscura Art Lab, Dance Resource Center, and Show Box LA, as well as Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (MANCC) Forward Dialogues 2019 and 2022 Loghaven Artist Residency. As a dancer, Jung has worked and performed at MANCC (FL, 2019), Jacob’s Pillow (MA, 2020), and New York Live Arts (NY, 2020, 2022), REDCAT (CA, 2021), and the Momentary (AR, 2022) in Milka Djordjevich’s CORPS.
A master artist of the 2019 Alliance for California Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program and 2019-2020 Cultural Trailblazer of City of Los Angeles Department Cultural Affairs, Jung has redefined the practice and repertoire of Korean dance in inter/multi-cultural settings as a continuation of her MFA in choreography at UCLA (2018) where she was a Westfield Emerging Artist. As a full-time dancer of Gyeonggido Dance Company which is internationally renowned for its large-scale traditional and contemporary Korean dance repertoire, she toured cities and countries in Asia and Europe. Having six years of early conservatory training in dance at the National Gugak School as a recipient of the National Theater of Korea Award, she obtained a BA in dance from Ewha Womans University in Seoul, South Korea. Jung is currently a lecturer at UCR Dance, teaching contemporary and Korean dance techniques, somatic practice, and dance composition. Her new project Norri, which will be premiered in Fall 2023 in partnership with LAPP, is a finalist of the 2022 National Dance Project Production Grant.
Destefano DeLuise, LOTUS BORN
The lotus blossom cannot bloom without the thick, dense, nutrient-rich mud from which it grows and rests as it sinks back into the water at night...From the tip of each delicate petal to the very last tendrils of the roots woven beneath the earth, in an intricate and ancient system of transformation and transmutation— which in turn manifests the sacred lotus flower. In the same way, being alive is an endless cycle of flowing through the inextricably linked nature of joy and suffering— for the two are not separate. As we learn to love, take care of, cradle and hold with compassion our suffering and grief, so are we widening the expanse of our capacity for joy and gratitude..
It is within this process of transmutation that we are able to understand the alchemical powers of patience, compassion and surrender-— and nature surrounds us with an abundance of guides and teachers in how to wield this precious skill, as with the lotus flower...
She reveals to us in her poise, in her elegance, how to appreciate the richness of the mud, whilst continuing to exude grace. This divine and radiating stillness... born of the wisdom of the lotus flower...is also the place from which are all born and to which we will return...
As the petals wilt back into the earth, so do they become the home and spark of life for the next blossom to come...
om mani padme hum
(This dance is a dedication to the late and tremendously revered Thich Nhat Hanh)
Biography:
By way of movement, music and filmmaking, Destefano DeLuise’s means of expression ruminate on the notions of death and impermanence, emptiness, grief and compassion—all whilst grappling with the intricacies of what it means to exist in a human body…She aims to push the ideas and limits of understanding waking (and dreaming) reality through simple metaphor, obscure landscapes of sound/imagery and extreme physicality—using suffering and release as instruments to dissolve into the expansive nature of awareness. Moments of transition, transformation and transmutation are of great intrigue and inspiration to her process—which has led to an important journey of healing trauma and living in service of others, mainly through plant medicine, volunteering with hospice patients and as a homebirth midwife's assistant — forever learning from the wisdoms of birth, death and the powers of patience, stillness, deep listening and loving kindness.
Gyda Valtysdottir is an Icelandic cellist, vocalist & a producer. She has been active as a musician since her early teens as a founding member of the experimental pop-group múm. Classically trained, Gyda has made music for films, theater, dance, among many other creative ventures. She has released 4 solo albums and in 2019 she received the prestigious Nordic Council Music Prize 2019 for her music & performance, describing her distinct vocals & instrumental inventiveness ”highly unique & captivating”
Artistic Directors
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.
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, 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.
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.
Sound and 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.
Graphic Design: Kio Griffith
Video documentation: Hsuan-Kuang Hsieh
Box office, House manager: Johanna Wolf Petersen
These performances are made possible by City of Los Angeles, Department of Cultural Affairs, Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture, California Arts Council, Friends of Venice Library, Oregon Community Foundation, the Electric Lodge and our donors.