“Dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen”
“Whoever burns books will eventually burn people.” Christian Johann Heinrich Heine
FLOWER OF THE SEASON 2022
“Body as Evidence” homage to Ray Bradbury
Saturday July, 30, 8:00 PM
Sunday July, 31 4:00 PM
Body Weather Laboratory presents Flower of the Season 2022. Continuing a 19-year tradition of minimal yet encompassing use of space and theatricality, this year’s performances will feature Japanese dancer/choreographer Oguri (Venice, CA) collaborates with dancer Andrés Corchero (Catalonia, Spain) in an evening length work inspired by Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451” the dystopian fable in which fireman burn books rather than put out fires and ignorant complacency robs humanity of spiritual freedom and personal dignity.
Choreography and Dance: Andrés Corchero and Oguri
Music: Zenji Oguri
Lighting: Carol McDowell and Andrés Corchero
Set: Andrés Corchero, Oguri and Keiden Oguri
Producer: Roxanne Steinberg and Oguri
Graphic Design: Kio Griffith
Video documentation: Hsuan-Kuang Hsieh
Box office, House manager: Johanna Wolf Petersen
Artist’s Biographies
Dancer /Choreographer Andrés Corchero, resident of Catalonia, studied contemporary mime and clowning for theater and circus, and performed with Albert Vidal, Odin Teatret and Shushaku & Dormu Dance. A tireless explorer of body languages, he worked in Japan with Kazuo Ohno and Min Tanaka, dancing in company Mai-Juku (1986-1995). Corchero concurrently performed his own creations internationally.
In Barcelona, in 1991, he began a long artistic relationship with poet and translator Feliu Formosa, receiving the National Dance Award of Catalonia for "El bufó sota la tempesta” 2003. With Joan Saura, Agustí Fernández and Liba Villavecchia, Corchero formed the improvisation group IBA, organizing IMPROVISA Festival. He formed the prestigious Raravis dance company (1993-2012) with Rosa Muñoz.
In 2011, Andrés Corchero reunited with Japanese dancer Oguri. Their on-going project "My Neighbor Sky" was performed in Electric Lodge, Venice CA, the Creation Center l'Animal a l'esquena, the Mies Van der Rohe Pavilion (Grec Festival de Barcelona 2013), Joan Miró Foundation (Grec Festival de Barcelona 2018) and Teatro Principal, Palma.
He joined Morleigh Steinberg and Oguri’s ARCANE Collective in 2013 to create "Return to Absence", inspired by Samuel Beckett's trilogy. Presented at the Electric Lodge, it premiered at the Dublin Dance Festival, and was performed at NY Live Arts and the Grec Festival of Barcelona 2016.
2015, he danced "Sin respuestas" with musician Ivo Sans, MOCA Barcelona. 2019 he collaborated with the famous singer Silvia Pérez Cruz in “La Relativitat de la Bellesa” at the National Art Museum of Catalonia, Classics Festival. January 2020 premier "Absences (Padre and Camí de silenci)" for the Mercat de les Flors, Barcelona.
He has collaborated with dancers, Hisako Horikawa, Christine Quoiraud, Frank Van de Ven, Angels Margarit and Ana Eulate, María Muñoz and Pep Ramis (Malpelo); musicians Jordi Riera, Horacio Curti, Christoph Irmer, Miguel Poveda, Joan Ollé (director), visual artist Jordi Rocosa, among many others.
Andrés Corchero other awards:
Applause Award 2002- Sebastià Gasch Award for the Performing Arts, together with Agustí Fernández, for the piece "A modo de esperanza". Prize "Tal pas de la tarda 92" of National Radio of Spain for its multidisciplinary works together with Feliu Formosa.
A native of Japan, Oguri is an internationally acclaimed dancer who has been described as a master at redirecting the way one sees and encounters the physical environment, his dance emphasizing the unpredictable. A resident of Southern California since 1990, Oguri produces full-evening solo and ensemble work, improvising and collaborating with musicians, sculptors, painters, poets, and literature. He is an artist-in-residence at the Electric Lodge in Venice, California where he conducts Body Weather Laboratory training workshop, a forum for investigating the body and dance. He has received support from the National Endowment for the Arts, National Dance Project, New England Foundation of the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, The James Irvine Foundation, and Center for Cultural Innovation, The Metabolic Studio, The Japan Foundation, 2018 United States Artist Doris Duke Fellow and 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. 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.
Special thanks: Lori and Joel Shapiro, Johanna Wolf Petersen, Eleni Merari, and Destefano DeLuise
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.