Test Kitchen
An Experimental Performance Event
Sat, April 19th, 8PM
Cambridge YMCA Theater
Yuka Takahashi - Artistic Director and Producer of Test Kitchen
Yuka Takahashi is a dancer, performer, improviser, choreographer and certified Pilates instructor born and raised in Japan. After graduating from high school she moved to NYC to attend Joffrey Ballet School. While in NY she extended her interest and training in Modern/ Contemporary Dance and performance art. In 2006 she moved to Vienna, Austria. There, she regularly presented dance, installations, performance art and taught an improvisational dance class at WUK. She received 2 yearly residencies at LABfactory and a short residency at D.ID. curated by Liz King. At LABfactory she created inter-disciplinary performances with full professional support under the direction of Thomas J. Jelinek and Kazuko Kurosaki. Since she was in Vienna, she has been strongly engaged with artists of other disciplines. One of her collaborative works, with Ursula Endlicher, was presented at the art exhibition of SIGGRAPH ASIA2009 in Yokohama, Japan. Since moving to Boston in May 2011 she has presented her own works at Mobius, Boston Center for the Arts, Boston University, Movement Research (NYC), Y Theater at YMCA and OBERON. In 2012 she produced an interdisciplinary experimental performance event at OBERON Theater. She performed Trisha Brown’s living installation at the ICA. Currently she is working with Zoe Dance Company and Ego Art Inc. besides creating her own projects locally and internationally.
She would like to thank for the people who come to support experimental performance field, and staff and talented artists who contribute their fine quality works. www.highbridgeproject.com
ARTISTS
Rachel Barringer
Cellist Rachel Barringer, a Los Angeles native, is an active classical chamber musician, rock musician, yoga instructor, and private cello teacher living in the Boston area. After attending California Institute of Arts as a cello performance major she moved to Massachusetts where she received her Masters Degree in Music from the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, MA. Recently Rachel released a solo album,
"Glass Dahlia,” which has brought together her experiences performing in numerous classical and contemporary chamber music ensembles, Partch (LA-based band performing the music of microtonal composer Harry Partch), and various rock bands(she is a founding member of the Wrong Shapes and plays cello in the Grownup Noise) to create a hypnotic blend of atmospheres and moods, all using only looped cello and voice. Songs from "Glass Dahlia" are being used as part of the soundtrack to an upcoming PBS documentary titled "Coming Back" (spring 2014) about veterans returning from being stationed overseas.
Emily Beattie
Emily Beattie collaboratively creates body based movement that resuscitates liveness in processed and live performance. She is a re-embodier engaging with performance and technology. Her experimental works for stage, screen, and site have been supported by REDCAT, Brown University, Pieter Performance Space, Boston Cyberarts Festival, World Arts Music/Crash Arts, Green Street Studios, Somerville Arts Council, Gloucester New Arts Festival, Design Boston, ART’s Oberon Theater, Support Women Artists Now Day Inc., Kyoto Renku Festival 2011, and Rhodopi International Theater Lab. As a performer, Emily is currently on tour with projects with David Roussève/REALITY and Lionel Popkin Dance Project. She has also had the honor of working with Donald Byrd, Simone Forti, Stephen Koplowitz, Jennifer Monson,
Sara Rudner, and Edisa Weeks. She has processed interactions with these artists to develop and teach approaches to movement while on faculty at Brown University, UCLA, Walnut Hill School for the Arts, and the Boston Ballet Community with recent opportunities to work with students as a guest at Rhode Island School of Design and Tufts University. www.emilybeattie.com
Joe Burgio
Joe Burgio is an explorer in time and space by way of improvisation. Fascinated by the possibilities of collaboration, the creative potential of structure, and the expressiveness of the body in movement, Joe has made work in churches, galleries, WWII artillery bunkers, outsider art-spaces and traditional black-box theaters.
His approach to dance making fuses raw creativity with techniques drawn from multiple artistic and scientific disciplines.
Chorizo®
Chorizo® is a Massachusetts-based movement and sound project formed on Groundhog Day, three weeks after the Great Molasses Flood of 1919. Amidst the chaos, a small group of refugees trapped on the top floor of a bakery in the North End passed the time by playing dice, eating biscotti, and observing the social habits of snowy owls. After several long nights, members of the group discovered a shared love of music boxes, bells, whistles, and glitter. When they stepped out into the bright sunlit puddles of molasses, they knew they had found their purpose.
Movement: Teresa Czepiel
Reeds: Steve Norton
Flute: Matt Samolis
Sara June
Sara June is an American performance artist whose work is rooted in body-based forms. Her artistic training and influences harken from Japanese and American experimental performance methods, particularly Butoh and Body Weather Training. She has studied Butoh with Katsura Kan, Hiroko Tamano, Natsu Nakajima, Su-En, Diego Pinon, the Vangeline Theater, Deborah Butler, and Jennifer Hicks, Body Weather with Zack Fuller, Contemporary Movement Improvisation with Liz Roncka and Olivier Besson, and performance art methods with Allison Wyper among others. Sara June's work is deeply influenced by her academic and research background. She completed undergraduate training as a visual artist (Rhode Island School of Design), and graduate training in Developmental Psychology (Harvard University) and Clinical Social Work (Boston University). She has been an active member of the Boston-based experimental artists' group Mobius since 2009. Currently, she has focused on creating new movement languages to iterate concepts of self. Since 2006, she has worked closely with musician Max Lord to create collaborative works that have most recently focused on the study of enigmatic historical figures or sites. Together, they co-curate the Zeroplan Performance Series which has hosted acclaimed national and international experimental musicians and dancers in improvised contexts since 2007.
Eric Gunther
Eric Gunther was born in New York in 1978. He studied Computer Science at MIT.
He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he is a founding partner of the interactive art and design firm, Sosolimited. Eric makes music with the bands Knolls, Maamba, and Babystep. He and Jeff Lieberman made a timelapse dance music video for OK Go. He and Emily Beattie work on interactive dance films. In the in-between hours, he dances, meditates, and makes things that shake people. www.sosolimited.com
Max Lord
Max Lord is a Boston-based musician who has worked in a variety of rock, noise, electronic and improvised settings. Though originally identifying as a percussionist, since 2000 he has performed with Buchla electronic instruments.
His recorded work as Ghost Grass recalls mid-century electronic experimentation as often as more modern improvised approaches and is intimately tied to the magnetic medium on which it is created. As a collaborator and organizer, he is closely associated with the experimental movement community and has performed with Sara June (as Lord and June) since 2006. In 2009, he became a member of the Mobius Artist Group.
Liz Roncka
Liz Roncka appreciates your curiosity and presence.
She looks forward to improvising with you !!!
Angela Sawyer
After finishing a philosophy degree specializing in Husserlian phenomenology in the mid-1990s, writer and musician Angela Sawyer felt fully prepared to start astonishing audiences around the Boston area using her mouth, some broken electronics,
toys & noisemakers. Impromptu squealing & gargling has become her specialty, and she’s released a steady trickle of small-run lps, cds, cdrs & cassettes over the years. Changing the names of her projects to suit her every whim, the current active roster includes Preggy Peggy & the Lazy Babymakers & Duck That. Her fantastic recent lp
“A Short Visit To The City That Bleeds” is full of weird up-close intimate wordage and environmental activity recorded ‘in and around a rental car parked on leafy 34th Street in Baltimore, MD.’ Dennis Tyfus from the Ultra Eczema label says Sawyer is “the best living vocal artist”. She also runs the one & only Weirdo Records from a tiny storefront in Cambridge. www.weirdorecords.com
Photo: Sophie Gillmann
Photo: Yi-Chun Wu
Caitlin Ewing
Caitlin Ewing completed her B.F.A. in Dance with Distinction from The Ohio State University. In Boston, she performs with Annie Kloppenberg and Alli Ross. She is also an adjunct dance instructor at the Cambridge School of Weston and Assistant Director of the Theatre and Dance Summer Programs at Mercersburg Academy.
Gabriela Silva
Gabriela Silva received her dance training from OrigiNation Cultural Arts Center, Boston Arts Academy and the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. She is fortunate to perform with Emily Beattie, Jean Appolon Expressions, Danza Organica, Selmadanse, and Public Displays of Motion.