Lee Nguyen from the City of Austin gave the latest work at ZACH Theatre a thumbs-up review. But it wasn’t exactly for the company’s latest drama, comedy or musical.
Since 2003, Big Medium’s East Austin Studio Tour (or EAST for shorthand), Nov. 12-13 & 19-20, has offered Austin artists the chance to open their doors to the public.
ARCOS Dance is known as an experimental platform for dance technology – a merging together of bodies in space and digital creation. It’s like a modern brand of philosophy, an embodiment of human history alongside a projection of its uncertain future.
Convention is not a part of Allison Orr’s vocabulary. The Forklift Danceworks artistic director has carved out a particular niche in the site-specific performance world of Texas—one that draws attention to the people and systems that keep our communities ticking, often without thanks or notice. This is Orr’s specialty: bringing the invisible to the forefront.
The Dance/USA conference was held in Austin this past June, a first for the capital and the organization’s second visit to Texas (Houston, 2009). For me, it was a chance to hobnob with my peers from all over the US, expand my arts toolbox with the broad spectrum of talks and workshops and to spend some much-needed quality time with the Austin Dance community.
The Austin non-profit, Co-Lab Projects, is an incubator for more than 100 artists who often rely on collaboration to make their work. For example, the painting duo Drew Liverman and Michael Ricioppo, who function as a unit called YOUNGSONS, had a show in May at Co-Lab’s pop-up location and created a large-scale outdoor mural. So it makes sense that when Co-Lab founders Chris Whiteburch and Austin Nelson decided four years ago to launch Art of the Brew, a beer + art collaboration, it was instantly one of their most popular endeavors. This year’s event takes place on Sept. 3.
In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass (1872), the heroine Alice holds a mirror to the inverted words of “Jabberwocky” and realizes she has entered a mirror world. The quote also serves as an entry point to the Blanton Museum’s upcoming exhibition of Book from the Sky by artist Xu Bing, on view through Jan. 22.
Charles O. Anderson is an associate professor of African Diaspora Dance Studies and the Head of the Dance Program at The University of Texas at Austin.