Group Work
Premiered at On the Boards, Juicy Point B, February 2005
(Seattle) - On the Boards (OtB) presents the latest work by Seattle-based choreographer, dancer and mathematician, Maureen Whiting, February 17-19 at 8pm on the OtB Mainstage. Juicy Point B is the culmination of research by the Maureen Whiting Company in parking lots, old factories and seedy hotel rooms over the past year. Whiting identifies moments of unbridled human expression in these non-traditional settings and uses them as fuel for her intricate, emotionally energized and physically compelling choreography. Her performance research involves working with modern and classical dancers actresses and non dancers to get at the seeds of heightened emotional and physical expression through different performance and dance mediums. Whiting pairs her distinct choreographic work with the talents of a large group of artists including award winning scenic designer Etta Lilienthal, talented performers and dancers Kory Perigo, Tamin Totkze, Laurentia Barbu, ballerina Julie Tobiason, actress/director Frances Hearn, singers Grace Hearn & Pam Tobiason, standout local composers and musicians Evan Schiller, Dave Abramson, Brad Dunn, and video artist Alex Schweder to create a physically and emotionally stimulating experience.
Juicy Point B describes and highlights the additive, neutralizing and subtractive effects of types of juicy points of life such as unbridled emotion, vigorous dancing and live singing, combined with a visual stimulating interactive environment designed by Etta Lilienthal. Whiting and Lilienthal create a setting in order to explore how audiences and performers interact with the "juicy points" of our surroundings. Juicy moments of life are heightened in the theater for the audience to experience, enjoy, and then personalize.
As a choreographer, Whiting actively pursues collaborations with visual artists, composers, and actors to explore the structural and expressive outcomes between artistic mediums. Her unique training in dance, mathematics and visual art allows for a vision which explores interlocking structures of theoretical systems which she then applies to her creative process as a dance maker, creating a rich visual, kinesthetic world.
Premiered at Seattle Universtiy: February 2004
Maureen Whiting creates contemporary performance art with her company inspired from installations in our 2003-2004 season incorporating video, elaborate costumes from Terry Frank & KD Schill, and original composed music by Evan Schiller. Live video is added by David Craven with original set design by Jeff Gerson This piece HERE/THIS (55 min./2004) explores the nature of consciousness and projection in the form of a dance/play/circus.
Premiered at On the Boards, Bowie: Inside/Out, May 2003
In the spirit of Avant-Garde Rock and Performance Art, the Maureen Whiting Company creates a visually mesmerizing, dynamic, and unusual rock-and-roll extravaganza. Unblinking Moonage Daydream on a Blue Planet (10 Min./2003) for three performers utilize bigger than life costumes, rock and roll make-up, synchronized dance, peppered with hot exhibitionist strutting to play with reinvention of performance persona in order to honor the spirit of David Bowie and Rock Performance.
Premiered at On the Boards, Artist Access, December 2002
In live cabaret performance, the Maureen Whiting Company presents Unravel, Unrelated Events
(60 min./2002), an evening of fast paced interrupted dances: solos, duets, and trios compiled in an unraveling series of recent works to form a colorful evening of dance, theater, and one short film. The show features new rhythmic beats by local composer Evan Schiller. Also featured are some wind-up toy chickens, feather boas, lacy panties, a bit of dancing, and a little mess.
Premiered and Commission by Velocity, January 2002
Little Things Matter (25 min./2002) is a melange of choreographed face movement and large group ensemble work with startling moments of surprise and humor exploring themes of interconnection, relationship, and the additive nature of emotional events which create larger happenings.
Premiered and Commissioned by On the Boards, New Performance Series, February 2001
Steered by a certain architectural intuition and fueled by a desire akin to archiving elusive geometry, wreck tangle (60 min./2001) traverses through a horizontally diffuse and emotional landscape. wreck tangle is peppered with startling moments of humor and danger as a dancer runs into a wall, hears an unexpected sound, or is faced with a sudden appearance of a glowing wall or gigantic video image. This piece for 7 female dancers has projected video by Robert Campbell on a set designed by visual artist Gary Smoot. The video creates a dynamic moving landscape of color, image and form. Original music was commissioned from local and international composers Ian Christe, Eyvind Kang, Reggie Watts, and David Stanford, and creates a soundscape filled with the din of day to day life and linked to the subtle inner landscape of the dance.
Premiered and Commissioned by On the Boards, Northwest New Works and Bagnolet Competion, Los Angeles, January and April 2000
And It Was (29 min./2000) is dynamic, visceral and emotive as the five dancers move from a raw yet refined movement palette to a theatrical use of facial expressions. The movement at times surges, then stops and balance in time as the dancers pause mid movement allowing the emotional state to shift to a
different level. In this collaboration with lighting designer Ben Geffen as the movement transmutes into a facial expression the light shifts to just the face or the torso. The lighting mimics the outer world in which we live with its relentless shifts and changes; sometimes in tune with our inner world, and other times not.
Premiered and Commissioned by On the Boards, Northwest New Works
Among Caesurae (25 min./1999) utilizes clear spacial and rhythmic patterns to support and contrast emotional outbursts and expression including laughter, breathing, sounding, and singing. This piece is about the delicate and sometimes humorous and often humbling task of balancing logic and emotion. This was collaboration with composer Joe Zyonc who created a score that supports and comments on these tensions between logic and emotion.
Premiered and Commissioned by On the Boards, Northwest New Works
Seeing With Both Eyes Closed (22 min./1998) is a collaboration with video artist Robert Campbell. In Seeing With Both Eyes Closed, an intensely color-saturated, single video image represents the inner psychological life of the dance as it slowly and sometimes imperceptibly changes, deep emotional shifts happen and are perceived as something more shockingly sudden. How often do we discover meaningful events or feelings in life this way?
Installation Work
Juicy Point (60 min./2004) is the culmination of research in parking lots, old factories and seedy hotel rooms, Maureen Whiting's latest dance work Juicy Point (June 12-14 2004) arrived in a raw warehouse setting (an old brewery space currently used for coffee bean storage) beautifully transformed by renowned scenic designer Etta Lilienthal with lighting by LB Morse. Audiences interacted with the juicy points of this surrounding and the dynamic raw visceral dancing and performing by the Maureen Whiting Company.
Alien’s Also Love (40 min./2003) is a performance installation taking place in a seedy hotel room of the Commodore Hotel, by members of the Maureen Whiting Company. This installation is a visual and movement based installation, which focuses on themes of love, sexuality and alienation.
Out Bound (30 min./2003) along with David Craven and Fionn Meade the Maureen Whiting Company calls out the words, the other acts on them. But have both parties followed the same path to their shared predicament? If one directs the other and vice versa, who-in the end-is determining the outcome? “This is the king,” for instance, needs no explanation, or does it…As part of Games In Motion, choreographer Maureen Whiting, video artist David Craven, and writer Fionn Meade explore the ‘rules of the game’ and make heads of tails during the process in site-specific performance exploring the nature of ‘directives’.
And there was concrete skin for your face (30 min./2002) combines sound and movement made by choreographer Maureen Whiting with the company dancers, video installation by video artist Robert Campbell, and costume installation by designers Sarah Harlett and KD Schill. This sensory-based installation is an experience of sound, movement, visual elements, and memory. The choreographer, Maureen Whiting, is transposing movement and created the original sound score. The video is a non-verbal story with combining images from structured dance phrases with video memory of claustrophobic improvisations inside the Fort Worden’s old chambers at night. The costumes vary from military-style uniforms to fantastic evening gowns. The gowns in the installation represent the memory of person’s life. The artists are exploring these layered elements in Jack Straw’s gallery settings.
Solo/Duet
Premiered and Workshopped in Sweden and Amsterdam and at On the Boards
Strangely Solid (12 Min./2003) and Delicately Through The Middle (24 min./2001) are choreographic works with Frankfort Ballet dancer Heidi Vierthaler which focuses on the relationship between inner and outer body. This engenders states of surprise, sensation and humor as it bridges highly kinetic dancing in a psychologically edgy world, with punctuations of facial expressions. Evan Schiller created original music and the interactive set was designed by Maureen Whiting with designer Jeff Gerson.
Premiered and Commissioned by On the Boards, Northwest New Works
Rats/The Continuous Humiliating Process of Being Human (30 min./2002) is a solo created and performed by Maureen Whiting uses words, movement, music, tape, Styrofoam, lipstick, and a bathing suit to comment on containment, mental patterns, desire, humor, and sexuality. The sound score includes music by Evan Schiller, Eyvind Kang, and Japanese pop.
|
|
|
