I am creating a performance with The Urbano Project. Mark your calendars, the show is April 8 at 3pm. It's a Saturday. Over the next ten weeks of rehearsal and creation, we will build off the December three week work shop I just finished for Urbano. The work shop was called Dance Sketch Book Portals (see image below). In this dance class we made videos the way an illustrator might make sketches. Each video was just a way of taking notes about an idea not a finished project. I was inspired by Tok Tok, and so we gave ourselves permission to use music we did not hold the license for in these sketches as well. Because it is not the whole song! We also put the videos on YouTube and displayed them in an interactive sculpture, to get the feeling of an audience. Although it was not a live audience, we displayed them online as a way for audience members across time to have a portal back to the work. Our audience was dispersed and ongoing, but an audience never the less!
This was my second Urbano Artist in Residence opportunity. Urbano is a non profit in Boston that offers residencies to artists in every discipline. The organization selects candidates who create works that blur boundaries between art and everyday life. All of Urbano's residencies facilitate conversations with the surrounding community through the lens of contemporary art. Our project took place in Kendall Square, so the use of online videos was meant to dialogue with the Tech Community as well as Boston Artists recently displaced by the tech community. The Foundry is a new arts space seeking to address that aspect of gentrification in Cambridge, so the location was very special. From Urbano's website: Through artistic collaboration, participating youth and professional artists are challenged to create projects that take place both within the boundaries of an exhibition space and in the community beyond the walls of the studio. These projects span diverse artistic themes and disciplines, but they are all rooted in the fundamental principles of collaboration, risk-taking, and creative and critical expression.
