GUEST ARTIST SERIES: TAHNI HOLT (PDX)
GUEST ARTIST SERIES: TAHNI HOLT (PDX)
DUET LOVE PERFORMANCES
SEPT 4 / 7PM WITH POST-SHOW CONVERSATION + SEPT 5-6 / 10PM
Velocity Founders Theater 1621 12th Ave
TICKETS $20 / $25 at the door / $15 student + senior / $17 MVP
“The movement is powerful and raw and compelling . . .” – The Seattle Times, Brangien Davis
Celebrated Portland choreographer Tahni Holt’s provocative world-premiere Duet Love plays with our precious notions of hetero-romance. Holt and a stellar Pacific Northwest artistic team, draw from iconic photographs of famous couples as a driving force to disrupt and question how gendered bodies are portrayed in performance. Developed during a June and August 2014 Velocity residency, Duet Love thrives upon queer twists by asking: How does audience desire inflect the experience of masculine/feminine into the movement and emotion of dancing bodies? Performed by Ezra Dickinson, Keyon Gaskin, Allie Hankins and Lucy Yim. Music composed by Luke Wyland with special guest Corinna Repp. Dramaturgy by Robert Tyree. Lighting design by Jeff Forbes. Costume design by Jayme Hansen and Kate Fenker. Artistic advice by Chris Larson.
Duet Love kicks off Velocity’s Fall Kick-Off, with a weekend full of showcases highlighting the best of Pacific NW dance from 2014 and giving a preview of what’s to come in 2015! After the Velocity world premiere, Duet Love heads to PICA’s TBA festival in September 2014.
Photo Eugenie Frerichs
AUDIENCE LAB + MASTER CLASS
AUDIENCE LAB: TAHNI HOLT Duet Love
THUR SEPT 4 / 5:30-8:30PM
Velocity 1621 12th Ave
LAB $30 / $25 MVP / Includes ticket to THUR performance + refreshments + post-show conversation
Audience Labs aim to demystify experimental dance through an equal emphasis on conversation, presentation, participation and social interaction. Facilitated by Velocity Artistic Director Tonya Lockyer, this audience lab focuses on Tahni Holt’s Duet Love. The Audience Lab includes a ticket to the performance, refreshments and a post-show conversation with the artist.
MASTER CLASS: TAHNI HOLT
TUES SEPT 2 / 9:30-11:15AM
Velocity Founders Studio 1621 12th Ave
Work on the cellular, tingly, membrane, rivers, depth, pathway, ease, vibration, charged, warmth, softening, cleansing, full, rhythm, scale, inside, buoyant, container, continuum, oscillation, distinguishable, exchange, opening, absorb, syncopation, vitality dance through a rigorous warming up to sensorial systems and to our emotional, individual and group body. Material in class is constructed and shaped by the two year rehearsal process of Duet Love. Expect to gain insight into you – through relationship to others in the room. More is more.
Photo Eugenie Frerichs
ABOUT THE ARTIST
TAHNI HOLT’s (PDX) varied collaborations and solo work have been presented throughout the Northwest and beyond: On The Boards and Bumbershoot, PICA’s TBA Festival, Reed College’s Raw Art Week, Fusebox Festival, The Lucky Penny (Atlanta); Movement Research’s Monday at Judson Church (NYC); as well as far off places in France, Romania and Idaho. In 2010 Holt was curated into the PORTLAND 2010 Biennial and is an Oregon Arts Commission Fellowship awardee (2007).
In 2011 She was extremely honored to be one of four Oregon Choreographers highlighted at Marylhurst College’s Art Gym exhibition Dance: before, after, during.She has worked with Deborah Hay on The Solo Commissioning Project in Scotland and has spent time in Vienna as a performer for Eszter Salamon and Christine De Smedt’sTransformers at the Impulstanz Festival (2010). Holt has worked for Miguel Gutierrez in his Freedom of Information project (2009) and is currently in an on-going collaborative dance project with Madalina Dan that was initiated through their Romanian residency this past June.
Along with dance making, Holt, and three others, produce the dance newspaper FRONT. FRONT relies on the old-school tactics of the newspaper infused with new, current, future energy of dance theory and practices in the field. Holt has taught numerous workshops throughout the Pacific Northwest most notably at Reed College, Lewis and Clark College and The University of Oregon, and is currently at the beginning stages of operating her own dance studio, FLOCK. FLOCK is a dynamic incubator for risky creative endeavors where, Holt, as well as eight other Portland choreographers, inhabits as artistic home.
Photo Megan Radocha
INSIGHTS
“Tahni Holt captured the complete trust of the audience that can only occur with the establishment of true intimacy between the performer and her crowd.”
– Pica Press Core, Patrick Leanard
“With acts pouring into Portland from around the world it is nice to know some locals can hold their own on an international stage. Under an hour is a frantic, beautiful representation of that all-important moment when something is changed forever”
– The Portland Mercury, Ryan Dirks
READ REVIEW – Tahni Holt’s ‘Sunshine’ means as many ways as it can, Oregon Artswatch, Barry Johnson, November 12, 2012
READ REVIEW – Further Thoughts on Tahni Holt’s Culture Machine, The Portland Mercury, Noah Dunham, October 15, 2010
