Announcing Documents on Dance, a special guest residency by Chloë Flores

I am thrilled to announce the launch of Documents on Dance, a special yearlong guest residency by my talented colleague and friend Chloë Flores. Dance is an important part of the performative fabric of Los Angeles, where it enjoys a flirtatious and generative relationship with the visual arts, as well as an experimental freedom that is hard to find in cities renowned as centers for the dance mainstream. I have occasionally covered dance events on this blog before, but have long wished for some deeper and more sustained form of engagement. Chloë answered my prayers when she proposed this residency. I’ll let her explain the concept in her own words:

Documents on Dance (2014) is a year-long online research project, journal and public archive on dance in the expanding field of performance. This project positions curatorial research as an alternative form for documenting performance art in Los Angeles through, but not limited to: formal and informal interviews; edited notes from performances; conversations; passages from texts; margin notes; artist, performer, and dancer profiles; historical references and research; citations; bibliography; etc. The compilation of information will form the basis for an exhibition.

Stay tuned for DoD’s first post, coming later today!

homeLA, Mount Washington, May 4, 2013

Alexandra Shilling’s Absence: A History deconstructed, performed by Sarah Jacobs, Aaron Kahn, Carol McDowell, and Madison Page

There’s a grand experiment afoot; the pioneering dance maven Rebecca Bruno, in partnership with the folks at Pieter and the Dance Resource Center, is seeking to infiltrate private homes throughout Los Angeles with a “site-sensitive” dance series called homeLA. The concept is a mutually beneficial one; the city’s small but scrappy experimental dance community opens up new performance venues for itself, while the sites themselves are enhanced by evocative dance works that play off their unique architecture.

The first installment of homeLA took place this past weekend at the home of Chloë Flores and Tim Lefebvre—a stunning, custom-built modernist compound nestled at the top of Mount Washington. The four-story main house and adjoining guest house, which sit elegantly on a hillside and deftly engage indoor/outdoor dynamics with elements like sliding glass doors and hidden patios, offered many unique spaces for dancers to experiment with movement.

Native Strategies journal launch, featuring a performance by Jmy James Kidd, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), Hollywood, August 11, 2011

Jmy James Kidd

It’s been an exciting week for performance art in our city. Following last Tuesday’s bar-setting event curated by The Action Bureau at Human Resources, LACE hosted a launch party for the Native Strategies journal, published as a complement to the Native Strategies series of curated performances.

Put together by the hard working team of Brian Getnick, Zemula Barr, and Molly Sullivan, the first issue of Native Strategies covers a series of performances that took place in the spring under the rubric of So Funny It Hurts. Artists Alice Cunt, Kale Likover, Nathan Bockelman, Lauren Weedman, Asher Hartman, Paul Outlaw, and Curt LeMieux were asked to present performances highlighting the complex uses of humor as a tool in their work. The journal both documents and expands on these performances through photographs, substantial essays written in response to the performances, and in-depth interviews with the artists.