REDCAT's 7th New Original Works Fest Launches Eight Projects By Local Artists

REDCAT is proud to announce its seventh annual New Original Works Festival, July 22 through August 7, 2010. Each year, REDCAT serves as a vibrant performance laboratory where Los Angeles artists gather to push the boundaries of creative expression in new dance, theater, music and multimedia performance works. This year's NOW Festival artists include Maureen Huskey, Killsonic, Christine Marie & Ensemble, Rae Shao-Lan Blum & Tashi Wada, Raphael Xavier, Alexandro Segade, Hana van der Kolk and Miwa Matreyek.

"In order to create this year's festival, REDCAT surveyed more than 160 proposed projects. It's an inspiring process that speaks to the vitality of the city's experimental performance scene." says George Lugg, the NOW Festival's Director and Associate Director of REDCAT. "The eight new projects that audiences will experience are fueled by the creative force of more than 83 artist and performers, as they reinvent theatrical forms, assimilate new technologies and pose essential questions about how we live the political and social realities of now."

Described as "on the pulse of cutting-edge contemporary performance" by the Los Angeles Times, this annual festival, now in its seventh year, often launches productions that live on long after their presentations at REDCAT, receiving national and international grants and often expanding into full-length works. REDCAT is thrilled to fulfill its interdisciplinary mission and give artists in this region the creative support they need to achieve national and international stature.

This year's eight NOW productions will share the REDCAT stage for three daring and distinctive programs over three consecutive weeks:

WEEK ONE

Maureen Huskey: The Exile of Petie DeLarge
July 22 - 24 | 8:30 pm

"[Huskey] provides us with a useful strategy for considering our place in and connections to the world." --Art Journal

Bessie Award-winning director Maureen Huskey teams with artistic producer Elizabeth R. English to lead a collaborative experiment in language and performance, bringing to life Jennifer Barclay's neo-gothic text The Exile of Petie DeLarge. Exquisitely visual staging and powerfully rhythmic performances drive the darkly funny story of Petie, the expelled leader of a campus coup, and her gang of renegade students in their grim struggle to regain control of the student body.

Related Website | www.creative-capital.org/grantees/view/308/project:263
Article | www.lastageblog.com/2010/06/18/the-exile-of-petie-delarge-writer-seeks-new-way-of-storytelling

Killsonic: Tongues Bloody Tongues
July 22 - 24 | 8:30 pm

"There's nothing like witnessing them for the first time ... Killsonic blows me away." --LA Weekly

The 30-piece musicians' collective Killsonic plays under the direction of a reanimated Saddam Hussein as they orchestrate the factious history of Iraq in the era of British rule. In a staged processional that features a giant set piece, ragged costumes and blaring megaphones, this high-energy processional band cries out the history of a land that has been contested for centuries.

Killsonic Website | www.killsonic.org
Video | www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wy_jLEW57sY
Video | www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJt-oTUYk7Q&feature=related

WEEK TWO

Christine Marie & Ensemble: Ground to Cloud
July 29 - 31 | 8:30 pm

"Christine Marie's shadow design conjures a literal ocean of surprise." --Los Angeles Times

Seamlessly integrating projected shadows, live actors and an innovative sound score, Christine Marie and her collaborators draw on the history of electric light to manifest a flickering world of natural phenomena and human intervention. Large-scale imagery from simple handheld lights and props takes on mythological proportions as scientific discovery, religious folklore and magical trickery blend into an incandescent work of expressionist theater.

Artist's Website | www.cimimarie.com
Video | www.youtube.com/user/cimimarie#p/u/1/Ty6_-u5zEPE

Rae Shao-Lan Blum: Systems of Us
July 29 - 31 | 8:30 pm

"Her sensitivity to phrasing creates an image of raw emotion, with contortion and line functioning as feeling." --The Dance Insider

Through interdependent movement and musical scores, three dancers and five musicians build a work of spontaneous elegance as they delve into the complexities of intimacy interrupted. Choreographer Rae Shao-Lan Blum and composer Tashi Wada lay out intersecting compositions that weave repetition, disruption and transformation into a vigorous exploration of the nuanced negotiations that keep relationships alive.

Choreographer's Website | www.raeshaolanblum.com
Composer's Website | www.music.calarts.edu/~tashi/tashi_works.html
Video | www.vimeo.com/6692668

Raphael Xavier: Black Canvas
July 29 - 31 | 8:30 pm

"Xavier abstracts the Hip-Hop vocabulary, loosening it from its usual musical moornings." --Dance Magazine

Raphael Xavier is a finely tuned master of Breaking whose continued innovation has led the vanguard of hip-hop dance theater, first as a member of Rennie Harris Puremovement, then as choreographer and co-founder of olive Dance Theatre. In Black Canvas, Xavier shifts the rhythms of Rap and propels narratives through Breaking to draw parallels between the performer's body, which is inscribed by life's experiences, and the stage itself.

Video | www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AJD06cQ54U
Video | www.youtube.com/watch?v=LX2eXldcA68

WEEK THREE

Alexandro Segade: Replicant VS Separatist
August 5 - 7 | 8:30 pm

"Incisively intelligent work ... with a sense of humor that is as biting as it is playful." --Fanzine

Presented as a live film shoot with a crew of technicians, Replicant VS Separatist uses stylized comic-book action to construct a sci-fi tale of state-mandated marriage. My Barbarian's Alexandro Segade calls the shots as his actors portray two male couples navigating love in the face of militaristic conformance--one whose compliance places them within the legal establishment and one whose unsanctioned relationship has them on the run.

Artist's Blog | www.alexandrosegade.wordpress.com
Video | www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjLLIxibvok

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Hana van der Kolk: Once More, Again, One (Solo)
August 5 - 7 | 8:30 pm

"A meditation on subtle awareness." --ArtForum

Dance artist Hana van der Kolk adapts a work originally conceived for four dancers into a solo exploration of performance, collective encounter and the power of popular music. While ransacking familiar songs by the Pointer Sisters, Prince and The Rapture, van der Kolk's choreographed tasks turn cliché metaphors into a poetic landscape of movement, sound and unexpected associations.

Artist's Website | www.hanavanderkolk.com
Video | www.vimeo.com/9548553

Miwa Matreyek: Myth and Infrastructure
August 5 - 7 | 8:30 pm

"Extraordinary and beautiful ... Matreyek pushes the boundaries of realism." --THE Magazine LA

Known for her celebrated work with the multimedia collective Cloud Eye Control, award-winning animation and performance artist Miwa Matreyek creates live cinematic works that place her body within meticulously constructed realms of fantasy-driven projection. In the hallucinatory logic of Myth and Infrastructure, Matreyek's shadow--self moves, under a sphere of constantly rotating stars, through primal worlds and dense cityscapes--both witness and agent in a vast human narrative.

Artist's Website | www.semihemisphere.com
Video | www.vimeo.com/10278043

The New Original Works Festival runs July 22, 2010 - August 7, 2010 at REDCAT. Each program is performed on three consecutive evenings and performances take place Thursday through Saturday at 8:30 p.m. Tickets are $18 for a single performance or $36 for a festival pass, with student discounts available. Seating is general admission. Tickets and information can be obtained at the REDCAT box office, 213 237-2800 or www.redcat.org. REDCAT is located at the corner of W. 2nd and Hope Streets, inside the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex (631 West 2nd Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012).

The New Original Works Festival is supported by grants from The James Irvine Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

For additional information about the festival and the artists, high-resolution images, media and interviews, please contact Diana Wyenn at 213 237-2873 or dwyenn@calarts.edu.

ABOUT REDCAT
Opened by CalArts in 2003, REDCAT (Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater) introduces diverse audiences, students and artists to the most influential developments in the arts from around the world, and gives artists in this region the creative support they need to achieve national and international stature. REDCAT is the newest partner in an international network of adventurous art and performance centers, which together are playing a vital role in the evolution of contemporary culture. REDCAT is a center for experimentation, discovery and lively civic discourse. For more information, visit www.redcat.org.

REDCAT season sponsors include The Standard Hotel Downtown, Yamaha Pianos, Ovation TV, Los Angeles magazine and KCRW. For complete REDCAT acknowledgments, visit www.redcat.org/acknowledgments

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