Spanish theater artist Angélica Liddell is making her US debut this weekend at On the Boards in Seattle, where she presents Te haré invencible con mi derrota, a solo performance that involves a remarkable amount of self-destruction. The show is based on the life of Jacqueline du Pré, the British cellist whose tragic life and death was the subject of the controversial biopic Hilary and Jackie. Liddell though, seems to be using du Pré’s experience as little more than a jumping off point for her own explorations. As she told one interviewer [PDF]:

I identified my own spiritual demise with Jacqueline’s demise. She died at the age of 42, the age in which my life blew up, the age in which I entered true adult life, alone, in which I couldn’t bear the idea of growing old, the idea of losing my youth, in which my body triumphed over my will, my body drew me away from love and pleasure, and towards a terrible anxiety, towards panic. I felt the same as Jackie, the same. And I used her as an interlocutor with hell, not from a hagiographic perspective, but from a supernatural, demented one.

Cheery Ms. Liddell is not. Her piece is likewise extremely intense, involving an intense consumption of alcohol as well as onstage cutting (she has a day off during the one-week run to recover). “I abuse my body because it’s the only way I have to feel that I still have a body,” she told Seattle weekly The Stranger. “If I have no pleasure, I have to feel my body through pain.”

Still, Liddell’s work has a growing international reputation for its brutal, soul-baring quality. This work made waves at Avignon in 2010; we’ll have to see how American audiences respond.

Update: Seattle’s newspaper critics have been painfully silent on Liddell’s work, but the best performing arts writer in town–and my former boss–Michael van Baker has a fantastic, must-read review:

Te haré invencible con mi derrota is the gnomic title of Angélica Liddell’s deeply unsettling performance … It means “I will make you invincible with my defeat,” although the performance may defeat you, if you have a low tolerance for someone drunkenly slicing into herself with razor blades, driving broken glass into her back, or piercing her fingers like a pin cushion, while you watch.

It’s not a show I thought I’d find myself arguing on behalf of, and yet here I am. The normally up-for-anything On the Boards audience sat in stunned silence as Liddell’s footsteps faded away, the door clanging shut behind her as the show ended. The stage was still lit in its stations of her via dolorosa: a BB rifle, a paint gun, a blowtorch, a topiary, a microwave, a painting, a chair, a collection of cellos, bread (now scattered), a wax hand sitting in a cooling pool of itself. After a long while, someone tried clapping again, and it caught on, raggedly, though not forcefully. It was like clapping for a crucifixion.

Click here to read it all on The SunBreak.

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From Jessica Jobaris's (center) piece at NWNW

I may live in NYC now, but I have a special place in my heart for Seattle’s contemporary performance community, where I learned the ropes, and in particular for the NW New Works Festival at On the Boards. A two-week festival of new dance, theater, and music, from Seattle and the larger Pacific NW’s performance community, NWNW is one of OtB’s oldest and most beloved programs. The vast majority of new experimental work coming out of the region is first seen in 20-minute form at the festival; what audiences see from 16 companies over two weeks will be filling out the next couple years’ seasons of original, challenging work. I sat on the festival selection panel for the 2010 fest (an awesome and humbling experience), and this is the first time in five or six years I won’t be there for it. The trailer only does it partial justice, so check the OtB blog for reviews and more info. Also, for all the Portland readers we (hopefully) have, some of the artists, like Jessica Jobaris, will be headed south to Portlandia two weeks from now for Risk/Reward, the local performance festival produced by our good pals Hand2Mouth Theater, who understand that the key to healthy arts in a city is building institutions to showcase and support the diversity of work happening there, so please, support their efforts.

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Low Lives, an innovative festival of “live networked performances” goes down Friday, April 29, and Saturday, April 30. Here’s the deal: Friday night starting at 5 p.m. Pacific/8 p.m. Eastern, the above LiveStream feed kicks in. For the first three hours of the feed, you get to catch five-minute excerpts of live performances from…well, all the hell over the place. (See the site for a full list, not in order.) Then, at 8 Pacific/11 Eastern, the full-show starts: Seattle’s On the Boards is presenting Catherine Cabeen & Co.’s Into the Void in its entirety. Saturday, you get another sampling of five-minute snippets but no full show.

So not only is the idea cool in and of itself, but, well, I totally dig Catherine Cabeen, as I’ve mentioned once or twice in these digital pages. A former dancer with both Bill T. Jones (she actually performed roles he originally choreographed for himself, apparently) and the Martha Graham Company, Cabeen is a remarkable dancer most recently seen supporting Richard Move at DTW. Into the Void is, if I’m not mistaken, her first evening length commission, an exploration of the work of French artist Yves Klein, and features, among other performers and collaborators, her equally talented former Jones Co. dancer Germaul Barnes. Cabeen has herself written at length on the inspiration and ideas behind the piece (she’s hella smart), and it’s certainly worth reading.

Low Lives Festival is a co-production of Jorge Rojas and Chez Bushwick, and if it turns out you like Cabeen’s work, she’ll be at the Joyce Soho twice in the upcoming month: once for her own evening in May, and as part of the A.W.A.R.D. Show! All-Stars in late May/early June.

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The cast and crew of "L'Effet de Serge" with their "zombie visas," photo courtesy of On the Boards.

Money Money Money: As I’ve mentioned before, I’m sick and tired of Big Ideas demonstrating what a Serious Person you are in terms of lobbing arts sector bombs talking about this or that on the financial side, proposing ineffective, unenforceable plans about how to make things better or save the arts (as though saving isn’t really just a resistance to change, anyway). So it was nice over the last week to encounter a series of more philosophical responses. Seattle-based playwright Paul Mullin (a must-read in the theater world, up there with Parabasis) has a great essay up called “Money Isn’t Everything…or Anything,” in which, rather than bombastically attacking anything, he subtly goes for jugular nonetheless, exploring the relationship of art to money, and offers a rather beautiful defense of theater as an amateur endeavor if that’s what’s required.

“All art is a conversation—theatre doubly so.  If my former friend is telling me I can only hold a conversation with the upper middle class of the Western World circa early 21st century I am obliged to either politely ignore him, or firmly insist he go fuck himself,” he writes, adding: “Yours is the territory you refuse to surrender.” Well worth keeping in mind more often.

Then, over at HowlRound, Polly Carl has a great piece on the idea of “gifts,” and the power of art within the social framework of gift moments. There’s some cross-over with Andy’s essay here on art as a gift economy, and both are also well worth reading.

Update on France’s Vivarium Studio: Two weeks ago we broke the story that, due to visa issues, L’Effet de Serge, a well-loved piece of theater from France’s Vivarium Studios, would potentially have to cancel their upcoming performance at Seattle’s On the Boards. Privately, I was told that the decision to cancel had already been made and the theater was just waiting to announce after the weekend. It was a surprising piece of news given that the show has already played the US on more than one occasion, including the 2010 Under the Radar Festival, and Vivarium Studios has toured other shows previously. The good news is, due to outcry and the intervention of one of Washington’s US Senators and Representatives, the visa rejection was overturned at the last minute, and the show will go up on schedule. I certainly wouldn’t presume to take any credit, as, you know, that probably goes to the state’s elected representatives, but I know that some readers took the time to write in to the addresses I provided. And indeed, it appears that ultimately Mr. Alejandro Mayorkas stepped in to help deal with situation, so to all the readers who wrote in, as well as the bloggers who helped pick up the story (Parabasis, Infinite Body, Contemporary Performance), give all yourselves a pat on the back.

Waking Up: The Brits are all a-twitter over The Independent‘s theater critic Paul Taylor falling asleep and snoring loudly during a performance. The Guardian‘s theater blog has the story, and it’s an amusing read. But I only mention it in passing, because what I really want to point readers to is Claudia La Rocco’s fascinating essay-lecture in the current issue of the Brooklyn Rail, “Some Thoughts, Possibly Related, on Time, Criticism, and the Nature of Consciousness.” I mention the sleeping issue in tandem because sleeping at the theater also comes up in La Rocco’s piece, but it’s so much more–a lovely, free associative, fragmentary exploration of ideas that says less than it asks. I have nothing to add, but be sure to check it out.

Odds & Ends: Keith Hennesy talking about Joseph Beuys and Crotch in Berlin – Kansas loses their only modern dance company – one of London’s most praised pub-theaters is shut down over stairway concerns – Belarus Free Theater is back in the news (UK) and onstage (NYC) – Bellyflop tallies up the Place Prize winners in London – a Beijing modern dance company tries to teach the Chinese it’s not all just pretty ladies – Ben Brantley defends feel-bad theater – dancer/choreographer Catherine Cabeen on drag performance and Richard Move’s Martha@

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This just in from Seattle’s On the Boards, where Vivarium Studio‘s beloved little gem L’Effet de Serge is supposed to be playing later this month:

We are writing to let you know that we are having to consider the possibility of canceling a production after receiving the news that the visas for our next performers, France’s Vivarium Studio, may not be issued. In our 34 year history we have brought hundreds of foreign artists to the US and this is the first time that we have encountered this kind of visa difficulty.

OtB submitted visa applications for Vivarium Studio in early February, more than the required time for these kinds of applications, and have finally received notice today (4/1) that the visas for artist travel to the US may be denied. We have worked tirelessly, especially over the past 2 weeks, to ensure that these visa would be approved, enlisting legal help from several prominent immigration lawyers and congressional offices and foreign consulate offices. This news is of particular shock, as the artists were approved to perform elsewhere in the US just this past January.

This is, of course, not the first time recently we’ve encountered the issue of visa troubles for foreign artists. Just in March, La MaMa had to push back the opening of Irish Modern Dance Theater’s Fall and Recover over visa issues. The Journal had the complete story, as we noted in The Digest a couple weeks ago. Apparently, in a courageous attempt to keep artists out of the country, the Obama administration has radically increased the level of scrutiny for artist visas, justly determining artist visas to be a major area of abuse. The Journal had some choice quotes pertaining to scrutiny of IMDT’s visa applications, for a show that features survivors of torture:

Given the multi-ethnic composition of the group and the universal subject matter of the work to be performed, USCIS is unsure whether the term ‘cultural’ applies in this case.

Why exactly the Obama administration thinks this is important is somewhat beyond me. As a resident of South Brooklyn, where the Russian mafia freely exploits the J-1 visa program to supply right-off-the-boat “talent” to strip clubs in Astoria, I think that, ahem, there might be bigger fish to fry than artist visas. Vivarium Studio, for instance, has already performed in the US, winning praise as an audience favorite at the 2010 Under the Radar Festival. And of course the company is from the rather un-radical, un-offensive nation of France, inevitably leading us to conclude that DHS’s review process is becoming increasingly arbitrary and capricious, which is a very legalistic way of saying they’re full of shit and should be worried about the new practices.

So please, if you have a moment, consider writing DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, who oversees the US office of Citizenship and Immigration Services, at janet.napolitano(at)dhs.gov [EDITOR'S NOTE: It's come to our attention that Sec. Napolitano's public email has been disabled], as well as the office’s director, Alejandro Mayorkas at alejandro.mayorkas(at)dhs.gov.

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Josephine's Echopraxia, "stifle," part of the Seattle edition of The A.W.A.R.D. Show! L-R Rosa Vissers, Marissa Rae Niederhauser, Meredith Horiuchi, Meredith Sallee, Allie Hankin. Photo by Ryan K. Adams

Republicans Don’t Care About Saving Money–They Just Hate Us: One of the big things that’s got the arts & culture world a-twitter is the recent news that some evil Republican party satraps, in a dark conference room somewhere, billowing with the smoke of illegally imported Cuban cigars made of actual Cubans, have concocted a wicked plan to balance the federal budget by eliminating the NEA, NEH, public broadcasting subsidies, and a host of other things that liberals everywhere love. This has predictably led to plenty of hand-wringing amongst arts supporters, who proceeded to try to defend federal arts dollars (no easy task given creatives’ infamously poor math skills). LA’s Culture Monster piped in with the rather extreme claim that the $1.6 billion in total annual federal arts and culture dollars feeds $30 billion back into federal, state, and local tax coffers (I have no idea where they get their figures, but if the arts actually gave you a 1,800 percent ROI, we’d all be rich).

Now, far be it from me to ever to suggest arts and culture funding is a bad investment (actually, I do have a problem with the idea that it’s an “investment” at all, but that’s a different story), but no matter how you try to justify the investment, it won’t work for the Republicans because they don’t care. This has nothing to do with anything other than partisan hatred; no matter how good your math, you won’t win. They just happen to hate us. We’re “elitists” and they want to take us down. There’s a fantastic essay in the current issue of n+1 magazine on just this topic. And how much is the Republican “plan” nothing but partisan b.s.? Well, amongst other things, it calls for eliminating subsidies for organic farming, but not non-organic farming despite record cash revenues. So don’t even bother, people, and don’t worry about brushing your math skills–this isn’t about budgets or economics, this is just the latest front in the culture war, from the people who really like waging it.

Tragedienne: Horrible news coming out of Russia. Among the victims of the suicide bombing of Domodedovo Airport in Moscow was Ukrainian playwright Anna Mashutina, who wrote under the name Anna Yablonskaya. Unfortunately, I”m unfamiliar with Yabloskaya’s work, but remembrances have poured in from all over, from John Freedman at The Moscow Times to The New York Times to the Guardian in the UK, where Natalia Antonova described Yablonskaya’s work as “about family life, love and sex. Never the type to try to shock her audience, her writing was very subtle, feminist but not overtly political.” Yablonskaya’s most regarded play Pagans is scheduled for a reading at the Royal Court in London on April 7, 2011, as part of their international playwrights season.

Dance Critic Critique: Over at the DanceUSA blog, former NY Times dance critic John Rockwell offers his thoughts on the role of the dance critic. I have to admit that I’m oddly ambivalent about what he has to say. On the one hand, it’s all by-the-book true, even the parts at the expense of people like me (“Right now, a print critic is different from a blogger in that there is usually still at least one major daily newspaper per town, and hence its critic assumes a disproportionately influential role in the local community”). His sentiment that “[W]e see the critic’s role as a noble one–trying to encapsulate in resistant prose the artistic experiences we encounter, maybe helping to educate our readers and provide them a sounding board for their own opinions, advancing the standards of an art form we love,” is a perfectly noble way of putting it. It’s also J-school by-the-book unreality, which is my other hand: first of all, Rockwell’s adorably out-of-touch if he thinks most towns still have a “dance critic,” as opposed to some freelancer who occasionally gets to cover something besides the ballet, and as a blogger whose career path seems predicated on the eventual collapse of traditional publishing, I call b.s. on all the high-minded sentiment about how being an arbiter of taste (the traditional role of the critic) really adds to discourse.

The truth is, critics are a dying breed because they exist largely outside of a discourse, which is where people like me come in–people who actually believe in trying to generate discourse–and yes, I’m rather proud to not be above being an “institutional booster, especially of fledgling companies,” or serving “the dance community or particular artists.” Why shouldn’t I support artists whose work I believe in? Why shouldn’t I try to support the community?  So let’s all get over ourselves and admit that the only reason Alastair Macaulay’s job still exists is because ballet companies areabout  the only people in the dance world with money to advertise in the newspaper, which is why the Times thought it was worth it to send him around the country to see The Nutcracker ninety-billion times.

A.W.A.R.D. Show Seattle: On to supporting the community: this Thursday night, The A.W.A.R.D. Show! kicks off in Seattle at On the Boards, and anyone interested in a brief guide to Seattle dance should, ahem, feel free to read my preview. Really, the program includes most of the really interesting artists from the region, from Zoe Scofield (whose newest work premieres at Jacob’s Pillow in a few months) to Waxie Moon, Seattle’s most innovative queer performer, to Portland, Oregon’s experimental dance-movement company tEEth, to the work of choreographers I respect and have been enthused by, from Ellie Sandstrom to Olivier Wevers to Marissa Rae Niederhauser.

East of Where?: East of Borneo is a fantastic online visual art magazine out of LA, and it’s one of the most-visited sites on pretty much every computer in the Culturebot newsroom. Seriously, we love this site and you will too. So, just because, I’m linking to the latest little treasure a reader has uploaded to their site: the publisher’s note-cum-manifesto in the first issue of Little Caesar magazine from 1976. Written by Dennis Cooper before he was a darling of the downtown scene, or a resident of Europe, the note casually announces that “We’re not fifty year old patrons of the arts. We’re young punks just like you.” It’s a page of history, and worth checking out along with everything else East of Borneo presents.

Odds & Ends: If you happen to be a reader from LA–welcome!–be aware that one of New York’s finer devised theater companies, The Civilians, will be presenting a cabaret evening of songs from a work-in-progress musical commissioned by the Center Theatre Group on Feb. 5. “A Pretty Filthy Evening” will showcase songs that the company has developed through their documentary theater approach, centered on the adult entertainment industry. Mmm…porny! Here in NYC, Jordana Che Toback and Clarinda Mac Low are this season’s SPLICE over at DNA, where Jan. 27-30, their a dinosaur attacks a lighthouse is playing (tickets here). And speaking of dance, DFA’s Dance on Camera Festival is…entering its last week! Damn! Should have been on top of that a little more (emails help people). Fantastic work being showcased daily–for the line-up, see the website.

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On the Boards TV, a project of Seattle’s contemporary arts center On the Boards, turns one today, and for the next week, you can “rent” any video onsite for just $1. Using high-quality digital video shot by a qualified group of filmmakers (a huge novelty in the world of performing arts videography), OtBTV creates high quality, engaging videos of leading contemporary performance groups, including Radiohole, Temporary Distortion, Jan Fabre, Reggie Watts, Young Jean Lee, and the late and wonderful Tanja Liedtke. There’s a variety of plans to access OtBTV content, but a streaming view of any video onsite is just $1 with the discount code “happy birthday” through January 28.

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Choreographer Dayna Hanson, formerly of the seminal Seattle dance-theatre company 33 Fainting Spells, debuts a new evening-length work, Gloria’s Cause,  starting Dec. 2 at On the Boards. Culturebot covered the work-in-progress showing at the TBA Festival in Portland this last September; read about it here.

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