Opacity of Performance investigates the physical and emotional effects that both dancers and viewers undergo when visibility, activity, and attention vary over an extended duration. Viewers will encounter three performance areas divided by three movable curtains, which dancers will move to obscure, reveal, and shape viewers’ experiences of the solo performances coexisting in these distinct spaces. The choreography centers states of visibility and invisibility, created collaboratively with the performers. Both in design and movement, the durational performance explores the tension inherent to being seen, which both validates the performer’s subjectivity and objectifies the individual as a member of a specific group. Resisting such visibility counteracts society’s drive to control and empowers otherness in the face of cultural repression.
June 19, 2022 - June 26, 2022
12pm - 5pm daily |
Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR
Click here for the link to the recording of the livestream performane on June 18, 2022
Performed by Intisar Abioto, Roland Dahwen, Nolan Hanson, Garrick Imatani, Sydney Jackson, Irene June, Stephanie Schaaf, Emily Squires, and Takahiro Yamamoto
Directed and choreographed by Takahiro Yamamoto
Dramaturg by Ben Evans
Technical supervision by Garrick Imatani
Curated by Sara Krajewski, the Robert and Mercedes Eichholz Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. Lead support provided by the Oregon Community Foundation’s Creative Heights Initiative with additional support from the Museum’s Art Gym Endowment. Creative development supported by MacDowell, lumber room, the Henry Art Gallery, Velocity Dance Center, the Bogliasco Foundation, and Portland Institute for Contemporary Art.