Luis Wachong is a member of Costa Rican firedancing troupe Pyrodanza. Here he does an impressive sunset routine with a series of fire-tipped props. Read the rest
Check out this impressive firedancing performance
Pianist performs while wearing eye-tracking device
Professional pianist and Steinway Artist Daniel Beliavsky and his student Charlotte Bennett agreed to perform while hooked up to an eye-tracking device that superimposes the wearer's eye movements. Read the rest
San Francisco: ODC's stunning new season of contemporary dance
Tonight (Thursday, 3/23), San Francisco's magnificent contemporary dance company ODC launches their 2017 season that includes two world-premiere dances, live music, and reprises of Brenda Way's Walk Back the Cat and Kate Weare's Giant. Every year, ODC astounds me with creativity, freshness, and compelling narratives told through sublime motion.
More: "ODC show examines what we hold on to, through dance" (SFGATE)
How to practice anything effectively
Educator/musician Annie Bosler and peak performance coach/author Don Greene provide simple tips to optimize the practice of practicing. (TEDEd)
Marina Abramovic describes her harrowing 1974 performance of Rhythm 0
What happens if you allow a group of onlookers to do anything they want to you for six hours? Marina Abramovich found out in 1974 when she laid out dozens of items on a table, including a gun with one bullet, and allowed strangers to use the items on her however they saw fit. Read the rest
Animated interview with Leonard Cohen
“I don’t feel any compulsion just to stand under the spotlight night after night unless I have something to say," --Leonard Cohen, December 1974
Artist celebrates Patriot Act's anniversary by handing out "Official Air Travel Replacement Knives" to arriving SFO passengers
Last week, artist Michelle Pred celebrated the anniversary of the Patriot Act by dressing up as an old-timey Pan Am flight attendant (she wore her mother's old Pan Am hat!) and handing out "Official Air Travel Replacement Knives" to people waiting for their bags at SFO (she had 50 knives, but it took more than 50 tries to give them away, as more than half of the people she approached refused to engage with her). Read the rest
How to make a coin vanish (without seeming like a weirdo)
Andy at the Jerx elaborates on a great way to set up a magic trick: "the peek backstage." Read the rest
Kenneth Anger and Brian Butler occult theatrical extravaganza in L.A. on Sunday
On Sunday, pioneering underground filmmaker Kenneth Anger and occultist/artist/musician Brian Butler are staging their performance piece Technicolor Skull at The Regent in Los Angeles. From the event announcement:
Unleashing a 60,000 watt sound system and several tons of equipment for this special hometown performance, the duo are at the pinnacle of their powers and look forward to reestablishing dominion over these and other united states.
Artistic contemporaries and longtime friends, Kenneth Anger and Brian Butler work in a wide variety of mediums, though none perhaps more visibly than light and sound. The Regent is proud to host these two visionary artists in person to perform the newest installment of their radical project Kenneth Anger & Brian Butler’s Technicolor Skull. Both artists are continually pushing the limits of their aesthetic and creative capacities towards exceeding characteristically human capabilities. To witness this in a live setting is to experience one of the most important discoveries of the twentieth century.
Dancers in the house
This week on HOME: Stories From L.A.:
A roving. shifting company of dance and performance artists is nudging its audiences to think about home differently -- by bringing one-off, site-specific performances to houses, live-work spaces and tiny apartments all over the Los Angeles area. Meet homeLA.
HOME is a member of the Boing Boing Podcast Network. If you like what you hear, please rate/review the show on iTunes. NEW: Subscribe to the newsletter.
Subscribe: iTunes | Android | Email | Google Play | Stitcher | RSS Read the rest
Artist keeps vigil on a bed of nails to protest frenetic culture
Billy X. Curmano, from Winona, Minnesota, plans to spend 24 hours on a bed of nails (and a pillow of tacks) later in March. To prepare for the big sleep, the painter, sculptor, and performance artist pounded hundreds of nails into plywood in his workshop. (It actually looks more comfortable than a few Airbnb's I've booked.)
"It’s always a good time for a nap, Curmano believes, but our frenetic society doesn’t see it that way. That’s too bad, because it could save serious energy in the form of switched-off electronics."
"Winona artist Billy X. Curmano challenges boundaries in art, life" [Winona Daily News] Read the rest
WATCH: Choreographed LED hula hooping
Viennese artists Annika Hakala and Lisa Looping of HoopioSis perform mesmerizing choreography using LED hula hoops. Be sure to watch in HD. Read the rest
A new dance: ODC, Andy Goldsworthy, and Zoë Keating (San Francisco)
Tomorrow night, San Francisco's pioneering contemporary dance company ODC will premiere a new work inspired by famed sculptor/environmental artist Andy Goldsworthy with live music by experimental cellist and loop musician Zoë Keating, likely familiar to Boing Boing readers from previous BB posts, or her appearances on Radiolab and Who Killed Amanda Palmer. For this piece, titled "boulders and bones," ODC artistic directors Branda Way and KT Nelson took choreographic inspiration from the ever-transforming landscapes of art and nature. The visual context of the dance comes from a time-lapse film by RJ Muna shot during the seven-month installation of a Goldsworthy sculpture at private location north of San Francisco.
Performances of "boulders and bones," along with several other works, will be held through March 30. Tickets are available here. Boing Boing is delighted to share the special video below from a "boulders and bones" rehearsal, along with another stunning photograph of dancer Natasha Adorlee Johnson by RJ Muna.
RAW's The Cosmic Trigger as a stage play
A group of dedicated disciples of bOING bOING contributor Robert Anton Wilson are orchestrating a stage production of RAW's "Comsic Trigger: Final Secret of the Illuminati," a fantastic memoir of high weirdness that had a massive influence on my own life. Leading the charge is Daisy Eris Campbell, whose father adapted RAW's The Illuminatus! Trilogy for live theater in the 1970s. The Daily Grail has the scoop: "Pulling The Cosmic Trigger"
In other news... Fnord. Read the rest
Bring Survival Research Laboratories to the Googleplex
Our friends at pioneering machine performance group Survival Research Laboratories respectfully request the opportunity to bring their delightful robotic presentations to the Google campus. Now that's an offer you can't refuse. Read the rest
Performance artist frosts and shares cake on NYC subway
Performance artist Bettina Banayan has conducted a number of interventions on the NYC subway, but this one, in which she frosts, decorates, and shares a cake with her fellow commuters, is my favorite. Unlike the other performances, which largely revolve around making people uncomfortable (or at least discomfited), the punchline of "Subway Cake Performance 02/11/14" is a subway car full of happy people whose life in the city has been made sweeter and friendlier.
(via Neatorama) Read the rest
Gestural paintings from charcoal-coated body
For her "Emptied Gestures" series, Heather Hansen coats her limbs in charcoal and then uses her body to paint beautiful shapes and forms on huge pieces of paper. I bet when she makes snow angels, they are prettier than mine. (via Imaginary Foundation) Read the rest
