Arts on Foot

On Saturday September 17, I had a busy day with multiple performances as part of Arts on Foot, thanks to Capital Fringe. The organizers of the upcoming Fringe festival presented loads of free performances and I was lucky enough to be included in two of them…

Ginger Wagg and Jane Jerardi put together a site-specific piece called "Spill." We did this last February at Transformer Gallery, and made a new version for this event, which took place on a parked bus.

We re-used certain elements from the first version, but things were considerably different this time. Originally, visual artist Agata Olek constructed an enormous sculpture made entirely of crocheted balloons, this time we were using different work of hers, made from crocheted plastic, toys, and other materials. Agata made new costumes for Ginger and Jane, and I made some new recorded audio materials using field recordings of the DC subway system plus some samples of public transit in Budapest that I found online… the live elements included dance by Ginger and Jane, and I played clarinet and a few small percussion instruments. There wasn't electricity, so I couldn't play electric guitar. Dave Maddox wrote up a nice review on his blog – so I won't write a redundant description of the performance… but I will tell you that it was a unique performing experience, since the audience was coming and going during the show, and the boundaries between performing space and audience were totally blurred. There were four performances, I played live in two of them.



We're doing this piece again on October 22nd as part of Jane's big show, Efficiency, but that will be in a theater, not on a bus.

I had to miss two Spill shows because I was also scheduled to perform with Jane Franklin Dance. We did a piece called "This Just In…" which includes live music performed by Amber Dunleavy on theremin, and me playing prepared guitar. We've done this piece several times, and I felt like it went pretty smoothly. We were in a vacant store on 7th Street – it was a raw unfinished space, and made for an informal performance environment. I think this led to our own perception that the stakes were low, so it was ok to take some risks. That resulted in a lively performance.


I'm working on a major new project with Jane Franklin Dance for this coming season… some info is online here.

photos: top three by Julianne Brienza, bottom one by Jason Horowitz.