Joan Laage

Red

THE PROJECT:

Red is a 2-hour-long performance art piece commenting on the role, importance and attachment to the buildings that compose our urban environment. The principal theme revolves around our decisions, and the emotions accompanying them, to keep or demolish old buildings. What is the significance or historical buildings in general? Should we fight to keep history alive in this way? Or give way to modern and, perhaps, practical developments? What is the role of memory in our appreciation and valuing the past? What changes are we willing to accept and what changes would we like to see happen in our lifetime?

For Red, Joan performs with longtime collaborators Sheri Brown, Alan Sutherland, and Jaimie Healy.

Red is part of the artSparks 2010 program. To learn more about what is going on in Occidental Park this summer, please visit the artSparks 2010 website.

Photo courtesy of artist.

ABOUT THE ARTIST:

Joan Laage (Kogut Butoh) studied under Butoh masters Ohno Kazuo and Ashikawa Yoko, and performed with Ashikawa’s group Gnome while living in Tokyo in the late 1980s. From 1991 to 2002, her company Dappin’ Butoh performed regularly in Seattle including Allegro! Dance Festival, New City/New Dance and the Fringe Theater Festivals. As a soloist Joan performed in the Cleveland Performance Art Festival, the New York, Portland, Chicago and Paris butoh festivals and at several festivals in South Korea. She is featured in Sondra Horton Fraleigh’s book Dancing Into Darkness: Butoh Zen & Japan. Joan directed Operation Theater: body under the knife in 2009 supported by a grant from the City of Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs.

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