Spring Studio at REDCAT This Weekend

John Hogan’s ‘Chair Piece.’

The Spring edition of REDCAT Studio, a year-long series of new and experimental performances, returns this weekend (May 31-June 1). The two nights of performances feature six works, two of which involve CalArtians.

Choreographer and CalArts alumna Lindsey Lollie (Dance BFA 12) re-stages Interval for nine dancers. The work is a collage of visceral and improvisational movement exploring the overwhelming sensations and thoughts provoked by mind-altering substances and features an original score by composer and alumnus Paul Matthis (Music MFA 13).

In Chair Piece, CalArts faculty John Hogan (Art/Integrated Media MFA 06) satirizes Clint Eastwood’s address to the 2012 Republican National Convention. According to REDCAT, the work lays bare the “white American male’s sense of entitlement, eliciting discourse regarding privilege, power dynamics, and the individual’s role within institutions.”

Writer Sarah Bay Williams’ You Are Smashing: A Piñata explores the moments of fueled collective energy produced in the act of destruction, as handmade piñatas are smashed in front of audience members to the sound of a deconstructed piano by composer Paul Gachot. 

Choreographer Rebecca Bruno and visual artist Michelle Jane Lee’s Crave, inspired by playwright Sarah Kane’s non-linear, fragmented one-act of the same name, is a visual performance that investigates despair through movement, multi-colored lighting elements and striking stage imagery.

In an excerpt from Beloved, interdisciplinary choreographer and dancer Prumsodun Ok uses Khmer classical dance set in a lush soundscape to reveal the charged homoeroticism of the ancient art form. 

D. Reuben Snyder aka Caspar Sonnet uses microtonal/alternate tunings, loops, Ebow and voice in Kahlotus, producing a sound that seems simultaneously alien and familiar. 

This season’s program is curated by musician Anna Oxygen (Music MFA 08) and producer Malcolm Darrell.