UC San Diego Theatre & Dance To Present GradWORKS 2018: THE HUMAN BODY TIME MACHINE

The UC San Diego Department of Theatre and Dance presents gradWORKS 2018: The Human Body Time Machine, a dance performance directed by Aurora Lagattuta.

About the show: The Human Body Time Machine is an immersive dance performance that creates a "meditative playtime" for audience to experience the movement of time. This new work features a diverse array of dancers from various backgrounds, abilities and ages. Immersive and exploratory in nature, the performance consists of several playing spaces created through choreographic, set, light and video design. This multi-media performance communicates through virtual as well as material presences in a performance ecology that integrates fragments of reality, virtuality, water and imagination. The audience is free to walk, pause and saunter through these constructed spaces in order to conceive different temporal encounters.

The Human Body Time Machine runs April 12-14 at 7pm. Performances are at the Mandel Weiss Forum in the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Theatre District on UC San Diego's campus: 2910 La Jolla Village Drive, La Jolla, CA. For information about parking, please see the website.

Tickets are $20 for regular performances. Subscriptions and group rates are available. Student tickets are $10 for regular performances. Faculty, staff, alumni and senior citizens discounts available as well. Tickets can be purchased online or by calling the box office at (858) 534-4574.

The cast features Leslie Armstrong, Alice Astarita, Leila Currah, Shelan Deloyi, Jo Elyn, Manuel Gonzalez, Sandy Huckleberry, Nicole Isabelle, Ella Jong, Mihwa Koo, Alisha Lenning, Leanna Long, Dulce Rodriguez-Ponciano, Sabrina Sauri, Jaime Shadowlight, Barbara Shea, Jade Solan, Clara Toledo, Crystal Wang, and Tiange Zhou.

The creative team includes Aurora Lagattuta (Director), Hsi-An Chen (Scenic Designer), Minjoo Kim (Lighting Designer), Kevin Zhang (Music Composer), Maya VanderSchuit (Video Designer), MaeAnn Ross (Sound and Video Assistant), Bryan Runion (Production Stage Manager), and Biying Ding (Assistant Stage Manager).

About the director: Aurora Lagattuta has choreographed and performed across The U.S., Europe and Asia. Her work has been described as being, "bizarre and beautiful" as well as "transformational" and "otherworldly" by the Huffington Post. Lagattuta has been presented at Theatre Row in New York City, Electric Lodge and Highways Performance Space in Los Angeles, Cindy Pritzker and the Chicago Public Library in Chicago, k77 in Berlin, The New Space in Brussels, La Caldera in Barcelona, Café de las Artes in Santander, Spain and by Malashock's Engagement Ring, Vanguard Culture and the Mingei Museum in San Diego. She has been awarded residencies at Bali Purnati in Bali, Indonesia; Palacio de Festivales and Forn de La Calc in Spain, Ponderosa in Germany and most recently at Shiro Oni in Japan. She danced for various companies in NYC, Portland, Germany and Spain, most notably with Meg Stuart and Marta Carasco and she holds a BA in Theatre from Fordham University at Lincoln Center, NYC. Her solo, Inside the Whale, toured throughout Europe, Chicago, Los Angeles and at the United Solo Festival on Broadway in NYC, where she was awarded, The Best Multi-Media Solo Award and the United Solo Award. The United Solo Award hosted Lagattuta's solo performance at the United Solo Europe Festival in Warsaw, Poland. She is an Academy Member for United Solo, NYC, a member of the New Space Collective in Belgium and a member of San Diego Dance Connect. She currently is a MFA Contemporary Dance Making and Performance student at UC San Diego, where she has received the prestigious San Diego Fellowship.

Director's Statement: The Human Body Time Machine is an extension and elaboration upon my recent performance work that I created at the Shiro Oni Artist Residency in Onishi, Japan this past summer. This new work aims to create sensorial experiences that investigate how one experiences and transforms the various moments of time harbored within the body. I envision human beings as more of an interactive happening than a separate definable thing and therefore, my work aims to create performances that serve as an intersection of internal and external spaces, albeit in an abstract, beautiful, and playful manner. I am interested in performance that is an act of compassionate exchange, it is generous. It is an act of acceptance, change, and tenderness towards our planet and ourselves. I am passionate about creating dance that is a corporeal practice for personal and community integration. The poetry of my work stems from a process of continually becoming, rather than escaping, my body, my community, and my environment as a human and artistic necessity.

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