JoBdance Presents: (DIS)CONNECT This May At Yaw Theater
By: A.A. Cristi Apr. 17, 2019
This May, Yaw Theater will host the premiere work of joBdance, a brand new Seattle dance company founded by Seattle dance artist Joseph "jo" Blake. This ambitious inaugural work will center on a duet between Seattle dance favorites Sean O'Bryan and Alicia Pugh, and will feature an immersive 4-channel video installations by local dance/media artist Devin Muñoz. Based on the past year that Blake spent traveling around the world with a Bonderman Travel Fellowship from the University of Washington, (dis)connect explores the tensions between the individual and their community, and the role technology plays in both forging and complicating our connections with each other.
West Coast audiences may know Jo Blake best for his work over the past ten years as a star dancer with the Salt Lake City company Ririe-Woodbury, where he danced for over ten years to the delight of audiences in Salt Lake and beyond. Since coming to the University of Washington in 2015 for his masters in dance, Blake has quickly become one to watch in Seattle's next generation of choreographers. Following his critically acclaimed solo at Men in Dance last year, (dis)connect marks Blake's most ambitious project to date: the audience will sit in an enclosed, inward-facing square, surrounded on all sides with a 4-channel video installation that mixes footage of the city of Seattle with live-feeds of the performance itself. At the same time, audience members who can't attend may tune in online to watch the performance unfold in real time. At the center of this multi-channel extravaganza are O'Bryan and Pugh: two people, two bodies, attempting to build a relationship in the here and now, surrounded by a whirlwind of screens that traverse space and time.
This contrast between the focused, nuanced duet between Pugh and O'Bryan and the large, looming projections reflects the dilemma faced by Seattle and much of the world today today: in a city laden with technological innovation and a culture that is so relentlessly interconnected, there are resounding questions and anxieties about our ability to meet and connect with other people. (dis)connect places the audience at the center of that conflict, in an effort to connect artist and audience in the same struggle of reconciling these impossible tensions of the modern age.
*Note: Both performances will be followed by an open conversation between the artists and the audience, in a chance to engage each other face-to-face, and to commune about the difficulties surrounding (dis)connection in the contemporary world.
Performance Dates + Times:
Mon May 6 / 8PM
Tues May 7 / 8PM
Location: Yaw Theater / 6520 5th Ave S Seattle, WA 98108
Tickets: $10 minimum donation
Open Rehearsal: Sun April 21 7-9PM
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