The Gray Dance Presents Nine Lives At Base Experimental Arts

Seattle dance company The Gray is thrilled to present their third major performance project Nine Lives, an evening of three brand new dance works inspired by Pacific Northwest superstar author Ursula K. Le Guin. The evening will feature world premieres of original dance works by Joseph Blake, Cameo Lethem, and Beth Terwilleger/The Gray.

The evening-length triple bill will be a veritable who's who of Seattle's emerging dance artists, including up-and-comers like Alicia Pugh, Liz Houlton, Jane Cracovaner (Whim W'him) and Ivana Lin (Khambatta Dance) in the mix. While Blake, Lethem, and Terwilleger have each gotten significant individual attention for their choreography, this will be the first time the three present their work together.

Tackling themes ranging from environmental disaster to individuality in an age of massive digital replication and everything in between, choreographers Blake, Lethem, and Terwilleger bring the prescient questions of Le Guin's fiction to life in a night of new dance that are sure to resonate with audiences long after the performances have ended.

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 of the choreographers to watch in Seattle's next generation of choreographers.

"By the end of Effecting Galatea, I was completely immersed in the world Lethem had created, fully ready to witness the events that could have transpired there." Philippa Myler, Seattle Dances, August 2017

"The audience might be witness to the future of the human race-a being that thinks differently" Fox Whitney, Seattle Dances, August 2016

As a neuroscientist/dance artist powerhouse combo, Cameo Lethem will bring to the evening's performances her singular eye for imagining alternative worlds and modes of consciousness through the human body. Though she is a relatively recent arrival in Seattle, Lethem has already shown original works at On the Boards, Velocity Dance Center, Electric Lodge, Yaw Theater, and more, and has danced with some of the city's most cherished artist like Alice Gosti, Kate Wallich, and Hayley Shannon. Known for her immersive, strange, and engrossing choreographic worlds, Lethem is almost too perfect a choreographic voice to evoke and explore Le Guin's themes of alienation, empathy, and the future of human love and kinship.

The most recent arrival of the three choreographers and artistic director of The Gray, Beth Terwilleger's performance for Nine Lives will be one of three she is presenting in the coming season, with another world premiere at Base's 12 Minutes Max and a second brand new work debuting at Converge Festival, both in mid-March. With an creative curiosity only matched by her ambition, Terwilleger's presentation of Nine Lives comes directly out of her mission for her company The Gray: to create new, accessible dance works and events that connect with audiences on a very personal level, and using dance to build empathetic bonds between audiences and performers.

Terwilleger's choice of Le Guin's work as the common ground for this evening goes hand in hand with the Gray's mission, and Terwilleger's vision for Seattle Dance. With Nine Lives Terwilleger is trying to do much ore than produce another dance show. In the forum of experiences and ideas that circulate around Le Guin's stories and characters, Terwilleger, Lethem, and Blake are to hold a space for audiences and artists alike to wrestle with some of the most pressing questions that are on our horizon, so that we may face tomorrow with empathy, curiosity, and courage.

Performance Dates + Times:

Sat March 23 / 7:30PM

Sun March 24 / 7:30PM

Location: Base Experimental Arts + Space / 6520 5th Ave S #122, Seattle, WA 98108

Tickets: Donation-based admission

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