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Picks for PICA'S T:BA Festival

We’re home to amazing performing arts festivals and events like PDX Jazz Festival, Design Week Portland, Portland Winter Light Festival, Sneakerweek PDX, and many more. Bringing massive international artists while also highlighting regional and local Pacific Northwest performing artists is par for the course for all of these -- none more so than Portland Institute for Contemporary Art and their contemporary performance festival T:BA (Time-Based Arts), which melds visual art, installation, performance (dance, music, experimental theatre, all of it!) into full length performances, late night extravaganzas, drag balls, gallery showings, and site-specific pieces around town from September 5-15.

Here are a few of the shows we’re most excited for this September:

Like a Villain (Holland Andrews), HELLO, I’LL SEE YOU LATER (performance/party)

September 5, 9pm
Like a Villain (Holland Andrews) will be performing a night of expansive, ceremonial, extended-technique vocal compositions to draw in the opening of this year's TBA Festival.

Opening nights at T:BA have historically been a who’s who of fancy folks dressed in their most artistically chic frocks, food carts, great drinks, and a lot of FUN. Adding Like a Villain to that mix means it’s gonna be WILD.

FREE

Eiko Otake, A BODY IN PLACES (visual art)

Sept. 5th 6 - 8pm (Opening Reception),  September 5 – October 24, 2019,  Gallery Hours: Mon-Sat 10am - 6pm

At PNCA, Eiko Otake (who has performed as Eiko & Koma for more than forty years) performs in, on, and with epic landscapes along with her 'collaborators:' irradiated Fukushima, a nighttime swarm of moths in the Kanakadea Forrest, her recently deceased mother at her funeral, and in the changing city of Hong Kong soon after the 2014 Umbrella Revolution. On opening night, Eiko will perform a solo in and around the gallery.

A new, three-channel video of Eiko performing with the spring waters and deserts of California, shot by Alexis Moh and produced at the IEA, will be on view during her T:BA performances of The Duet Project: Distance is Malleable.

This unique Japanese artist performs with a longevity that is unparalleled. Portland is lucky to have her and her work presented, and we highly recommend seeing her gallery installation and/or her duet performance while you can!

FREE

Mia Habib, ALL - A PHYSICAL POEM OF PROTEST (durational performance)

Sept. 6, 6:30pm Outdoor / Sept. 7, 3:30pm Indoor

ALL - a physical poem of protest investigates the individual and shared agency of choreography in social, political, and artistic spaces. An epic durational community performance, it considers the force of the protesting body and human mass through the meditative action of walking and running in circles.

Come be a part of the time-based performance that is ALL, and get deeper into the cultural offerings that makes Portland what it is: one of the most creative cities in America.

TICKETS & MORE INFO

Miguel Gutierrez, THIS BRIDGE CALLED MY ASS (dance)

Sept 7 8:30pm / Sept 8, 4pm and 8:30pm

In This Bridge Called My Ass, six Latinx performers map an elusive choreography of obsessive and perverse action within an unstable terrain of bodies, materials and sounds. Inspired by This Bridge Called my Back - an anthology of feminist essays that explore identity and critique white feminism. Choreographer Miguel Gutierrez (NYC) has been occupied with thinking about how he negotiates his queer Latinx identity within the traditions of the white avant-garde. This led to This Bridge Called My Ass, a piece that bends tropes of Latinidad to identify new relationships to content and form.

And, fair warning, Miguel’s choreography tends to include a lot of nudity. Like, a LOT. If you’re up for it (we totally are!), we will see you there!

TICKETS & MORE INFO

Anthony Hudson // Carla Rossi, LOOKING FOR TIGER LILY (SOLO) (performance)

Sept 12th, 13th and 14th 6:30 pm

Starring Anthony Hudson—the human vessel for Portland’s premiere drag clown Carla Rossi—Looking for Tiger Lily (Solo) utilizes song, dance, drag, and video to put a queer spin on the ancestral tradition of storytelling -- What does it mean for a queer, mixed Native person to experience their heritage through white normative culture as they recount growing up watching the 1960 production of Peter Pan featuring Sondra Lee’s blonde, blue-eyed, 'Indian Princess' Tiger Lily? Anthony (and Carla) draws from a songbook stretching across Disney’s Pocahontas to Cher’s "Half- Breed." Not just autobiography, Looking for Tiger Lily (Solo) is a coming-of-age story that's more than cowboys versus Indians.

Now, we’ve seen Anthony work in a number of capacities: artist, drag clown, hostess with the MOSTess, and as the Community Programmer at Hollywood Theatre. If you haven’t gone to a QUEER HORROR night… you are missing OUT!

TICKETS & MORE INFO

GET YOUR ART ON

PICA’s T:BA Festival lasts for a whopping 10 DAYS! Event fees vary, and many are free, so make sure you grab a pass (or single tickets) before they’re gone. Make it a whole trip -- we promise, it will be worth it! Stop into our gallery space at the original hotel to see Gigi Conot’s work through September 30, and get a room at the Jupiter while you're at it!