The Performing Americas Project is supporting the tours of three different Latin American companies that will be traveling to NPN Partner sites in 2008.  The companies will be engaged in week-long residencies of performances, workshops and community outreach in each city.   Check out the schedule below for opportunities to see this amazing work from Latin America.

Alaska

    by Diana Szeinblum and Company / Buenos Aires, Argentina

Diana Szeinblum, a Pina Bausch trained choreographer from Buenos Aires, brings her new work Alaska to the United States. Performed to a pulsating live score, Alaska unfolds as two women and two men come together and fall apart, simultaneously pan-erotic, violent and coolly held-back. Argentine choreographer Diana Szeinblum’s new work explores the relationships between four characters and the concept of "interior space." Raw, sexy, brainy, mysterious and darkly funny.

Alaska Tour Dates:

January 25 – February 1, 2008
    Portland Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA)
    224 NW 13th Ave., #305
    Portland, Oregon 97209
    www.pica.org

February 4 – 10, 2008
    Dance Theater Workshop
    219 West 19th Street
    New York, NY  10011
    www.dtw.org

February 11 – 17, 2008
    Tigertail Productions
    842 NW 9th Court
    Miami, FL 33136
    www.tigertail.org

February 18 – 24, 2008
    Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater
    (REDCAT) 
    631 West 2nd Street
    Los Angeles, CA 90012
    www.redcat.org

 

Las Chicas del" 3.5 Floppies

    by Luis Enrique Gutierrez Ortiz Monasterio / Mexico City, Mexico

Life is tough. Choices have to be made.  Pay little Joaquín´s school fees or blow the lot on coke and go clubbing to the 3.5" floppies?  Clean the apartment so your estranged kids can visit or let your penniless pal move back in and risk everything? And what about the irresistible offer from the men in Tijuana?  Two semi-whores, semi-junkies, half-mad and half-baked, discover that they count for nothing as personalities, that they are hardly worth an empty gesture and they might as well be dead – but no – because there will always be another two semi-whores, semi-junkies, half-mad and half-baked to take their place, or they themselves with be cloned into the same empty space.  As hard as we may look for it, our existence has no meaning, we represent the grimace of God who simply filled a space for the sake of filling it – like the god of Philip Gosse, who created a quantity of ancient fossils so that the world would look older – to avoid feeling lonely, like those who collect Hustlers or The Preacher.  This work is performed in Spanish with supertitles in English.

About the Writer - Luis Enrique Gutiérrez Ortiz Monasterio
Amongst his principal Works are Diatriba rústica para faraones muertos (Rustic Diatribe for Dead Pharaohs), De bestias criaturas y perras (From Infant Beasts and Dogs), Los restos de la nectarina (The Remains of the Nectarine) and Portal (Doorway). He has published stories and poetry, with less frequency and success as his works for the theatre, for which he has received various awards. He also directs a literary workshop “Sentenced” in the San José el Alto Penitentiary in Querétaro.

Las Chicas Tour Dates:

February 11-17, 2008
    El Centro Su Teatro 
    4725 High Street
    Denver, CO 80216
    www.suteatro.org

February 18-24, 2008
    Museum of Contemporary Art
    220 East Chicago Avenue
    Chicago, IL 60611
    www.mcachicago.org

February 25-March 2, 2008
    7 Stages 
    1105 Euclid Avenue, NE
    Atlanta, GA   30307    
    www.7stages.org

 

Like an Idiot

     by Cristina Moura / Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Brazilian-born Cristina Moura delights with like an idiot, an exploration of dance performed to music ranging from Mozart to Lauryn Hill. Physical, concrete, subjective, Moura’s movement vocabulary is emotional and political, displaying the body as a storehouse of emotions.  "Cristina Moura’s solo urban dance work like an idiot is an inner landscape of dancing with oneself — funny, physical, political, impulsive. Brazil’s Cristina Moura is . . . urban, engaged, and audience-friendly."  Staci Nevinski, CulturalAffairs.org

Confirmed Tour Dates:

May 18-25, 2008
    Cultural Odyssey
    762 Fulton Street
    San Francisco, CA
    www.culturalodyssey.org

Cristina is also interested in touring her latest solo work, "My Mother Naked."

For more information on how you can present Cristina Moura’s work as part of her Performing Americas Tour 2008, please contact Elizabeth Doud at edoud@npnweb.org or 504.717.5786.