Titan Arum - evening-length Seattle premiere 2011, Washington Hall
Titan Arum, is a wildly opulent site-specific work created for the newly restored, historic Washington Hall. Joining Salt Horse choreographers Beth Graczyk and Corrie Befort is a cast of remarkable and powerful dancers: Alia Swersky, Allie Hankins, Jessica Jobaris and Shannon Stewart. Salt Horse composer Angelina Baldoz’s music score showcases live performances by renowned musicians Stuart Dempster, Greg Campbell, Lori Goldston, Tari Nelson-Zagar and Jaison Scott.
Titan Arum brings this ensemble together to play with how the potential of any moment is dependent upon the synergy or collision of its parts. Fierce, sensual movement collides with lush, live acoustic sound. Disproportionately gigantic paper sets emerge and vanish. Living costumes bloom and fade. Salt Horse brings its signature surrealist lens to Washington Hall to warp and vivify perception.
Man on the Beach - evening-length work premiered in Seattle February 2010
Colorful dream-like fantasy worlds permeate the stark, monochromatic lives of three men caught perpetually remembering a moment in time. One, un-tethered, becomes disembodied, another self-amplifies in triplicate, and the last is endlessly encircled by his cloaked reality. "Magic" scenic effects and lush live sound cinematically frame both funny and terrifying moments of being stuck.
Joining Salt Horse dancers/choreographers Beth Graczyk, Corrie Befort and composer/musician Angelina Baldoz are a cast of three distinctive Seattle performers: Michael Rioux, Jens Wazel and Serge Gubelman. Man on the Beach was first presented in On the Boards’ 2009 Northwest New Works Festival and funded in part by Artist Trust. The work has been included in the 2010 4Culture Touring Arts Roster.
This was a cliff - toured the US, Spring 2009 through the SCUBA touring Program
This was a cliff follows two characters, one dense and one hollow, as they traverse a room, a forest, and a wormhole to reveal their separate fates. Celebrated for its unusual layering of intricate choreography and sound, daring improvisation, wild sculptural scenography and luminous film work the piece is a playful and dark look at petrification and evolution.
This was a cliff actively plays with audience perception: a table and chair slowly crawl off the stage as if by themselves; a dancer "vanishes" leaving only her empty clothes behind; one character's arms gradually extend to 6 feet in length through the mechanical magic of visual artist Steven Berardelli while another is covered head to toe in hair. Angelina Baldoz's music creates a full topography for the work with avalanches of sound, humorous, sticky squeals of live trumpet and liquidly sung lyrics.
Although constructed as an evening-length piece (60 minutes), it can also be shown in a shorter version (30 minutes) that complements an evening of shared work. The shorter piece retains the integrity of events as seen in the larger work, but allows timing, duration and transitions to create a succinct and compelling performance. This was a cliff can be performed in both traditional theaters and nontraditional performance/gallery spaces. Please Contact us for technical requirements.
