News Enjoying Neal Medlyn's presentation of Her's a Queen last night at TBA's The Works required patience–a lot of patience. What was supposed to be a 30-minute opening act for Miguel Gutierrez's DEEP Aerobics dance party dragged on for over twice that long, and what many in the audience expected to be a hilarious interpretation of the endlessly entertaining career of Britney Spears turned out to ...   More

News Even before the Gloved One's death, it had been planned: esteemed, talented local jazz pianist Ben Darwish was to inaugurate an Afrobeat Tribute to Michael Jackson for PICA's TBA Festival, making over MJ's works in the style of Fela Kuti, Afrobeat's founder. And well, it was difficult at first to figure out what, about this, was culturally icky, though it was icky. It was, after all a mere ...   More

News Miguel Gutierrez was right. When I interviewed the New York dance maker last week he explained Last Meadow, his work that had its world premiere as part of PICA'S TBA Festival last night at the Winningstad like this: "“I think this show will go over really well with people who like to be confused." Luckily, there's a lot more to the piece than disconnected imagery and cascades of movement ...   More

News In the past couple weeks, ever since the intensity surrounding TBA:09 has been ratcheting up, I've been hearing the name Young Jean Lee. Seems like Lee's theater piece The Shipment has been on the tip of every tongue, as one of the premiere works in a festival full of them. Did it live up to the hype? Yep, it did. The Shipment is a strange, abrasive, gut-check--a frank examination of racism ...   More

News Another WW writer, Matt Korfage, has already written a very discerning analysis on this blog of the interpretive dance in last night's TBA Festival performance of Meg Stuart and Philipp Gehmacher's Maybe Forever performance. So I took a look at what you can glean from the show if precise expressive movements are not your first language. Having seen the drab and desolate looking picture attached ...   More

News Hopefully all you TBA Fest goers out there made it to the opening Salon chat that took place at 12:30 pm Friday at Pacific Northwest College of Art. The audience there filled about three-quarters of the 50 or so chairs there, so while the crowd was decent, chances are you didn't make it. Which is a shame, because PICA's artistic staff—Cathy Edwards, Kristan Kennedy and Erin Boberg Doughton—provided ...   More

News When the couple behind me left the TBA Festival screening of Erased James Franco after 20 (long, long) minutes, every sinew of my body berated me for not doing the same. Sitting through this concoction requires an immense feat of willpower, on a par with James Franco's own heavy, labored attempts to show off this “favorite performance of any that I have ever done.” And for an actor ...   More

News I must admit, I was disappointed about the “tablecloth.” What was advertised in the TBA guide as a “giant, checkered picnic blanket” and what I had imagined as a rolling sea of gingham turned out to be large red and white tarps, spread apart in a vast rectangle. Maybe if I had seen it from an airplane it would have looked better. I mean, do you see a blanket here (see photo ...   More

News Every Time I See Your Picture I Cry. Yeah, that title makes me a little nauseated, too. And I would be lying if I said that wasn't one of the many feelings that came to the surface in the midst of Daniel Barrow's TBA show last night; funny, though, how nausea can feel so satisfying when paired with a helluva lot of other emotions. Barrow's tour de force is notable in the way it combines many things: ...   More

News The Melody Owen-curated Circles and Spinning Wheels film-short collection, showing at this year's TBA Festival, was borne of Owen's travels collecting image and film from around the world, but two of its early highlights were local. E*Rock's “Cherry” Ratatat video--Evan Mast of Ratatat is his brother--was, as with most of E*Rock's visual work, exuberant in its childlike simplicity. ...   More