Reboot the past, change the future: rehearsals for Shooting Columbus
January 18, 2017
Happy 2017! Our Fifth World Collective is in intensive rehearsal mode for “Shooting Columbus”, which premieres March 29-April 8, Borderlands Theater, Tucson. Info here.
T Loving (left) plays Bruna the time traveler, and Sarah Haro (right) as Native American Boarding school student.
Matthew Saraficio and Jules Gantham in movement exploration.
Director Rachel Bowditch leads us in a “rock through” mapping out our site-specific show w/dancer Ryan Pinto, and set designer Greg Houston.
Matthew Saraficio plays the Tohono O’Odham leader in the year 3401.
Jam Sessions Begin
July 16, 2015
Ryan Pinto in recent Jam Session, photo by Adam Cooper-Terán.
Our Shooting Columbus collective begins regular jam sessions (research, mixology, movement, observation, discussion). Thank you to our friends at Pan Left Productions and the Global Justice Center providing a space for these laboratory-like ideas to percolate. More photos.
Shooting Columbus/Indigenous Cycles receives MAP Fund and NET Exchange Grant
April 29, 2015
We are pleased to announce that Shooting Columbus has received major support from the MAP Fund. An Exchange Grant from the Network of Ensemble Theaters will also help fund the research and community phase of this project, The Indigenous Cycles, which convenes at the Herberger Institute at Arizona State University.
This is a multi-year project involving Indigenous artists from the Southwest region. Rolling premiere begins at Borderlands Theater in Tucson in the fall of 2017. More.
New work: Jomon/Jamón at “Border’s Edge” benefit
February 16, 2015
Border’s Edge:On the Edges of Performance
Featuring Enrique Garcia, Natalie Brewster Nguyen, Milta Ortiz, Logan ‘Dirtyverbs’ Phillips, Serena Tang, Denise Uyehara & Karen Falkenstrom
Thursday, March 5, 7pm
Borderlands Theater – 40 W. Broadway, Tucson
$10 – $20 Sliding scale, at the door only
(520) 882-8607
https://www.facebook.com/events/797765073646736/
Borderlands Theatre showcases Tucson’s avant-garde performance community in its latest venture, Border’s Edge: On the Edges of Performance. The evening features a stellar line-up of performers and writers, who will inhabit the courtyard of Borderlands Theater at 40 W. Broadway in downtown Tucson.
Interdisciplinary artist Denise Uyehara, with musical accompaniment by Karen Falkenstrom of Odaiko Sonora, explores Okinawan identity and “authenticity” while wearing a paper kimono with 20 foot arms in a performance titled, Jomon/Jamón. Milta Ortiz examines marriage and feminine identity in her experimental performance piece. Natalie Nguyen and Selena Tang of Flight School Acrobatics perform a duet called Double Crossers that plays with twins, acrobatics, and the Asian female action heroine archetype. Interwoven throughout the night, spoken word poets Enrique Garcia and Logan Philips read from their recently published books, Tortoise Boy Says and Sonoran Strange, respectively.
The Hello Kitty Panel and Time Magazine
February 16, 2015
Photo: Jae C. Hong—AP
Hello Kitty Panel Discussion
This panel discussion will take a critical look at the phenomenon of Hello Kitty, examining some of the arguments made by her detractors. Moderated by Hello! curator Christine Yano, with Laura Miller, Jaime Scholnick, and Denise Uyehara.Yano will be signing books following the program.Free for members; free with Hello! admission; $5 general.Moderator: Christine Yano, PhD
Archipelago (2012)
February 8, 2015
ARCHIPELAGO is a new multidisciplinary work by critically-acclaimed performance artist Denise Uyehara and award-winning visualist Adam Cooper-Terán. Through video, image and movement they remix ancient myths of Okinawa with the story of Batuc, a village in the Yaqui River Valley which was flooded by the Mexican government. They weave together loss, cultural survival, wrath of the deities, spirits of past, present and the future. Premiered at Highways Performance Space, with support from the National Performance Network Creation Fund. Click here for video and details.
Transitions w/James Luna, LACE (2012)
January 7, 2015
Denise Uyehara and James Luna, photo/design: Adam Cooper-Teran
Transitions by Denise Uyehara and James Luna
Everybody has a past. For James Luna and myself, that past began in Orange County — land of malls, surfers and the 405 Freeway. How did we evolve from being ethnic minorities in suburbia to the artists we are today? And in the sea of consumerism and cultural amnesia, what makes an Indian or Asian American truly “authentic?”
In this project we revisit one of James Luna’s performances from the 70’s, also entitled Transitions, in which he unpacked a bag full of “Indian” objects and created a new rituals with them. We’ll spring board off the earlier work and unpack the metaphorical bag to revisit what’s inside. Together we’ll conduct a series of rituals that recount surviving life behind the “Orange Curtain.” We’ll be remixing surfing music, disco, narrative and home movies and surfing footage projected onto a psychedelic kimono with 30 foot long arms that can wrap around Denise like a cocoon or straight jacket.
Transitions is commissioned by Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) for Los Angeles Goes Live as part of Pacific Standard Time, an initiative of the Getty. Pacific Standard Time is a collaboration of more than 60 cultural institutions across Southern California coming together for the first time to celebrate the birth of the L.A. art scene, beginning in the fall of 2011.
Premiered at LACE Thursday, November 10, 2012
LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions)
6522 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90028
| Tags: American Indian, Asian American, Denise Uyehara, James Luna, LACE, Native American, Performance Art, Transitions
Big Head published in Anthology of Testimonial Plays (Bloomsbury/Methuen)
August 26, 2014
Big Head
, which examines the treatment of Japanese Americans during WWII and those now perceived as “the enemy” a post 9/11 world, is included in a new anthology from Methuen/Bloomsbury Press. Edited by Alison Forsyth. I’m honored that my work will sit along side writings by Anna Deavere Smith, Paula Cizmar, Tim Etchells of Forced Entertainment and many others. Big Head was originally published by the beloved Kaya Press.
Dreams & Silhouettes/Suenos y Siluetas (2014)
July 22, 2014
Click here for Video of show and here for Local PBS (AZPM) feature. Dreams and Silhouettes/ Sueños y Siluetas is a multidisciplinary installation that offers a performative response to the detentions and deportations affecting local residents. Premiered January 2014 at the Center for Global Justice in Tucson, AZ. Made possible with generous support from the Tucson Pima Arts Council P.L.A.C.E. grant and the MAPFund. More on the project and community voices.
Gracias from the Dreams/Sueños Team
January 27, 2014
SOUTH TUCSON – We want to thank the community for coming out to see Dreams and Silhouettes/Sueños y Siluetas at the Center for Global Justice. It was so exciting to perform to a packed house — and what a diverse crowd! We were so moved by your energy, support and feedback. Special thanks to our community partners: Las Promotoras, Coalición de Derechos Humanos, Pan Left Productions and the Center for Global Justice. Check out the media coverage on the project and artist notebook.
Dreams & Silhouettes Press Coverage
January 23, 2014
“Without Papers”
Tucson Weekly article, by Margaret Regan
“Border Issues Visualized by Art”
review in the Daily Wildcat
University of Arizona
“Llevan al teatro ‘Sueños y Siluetas'”
de los deportados
La Estrella.com
and on Carolyn’s Community News,
TucsonCitizen.com
Dreams & Silhouettes/Sueños y Siluetas
Saturday January 25, 2014, 7p.m.
Free
Global Justice Center
225 E. 26th St. (just west of 4th Ave.)
Tucson, AZ 85713
Show details
Live shadow painting in progress for Dreams & Silhouettes
January 10, 2014
Deep in production….
Wesley Creigh, after a live painting created with Christina Cardenas
Wesley painting in the “shadow” of a local resident who has been deported
I’ve been thinking a lot about how to make the invisible more visible. How do you represent someone who is undocumented, who lives with constant threat of deportation, without making them more vulnerable? We conducted a workshop with Las Promotoras, the women of Derechos Humanos who help educated the public about their rights. In the workshop we explored peoples dreams and aspirations, then had them write a letter to someone they loved as if this dream had come true. These letters are played back as audio clips in the Shadows scene from the show.
Meanwhile, performers stand in for those they know who have been deported, created a shadow on the wall, which magically reverses to a white shadow.
Above is a photo of Wesley Creigh in a test run – painting in the “shadows” representing those deported. Melo and Wesley will both be painting, along with Adam’s animation playing in tandem with their artistry.
Click here for details on this free performance in South Tucson.
Featured Performances
- Ancestral Cartographic Rituals, Stanford Nov. 2017
November 21, 2017 | 8:08 pm
Ancestral Cartographic Rituals A work-in-progress by James Luna and Denise Uyehara Wednesday, November 29, 2017 7:30pm to 8:30pm Oshman Hall, McMurtry Building Stanford University Free and open to the public – come early, it may fill up quickly! Details here What happens when Indigenous artists test their DNA? How do their findings confirm, authenticate, […]
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- Shooting Columbus (2017)
May 15, 2017 | 9:24 pm
Click here for PBS feature Click here for 10 minute highlight video “If settlers never arrived in this land, how would your life be different?” Borderlands Theater proudly presents Shooting Columbus, written and performed by the Fifth World Collective, a group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists from the state of Arizona. The work examines the […]
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- The Senkotsu (Mis)Translation Project (2006-2009)
February 9, 2015 | 9:29 am
The Senkotsu (Mis)translation Project (Highways Performance Space 2009, Barnsdall Municipal Art Gallery/COLA Awards 2006) is an interactive interdisciplinary performance installation that explores the entangled history of Okinawa and the U.S. military which has had a presence on these southern-most islands of Japan since World War II. It evokes the battle of Okinawa in which one-third […]
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- Archipelago (2012)
February 8, 2015 | 12:26 pm
ARCHIPELAGO is a new multidisciplinary work by critically-acclaimed performance artist Denise Uyehara and award-winning visualist Adam Cooper-Terán. Through video, image and movement they remix ancient myths of Okinawa with the story of Batuc, a village in the Yaqui River Valley which was flooded by the Mexican government. They weave together loss, cultural survival, wrath of […]
Comments closed
- Transitions w/James Luna, LACE (2012)
January 7, 2015 | 2:18 pm
Transitions by Denise Uyehara and James Luna Everybody has a past. For James Luna and myself, that past began in Orange County — land of malls, surfers and the 405 Freeway. How did we evolve from being ethnic minorities in suburbia to the artists we are today? And in the sea of consumerism […]
Comments closed
- Big Head (2001 – 2003)
January 1, 2015 | 9:36 am
Big Head revisits the treatment of Japanese Americans during World War II and considers current-day treatment of those perceived as “the enemy now”, including Muslim Americans, Arab Americans, and South Asian Americans. A work that has been in the making since early 2001, this poetic, interdisciplinary performance offers up letters from Rohwer Internment Camp in […]
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Archive for Featured Performances »
- Ancestral Cartographic Rituals, Stanford Nov. 2017