More Information About Appenzeller

Website

http://www.highwaysperformance.org

Description

Appenzeller is a collaborative evening by dance, sound, and performance artists Wanda Gala, Brooke Smiley and Bob Bellerue conveying presence through pressure, in body and energetic environments.

In Appenzeller, a durational transcontinental choreography is developed and actuated by Smiley (London) and Gala (New York) through live video streams and performance with composer Bellerue. Structured by networked communication systems, and opaquely informed by topical concerns, Appenzeller reflects the pressures of virtual and live experiences and the politics that they evoke. Live video, dance, noise...ghost drummers of the cosmos…amplified piano and a karaoke machine…seductive overdrive, performed by Bellerue, Gala, Smiley and guests.

Bob Bellerue is a composer, experimental musician, and creative technician based in Brooklyn, NY. Over the last 20 years he has been involved in a wide range of live creative activity - homemade percussion ensembles, Balinese gamelan, dance/performance art sound scores, installation art. Bellerue's work utilizes custom electronics and software programming, incorporating feedback, prepared field recordings, de-musicalized instruments, and found oscillators.

He is in the midst of long-term collaborations with the choreographer Wanda Z Gala, and gigs regularly as a solo artist (under his own name, and also as Diablo), in KILT (with Raven Chacon), and in collaboration with many artists in the universal experimental music scene (Z'EV, Smegma, Joseph Hammer, Telecult Powers, Francisco Meirino, Tecumseh, Jarrett Silberman). Bob's work has been presented at the Yogyakarta Gamelan Festival, Centre de Cultura Contemporanea de Barcelona, New Genre Festival, CEAIT Festival, Roulette (as part of Shinkoyo Circus), Highways Performance Space, Olympia Experimental Music Festival, PDX Noise Festival, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Radio Epsilonia (Paris), Radio Geronimo (Yogyakarta), WFMU, KFJC, KXLU, Stanford University, UCSD, UCLA, Naropa University, and California Institute of the Arts.

Bellerue’s discography includes dozens of releases on Anarchymoon Recordings, Zelphabet, Banned Productions, P-Tapes, RRR Records, Static Aktion, EMR, Iatrogenesis, Bastardised, Peyote Tapes, Together Tapes, Breathmint, Feathering Pines, Baked Tapes, Abandon Ship, 3rd Sex, and Important Records (as part of Tecumseh). Bellerue was formerly based in Los Angeles, where he ran the sub-garde experimental music/performance space the Il Corral, and curated the Beyond Music series and festival. He currently lives in Bushwick, NY and is employed by The Kitchen as Technical Director, as well as running Anarchymoon Recordings and Cold Hands Video.

Wanda Gala is an arts educator, choreographer and ethnochoreologist from the whose professional interest in the embodiment of cultural phenomenon unifies her practical, academic, and artistic work. Her performance works examine the historical and contemporary entropies of individual and cultural ideals, mythologies and fantasies. These "post nuclear family tales" (LA Weekly 2006) occur in theatrical, installation, filmic and site-specific contexts. Individual and collaborative works have been presented in the U.S. and abroad in Poland, Switzerland, Scotland, and Italy.

Showings include the screening of Okno (Okna, drzwi, sciany) at the American Dance Festival and Festival Era Nowy Horyzonty in Wroclaw, Poland. Gala also choreographs works for performance artist, Narcissister, which have been presented at such New York venues as The New Museum, Deitch Projects, The Box and most recently, The Kitchen. Her work has been supported by both the Durfee Foundation and the Brooklyn Arts Council. She holds a BFA in Dance from California Institute of the Arts and a Master's in Ethnochoreology for the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance. Gala has contributed to Critical Correspondence through Movement Research in New York, a publication conceived to activate and develop discourse on dance and movement-based work.

She currently manages the Center for Performance Research in Brooklyn, founded by Jonah Bokaer and John Jasperse.

Brooke Smiley was born in Los Osos, California. She works in the United States, Mexico and Europe as a performer, collaborator, earth builder and community educator. Her dissertation, The Face of the Performer: Mask, Identity, and Transformation earned a Distinction and MAP from Laban, Europe's leading movement and dance research center, where she also performed in Transitions Dance Company under the artistic direction of David Waring.

A constructor of situations wherein the body is site and source for re-negotiation of gender, identity and politic, she often performs solo with a white neutral mask in the company of noise artists friends from Los Angeles. She graduated with a BFA from CalArts and most recently is working with Ventura Dance Company (Swiss) on a Life Forms generated choreography based on fractals. 

About the Ticket Supplier: Highways Performance Space

Highways Performance Space is Southern California's boldest center for new performance. Founded in 1989, Highways continues to be an important alternative cultural center in Los Angeles that encourages fierce new artists from diverse communities to develop and present innovative works.

Highways promotes the development of contemporary socially involved artists and art forms. Our mission is implemented through four programs (the performance space, workshop/university program and two galleries). Annually, Highways co-presents approximately 250 performances by solo dramatic artists, small theater groups, dance companies and spoken word artists; curates and exhibits approximately 12 contemporary visual art exhibits per year with work that explores the boundaries between performing and visual art forms; commissions and premieres new work by outstanding performing artists; organize special events, curate festival, offer residency and educational programs that engage community members in the arts while providing access to professionally-directed instruction.