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About the Show
This performance provides a rare, behind the scenes look at early stages of groundbreaking artistic productions from world-renowned artists. Sophia Brous and Yuka Honda, two National Sawdust Artists-in-Residence, refresh operatic traditions by presenting two large-scale works for the stage in the early stages of their development. Audiences will have a unique opportunity to witness a “first look” at these projects with ambitions to be presented in front of a global audience, and meet and ask questions of the brilliant creators behind those projects. This showcase will feature opera as you have never seen it before, completely reimagined for the modern audience.
National Sawdust co-founder, Artistic Director, and composer Paola Prestini will lead the Q&A session after each performance. Multicultural new-music ensemble Khemia will open the evening with a presentation of their completed multimedia project, Fragility.
About Gorgon
Gorgon (/ˈɡɔːrɡən/; plural: Gorgons)
from the ancient Greek gorgós, meaning “dreadful”, and the Sanskrit “garğ” (Sanskrit: गर्जन, garjana), defined as a guttural sound, similar to the growling of a beast.
“the Gorgon was made out of the terror, not the terror out of the Gorgon.” — Jane Ellen Harrison
Cross-disciplinary Australian/New York-based performer, vocalist and musician Sophia Brous presents GORGON, a new contemporary performance work exploring the ancient archetypes of the female monster.
This short work-in-progress excerpt explores the tales of the Greek myths’ most venerated and vilified heroines. From Medusa to Pandora, Scylla, the Amazons, Sphynx and Euryale, GORGON looks at the ancient myths that have become contemporary memes – images, language and symbols imprinted in our unconscious relationship to female leaders across art, culture, politics and everyday life.
For this First Look, Brous will show an excerpt of workshopped material with a cast of collaborators including multi-disciplinary musician/dancer/choreographer Sarah Kinlaw, cellist Leila Bordreiul (Issue Project Room resident artist) and celebrated vocalist and jazz composer Sara Serpa, with future Gorgon cast collaborators including Helga Davis, Zeena Parkins and Susie Ibarra.
About No Revenge Necessary
Yuka C. Honda presents an intimate window into the very first stage of development in her original opera: NO REVENGE NECESSARY. The multimedia work incorporates film, theater, dance, and ‘live’ electro-acoustic music, highly ambitious in scope and novel in both conception and execution. You see the tale of future Earth, of humans surviving in a surprising state of compromise with a unique hope. The mostly Japanese cast is an illustrious lineup, featuring Satomi Matsuzaki (of Deerhoof), Kahimi Karie, tap dancer and Bessy winner Kazu Kumagai, Yuka’s frequent collaborator bassist Devin Hoff, as well as Jaiko Suzuki, Rebecca Wright, and Akio Mokuno.
About Fragility
The Khemia ensemble presents Fragility, a continuous sound, video, and light installation seeking to examine the nature of human relationships. This workshop features music by Marcos Balter, Pierre Jalbert, Khemia composers-in-residence Carolina Heredia and Bret Bohman, and original video by Khemia artist-in-residence Natali Herrera Pacheo. This work represents the evolution of collaboration between the performers, composers, and artist-in-residence of Khemia over its 2017-2018 season and is in its final stage of presentation.
About the Artists
Sophia Brous
National Sawdust Artist-in-Residence Sophia Brous is a inter-disciplinary musician, vocalist, performer, creative director and curator. An artist with diverse interests, she collaborates with companies and artists internationally on new and devised works and commissions. Brous is current resident artist at New York’s National Sawdust and past resident artist at Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center and the Red Bull Studios New York. She is finalist in the Melbourne Prize for Music Outstanding Artist Award.
Originally from Melbourne, Australia, and now largely based in New York, recent commissions and collaborations include the celebrated song cycle Lullaby Movement with David Coulter and Leo Abrahams’; In Dreams: David Lynch Revisited‘ (The Barbican, Paris Philharmonie), large ensemble collective EXO-TECH featuring Kimbra, Moses Sumney, Colin Stetson, Yuka Honda, Sean Lennon and many others, Arthur Russell Retrospective for BAM; Hallucinations for DOCUMENTA Athens 2017; motion picture Mary Magdelene, Frank Zappa opera ‘200 Motels’ for Southbank Centre London; and forthcoming commission Gorgons (National Sawdust/Yale University).
Alongside her creative projects, Brous is a recognised artistic director and curator and from the age of 22, emerged as one of Australia’s youngest arts leaders as Program Director of the Melbourne International Jazz Festival and Curator of Music at the Adelaide Festival of the Arts. She is current Artistic Associate at the Arts Centre Melbourne where she is founder and curator of Supersense: Festival of the Ecstatic. She is a 2019 Creators Fund recipient of the State Government of Victoria.
Yuka C. Honda
Yuka C. Honda (C is for Cline) is a musician/producer/composer/performer. Born in Tokyo, Honda spent part her childhood in Dusseldorf, Germany and in a small village in Denmark. She feels that having lived in different countries and learned different languages before her foundation was formed have had a major influence on her music, in which her major interest is in the integration of elements which may initially seem foreign. As such, her work naturally defies the concepts of genres and borders.
Currently residing in New York City, Honda is best known for the band Cibo Matto, which she co-founded with Miho Hatori in 1994 and in which she created a unique one man band sound by triggering samples ‘live’. Honda has released three solo albums (on the Tzadik label) and has produced recordings by Sean Lennon, Martha Wainwright, YOKO ONO PLASTIC ONO BAND, and Cibo Matto.
She has recorded and performed with a wide range of musicians such as Yoko Ono, Esperanza Spalding, Bernie Worrell, Marc Ribot, Laurie Anderson, Sean Lennon, YoshimiO (of The Boredoms), Kimbra, Thomas Bartlett, Trixie Whitley, and Nels Cline, among others.
Honda’s current projects include: CUP with Nels Cline (gtr); REVERT TO SEA with Nels Cline (gtr), Alex Cline (drums, perc, vocal), Zeena Parkins (harp), Devin Hoff (ac. bass); LIMBS with Susie Ibarra (perc), Kazu Kumagai (tap dancer), Andrew Nemr (tap dancer). She also performs as a solo electronics artist which she named EUCADEMIX.
Khemia
Khemia is a 12-member music collective dedicated to the presentation of new contemporary concert music in innovative ways. Our core values are to present music as diverse as our membership and to engage with this music through multimedia performances. We foster collaborations among the arts by working closely with designers, visual artists, and writers as well as incorporating poetic, visual, and interactive elements in our performances. The members of Khemia Ensemble have come together across five countries from around the world: Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil, China, and the United States to form an ensemble that seeks to diversify and share the music of living composers.
