Saturday, June 5, 2010

8:00 p.m.

Western Sky Studio
2525 8th St.
Berkeley, CA 94710

$8 - $15 sliding scale admission, tickets available at the door.

Performances by:

Cathie Caraker : dance

Katarina Eriksson : dance

Imaginary Friends (Abhay Ghiara, Kim Criswell, Krista Gullickson) : theater

Valerie Smith & Stuart Phillips : dance

Titter (Aurora Josephson, Tony Dryer, Jacob Felix Heule, Kanko Nishi) : music

Tumbleheart (Evan Specter, Jonathan Walker, George Carver) : theater

...And probably a surprise or two...


Here's a little more detail:

Cathie Caraker is an international dance artist and teacher. Her solo performance work has been presented in NYC by Dance Theater Workshop, Danspace at St. Mark's Church, Movement Research at the Judson Church, University Settlement House and the New York Improvisation Festival, and elsewhere in N. America, Europe, Argentina and Brazil. She was recently Artist-in-Residence at CounterPULSE in San Francisco, where she premiered a new work in collaboration with Katarina Eriksson. (Photo by Frank Revi.)


Katarina Eriksson, back again from Sweden and from the EarthDance E/merge Festival, will be dancing. Katarina coproduces and is cofounder of Moment's Notice. She also teaches dance and improvisation, tours with Hoppalappa Postfolki Tanziteatteri in Sweden, and performed at the SF Fringe Festival with Rowena Richie's LandEscape, a dance theater piece based on Michael Pollan’s texts.

Katarina and Cathie never fail to mesmerize. Often, they collaborate (like when they teamed up for a residency at CounterPulse to produce ANIMoid.) This time, they're each dancing solo... unless another inspiration strikes. In any case, this is going to be good!


Imaginary Friends (Kim Criswell, Abhay Ghiara & Krista Gullickson) has been working together as a physical theater improv trio for over ten years, mostly experimenting in its own private Imaginary Friends Improv Lab. Someone once said they were like "Butoh meets the Marx Brothers." However, Imaginary Friends performs neither Butoh nor vaudevillian comedy. They just like madcap minimalism.


Valerie Smith & Stuart Phillips will perform "Love As Is". This duet bridges the gap between thinking and acting, responding immediately to chosen stimuli in an out of control matter to resolve inner issues through feminine release, the outcome being more life, resolve and questions answered with more evolved vibrancy and refreshing charge.

Stuart Phillips has been pruning and performing improvisation for 28 years and contact improv for 22 years, investigating everything real through contact mode.

Val Smith is dance artist who engages with movement education, performance, and somatic research. Her performance work explores collaboration, creative practice, and composition. Inspired by the intrinsic social politics of Contact Improvisation, Val is currently working with the relational experience of self in dance; how we come to know and identify with ‘self’ and ‘other’, and how does language along with our assumptions and beliefs affect our dance interactions? Val moved to Eugene, Oregon from New Zealand in 2008 and founded Humdance, a proposition for somatic research, practice and performance.

Titter is a music ensemble featuring Tony Dryer (double bass), Jacob Felix Heule (drums), Kanko Nishi (Koto), and Aurora Josephson (voice).


Evan Specter, Jonathan Walker and George Carver are founding members of Tumbleheart, a 3 year old ensemble that transforms recent, memorable life experiences into story, in real-time. They compose spontaneous memoir-scapes, co-written in the moment with one or more members of the ensemble. The memoirs emerge and take shape (in physical movement, with spoken or sung narrative) on the stage in a manner that reveals the deep streams of meaning and emotion that lay within everyday experiences. Tumbleheart’s work is based on ten years studying Motion Theater with the pioneers of this style of theater-making, Nina Wise and Corey Fischer. For more about Motion Theater, visit ninawise.com. Check out www.Tumbleheart.org for more about Evan, Jonathan and George.

And... of course, it's improv, and it's Moment's Notice, so there are always surprises.

See you there!