Josie at The Henry

Josie E. has been invited to show work at The Henry (5th Ave NE & NE Campus Pkwy) as part of the Carolee Schneeman Symposium: Streaming in From the Moon , on 11/19. I go on shortly after 7pm, beginning on the Cascaiding Stairs and moving to the Fuses exhibition room. Please follow the action or you will miss it. Don't be shy! I will be doing a site specific version of an idea I've been kicking around and I'm calling it Fugue. Here is a preview image

Another iteration of it will be performed in December's 12 Min Max at On the Boards (100 W Roy) Dec 11 and 12 at 7

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I will be creating a site specific dance, physical sculpture and video installation Saturday, September 24th, at The Hedreen Gallery at Seattle University’s Lee Center for the Arts, located at 901 12th Ave as part of their NIGHT CLUB series.

The event will begin at 7:45. Please arrive on time as audience members will be led on a small tour starting from the Hedreen Gallery. This is a free community event. For more information please email josephinesechopraxia@gmail.com

This is a very exciting opportunity for J's E as the event is specifically designed to bring the school's students out as a way to not only see new art but get to know working artist's. After the performance the audience is invited for an all-night SLEEPOVER!

Josie is doin it for the kids!

Also, I am pretty excited to touch back with some material presented during my Project: Space Available residency http://marissaniederhauser.blogspot.com/2010_09_05_archive.html

I will be further exploring manipulation and ownership in gender relations bringing in fresh research into Hitchcock Blondes, visual framing as dismemberment, substance abuse as a method of control and drowning as a parallel for identity erosion.

JOSIE at SAM REMIX 6/3

Mercy is a Warrior will be performed at SAM REMIX!

June 3

8:45 in the lounge, 9:30 and 10:45 in 3rd floor galleries

1300 1st Ave

http://www.seattleartmuseum.org/calendar/eventDetail.asp?eventID=21408&month=5&day=3&year=2011&sxID&WHEN

Pictured: Tobi Nussbaum and Marissa Rae Niederhauser

photos by Carlos Melgoza http://anima-nocturna.blogspot.com/

More on the concept at

http://marissaniederhauser.blogspot.com/2010/12/2-pieces-in-upcoming-12-min-max-at-otb.html

Past performances of Mercy

http://ontheboards.org/blog/josephines-echopraxia-12-minutes-max

tracings at SIFF

The time/date has been released

tracings will play Thursday May 26 at 9:30

in the Alternate Cinema Shortsfest

at SIFF Cinema in the Seattle Center

More info: http://www.siff.net/festival/film/detail.aspx?id=44394&FID=206

Mercy is a Warrior

From a recent photo shoot for Mercy is a Warrior.

Photo by Carlos Melgoza http://anima-nocturna.blogspot.com/

Thanks to http://www.inscapearts.org/ and Sam Farrazaino

SIFF

Wonderful news tracings will play SIFF!

http://www.siff.net/festival/index.aspx

May I suggest?

While I would never want a world free of intelligent review and critique I think it is sad that critical analysis is our default mode for viewing art. I know it makes us feel like we are an informed insider to be able to dissect and knockdown a piece of art but I find it heartbreaking and think that in doing this we, as audience, rob ourselves of being able to sit inside the creation.

A humble suggestion, occasionally suspend your disbelief and accept a work of art as you would a birthday gift. Even if it isn't exactly what you might buy yourself, it hardly matters. What matters is that someone took the time, energy and thought to give you something that they hoped you might gain some benefit from.

I think this is where most artists come from when offering up the fruits of their labor, so why do we insist on putting up so many barriers to our own connection with a work? What are we depriving ourselves of when we insist on pulling the wings off of everything we see in order to determine if and why it can/not fly?

I am not saying we should watch every thing in this manner for the rest of our lives. I just think it is a nice experiment to try in hopes of gaining fresh eyes. Remember when you first went to the theater (gallery, record store…) and everything was mind-blowing? Don't you ever mourn the loss of that perspective? I do.

Art is a gift.

Sometimes it is ok to just say thank you when someone gives you a gift.

Visit at VA Puget Sound

Thanks to the veterans and Anne Peterson at the Beacon Hill VA Puget Sound. We had a charming visit.

Highlights include meeting Jack who used to be a ballroom dancer AND played drums in a husband/wife band when swing dance drove ballroom out of fashion. You could see it in him too, long limbs and a certain presence even with his age.

Another bright spot was a sleepy vet that wandered right through the middle of the dancing to get to the coffee on the other side of the rec room. It was such a nice reminder that dance doesn't always have to be this precious thing pedestaled upon a stage but is really just another simple part of life.

As soon as I got home I got a nice note from Anne thanking us for our performance!

On a more serious side the experience let me to some further contemplation on the role of arts in the world. Upon first arriving at the hospital I feel shame. Who do I think I am trying to make a DANCE of all things considering mortality, loss struggle. Here I am youthful and ridiculously able-bodied in comparison to the residents, living a fairly sheltered existence.

Who do I think I am????

Of course none of the vets or the staff were thinking this. They are pleased that we have come, they are enjoying it. And I come to terms again as I have over and over with the truth that it is ok to be who you have become. Not everyone should be a doctor or a soldier and not everyone should be a dancer, and that is ok. It is ok that life places each of us in different roles. I am what this life has presented me, just as they are. I don't take issue with them for fighting wars that I don't believe in, they don't take issue with my years of plies and tendus and futile acts of movement.

They are happy to see us. Instead of guilt, I will feel happy to be seen.

I have a right to tell this story even if I am most likely farther from it than they. We all have a right to it. We all end up in it. We all have to watch those around us enter into it. It is OUR story. I just happen to have been placed in a position where I can tell the story. They were in a position to patch wounds or to fight and sadly to kill, but they rose to meet what they were given. I am in a position to be seen. I have a forum to 'speak'.

Maybe sometimes the graceful thing to do is to put aside our private neurosis, to not shrink humbly away on account of our own insignificance, but to do whatever thing we have been given with as much dedication and integrity as we can muster.

Maybe seeing a thing through is an honorable thing, regardless of what path you have stepped onto.

The A.W.A.R.D. Show!

Josephine's Echopraxia

is excited to be participating in this year's

The A.W.A.R.D. Show! 2011: Seattle

One Night Only!

Friday January 28th, 8pm

On the Boards, Merrill Wright Mainstage

100 West Roy St, Seattle WA, 98119

Tickets $15 http://www.ontheboards.org/special-events/award-show

or call 206.217.9888 Tue - Fri • noon - 6pm

The A.W.A.R.D. Show! is an experiment including dance audiences in the usually closed door process of arts funding, an acronym (Artists With Audiences Responding to Dance) The A.W.A.R.D. Show! gives audiences (along with a professional panel) the opportunity to award one deserving choreographer a $10,000 grant and two runners up $2,000.

Josephine's Echopraxia is excited to have another chance to dance upon On the Boards' beautiful and expansive mainstage. We have further developed our work from Northwest New Works and are bringing you the next chapter, Saying goodbye again and again and again and again… [stifle] While excited to be a part of this innovative performance and granting format we are focusing our energy on the truest expression of where stifle needs to go next instead of focusing on the competitive aspects of the show.

We would be honored if you would join us to take in these developments. Saying goodbye again and again and again and again… [stifle] will bring you performances by Marissa Rae Niederhauser (dancer and choreographer), Spencer Moody (musician and composer), Allie Hankins, Meredith Horiuchi, Meredith Sallee and Rosa Vissers (dancers) and Cameron Elliott and Eric Fisher (musicians).

We hope you will join us for this intriguing evening of dance that includes performances by Waxie Moon, Quark Contemporary Dance Theatre and tEEth with a Q and A and vote after the show.

To help bring Saying goodbye again and again and again and again… [stifle] to The A.W.A.R.D. Show! please make a gift securely online at

https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=30857. I have partnered with Shunpike, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, as our fiscal sponsor. This means your donation to Josephine's Echopraxia and Shunpike will be tax- deductible to the fullest extent of the law.

For more about The A.W.A.R.D. Show! please visit http://www.joyce.org/about/special_events_awardshow.php

Major funding for this program has been provided by The Boeing Company.

Saying goodbye again and again and again and again… [stifle] made possible in part by a grant from 4Culture and a smart ventures grant from Seattle’s Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs. Developed in part during a Flight Deck Residency at Open Flight Studio and at MLK Ballet.

Josephine's Echopraxia is an Associated Program of Shunpike http://www.shunpike.org/