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Aniccha Arts,
Census

With over 100 people moving as a critical mass in collective patterns and at random flourishes, Census addresses the inherent challenges and inaccuracies of taking count of a populace.

Census features performers from the broadest range of experience in dance, movement, and embodiment by inviting our neighbors, our parents, our best friend’s cousins, and even the strangers that pass by us every day. This performance begins with the sunset and invites the interactions of 9 hours of festival-goers to dance along into the sunrise.

Census Tour and Movement Clinic
Come take a tour (offered on the hour from 9pm onward) to learn more about the project through a question and answer session. If you’d like to dance, you can also learn some of our choreography and then perform it with cast members live on stage. If you are interested in performing with us for a longer period of time, check in at our tent placed at the Guthrie side of our stage.
ASL interpreters will be on site from 9pm to 1am to support the tours.

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Aniccha Arts

Founded in 2004 (by Pramila Vasudevan), Aniccha Arts is an experimental arts group that creates immersive performance environments primarily made of dance and electronic media. This interdisciplinary arts collaborative produces site-specific performances that examine agency, voice, and group dynamics within community histories, institutions, and systems.

Census was conceived by Piotr Szyhalski, Jasmine Kar Tang, and Pramila Vasudevan.

Performers (joined the project in May 2016)

Yasmin Abdi, LaPorsha Allen, Maya Beck, Athena Isham “Bezhigobenasique,” Aaron Brink, Yolanda Burkhardt, Katie Clapham, Portia Control, PH Copeland, Namrata Gaikwad, Kaveri Ganguly, Ranjana Ghosh, Marion Gomez, Karenina Gonzalez, Kyra Hood, Jennifer Houston, Lina Jamoul, Abe Levine, Laura Levinson, Nadia Linoo, Vivian Liu, Kaoz, Alizarin Menninga-Fong, Eiko Elise Mizushima, H. Uyen Nguyen, Anwulika, Malcolm Peterson, Atlese Robinson, Isabel Ruelas, Alan Tse, Andrew Y. S.Young

Performance collaborators (joined the project in March 2016) were involved in creating ‘modules’ (scores/ideas) for Census

Jaffa Aharonov, Sherie Apungu, Nastalie Bogira, Rica de la Concha, Beverly Cottman, Will Courtney, BriAnna M. Daniels, R. Kakuyu Dewberry, Sherrie Fernandez-Williams, Andres Guzman, Pedro Lander, Erica Lee,  Holo Lue Choy,  Alys Ayumi Ogura, Takawi Audam Peters, Lela Pierce, Alli Shurilla, Anandi Somasundaram, Chitra Vairavan, Cassandra Velociraptor, Kayva Yang, Magnolia Yang Sao Yia, Emily Zimmer

The designers, group facilitators, and coordinators who built the scaffolding for this project are listed below:

Kurt Robert Kim Blomberg (movement group facilitator, performance collaborator) is a Korean adoptee, performance artist, educator, and activist.  This will be Kurt’s third project with Aniccha Arts.  He is excited to be part of this project.

Tena May Gallivan (light group facilitator) grew up on stage, and try as she might, she hasn’t been able to leave it since. Besides acting at theaters such as The Guthrie, Chanhassen Dinner Theater and Park Square Theater, she has done Voice Overs for television and radio both nationally and locally for such clients as Tresseme, Subaru and Macy’s. She is also a Teaching Artist at Upstream Arts and has studied as well as taught various forms of dance.

Max Hoaglund (technology designer, performance collaborator) is an interactive artist and systems designer who works to realize collaborative artwork projects that incorporate elements of digital technology. Max was educated in sculpture at MCAD and worked in the twin cities’ technology industry for almost a decade before returning to the arts in 2015.

Masanari Kawahara (object group facilitator, performance collaborator) is a performer, educator and Butoh practitioner who incorporates puppetry, mask and movement into his work. As a Butoh practitioner, Masanari is part of Nenkin Butoh-dan, led by Gadu Doshin, which received the 2015 Sage Award Outstanding Dance Ensemble for Fu.Ku.Shi.Ma. Masanari Kawahara is a Playwrights’ Center McKnight Theater Artist Fellow (2010-2011).

Elisa Lee (participant coordinator, performance collaborator) is the Participant Coordinator for Census. Elisa is a queer, gender nonconforming Korean American invested in and informed by intersectionality, personal-political experiences, and histories of resistances and survival.

Kelley Meister (project manager, performance collaborator) is an interdisciplinary artist whose work combines drawing, video, and performance into installations and stand-alone films. Kelley’s work has been shown around the country and abroad in galleries, theatres, film festivals, online, outside, in the streets, and in impromptu art-spaces and has been supported by the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Jerome Foundation, the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, and the McKnight Foundation. A commitment to social, racial, environmental, and economic justice is a through line in Kelley’s work. See more at kelleymeister.com.

Benjamin Reed (object designer, performance collaborator) is from Colorado, grew up in Northern Indiana, and lives in Minneapolis. He is a sculptor and video installation artist receiving his MFA from MCAD in 08′ and was a Jerome Fellow emerging artist in 2008-09.

Siddeeqah Shabazz (text group facilitator, performance collaborator) is originally from Oakland, CA. She graduated from the University of La Verne in Southern California with a B.A in theatre and from the Guildford School of Acting in England with a degree in theatre.  While in the Twin Cities she has worked with such theatres as Climb Theatre, Shadow Horse Theatre, Gadfly Theatre, Freshwater Theatre, 20% Theatre, Savage Umbrella, and Artistry. This is Siddeeqah’s 2nd show with Aniccha Arts and she is delighted.

Andrea Steudel (light designer, performance collaborator) is a party-maker and upcycle and life-cycle designer. One of her specialties is creating mobile platforms for ephemeral light and image projection.

Piotr Szyhalski (project advisor, designer) is a Polish-born, U.S.-based multimedia artist who in the past decade has established the Labor Camp—an ongoing art project that includes interactive components (digital and physical), original music, performances, videos, printed ephemera, texts, a blog, and an archive of online resources. Moving between fine arts (painting, photography, drawing, installation), sound, media art, and design, Szyhalski’s multilayered works often explore communication/exchange, extreme historical phenomena, and relationships between the individual and society/history/time.

Jasmine Kar Tang (dramaturg, performance collaborator) works to nurture the conceptual foundation of a performance, and her responsibilities have included designing and facilitating workshops for the multidisciplinary Aniccha Arts team to collectively arrive at a common language for a production. She holds a PhD in American studies from the University of Minnesota, applying her teaching and research skills through deep attention to process and a commitment to exploring issues related to race and its intersections.

Pramila Vasudevan (artistic director, producer, movement designer, performance collaborator) is a 2016 McKnight Artist Fellow for choreography. She has a background in classical and contemporary Indian dance, visual media design, and political science, all of which are reflected in her interdisciplinary voice and in her pursuit of a socially conscious performance practice. Through years of researching audience methods and how technology supports the integration of artistic disciplines, and also in acknowledging the hybridity of knowledge in our bodies as performers, Vasudevan is committed to the creation of site-specific performances. Major influences and teachers include Dr. Bala Nandakumar, Roshan Vajifdar Ghosh, Ranee Ramaswamy, Nirmala Rajasekar, Dr. Ananya Chatterjea, Piotr Szyhalski, Steve Dietz, and Dr. Ali Momeni.

Taja Will (technology group facilitator, performance collaborator) is a queer, Latina adoptee, dance artist and holistic healing practitioner. Her body of work is based in somatic intelligence, cultural inquiry and an aesthetic of spontaneity.

Syniva Whitney (text designer, performance collaborator) is an interdisciplinary artist with a background in dance, theater and visual art. They are one of the artists behind Gender Tender, an experimental performance project that centers the transgender and non-binary experience in process and presentation and has been making and sharing work nationally since 2012. Syniva is obsessed with the heart felt, slippery and dangerous subjects of identity, power, high and low culture, trash and transformation and often uses improvisational methods to investigate these territories as a choreographer, writer and human.

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This project is made possible by: Northern Lights.mn, Jerome Foundation, Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, Clientek Inc, Upstream Arts, Pillsbury House + Theatre, and 120 individual donors.

This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.

View more photos from Census on the Northern Spark Flickr here!

 

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Presented by

Supported by

Site(s)

W River Parkway between Portland Ave S and Guthrie Endless Bridge

Hours

9 pm—5:26 am

Hashtag

#census
Aniccha Arts
(works) Minneapolis
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