Baker & Tarpaga Dance Project and Catch Me Bird
Sans Detour
Fri. September 5 at 8:30 p.m.
Catch Me Bird’s husband-wife team hilariously blurs on and offstage lives through the daring aerial choreography of Silk. Baker & Tarpaga Dance Project intertwines West African dance and post-modern dance theater with live music to relate a heroic journalist’s true story in Disorder Inside Order.
Full price $25
Buy 3 or more events and pay only $20
Students and children $5
Extended Event Information
This split bill features the vanguard husband and wife teams of: Catch Me Bird, a daring duet company that fuses highly physical dance theater and aerial choreography, and Baker and Tarpaga Dance Project, LA's premiere African Contemporary Dance Theater company, who combine their passion and politics with highly theatrical movement for a visceral narrative, blending real life events with West African dance and post-modern dance theater. Border and boundary crossing appears in their multi-ethnic, intimate relationships, further highlighted by their charged partnering movement and aesthetics.
VOWS IN MID-AIR
For the first time in Ford Amphitheatre history Catch Me Bird dancers will perform aerial movement from the Ford’s proscenium towers. Catch Me Bird will utilize the architecture and unique setting at the FORD to create a site-specific aerial spectacle, highlighting the performers at the apex of the two towers. Audience participation will also be artfully woven into the event. The performance culminates in a possible marriage proposal and wedding ceremony on the main stage under the stars – see www.catchmebird.com, for the vows in midair link.
THE PERFORMANCE PROGRAM FEATURES:
“Gnama Gnama Mana Mana Kono/Disorder Inside Order” a startling expression of the events surrounding the 1998 assassination of Norbert Zongo, a highly respected Burkinabe journalist who exposed the corruption of government officials. The piece features live griot drumming and a melding of West African and post modern dance by six dancers: Olivier Tarpaga, Esther Baker-Tarpaga, Shelly Wilcox, Josette Wiggans, Wilifred Souly and Laurel Fanya House. The movement maintains the traditional West African grounded stance while exploring the floor and the air. “provocative images…charged partnering and movement sections that draw equally from West African dance vocabulary and contact improvisation…” – L.A. TIMES
The concert will also feature the world premiere of “SILK”, the latest chronicle in Catch Me Bird’s reality performance series. “SILK”, is the traditional element of the fourth anniversary gift and commemorates the couple’s real 4th wedding anniversary. “SILK”is a confessional, humorous and intimate look at the real communication between a wife and husband, and a collaborative working pair. The piece begins with the couple at the apex of the two 60-foot stage towers, unfurling long swaths of silk, and descending with daring aerial choreography. Humor, intimacy, and emotional potency bubble to the surface throughout the high-energy dance scenes. The audience witnesses a true portrait-in-motion. The work of Catch Me Bird is based on the actual marriage of the two performers four years ago, and the shifting dynamics between the public spectacle and the personal reality. |
