Oh Great Mystery….the next work is comparable to a child who was born into a tamasic state. A bit difficult, yet sweet, lethargic before noon, and doesn’t want to leave the house to play,… this process has been akin forcing the weather to change…impossible. Oh Great Mystery, will take premiere at Dance Theatre Coalition’s progressive Proving Ground Festival in Salt Lake City, Utah. I’ll be teaching/lecturing at the University, and in the community, and look forward to some steady sunshine, heat, and fresh faces. I am forcing myself into dedicated cardio-training mode, in the hopes the elevation doesn’t smoke me, like the last time I toured there.
Words about this new ‘death art’; there will be snow falling (check), terrorist mask (check), a gi-normous Happy Face costume (check) and rope burns on my torso (check check…ouch). This piece has nothing to do with BDSM, everything to do with the question what is necessary in/for/to sacrifice.
PostPartum
Many thank you’s….for helping make our show a pivotal success. From the opening night to the closing, we have never felt so grateful for a performance /production experience. We have been mourning the end (sniff sniff).
To leave a world like that, where lover’s stories unfold, ballads sung, hearts & flesh shown, well… it is like saying goodbye to home. Like leaving an old part of you behind when you move somewhere new.
This ride the past three weeks (really ten months) has reminded us the power artists/people have in going personal, in fearlessly revealing, and damn it feels good to have the work matter.
We thank you for oversold houses, four standing ovations , and, most importantly, for the look on many an audience face when you told us what this work meant to you (many of you were not performers or friends…what a difference your voices add). To move and be moved, to find a way to join, what true joy.
Having made a work as important to us as it was to those that saw it…it seemed to have the most desired effect..that of opening the heart. It certainly did ours. This piece may have been made from us, but it was for that which is larger than us, & it was inspired by that which unites us.
For those who were there….remember!:
“I’m thankful (clap clap) I’m grateful (clap clap) to Spirit (clap clap) to be alive whoa .. I’m thankful (clap clap) I’m grateful (clap clap) to bicycles (clap clap)……. to beeeeee aaaaaaaa-liiiive! “
“Imagine…” opens in less than one week…and all things considered,
we are off to a usual tech. We are having that slight panicky feeling accompanied by fits of sleeplessness, tech scheduling difficulties, carloads of random lighting gear, potential lack of electricity, and can’t get the blood to stay dark enough red for the Goat Sacrifice we perform on stage. Needless to say, We are doing GREAT! This is exactly how it should be. So why can’t I stop crying?
Truly, we hope you will join us, because we did not kill this goat in vain (PETA would have our asses), nor do we mind using candle light. It will be something. We are not sure what , but trust us. We’ve never let you down before, only ourselves.
Scroll below for details of our fleshy dance theater performance.
…its hard work cleaning up after the wonderful pigeons that are sharing our old navy hanger with us.
Nine months later…
“Imagine that everything I am doing is exactly how I want it to be” will open May 29th, at Sand Point Naval Base/Hangar Workshop 30. Continuing runs May 30th, 31st, June 5th and 6th (show ends on a friday night) All shows at 9pm.
Good times, good times. Please save the date!
Carpooling recommended. Here is a map link to get there from the South & from the North
Here is an excerpt of the night’s events:
Imagine…What do animals heads, hotel rooms, heavy metal, scorpions and streaking have in common?
A performance bizarre of course…from CorpusCorpus Movement Association!
An adventurous journey into both imaginary and real catastrophes of intimacy, Choreographer/Performer Jessica Jobaris is presenting the third collaboration with Animator/Composer/Performer Luke Allen. An evening length duet, “Imagine that everything I’m doing is exactly how I want it to be,” attempts to uncover the instincts of what makes one heart tick with another’s, while reflecting on the methods we engage in, to thaw our fear into grace…by all standards, a comedy!” Things are not difficult to do; rather what is difficult is to put yourself into a state to do them.” Constantin Brancusi.
“Imagine…..” is Co-sponsored by the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs, with additional generous support from Seattle Parks and Recreation, Gamelan Pacifica and many mysterious private donors.
Long Distance Relationships
Is easy when you have telepathy. We are tempting our newly adopted director, Robert Steijn, in Vienna or Berlin, or wherever he is at, to telepathically direct us or send us his genius assistance. (Robert, can you hear us?)
We will simultaneously sit down, We in Seattle, he in EU somewhere, and, regardless of time differences, communicate. We are excited to see what happens. Maybe we will resort to email afterwards, or maybe we will trust that what is given is what is needed.
Meanwhile, check out Robert’s goings on…find him here at www.unitedsorry.com
Aaaaand one! (as Martha Graham would begin everything.) Well, we, Luke and I, begin on the second count, or twenty-fifth count, depending on which section of the dance we are working on. It’s not that we don’t have discipline. We just have a discipline for listening. so…We wait. We sense. And then we start. Two weeks ago, we began rehearsals for Imagine that everything I’m doing, is exactly how I want it to be. It is a longer version of our work-in-progress, not just lengthier, but meatier, filled out, fully investigating our original ideas, the target month May is in mind, in a warehouse on Capitol Hill in Seattle.
It is a duet
And …. besides being unapologetically ridiculous, it is ultimately a work of heart.
We’ll touch each other, a lot, and maybe you too.
We are Back! Whew that went fast, too fast. When we arrived home from Berlin, Luke hit the delivery room, to bear forth the issue of our time with Europe; born is the mercurial new dance cinema work “That a Universe My Heart May Unfold.” With shots in Mauerpark, Berlin, some graffiti’d walls of Amsterdam, and along the Seine river in Paris, it is a sanguine and sublime amalgamation of Jessica dancing with Swans, plastic toys, movement partnered by various natural light, and a new appreciation for the complicated art of stop-motion. It premiered in Tokyo’s Uplink Factory (Next Moment Dance Cinema Festival…Corrie Befort is the greatest! www.uplink.co.jp ) and at Velocity’s New Dance Cinema 2007 ( www.velocitydancecenter.org).
We are off to Europe! Amsterdam, Paris & Berlin. I, Luke, will be filming, well, many “native to the culture” things including Jessica’s not so native site-specific improvisations along with drinking coffee frequently and wandering the Mauerpark flohmarkt. Jessica will be studying dance and the brain with Anja Weber at Dock Elf, seeing her Impulstanz teacher Damien Jalet perform at Haus Eins, and meeting Robert Steijn for the first time.
October 1st through October 22nd.
Email us and let us know of anything cool to check out. We start out in Amsterdam and then Paris, arriving in Berlin by the 8th, until we return on the 22nd.
AUDITION for
corpuscorpus movement association’s 2008 performance project!
Saturday September 29th, 3pm-5pm
Velocity Dance Center
915 E. Pine Street, Seattle, WA
email jessicajobaris@gmail.com for details
***bring a joke/singing is optional/cahones a must
Velocity’s Annual Kick Off - A benefit performance — September 23rd 8pm
Smoke Farm — September 8th @ 8:15pm
Smoke Farm: an elegantly rustic setting in the Northwest haven of Arlington.
We have been fortunate to grace the stage;some flopped down, taped tight Marley upon the annually built wooden stage that nestles in the edges of an old milking parlor with few walls left remaining.
8:15 is our slot.
It will be pleasurable for us to push our limits. Hope you feel the same. Get your arse down there. We dance in our underwear. C’mon….it’s hot.
Title of the work: “Imagine everything I am doing, is exactly how I want it to be.”
