Submerged: Moving in the Tulsa tunnels
A premiere of site-specific works
Tulsa’s underground tunnel system is the focus of the 2014 eMerge Dance Festival, presented by the Living Arts of Tulsa Dance Committee. The festival features site-specific dance and performance works created in response to each tunnel site, drawing inspiration from its architecture design, the tunnel’s history, and its current use. Dance works will be performed throughout the tunnel system in a series of “tours” that audiences sign up for and experience throughout the evening.
The mission of eMerge Dance Festival is to support and promote community, interactive dance art, and include civic participation. Interactive dance art is art that generates social participation. The work’s creation, its display, and its character itself, inspires immediate interactions that connect people to one another.
Each dance work performed during the evening queries its tunnel site for movement invention and meaning making. The works will evoke contexts of the ideas and memories of “home,” conformity and non-conformity to “mob mentality,” themes of passing through, the intersections of privilege and fear, and the ‘how tos’ of forging community outside of consumer-based outcomes.
Performing artists creating site-specific works and dance installations include Nina Madsen, Amy Morrow, Kira Blazek, Anna Bennett, Maggie Boyett, Living Water Dance Community, Portico Dans Theatre, and Jessica Vokoun & Rachel Bruce Johnson.
The eMerge Dance Festival will be Saturday, April 12, at 7pm in the Tulsa Underground Tunnel System. The festival extends from the Tulsa Performing Arts parking lot entrance at 2nd street (also the Hyatt Regency Parking lot) to the Kennedy Building lobby at Boston and 4th Street. Tickets are $20 at the door and $15 for members and students. VIP tickets are also available for $50, which includes special amenities such as a pre-party at the Hyatt, parking pass, hospitality suite and t-shirt.
Buy tickets and select your tunneling times, at www.livingarts.org/emerge-dance-festival-tickets.
This project was made possible with assistance from the Oklahoma Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, Living Arts New Dance Committee and the George Kaiser Family Foundation, The Outlet, John Eakin III, Wendy Thomas & Ralph Bendel, Lori Sears, BAM, LLC, 320 S Boston, LLC, Mid-Continent Tower, LLC, and Chris Bumgarner, Owner BAM, LLC.
Workshops before the festival
Purchase of an eMerge Dance Festival ticket will allow you to attend both workshops at no charge.
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eMerging dance workshop
Who are we and how do we fit together as dancers? Discovering community connection through dance. We invite intermediate to advanced dancers to a dance experiment where together we will merge hip-hop and modern/contemporary dance styles to create something new. We will do this live so that the collaboration isn’t predetermined, but is created right there with you in the workshop!
Where: Legacy Dance Studio East, 5582 S. Garnett Rd., Tulsa
When: Friday, April 4, 4-5:30pm
Cost: Purchase a ticket to the eMerge Dance Festival (bring email receipt confirmation) or purchase at workshop.
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Outdoor site-specific dance workshop
Site-specific dance/performance is work created in response to a particular place, site, inspired by its architecture/design, the history and current use (Description taken from Stephan Koplowitz).
Where: Oral Roberts University gardens (meeting place: Howard Auditorium dance studio)
When: Friday, April 11, 3-4:30pm
Cost: Purchase a ticket to the eMerge Dance Festival (bring email receipt confirmation) or purchase at workshop.
The Gayly - April 6, 2014 @ 10am