Title: Nick Cave Lecture with Special ‘Soundsuit’ Dancer Interludes
Location: Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts, 7380 East Second Street Scottsdale, AZ 85251
Description: WHAT:
Lecture by Artist Nick Cave
with Special ‘Soundsuit’ Dancer Interludes
WHERE:
Virginia G. Piper Theater
Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts
7380 East Second Street
Scottsdale, AZ 85251
WHEN:
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
7:00 pm
*Visitors are encouraged to stop by early at 6:00 pm to visit Nick Cave at SMoCA before the event
TICKETS: $15 ($12 SMOCA & ADC members) Free to all students with I.D. at the door
480-994-ARTS (2787)
Tickets online at: https://www.scottsdaleperformingarts.org/event.php?id=645
After-party at cream stereo lounge with DJs Joe DiPadova, dk.strickler & Tranzit. Live performance by Porangui of Grupo Liberdade with party hosts Brazilia, Baron Gordon, Jonny Rogers and Seven.
CHICAGO ARTIST NICK CAVE’S SOUNDSUITS COME TO LIFE IN A JOYOUS EVENT FEATURING A LECTURE WITH THE ARTIST AND DANCERS
I see this work—especially at this particular time—as a catalyst for change and I hope that the people who see it will be fueled by their experience with it. I want people of every age, race and interest to be transported for a few minutes with me, to another place at the center of the earth. And I hope we will dream together. –Nick Cave
(Scottsdale, AZ) The Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (SMoCA) and the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts have come together to present a completely unique, collaborative event full of dance, fine art, sculpture, fiber arts and sound fueled by the hybrid work of Chicago-based artist and former Alvin Ailey dancer Nick Cave. For one night only, on Wednesday, November 4th at 7:00 p.m., patrons will have the chance to experience dancers as they perform in Cave’s dazzling ‘Soundsuits’ – multi-layered mixed-media, wearable sculptures named for the sounds made when worn – along with Nick Cave’s special visit to Arizona to present his visionary work at the newly renovated Virginia Piper Theater. The event will incorporate a discussion with Cave, some of his featured video work on a large scrim and interludes showcasing eight dancers demonstrating some of his raffia, hair and crochet hat Soundsuits against live, experimental sounds by artist Joe Willie Smith. Claire Schneider, SMoCA Senior Curator says, “The amazing thing about Cave’s work is that it is truly multidisciplinary. It is informed by both visual and performing arts. It comes full circle when it is transformed from static sculpture into magical, fluid performance, one that invites the community into a whole new experience combining sight, sound and movement. These Soundsuits touch on classic human concerns that are centuries old—costuming, masquerading, and identity-altering power—in a contemporary way.”
ABOUT NICK CAVE’S SOUNDSUITS:
Soundsuits allow identities to be lost or hidden and new ones to be claimed. —Nick Cave
As the powerful traveling exhibition Nick Cave: Meet Me at the Center of the Earth (now on view at SMoCA) demonstrates, Cave erects sculptures that can be worn and costumes that can change the nature of the performer and the dance. His art asks viewers to let go of preexisting or fixed notions and others’ personas to come to a new, reinvented place. Cave creates vehicles in which identity is never fixed. By serving as disguise, camouflage and inspiration for dreaming, his costumes are liberating.
Nick Cave has been called a “shaman” or “one who knows.” The traditional role of the shaman is to communicate with spirits on behalf of the entire community through rituals that involve some sort of transformation. Often a shaman invokes a ceremony represented by exaggerated theatrical performances. In this tradition, art becomes a catalyst for transformation rather than an end in itself—which is how Cave views his own practice. Cave’s Soundsuit figures suggest that our identities are continually shifting and subject to alteration. They represent his attempt to reconstruct not just individual identity, but our shared common purpose as well.
ABOUT NICK CAVE:
Artist Nick Cave is currently a tenured professor and Director of the Graduate Program in the Fashion Department at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago. He has led numerous workshops on topics such as Extending the Body: Experiments in Clothing and has designed, manufactured, and marketed his own line of men’s and women’s clothing and ran a successful clothing company in Chicago. He has received numerous awards including the United States Artist Fellow Award (2006), Joyce Award (2006), Creative Capital Grant (2005, 2004, 2001), Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (2001), and National Endowment for the Arts (1991).
Cave’s art is also held in many highly regarded public collections such as the Brooklyn Museum, New York; the Seattle Art Museum, Washington; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washinton D.C.; and the Rubell Collection in Miami, Florida.Nick Cave has performed around the world—and, with this most recent exhibition, is looking forward to watching others perform in his Soundsuits.
Nick Cave: Meet Me at the Center of the Earth is organized by Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco. Sponsored by Janis Leonard Design Associates; Alice and David Olsan; and the SMoCA Salon.
Nick Cave’s lecture and Soundsuit event is presented by SMoCA in collaboration with the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts with contributing support from John Michael Capaldi and the School of Art in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, Arizona State University.
The Scottsdale Cultural Council, a private, non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, is contracted by the City of Scottsdale, Arizona, to administer certain city arts and cultural projects and to manage the City-owned Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts, and the Scottsdale Public Art Program. The programs of the Scottsdale Cultural Council are made possible, in part, by the support of members and donors and grants received from the Arizona Commission on the Arts through appropriations from the Arizona State Legislature and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Start Time: 7:00pm
Date: November 4, 2009
