Productions
Assemble This
February 12, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 23, and 24, 2010
Assemble This is a two-week artistic jaunt of dance and live music that transforms galleries and museums into a wickedly entertaining kinetic canvas. Join the adventure as Attack Theatre creates “delicious moments of intimacy” between audience, artist, and artwork. Every show is a unique performance event of conversation, creation, dance and music that combines the planned and the spontaneous. Attack Theatre asks you to Assemble This and immerse yourself in a world premiere each night.
Performances begin at 8PM, arrive at 7:30PM to mix, mingle and imbibe.
Venues
2|12 SPACE
812 Liberty Avenue, Downtown -- FREE opening night after party with DJ Justin Hopper from 9:30 - 11:30PM
2|16 Pittsburgh Center for the Arts
6300 Fifth Avenue, Shadyside -- Pre-show reception and intimate Dave Eggar concert at 7:00PM. $40, includes regular performance.
2|17 August Wilson Center for African American Culture
980 Liberty Avenue, Downtown
2|19 The Frick Art & Historical Center
7227 Reynolds Street, Point Breeze
2|20 Mattress Factory
500 Sampsonia Way, Northside
2|21 Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh
10 Children’s Way, Northside -- Please note: this show begins at 6:00pm
2|23 Society for Contemporary Craft
2100 Smallman Street, Strip District
2|24 The Andy Warhol Museum
117 Sandusky Street, Northside -- Presented as a part of the Off the Wall series. To find out about all The Warhol's programs, click here.
Eight Venues | Eight Dates | Eight Premieres | February 2010
Tickets
$20 general admission
$15 for students, seniors, and teachers
$10 participating museum members
$40 2|16 Pre-show reception and Dave Eggar concert at Pittsburgh Center for the Arts (includes performance)
$60 series pass (includes all eight performances - mix and match!)
Attack Theatre partners with eight of Pittsburgh’s premier museums and galleries to take this critically-acclaimed performance event on a whirlwind two-week artistic jaunt that exposes the moments between the planned and the spontaneous, in an adventurous evening of dance, live music, artworks, conversation, and creation.
Assemble This engages the audience with creation, improvisation, and performance inspired by specific works of art. The process begins with a short dance performed by the Attack Theatre dancers accompanied by Dave Eggar (cello) and Charles Palmer (percussion). After viewing this performance, the audience embarks on a lively, guided conversation with the dancers and the musicians about the chosen artworks. Using the discussion as inspiration, the performers transform the comments into original music and movement, which they overlay onto the existing work. With each additional work of art, the performance expands and intensifies, culminating in a work that explodes with physical intensity, personal involvement and intimacy, thus creating a world premiere dance event that connects artist, performer, audience, and artwork like never before.
The Assemble This performance series begins on February 12th at SPACE in the Cultural District and travels throughout the city to Pittsburgh Center for the Arts (Shadyside, February 16), August Wilson Center for African American Culture (Downtown, February 17), The Frick Art & Historical Center (Point Breeze, February 19), Mattress Factory (Northside, February 20), Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh (Northside, February 21), Society for Contemporary Craft (Strip District, February 23), and finally ending at The Andy Warhol Museum (Northside) on February 24th.
In a season of exciting change for Attack Theatre, the company is thrilled at the challenge to perform in such a broad and diverse group of gallery spaces, in only two weeks. Michele de la Reza, co-artistic director of Attack Theatre states, “Assemble This is a city-wide presentation of one of our most successful and unique touring programs, Some Assembly Required. We’ve performed this work in France, Texas, New York and even at an Oceanographic Museum in Monte Carlo. However, our loyal Pittsburgh audiences haven’t gotten the chance to see it develop over the last 10 years. Peter and I are ecstatic to bring it right back to where it started.” Peter Kope, co-artistic director adds “But this time we are performing it in eight different venues. I love the idea that if someone comes back each night, they will see something completely different. This show is risky and personal – we’re not afraid to call it intimate – and that’s what makes it so thrilling for the audience and performers.”
Cast of Assemble This
Assemble This features performances by the award-winning co-artistic directors Michele de la Reza and Peter Kope and Grammy nominated music director Dave Eggar (cello). Attack Theatre’s company dancers include Liz Chang, Dane Toney, and Ashley Williams. Returning to Pittsburgh by way of New York is acclaimed percussionist Charles Palmer.
History of Attack Theatre’s Some Assembly Required
Fusing choreography and composition with visual art, Some Assembly Required was originally commissioned for the Carnegie Museum of Art (Pittsburgh) in 1996 and is inspired by the work of Philip Yenawine, former director of education at the Museum of Modern Art. Some Assembly Required has been presented at: Museé Oceanographique (Monaco), Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art (New York), Ross Art Museum (Ohio), Blaffer Gallery (Houston), Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, The Frick Art and Historical Center (Pittsburgh), Mattress Factory (Pittsburgh), The Andy Warhol Museum (Pittsburgh) and the Avignon Festival (France).
Incident[s] in the Strip
November 13, 14, 16, 17, 20, and 21, 2009
All shows at 8:00pm
2425 Liberty Avenue, 15222 [map it]
Tickets
$20 advance/$25 at the door
$15 for students, seniors, and teachers
Free Parking: Available in the lot at 24th Street and Railroad as well as ample on-street parking.
Photography: Tom Altany. Graphic Design: Rob Henning Design.
Incident[s] in the Strip is an evening of high-energy dance-theater, newly composed live music, and dynamic video that fights to reestablish the nuance lost in too many moments. Join the fearless dancers and musicians of Attack Theatre as they embrace their new surroundings with a production that breaks perception of place, order, and beauty.
Walking down a brick alley, inundated with competing aromas, passionate whispers, and black and gold. A car passes, a door opens, a curtain parts. When you peel away the palpable layers, what remains?
For six shows only, Attack Theatre brings together its seasoned team of talented dancers, musicians, and designers for the world premiere of Incident[s] in the Strip, a performance featuring high-energy dance-theater and newly composed live music in their new Strip District home at Pittsburgh Opera’s Headquarters – transformed into a sound and kinetic landscape for this performance only.
This production is an exploration of physical and emotional contrasts – miniscule and massive, abstract and concrete, confined and expansive, quiet and thunderous - and the affect it has on the viewer. A skateboarding percussionist enters the theater space and triggers an experience of contemporary and classic urban images - a loud brick alley, a furtive glance, fresh coffee being ground, a gathering of passionate whispers and ever intrusive traffic. The performers exist in a distant yet intertwined pathway that coalesces and rebounds as the incident[s] collide. A world of action, reaction, and residual memory carry the audience through streets, corners and shadowed windows as these world class artists sculpt the accidental, the purposeful, and the illicit stare in an Act 1 of accumulating emotion.
While the audience is enjoying the theatricalized lobby experience, drinking complimentary libations and connecting with new and old friends; Attack Theatre is turning the theater inside out. When the audience returns to their seats, their perception of place and order will be challenged. The audience’s chairs are now on the stage area and the seating platforms have been transformed into the performance landscape.
“We’ve been intrigued by the juxtaposition of viewer and audience for a long time and now we have a chance to explore the concept in a theatrical and controlled setting” adds artistic director Michele de la Reza. “We have always been inspired by space – whether it’s a downtown street corner for our performance of ‘The Heist,’ or a warehouse for ‘The Dirty Ball.’ We find the opportunities in every situation and embrace it head-on,” comments artistic director Peter Kope.
“In Act 1, the audience is catapulted into an aural landscape of pure momentum and form. In the second act, memories of the actions of the first act weave and simmer and redirect into a commanding plot fusing abstraction and hyper-reality. It’s with this fusion that we’re able bring the audience on a journey of action and reaction,” says Attack Theatre Music Director Dave Eggar.
The simple beauty of action becomes the movement inspiration for Act 2. The expansive and physically charged incident[s] of Act 1 are now explored as passionate portrayals of everyday life and transferred into a language of intimate gesture, nuance and even vaudevillian schtick. The audience is invited to peek into the lives and souls and experience the joy that inspires creativity. This journey through the world of incident[s] brings a fresh realization of the affect of actively looking, watching, and experiencing and the change that we cannot avoid.
Incident[s] in the Strip features choreography by award-winning co-artistic directors, Peter Kope and Michele de la Reza and original composition by Grammy nominated music director Dave Eggar (cello). Attack Theatre’s company dancers include Liz Chang, Dane Toney and Ashley Williams. Returning to Pittsburgh by way of New York are acclaimed musicians Chuck Palmer (percussion, skateboard, vibraphone) and Tom Pirozzi (bass guitar). Costume designer Suz Pisano rejoins the Attack Theatre team after having designed for Insert [Clever and Thought-Provoking] Title Here and Someplace, not here. While Attack Theatre’s resident wizard, lighting designer Kevin Matz. brings 16.7 million color combinations to the pupils of the audience.