For the Corn and Flowers, Dance and Percussion

For the Corn and Flowers

Sunday, May 16, 2010 6:00pm - 8:00pm

The Anabolic Monument, California State Park

Tatsuya Nakatani Percussion

Oguri Dance

Roxanne Steinberg Dance

Admission free

The Anabolic Monument is an artwork by Lauren Bon, tended to by the Metabolic Studio in collaboration with the State Park of California in Los Angeles. It is made of the remains of Notacornfield, the Metabolic Sculpture, 2005-2006, that transformed the 32-acre brownfield at the historic center of dowtown Los Angeles into a green field for one agricultural cycle. It is currently in the fifth year of being tended to by the Metabolic Studio. The corn in the Anabolic is being grown for the final season of the Metabolic Studio's stewardship of the Anabolic Monument.

Tatsuya Nakatani (percussion) is originally from Osaka, Japan. He has performed in 80 cities in 7 countries and collaborated with 163 artists worldwide. In the past 10 years he has released nearly 50 recordings on CD.He has created his own instrumentation, effectively inventing many instruments and extended techniques. He utilizes drumset, bowed gongs, cymbals, singing bowls, metal objects, bells, and various sticks and bows to create an intense, organic music that defies category or genre. His music is based in improvised/ experimental music, jazz, free jazz, rock, and noise, yet retains the sense of space and beauty found in traditional Japanese folk music.

Roxanne Steinberg’s choreography and dance has been seen worldwide with composers and musicians Yas Kaz, Paul Chavez, Kenta Nagai, Tatsuya Nakatani, Leon Mobley, Myra Melford & Alex Cline and dancers Min Tanaka and Amagatsu of Sankai Juku. A founder of Body Weather Laboratory in L.A. (1987), she has performed with Oguri since 1990 and was presented in Flower of the Season, a performance series she now co-directs. She has choreographed for Body Vox in Portland, and artist Lauren Bon’s Notacornfield, the Metabolic Scultpure, 2005-2006, that transformed the 32-acre brownfield at the historic center of dowtown LA into a green field for one agricutlural cycle. Working at the Metabolic Studio and on Strawberry Flag in Los Angeles, dance is her language to coordinate space and community. Grants: Annenberg Foundation, Department of Cultural Affairs Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Arts Commission, Durfee Foundation, artist-in-residence Electric Lodge, Venice.

Oguri, an internationally acclaimed dancer/choreographer and a resident of Southern California since 1990, conducts Body Weather Laboratory a forum for investigating the body and dance (founded by Min Tanaka in Japan, 1978). In Japan, he studied fine art with Genpei Akasegawa and dance with Tatsumi Hijikata before working extensively with Min Tanaka farming, performing and presenting solo work in Tokyo. Since moving to the USA, he has taught and performed worldwide. The 2005 documentary film Height of Sky by director Morleigh Steinberg follows his 4-year project, an exploration of the California deserts in search of a dance between the human body and the borderline. He is an artist-in-residence at the Electric Lodge in Venice, California. Oguri has received support from the California Arts Council, the New England Foundation for the Arts National Dance Project, the Rockefeller Foundation, the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, The Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Arts Partners Program, The Getty Center, the Irvine Fellowship in Dance, the 2005 Irvine Dance: Creation to Performance grant. He serves on the Chora Council of the Metabolic Studio. The Metabolic Studio is comprised of Chora and Farmlab.