Touched

TOUCHED
equal parts performance art, improvisation and metaphor
with a side of audience participation

SHOWTIMES 21, 28 FEBRUARY 7 MARCH 6:00 PM

TOUCHED is a new work that brings together all that the ensemble windyPAE stands for. windyPAE - Windy Performing Arts Ensemble is a new company of pick-up artists from multiple mediums under the direction of Tommy Truss.

According to Truss, “TOUCHED is a bunch of broad strokes and fine gestures. The broad strokes in this piece are dance, music, spoken word, visual arts and improvisation while the fine gestures are the meanings and layers in the word touch.” The theme touch comes from Truss’s investigation of the body as a dancer, actor and body worker. He feels there are as many different kinds of touch, as there are response to being touched or touching someone. “ I am fascinated by the dialogue that can happen around a big issue, like touch and I particularly like it when that dialogue gets to be expressed in different ways, through visual art, music, movement, words and like a true conversation that is not scripted neither is this piece, it is highly improvisational.” The creation of TOUCHED has come through a variety of workshops with trained and non trained dancers, musicians, actors and visual artists, “Our goal” says Truss, “was to create a work that had enough structure in it that kept it from being a meandering bore but not too much structure and design that precluded any spontaneous investigation and tangents.”

Truss’s background in dance includes working in all kinds of venues, from abandoned buildings to furniture stores and working with all kinds of people, from professional dancers to people in prison. This piece reflects a bit of that history as well as his penchant for destabilization. “It starts when the audience enters the building, (which is not a traditional theater) where they have to walk through an ‘art instillation’ from there they end up sitting in the round close enough to the performers to hear them breathing.” He says there will be moments when the audience is invited to engage in even more ways and each person can decide how much they want to be involved.

The piece could be considered an homage to performance art of the 90‘s and the happenings of the 60’s art scene in New York City but Truss says, “It’s really acknowledging and loving the fact that we are alive and have a body, a body that can be touched and can touch and that can do extraordinary things... like sing and dance and paint and tell stories and where a single gesture can forege a dream”

TOUCHED has 12 to 15 performers and maybe more depending on which night you come to and depending on how much the person sitting next to you wants to participate. If you like to witness evolution, are keen for adventure and enjoy not knowing what might happen next, than this multimedia art event is your ticket to bliss.

SHOWTIMES: Performances are 6 to 7:15 ish on all the Thursdays in the festival at Crossways Community Center at 6 Roxburgh St off of Marjoribanks St. just up from the Embassy Theater.

Tickets: General $15, concession/groups (6 or more) $13, Fringe Addict Card $10 Email windypae@gmail.com with name, number of tickets required and date of show or buy them at Made Marion 17 Marion St. Limited number of tickets available per show.
For more information check out windyPAE on Facebook.

ENDS

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