Performances will take place at The Chocolate Factory Theater, 38-33 24th Street, Long Island City.
Co-commissioned with Portland Institute for Contemporary Art and On The Boards
In NOTHINGBEING, Portland, Oregon-based choreographer Takahiro Yamamoto uses highly physical movement, communal meditation, and the internal activation of sensory memories to construct a sustained and complex meditation on subjectivity and erasure within and between states of “nothingness” and “being”. Three performers (David Thomson, Anna Martine Whitehead, and Yamamoto) form the center of a collective gathering, in which intangible states – thinking, not thinking, feeling, surrendering, transforming, conjuring, and forgetting – are brought to the surface in starkly physical form. What does it feel like to shed? To unlearn? And how can we do this together? What does it mean to “be”, and to “be nothing”, and to be present, somehow, in between?
Created and performed by Takahiro Yamamoto in collaboration with David Thomson and Anna Martine Whitehead. Thought Partner: Samita Sinha. Sound Design: Coast2c. Costume Design: Alison Heryer. Lighting Design: Jeff Forbes.
NOTHINGBEING is supported by the Japan Foundation through the Performing Arts JAPAN program. It is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creative Fund Project co-commissioned by Portland Institute for Contemporary Art in partnership with The Chocolate Factory Theater, On The Boards, and NPN. The Creation Fund is supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Ford Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency). Takahiro Yamamoto is a 2021 NDP Finalist Grant Award recipient. Support was made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts with funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to address continued sustainability needs during COVID-19 and in support of NOTHINGBEING. The development of this project is also supported by Portland Institute for Contemporary Art and the Dance Center at Columbia College Chicago. The presentation at the Chocolate Factory Theater is supported by funds from the Oregon Arts Commission.
