Journey to the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin
in collaboration with Goddard College
Participatory Performance (and discussion) with The Olimpias:
Neil Marcus and Goddard College faculty member Petra Kuppers
Two performances on Thursday, August 26, 2010
4:30 - 6:00 pm and 7:30 - 9:00 pm
at Madrona MindBody Institute
In these performances, we will co-create a ritual experience, a nourishing re-imagining of memorialisation. The score focuses on the Peter Eisenman memorial in Germany, and the lawsuits brought on by the disabled people of Germany who sued for disability access to the site and lost. We'll approach these topics through doing, together, and through a sharing circle.
Space is limited.
Register now to reserve your place.
Event is free to the public, donations welcome.
What is Olimpias?
The Olimpias is an artists' collective and a performance research series. The artists explore art/life, cross-genre participatory practices, arts for social change and disability culture work. Olimpias work addresses its audiences directly, and engaged them gently and with care, to create a more inclusive future together.
Neil Marcus
Neil Marcus is an icon in US disability culture. In the 1980s and 90s, he performed his stage show "Storm Reading" over 300 times all over the US, the UK and Canada. Parts of it were on Maria Shriver's Sunday Today Show. Neil has also written and performed other plays in the SF Bay Area, and is a frequent guest in Butoh and Contact Improv Festivals. His poetry has found its way to many people, on the back of fridge magnets, policy statements for NGOs, university reading lists, and many people's private stash of important things to know about life. Neil is still recognized in the street for his role in an episode of ER. Mainly, though, Neil engages in his own street theatre show, singing, clowning and performing in the everyday. His book of poems, Cripple Poetics: A Love Story, co-written with Petra Kuppers and with photos by Lisa Steichmann, appeared in 2008 with Homofactus Press.
Petra Kuppers
Petra Kuppers is a disability culture activist, a community artist, an award-winning writer, and Artistic Director of The Olimpias. Petra was a fellow in Community Dance atthe University of Otago, New Zealand, a research fellow in Contemporary Arts at Manchester Metropolitan University in the UK, an artist-in-residence at Tramway Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow, Scotland; at SymbioticA in Perth, Australia; the San Francisco Poetry Center; and at many more universities and art centers in the US, Europe and beyond. She was named a life-time member of the national UK Millennium Awards Fellowship 'for talented individuals who strengthen and enrich their communities.' Later this year, Petra will be at the Australian National University in Canberra, working with fellow disabled artists. Petra has written extensively on disability and dance, community performance, embodied poetics, and contemporary performance aesthetics, and she teaches at Goddard College and the University of Michigan.
The Olimpias Performance Research Projects
The Olimpias is an artists' collective and a performance research series. The artists explore art/life, cross-genre participatory practices, arts for social change and disability culture work. The award-winning Olimpias installations, performances, dance videos and workshops have been presented internationally, and have recently explored such topics as slavery medicine, contemporary health care inequalities and art practice; sensuality, aging and disability; cross-cultural disability conceptions and notions of beauty in Butoh performance. Olimpias work addresses its audiences directly, and engages them gently and with care, to create a more inclusive future together.