Real-time, algorithmic and pre-recorded video unite with Elizabeth Streb’s aesthetic of grace and danger. The screen provides alternate viewpoints, both micro and macro, for the action at hand. Archival footage and reactive software fill the 20′ x 20′ screen

About the show:

“By exploring the frontiers of performance space, and creating works that reflect the spirit of our technological age, Ms. Streb is carrying dance into a new dimension.”
- The New York Times

Elizabeth Streb’s trademark risky choreography combines the visceral impact of extreme sports with the poetry and split-second timing of dance. Exploding with the suspense and energy of near-misses and imminent crashes, STREB Extreme Action’s daring performers explore the boundaries of force, gravity, action and reaction. Whether flying, falling, or seemingly suspended in mid-air, STREB fearlessly challenges nature, creating a new aesthetic of grace and danger. In this gripping new show, action-architect Elizabeth Streb takes her audience ringside for a match-up of human pitted against the phenomenal forces of everyday physical action. STREB materializes the unseen, ever-present, air-traffic controllers of our universe and puts those invisible action partners center stage.

Collaborators:
Elizabeth Streb: Action Architect/Choreographer
Michael Casseli: Set Design
Laura Flanders: Librettist
Aaron Henderson: Projection Design
Shelly Sabel: Lighting Designer
Maxim Safioulline: Sound Designer
Justin D’Apolito: Technical Director

Tour History:
World Premier:
July 12-15, 2006. La Guardia Drama Theater, Lincoln Center Festival, New York, NY

The Eccles Center for the Performing Arts (Park City, UT), Walton Art Center (Fayetteville, AR), The Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center (Great Barrington, MA), Flynn Center for the Performing Arts (Burlington, VT), FirstWorks Providence (Providence, RI), Williams Center for the Arts (Lafayette College), International Festival of Art & Ideas (New Haven, CT), Jackie Gleason Theater (Miami Beach, FL), Kravis Center (West Palm Beach, FL), Proctors Theatre (Schenectady, NY), Napa Opera House (Napa, CA), Portland Institute of Contemporary Art (Portland, OR), Bumbershoot (Seattle, WA), Britt Festival (Jacksonville, OR)

Related posts:

1. STREB – Wild Blue Yonder
2. STREB – BRAVE
3. Catapult Review – Village Voice

Blue Land Media and I worked on the video for Elizabeth Streb’s homage to the magic and mayhem of early flight.

About the show:
It is an age-old human dream to stretch the body into space and to venture into unknown territory where gravity just might lapse. Wild Blue Yonder is an action event for the rough of heart and deep of longing – people of all ages who are curious about escaping earth. STREB is inspired by Wilbur and Orville Wright, who a century ago made the first powered flight; by Amelia Earhart, who spanned the Atlantic Ocean; by Chuck Yaeger, who broke the sound barrier; by the Chinese MiG pilots who shrank the turning radiuses of their dog-fighting planes to create a physically impossible G-force; by any astronaut who’s ever braved the vomit comet; and every kid, regardless of age, who is willing to go where humans haven’t…To all these, STREB pays homage.

Wild Blue Yonder is the story of the actions people do, and the places people go when they dream. It is a story that requires the impossible, so with action contraptions we expand the body’s reactions, and we duet with nature’s forces of movement. Action, movement, courage, invention, and machines, these are what have made flying dreams real. The horse, the rider, the wheel, the motor, the car, the plane, the jet, the computer, all in their time were the next utterly impossible future dream, always defying the wisdom of the age.

Wild Blue Yonder requires the audience to have the experiences they have when they dream. In these dreams the impossible and absurd is real. Humans do fly. With the machines we build, the airplanes we fly, the unprotected ledges we jump from, our bodies take on that adventure dream. The Action show demonstrates how the extreme idea happens. STREB will take the audience into the wild blue yonder merely by witnessing what we do. Fast, Hard. And Out of Control. Radical Actions.
Elizabeth Streb

Collaborators:
Elizabeth Streb: Chreography
Michael Casseli: Set Design
Aaron Henderson and Blue Land Media: Projection Design
Laura Flanders: Librettist
Noe and Ivan Espana: Action Collaborators

Tour History
Wolf Trap (Vienna, VA), Napa Opera House (Napa, CA), Portland Institute of Contemporary Art (Portland, OR), Bumbershoot (Seattle, WA), Britt Festival (Jacksonville, OR), Jazz at Lincoln Center (New York, NY), City Center (New York, NY), The Oriente Occidente Festival (Verona & Trento, Italy), University of Wyoming (Laramie, WY), (Boulder, CO), Wausau Area Performing Arts Foundation (Wausau, Wisconsin)

Related posts:

1. STREB VS GRAVITY
2. STREB – BRAVE
3. Catapult Review – Village Voice