Jamie Marie WaelchliI had no idea what to expect from Fin de Siècle by Portland composer Sarah Dougher. The show turned out to be unlike anything else I’ve experienced in all of my five years attending the TBA Festival. Dougher’s performance was described...
As of Day 9 of TBA, I’m tentatively awarding Michael Reinsch’s Gallery Walk “Best in Show.” Reinsch’s performance involves him lumbering about the city in a big white box, embodying the construct of the modern white...
Andrew Dinwiddie has meticulously recreated a live sermon by the evangelist preacher Jimmy Swaggart, recorded in Van Buren, Arkansas, circa 1971. In a remarkably fluent echo of the original (peppered with emphatic interjections, “Huh!”)...
Vee Hua 華婷婷tEEth’s Home Made begins with two lovers coddling blissfully beneath a stretched white fabric. Assisted by a flashlight and a hand-held camera, they explore one another by gingerly brushing skin, squeezing folds, and following contours. All...
Innovation is often born out of constraint. The core of TBA’s popular Ten Tiny Dances is the magic of making a lot from a little. Ten choreographers are invited to develop original performances designed for a humble four-by-four-foot stage...
On a broiling afternoon at Washington High School, a crowd of people stood around and watched a very slow, deliberate car accident. Three beige Chrysler minivans, perched on a pile of slowly inflating blue air mattresses, raised their boxy rear-ends...
The story of the Cardiff Giant, a colossal “petrified man” unearthed from a fake archeological site in upstate New York in 1869, is a phenomenal object lesson for cultural production, and David Eckard’s ©ardiff performance makes...
There were no bouncy castles to be found where I grew up, so I’ve been waiting all my life to finally get in on some inflatable jump room action. Naturally, when I arrived at the launch of TBA’s 2011 festival at Washington High School, I...