CounterCurrent Festival 2016: This Page Left Intentionally Blank

The University of Houston Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts announces dates for the third annual CounterCurrent festival, CounterCurrent Festival 2016, scheduled for Tuesday, April 12 through Sunday, April 17, 2016. CounterCurrent is a free, city-wide festival of bold experimental art that occupies a range of unexpected sites in the Houston, including galleries, outdoor sites and non-traditional spaces.

The festival will be comprised of eleven major cutting-edge contemporary and collaborative works, including audio and video installations, live performances, and participatory events by artists from around the world. The lineup includes artists from the Middle East, Europe, New York, Massachusetts and Houston, TX.

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Big Dance Theater

PRESENTED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE MENIL COLLECTION
Wed, April 13 – Fri, April 15, 2016 at 2pm
Sat, April 16 and Sun, April 17, 2016 at 12pm and 4pm

“The tour aims to revivify the eyes and the body and the ears by looking at the prosaic world of the museum. So when the audience, at last, is set in front of a single work of art, the intention is to see better, to see more, to see anew, to see for yourself.” – Annie-B Parson of Big Dance Theater

A carefully choreographed viewing of art.

On a journey toward a single work of art, visitors encounter acts of movement, text, sound, throughout the museum, including walls, doorways, paths, corners and objects.

With the audience wearing headphones and led by a docent, this performance takes the form of a unique museum tour: one that provokes audiences into a new way of seeing. As headphones focus the mind, and instructions guide you with the precision of choreography, a personal, physical relationship to art begins with elements of misdirection, movement, confession and music.

Beginning in the museum’s main lobby and winding all about The Menil Collection’s unique campus of buildings and satellite installations, This Page Left Intentionally Blank deconstructs the role of the docent and the museum audio tour, subverting how visitors observe art in a museum. Walls are no longer simply walls: a parade of changing perspectives invades the in-between spaces of the museum as visitors are led toward this single artwork—what will happen and how will you respond once you get there?

Will you be prepared to confront this work of art, already set deep in your imagination by the journey there? Are you ready to see anew?

NOTE: Each audience group is limited to 20 people; the audience meets in the lobby of The Menil Collection. The performance occurs during museum hours. Recommended for ages 14 and up

Created by Big Dance Theater, Tei Blow, and Suzanne Bocanegra

Founded in 1991, Big Dance Theater is known for its inspired use of dance, music, text and visual design. The company often works with wildly incongruent source material, weaving and braiding disparate strands into multi-dimensional performance.

Led by co-artistic directors Annie-B Parson and Paul Lazar, Big Dance Theater has created more than twenty dance/theater works, generating each in collaboration with associate artists, a long-standing, ever-evolving group of actors, dancers, composers and designers.

Past Mitchell Center Suzanne Bocanegra presentations: Bodycast (CounterCurrent 2015), Rerememberer (CounterCurrent 2014), When a Priest Marries a Witch (2011). Past Mitchell Center Big Dance Theater presentation: The Other Here (2007).

“It’s hard to do justice to the freewheeling brilliance of Big Dance Theater.”
-The New York Times

TWITTER: https://twitter.com/bigdancetheater