Control Group Productions, resident company at Denver’s Work|Space at the Laundry, is looking for performer-collaborators to join us for several upcoming works, including our current project, which runs 4/20-28, and our 2012-13 season starting in September.

Control Group makes intermedia performance, allowing the purpose and process to guide the form of the product. With movement as our common basis, we create works that reach into our full toolbox as performers, engaging voice, character, objects, environment, etc. to fully mine the potentials of the live stage as a situation and a medium. Check out a retrospective of our recent works here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJVijpEg28c

We’re looking for collaborators with broad physical facility, strong performance presence, and familiarity with collaborative making. We rehearse 6-12 hours/week in 2- to 6-month processes. Payment for performances (working on rehearsal wage soon).

AUDITION DETAILS

February 19, 2-6pm (includes brief group warm-up)
or by appointment
at WORK|SPACE Denver
2701 Lawrence St., Denver, CO 80212

Arrive ready for an active warm-up, repertory playtime, and material development. RSVP to patrick@controlgroupproductions.org with a resume and your intended audition date. If you are interested in the project but not available for either date, please contact us to find another time to meet.

PROJECT DETAILS

Project 1: A Return to Awe [working title]
Rehearsals: Mondays and Fridays during the day (flexible), April and May.
Performances: late July at American Dance Festival in Durham, NC.
Description: taking over an existing role for touring of our current work.

Project 2: [STORIES project V2 / working title]
Rehearsals: Fridays and TBA, September through January.
Performances: January 2013, 2 weekends.
Possible further in-area and touring performances.
Description: Collaborating as a performer on a new work.

a bit about the projects:
Both the current project and the fall project(s) are part of an exploration revolving around Romanticism, with echoes into fairytales and the 60s…

…the relationship between the self and our surroundings in a world that exceeds our understandability…

…the supernatural, the unknowable, the forest-chaos / and the idea that we, or some, are special within this…

…The solitary artist genius, the supernatural being, the Other…

…The search for secret vistas and altered states, the journey and the being-in-the-moment, the emergence of the unexpected from within the self…

Fun fun stuff.

Click here for webpage

Our class schedule is taking off and we’re looking for teachers across performance and somatic disciplines to join us in sharing your goods and moving the artist, audience, and youth communities forward. Current schedule:

Fridays 10-11:30 (2/3-6/1): CGP Company Class (Adv/Prof Contemporary Movement) with Patrick Mueller. Full info below.

Saturdays and Sundays, multiple classes (1/28-3/31): Denver Alternative Artistic Education: classes in acting and movement for adults and teens with Kenny Storms. Full info here.

FULL DETAILS

CGP Company Class (Adv/Prof Contemporary Movement) with Patrick Mueller
When: Fridays 10-11:30 (2/3-6/1):
Cost: $12/class or 5 for $50 (no pre-registration needed, please drop in).
Contact: patrick@controlgroupproductions.org
303-947-2827
These classes approach dance technique functionally, focusing on cleaning  fundamental coordinations and attaining movement facility and ease through exercises that balance control and propulsion with release and  momentum.  Anatomical information about hard and soft structures inform the practice. The class builds from a gentle, introspective warm-up to challenging phrasework demanding fierce athleticism and refined artistry.

Bio: Patrick Mueller is the Artistic Director of Control Group Productions and Co-Director of work|space Denver.  Previous to founding these organizations, he performed with dance companies in  Germany, Denmark, New York, San Fransisco, and Denver, working primarily collaboratively on original pieces that toured to a dozen countries on three continents.  His teaching approach amalgamates experiences from many different movement and somatic practices, including Bartenieff Fundamentals, Alexander Technique, releasing techniques, traditional modern dance, yoga, kung fu, and parkour.

Feb. 2-4: She Said, a Denver Independent Choreographers Project curation (full info)

Feb. 17-Mar. 4: Uncle Rooster by LIDA Project

Apr. 5-7: Aura Fischbeck (SF), Cara Reeser (CO), and 3rd Law Dance/Theater

Apr. 20-28: Return of Awe [working title] by Control Group Productions

May 4-June 2: Auto de Fe by LIDA Project

Control Group + LIDA

[A Highly Refined then Perfectly Mixed Cocktail of Awesomeness]

The LIDA Project and Control Group Productions are moving in together, inaugurating a whole new plane of awesomeness in Colorado’s performance culture.  So it’s time to get cultured – at our classy-casual, laid-back formal, highly refined then perfectly mixed cocktail of a Grand Opening Gala.

Get your Thanksgiving fix of CGP and LIDA’s artistic excellence with performance installations and excerpts of upcoming work.  Enjoy libations and hors d’oeuvres.  Witness the unfolding of a dynamic new partnership.  Celebrate the birth of a unique new venue, and help us name our creation!

Saturday, November 26, 7pm-midnight
2701 Lawrence St., Denver, 80205

Control Group and LIDA Project are indeed moving in together, inaugurating a whole new plane of performance culture in Colorado.  Sounds like a party to me!

Full Newsletter here.

A new community blog for CO’s new arts community.

Read the newspaper recently?  Arts coverage is abysmally thin, and shrinking fast.  So a group of local arts innovators has banded together to create a forum for us – and you! – to move Colorado’s arts innovation forward as a community.

Introducing:  The Living Arts Chronicle

This site will host reviews of dance, theatre, music, visual arts, and intermedia forms, with a focus on progressive, experimental, and post-genre works.  We’ll have a group of contributing writers keeping the site lively and fascinating, and open posting for all readers.  The goal: arts journalism that is discursive, responsive, and multi-vocal.
Our founding artist cadre:
Joan Bruemmer (Band of Toughs, Wrecking Ball Theatre)
Amelia Charter (Denver Performance Laboratory)
Nathan Montgomery (Syzygy Butoh, Boulder Butoh Festival)
Patrick Mueller (Control Group Productions)
Amanda Berg Wilson (Catamounts Theatre)
YOU (Your Extraordinary Arts Heaven – YEAH.)

Touching the Unknowing

By Patrick Mueller
10-20-11

“To submit to and integrate all the energies around you [..., to] reach my own limits, to be scared, to touch the unknowing…” – this is the heart of performance for Diego Pinon.

Pinon’s Butoh Mexicano performances appear on a basic level as dance works:  they use movement in choreographed pathways to offer an aesthetic experience.  But at the heart of these choreographic “rituals” lies an openness, a carefully crafted space that comes alive through the energy called forth from the performer, the audience, the performance space, and the surrounding world.  This operates “beyond any esoteric and magical explanations,” Pinon affirms, and it is indeed absolutely concrete, tangible, palpable during his exquisite performance acts, creating the core of the expression/experience/“meaning” offered in these highly crystalized works.

Tomorrow (Friday Oct. 21) Pinon brings his electrifying stage presence to the Boulder Butoh Festival with N-Tankuku-Ichi – “Looking for the Trace of Love.”  The work delves into specific archetypes in Mexican culture of machismo and femininity, seeking thro

ugh movement and energetic presence to embody, dissect, and ultimately explode these cultural packages.  Pinon finds his way into these archetypes through his own details of past and personality – childhood memories, unique sensations, personal references to pop culture (including a Barbara Streisand song).  The result is unique, powerful, invaluable.

Hope you can experience it.

Pinon performs Friday night only, on a shared bill with several other Festival artists.  Saturday offers another curation of Butoh superstars.  Both shows at Naropa’s Nalanda Campus.  Full information at http://boulderbutohfestival.com/ .