Ingenuity's Premiere events bring world-class performers to the Cleveland stage
Die Audio Gruppe creates site-specific audio costumes known as "Audio Uniforms" or "Sonic Costumes" that reflect local customs, themes or traditions. These electro-acoustic clothes and dresses make sounds by interacting with their environment. Audio Ballerinas and Audio Geishas will be featured during the festival and brought to life by members of Inlet Dance Theatre.
Audio Gruppe
Baitz, Germany
In 1992, my company, The Repertory Project worked with Benoit Maubrey as part of the Cleveland Performance Art Festival. It was a blast. The dancers wore the audio tutus in CPT, at Tower City (where the dancers also dragged garden rakes equipped with pickup mics producing a loud screeching sound that echoed throughout the atrium), in the Halle Building Food Court during lunchtime and at a club in the Flats called Aquilon. There are great black and white photos of the events, but they are tucked away in the archives at the Western Reserve Historical Society (home to the history of the Repertory Project) and the CSU Library (home to the history of the Performance Art Festival). The events took place in March, so the dancers had to rely on batteries more than solar power, but inside Aquilon they stood on the bar and the frequency of the recorded tape loops was controlled by the bartender as he raised and lowered the levels of the lights that hung over the bar. Even in this hip-hop and techno blasting bar scene in 1992, attendees covered their ears and winced as the dancers played the very loud techno recording and screeched in from the freight elevator with the rakes in tow.

I encourage everyone to see the return of Maubrey's audio clothing to Cleveland. Back in the day, the Performance Art Fest and Rep Project were hot topics. Now long in the past, it is good to see Ingenuity hauling out some art and technology collaborations that are still interesting 15 years later. By the way, these were the only tutus Rep Project ever wore. The toe shoes, you might be wondering? We torched them in 1989, like so many bras burned in the 1960s, we had no use for them. The event took place on what is now a parking area just west of SPACES Gallery. Yep, we were a scrappy lot dedicated to new horizons for dance in Northeast Ohio. I still see glimpses of hope for the postmoderns here in NEO, but only glimpses. The majority of the audience seems mired in Taylorism, insipid as it is.  Ingenuity offers a chance to revisit, check out and get tuned into what has been going on in dance for the last uh... 40 years. Get with it NEO, the dance world has passed by here skipping over Cleveland like so many bits of detritus between NYC, Oberlin, Cincinnati, Columbus and Chicago.

Here's more: Sound Junctions

Also see Troika Ranch -- who despite rumor made their Northeast Ohio debut at Oberlin College (go figure) years ago. Thank you, Carter McAdams.

Here's the review from the 2003 preview of Future of Memory
Innovation powers company

Plain Dealer, The (Cleveland, OH)
February 15, 2003
Author: Wilma Salisbury; Plain Dealer Dance Critic

The evening- length work, a fascinating fusion of movement, music, text, video, costumes and lighting, will premiere later this month in New York. Although the preview lacked live music and a set, it successfully created a surreal world of vivid memories that became blurred, distorted, dramatized or destroyed.

The dancers - Danielle Goldman, Michou Szabo, Sandra Tillett and co-artistic director Dawn Stoppiello - each focused on a meaningful event or emotion. As the memory faded or changed shape, it was recalled with everyday objects.

The dancers alternately moved together in flowing unison or took the solo spotlight in collaboration with co-artistic director Mark Coniglio, who used interactive video techniques to transform the dancers' faces and voices. He also projected recurring images of a stone dropping into water and he composed taped string-and-percussion music that was played simultaneously with interactive electronic music generated by the dancers' movements.

The periodic scattering of small yellow balls suggested that the self-absorbed individuals portrayed by the dancers might be losing their marbles. But at the end, they exchanged Polaroid photos taken during the course of the piece and danced a harmonious quartet that celebrated the company's innovative union of performance art and technology.

Troika Ranch, the progressive digital dance company from New York, capped a teaching residency at Oberlin College with a preview of "Future of Memory" Thursday night at Warner Center.