Robert Rauschenberg

Superhero Clubhouse in Denmark and NYC: Don’t Be Sad, Flying Ace! & Field Trip: A Climate Cabaret

Don’t be Sad, Flying Ace

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Perched on the roof of his small house, armed only with a typewriter and a rare imagination, a dog attempts to adapt after a calamitous storm that left him stranded and floating far away from home.  Inspired by Charles Shultz’ iconic beagle and incorporating leading climate science, Don’t Be Sad, Flying Ace! is a multi-disciplinary duet exploring how people respond in the face of extreme climatic events.

Created by Jeremy Pickard, Simón Adinia Hanukai and Jonathan Camuzeaux in collaboration with scientists from Columbia University and the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

September 4-6 at the world-renowned Odin Teatret in Holstebro, Denmark

Oct/Nov in NYC, as part of Marfa Dialogues NY

Field Trip: A Climate Cabaret

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A musical adventure celebrating the value of collaboration and revealing science as a creative and intrepid process. Set in a wilderness camp where seven seven extraordinary women of climate science have gathered to share ideas, Field Trip features original songs, dance and poetry that together offer a uniquely hopeful view of our changing world.

As one of 18 lucky recipients of a grant from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation/Marfa Dialogues NY*, and in partnership with Columbia University’s Earth Institute/PositiveFeedback, we’ll be presenting a double feature in NYC this fall:

Act I Don’t Be Sad, Flying Ace!

Act II Field Trip: A Climate Cabaret

Carbon 13: Ballroom Marfa and Cape Farewell team up

This post comes to you from Ashden Directory

In Marfa, Texas

Kellie Gutman writes: Marfa is a small town of 2,121 people in western Texas.  In 2003, Virginia Lebermann and Fairfax Dorn converted a former 1927 ballroom into a performance and exhibition space called Ballroom Marfa.  In this intellectual environment, issues and perspectives are explored through film, music, art and performance.

Ballroom Marfa contacted Cape Farewell’s David Buckland to curate Carbon 13: From the High Arctic to the High Desert, which runs from 31 August until 20 January 2013.  Eight artists who have traveled with Cape Farewell to the Andes, the Arctic and Scotland’s island communities are presenting newly-commissioned works to highlight the effects of climate change.  The exhibit is supported in part by an Artistic Innovation and Collaboration (AIC) Grant from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation.

The artists represented are Ackroyd & Harvey, Amy Balkin, Erika Blumenfeld, David Buckland, Adriane Colburn, Antony Gormley, Cynthia Hopkins and Sunand Prasad.

In the online art newspaper, artdaily.org, the reviewer of Carbon 13 wrote:

Ballroom Marfa continues its ambitious mission of presenting art as a transforming media capable of addressing the most pressing issues of our time.

“ashdenizen blog and twitter are consistently among the best sources for information and reflection on developments in the field of arts and climate change in the UK” (2020 Network)

ashdenizen is edited by Robert Butler, and is the blog associated with the Ashden Directory, a website focusing on environment and performance.
The Ashden Directory is edited by Robert Butler and Wallace Heim, with associate editor Kellie Gutman. The Directory includes features, interviews, news, a timeline and a database of ecologically – themed productions since 1893 in the United Kingdom. Our own projects include ‘New Metaphors for Sustainability’, ‘Flowers Onstage’ and ‘Six ways to look at climate change and theatre’.

The Directory has been live since 2000.

Go to The Ashden Directory

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Rachel Rosenthal’s Birthday Bash 83

photo by Michael ChildersPioneering Interdisciplinary Artist Rachel Rosenthal Celebrates Her 83rd Birthday, A New Book, And Announces New Performance Ensemble At Track 16 Gallery’s Cultural Event of the Year

“Rachel Rosenthal’s Birthday Bash 83”

LOS ANGELES, CA – Los Angeles’ own living legend Rachel Rosenthal has a lot to celebrate this November! The interdisciplinary performer, animal activist, master teacher, and iconic artist will be honored on Saturday, November 7, 2009, with the cultural event of the year – “Rachel Rosenthal’s Birthday Bash 83.” From 7:00 to 11:00 p.m., Track 16 Gallery at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica, California will host the occasion, which will celebrate Rosenthal’s 83rd birthday, the release of her upcoming book The DbD Experience: Chance Knows What it’s Doing!, and will announce her Company’s new performance troupe, TOHUBOHU! Extreme Theater Ensemble.


In honor of the 83 years Rosenthal has spent on the planet, the event will feature an exhibit and silent art auction of the highest caliber. The auction will include 83 abstract, conceptual, and representational “portraits” of Rosenthal in a diverse range of media by exceptional established and emerging artists including a number of art world legends such as John Baldessari, Mike Kelley and Robert Rauschenberg*. Admission will cost $25. Tickets will be available online through Rosenthal’s site and at the door on the night of the event. Track 16 Gallery is located at 2525 Michigan Ave. Building C1, Santa Monica, CA 90404. For more information on the venue, please call 310-264-4678 or visit http://www.track16.com. For more information on Rosenthal and this event, please call 310-839-0661 or visit http://www.rachelrosenthal.org.


The 83 artist works being donated for the event’s exhibit and silent auction are from a mind-blowing array of artists. In addition to Baldessari, Kelley and Rauschenberg, art world luminaries such as Lita Albuquerque, Eleanor Antin, Judy Baca, Llyn Foulkes, George Herms, Martin Kersels, Ed Moses, Lee Mullican, Betye Saar, Masami Teraoka, Patssi Valdez, and June Wayne have confirmed their involvement. For a full list of participating artists to date please visit: www.rachelrosenthal.org/rr/party.html. Auction proceeds will support Rachel Rosenthal Company’s TOHUBOHU! Extreme Theater Ensemble performances, student scholarships, and visiting artist stipends. This special evening will also include a Champagne toast, an outrageous cake created by Joan Spitler and Leigh Grode of the world-renowned Cake Divas, and live music by Amy Knoles from the California E.A.R. Unit as well as Jean Paul Monsché of the Mad Alsacians.


In the past 25 years, Rosenthal has presented over 35 of her own original performance pieces – thought provoking works centered on humanity’s place on the planet. According to Artweek Magazine, “Rosenthal defines what differentiates quality performance art from mundane theatrical exercise…she took us into her reality, and for that brief and precious moment, she altered our vision of the world. This is what great art can and should do.”


Rosenthal’s long-awaited book, The DbD Experience: Chance Knows What it’s Doing!, a mix of memoir, philosophical musing, manifesto and teaching manual, will be published this fall by Routledge. DbD (Doing by Doing) is Rosenthal’s signature brand of improvisational theater. This is the first time she has written about her teaching methods. In the 168-page book, she explores improvisational theater and its relationship to life, offering a blow-by-blow account of what happens in Rosenthal’s 32-hour DbD weekend intensive workshops. Throughout the book, she describes the processes and exercises she invented and developed over the last fifty years. Routledge, a global publisher of academic books, journals and online resources in the humanities and social sciences, will release the book in the UK this October, and in the US in December 2009.


Rosenthal opened her studio, Espace DbD, on Robertson Boulevard in Los Angeles in 1980. From 1980 to 1983, Rosenthal presented performances by many emerging and established performance artists including Barbara Smith, Eleanor Antin, Cheri Gaulke, Alan Kaprow, John White, Joyce Cutler Shaw, Tom Jenkins, and many others. Rosenthal founded The Rachel Rosenthal Company as an educational non-profit arts organization in 1989.


Rosenthal’s teaching methods were inspired by Jean-Louis Barrault‘s concept of “Total Theatre” and Antonin Artaud‘s “Le Theatre et Son Double.” What emerged is a zen-inspired performance aesthetic that integrates text, movement, voice, choreography, improvisation, costuming, lighting, and sets into seismic experiences. She has been nurturing a new troupe of performers that she will introduce to the world as her TOHUBOHU! Extreme Theater Ensemble in January 2010.


Rosenthal has performed in over 100 venues around the world including documenta 8 in Kassel, Germany, The Helsinki Festival, ICA London, The Performance Space in Sydney, The Whitney Museum in New York City, and Museum of Contemporary Art here in Los Angeles. The Pompidou Centre recently included her in its 2006 show Los Angeles 1955-1985. Her pioneering performances have earned Obie, Rockefeller, Getty, NEA and CAA awards, among others.


Born into an affluent Russian-Jewish family in Paris, Rosenthal’s father, Léonard Rosenthal, was a gem merchant widely known as The King of Pearls. During World War II, her family escaped France, moving to Rio de Janeiro by way of Portugal. After losing his material wealth to the Nazi’s, her father had to start over at age 65. In 1941, the family left Brazil to settle in New York where Rosenthal graduated from the High School of Music and Art and became a U.S. citizen. She studied art, theater and dance in Paris and New York after the war with such teachers as Hans Hoffmann, Merce Cunningham, Erwin Piscator, and Jean-Louis Barrault.


Rosenthal began her theatrical career in Los Angeles in the mid-1950s as artistic director and performer in her totally improvised “Instant Theater” for its ten-year run. A leading figure in the Southern California Arts movement of the 1960s and 1970s, Rosenthal was a pioneer in addressing feminist and animal rights issues, and was a founder of “Womanspace,” a hotbed of feminism.


In 1999, Rosenthal received an Honorary Doctorate from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; and in 2000 she was honored by the City of Los Angeles as a “Living Cultural Treasure of Los Angeles.” Critics have called her “a monument and a marvel” and Richard Schechner, editor of The Drama Review (TDR), put Rosenthal into the same category as Robert Wilson, Ping Chong, Richard Foreman, Meredith Monk, and Laurie Anderson.


* Thanks to the Estate of Robert Rauschenberg, one of the 83 donated works for the auction is of particular interest. Among the silent auction items is a 1994 Rauschenberg print honoring Rosenthal. This piece is from Rauschenberg’s “Tribute 21” suite of prints – a portfolio that pays tribute to inspirational leaders – 21 artworks, celebrating 21 humans, all impacting themes in the 21st century such as peace, social justice, and a sustainable environment. In the portfolio, Rachel Rosenthal shares company with illustrious world figures such as Nelson Mandela, Toni Morrison, Jacques-Yves Cousteau, Carl Sagan, Buckminster Fuller, and the Dalai Lama, among others.

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For more information, photos, or to request an interview, please contact Green Galactic’s Lynn Hasty at 213-840-1201 or lynn@greengalactic.com.

event details

Saturday, November 7, 2009

“Rachel Rosenthal’s Birthday Bash 83”

Track 16 Gallery
Bergamot Station
2525 Michigan Ave. Building C1, Santa Monica, CA 90404
310-264-4678 \\\\ http://www.track16.com

7:00 – 11:00pm
Admission $25

– An outrageous cake created by Joan Spitler and Leigh Grode of the world-renowned Cake Divas
РLive music by Amy Knoles from the California E.A.R. Unit as well as Jean Paul Monsch̩ of the Mad Alsacians

Event info:
310-839-0661 \\\\ www.rachelrosenthal.org/rr/party.html

“There is nothing quite like a Rachel Rosenthal artistic materialization. Seeing (her) and experiencing her after-show discussion session firsthand is like sitting for a few minutes with Plato, listening to Rousseau or Jung or Thoreau speak in person. An evening with Rachel Rosenthal will stay with you a lifetime; do it for your future.” - Entertainment Today

“Rachel Rosenthal — bills herself simply as a performance artist. That’s about as accurate as calling the Taj Majal a house. The woman is a monument and a marvel. She is a force of nature…She is timeless, ageless, gutsy, quirky, exotic, potentially poignant.” - Los Angeles Times

“Rosenthal defines what differentiates quality performance art from mundane theatrical exercise…she took us into her reality, and for that brief and precious moment, she altered our vision of the world. This is what great art can and should do.” - ARTWEEK

Rachel Rosenthal, Keynote Address at Earth Matters on Stage

leib2-1Rachel Rosenthal, Artistic Director and performer with The Rachel Rosenthal Company, is an interdisciplinary performer who has developed a revolutionary performance technique that integrates text, movement, voice, choreography, improvisation, inventive costuming, dramatic lighting and wildly imaginative sets into an unforgettable theater experience. Over the past thirty years, she has presented over 35 full-scale pieces internationally. Critics have called her “a monument and a marvel” and Rosenthal has been critically ranked with Robert Wilson, Ping Chong, Richard Foreman, Meredith Monk and Laurie Anderson by Richard Schechner, editor of The Drama Review (TDR).

She is an N.E.A., J. Paul Getty Foundation and California Arts Council Fellow, and recipient of numerous awards, including an Obie for Rachel’s Brain, the College Art Association Art Award, and the Women’s Caucus for the Arts Honor Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Arts.  In 1994, she was chosen by Robert Rauschenberg to represent Theatre in his suite of prints, Tribute 21, and in 1995 received the Genesis Award for spotlighting animal rights issues in her work.  Rosenthal formed the Rachel Rosenthal Company in 1989 in Los Angeles.  The thematic emphasis of the Company’s work encompasses artistic, social, environmental, technological and spiritual issues presented in a visually, viscerally compelling form.

Born in Paris of Russian parents, Rosenthal’s family fled Europe during WWII to New York where she graduated from the High School of Music and Art and became a U.S. citizen. She studied art, theatre and dance in Paris and N.Y. after the war with such teachers as Hans Hoffmann, Merce Cunningham, Erwin Piscator and Jean-Louis Barrault.

She moved to California in 1955 where she created the experimental Instant Theatre, performing in and directing it for ten years. She was a leading figure in the L.A. Women’s Art Movement in the 1970’s, co-founding Womanspace, among other projects. Since 1975, Rosenthal has focused primarily on creating new works, writing, performing and teaching.

Rosenthal has performed at: documenta 8 / Kassel-West Germany; The Festival de Theatre des Ameriques / Montreal-Canada; the Kaaitheater / Brussels; Festival Internacional de Teatro / Granada-Spain; the Theatre Festival / Zagreb-Yugoslavia; U.S Time Festival / Ghent-Belgium; The Helsinki Festival/Helsinki-Finland; The Internationals Sommer Theater Festival / Hamburg-Germany; I.C.A. / London; The Performance Space / Sydney-Australia; The Kitchen, Dance Theatre Workshop and Serious Fun! (Lincoln Center) in New York City; the L.A. Festival (1987, 1990) Japan America Theatre, and Museum Of Contempor-  porary Art in Los Angeles; Jacob’s Pillow Splash Festival / Lee, MA and the Kala Institute / Berkeley, CA.

In 1990, Ms. Rosenthal premiered Pangaean Dreams at The Santa Monica Museum Of Art for The L.A. Festival.  In 1992 filename: FUTURFAX was commissioned by the Whitney Museum in New York. In 1994 she premiered her 56-performer piece Zone at the UCLA Center for the Performing Arts Wadsworth Theatre.  Between 1994 – 97, with her newly formed Company, she revived her acclaimed Instant Theatre of the 50’s & 60’s asTOHUBOHU! and went on to collaboratively createDBDBDB-d: An Evening (1994), TOHUBOHU! (1995-97),Meditation on the Life and Death of Ken Saro-Wiwa andTimepiece (1996), The Swans and The Unexpurgated Virgin (1997).  Both Timepiece and The Unexpurgated Virgin premiered at the Fall Ahead Festival at Cal State LA.  She has toured extensively in the U.S., Canada, Europe and Australia.

Rosenthal has taught classes and workshops in performance since 1979, in her LA studio as well as around North America and Europe.  Rosenthal has lectured at Carnegie-Mellon University’s Robert Lepper Distinguished Lecture in Creative Inquiry series, as a lecturer/presenter at the first Performance, Culture and Pedagogy Conference at Penn. State (1996).  In addition to personal appearances as performer, panelist and lecturer, Rosenthal teaches performance in her private studio in Los Angeles and has been a visiting artist at such institutions as The Art Institute of Chicago, Otis/Parsons, New York University, University of California (UC) Los Angeles, UC Irvine, University of Redlands, UC Santa Barbara, California (Cal) Institute of the Arts, Cal. State University Long Beach, Cal. State Los Angeles and at the Naropa, Esalen and Omega Institutes.

Grants received include: NEA Solo Performer Fellow (1983, 1990, 1993, 1994), J.Paul Getty Fellow (1990), five USIA travel grants (1987-1993), Art Matters (1988-1990), NEA Interarts (1992), Foundation for Contemporary Performing Arts, Inc. (1988-1990), The Rockefeller Foundation MAP (1993), The J. Paul Getty Trust Fund for the Visual Arts (1995), The Tides Foundation (1988-91), California Arts Council Fellow (1988), City of L.A. Cultural Affairs Department (1989-1998), National State County Partnership (1989,1991,1993-97), and most recently The ESRR Vision Trust (1996-1997).

Awards include: the Vesta Award (1983), the Obie Award (1989), the Artcore Art Award (1991), the College Art Association of America Artist Award (1991), the Women’s Caucus for Art Honor Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Arts (1994) and The Fresno Art Museum’s Distinguished Artist Award (1994). Artist Robert Rauschenberg has honored her in a new suite of prints entitled Tribute 21 (1994) as the representative for Theatre in a list including Art, Music, Civil Rights, Space & Ecology.  Recipients include Mikhail Gorbachov, R. Buckminster Fuller, Toni Morrison, Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama.  In 1995, she received The Ark Trust’s Genesis Award for spotlighting animal rights issues with “courage, creativity and integrity”.  In 1996, she received a Certificate of Commendation as well as a Certificate of Appreciation both from the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department.  In 1997, she received the L.A. WEEKLY Theater Career Achievement Award.

Rosenthal’s book Tatti Wattles: A Love Story which features her original, full color illustrations, published by Smart Art Press, Santa Monica, CA; a monograph of her life’s work, entitled Rachel Rosenthal, published by the John Hopkins University Press; Rachel’s Brain and Other Storms, an anthology of 13 of her performance texts published by Continuum and Nihon Journal an artists book of Japanese Sumi Ink paintings on Arches paper are all currently available.  Rosenthal’s work centers around the issue of humanity’s place on the planet.  She is an animal rights activist, a vegetarian, and companion to 3 dogs.