White Bird Blogs

Go visit our gallery to see White Bird photos from Gay Pride. Click here. Thanks to Monique for the photos! 

FEATURING PERFORMANCES BY

Portland Queer Documentary Festival
May 28-31 at the Clinton Street Theater

White Bird is proud to be co-presenting Projecting the Body at this year's QDoc - the Portland Queer Documentary Film Festival. Co-founders Walter Jaffe and Paul King will introduce the screening on May 31 at 3 pm. Projecting the Body is about the life and work of Australian filmmaker Stephen Cummins. Cummins burst onto the international queer cinema scene in the early 1990s. His films were poetic, erotic, and political. They were celebratory of gay culture and sexuality, yet steeped in powerful critiques of homophobic violence and the raging AIDS epidemic.

QDoc 2009 takes place May 28-31 at the Clinton Street Theater, 2522 SE Clinton ST. Q Doc 2009 program and ticket info can be found at www.queerdocfest.org.

Read the New York Times story about Baryshnikov's latest tour with Ana Laguna, coming to Portland this October at the Newmark Theatre.

Watch Paul and Walter dance for the crowd at Mad Hot Ballroom, a fundraiser for Young Audiences. Special thanks goes to their amazing teacher, Austin Buchholtz.

Read The Oregonian's interview with George Thorn, the longtime White Bird board member and one of the leading arts administration consultants in the country, about the state of the arts economy in Portland.

Click here for the full interview.

“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.” —The Wizard of Oz

With Love, a Bloody Nose

by Austin Buchholtz

If the audience sits on both sides of the curtain as they do in Chunky Moves’ Two Faced Bastard, then how could I write a fully-baked blog? Half would be revealed to me (and those I sit with) and half would be revealed to our hidden fellow audience members. So, with my tongue planted between my lips, I aim for 200% of the 50% I can uncover.

Most of the performance, we see and hear action on our side and only hear action on the other side. To someone content with life as it’s given, there is no inner conflict. On my side in the beginning there is only Stephanie Lake, a long-limbed blond dancer dressed in a tunic and moving like a robot on the fritz, while behind the curtain I can hear an interview being conducted. Clearly, I picked the best side, right?

If you were at Chunky Move, you might remember the epic cardboard battle scene. During the Q&A session with the audience, choreographer Gideon Obarzanek mentioned that this scene had been inspired in part by the website boxwars.org, a self-described post-post modern art movement, or punk rock recycling, a group of international warriors who fashion incredible costumes out of cardboard boxes. Click on the videos below to see Boxwars in action.

View performance images from Compania Nacional de Danza 2 by visiting our online photo gallery.

Read the Portland Mercury review of Chunky Move's Two-Faced Bastard.