Izumo no Okuni, the woman who founded kabuki—the eccentric, bawdy, cacophonous dance-drama form that first took place on a dry riverbed in Kyoto in the early 17 th century—is a bit of a mystery. She and a group of all-women social outcasts and prostitutes drew large crowds with their comical and licentious portrayals of everyday life and renditions of Buddhist folk dances.She is said to have invented the hanamachi or “bridge of flowers”, the runway that extends from the audience to the stage, and despite her disappearance from historical records around 1610 and the eventual outlaw of women performers, kabuki itself has lived on. When we researched Okuni, we immediately thought of punk (a shared influence) and its counter-cultural ethos. We thought of David Bowie and his Ziggy Stardust persona, created in collaboration with Japanese fashion designer, Kansai Yamamoto. We thought of Siouxsie and the Banshees and Gary Numan, genres of goth glam and synthwave, and their highly stylized, dramatic performances and crafted stage personas. We are reimagining Okuni in conversation with the forms that she’s potentially influenced within a hybrid, contemporary landscape of live synthesizer and digital design. This is not “authentic” kabuki. It is an uplifting of its femme origins in a context we hope will resonate today. Our premiere is at the Bates Dance Festival in 2024, and will include live taiko drumming by the first, intergenerational all-women/womyx taiko group in Canada.
There’s Only One Bed. Space Gallery 2023. “Choreographer and director Tristan Koepke shares an evening of works exploring gay ghosts, gentle camp, soft butch energy, and thirst trap fabulation.” The program is an encore performance of a May production that featured two piece premieres. The evening features performances by Koepke with Emilia Bruno, Ryan A. MacDonald (sound), Benny Olk, Rebecca Steinberg, and James Barrett.
The impulse for The Wind in the Pines comes from an ongoing practice started in 2014 that the artists describe as “letting the ghosts come in the space of performance.” To develop this piece the artists draw on Aoki’s Japanese heritage, family stories and memories to create text, animation, sound and an improvisational movement score to become, as she says, “a medium for the residue of family history.” Shaina Cantino: Dancer. Ryan MacDonald: Sound, Animation, Text, Dramaturgy. Alice MacDonald: Dancer. Aretha Aoki: Choreography, text. Christopher Akerland: Lighting.
Masks by KCAI Foundations students were created, paraded and displayed in response to the performance.
The End of Men. Joyce Unleashed, Danspace Project, Space Gallery, Colby Theater: Choreographer Vanessa Anspaugh: Featuring an all-male cast, Anspaugh considers the question: “What does feminist work look like without women?” The End of Men delves into religion and ritual to investigate masculine vulnerability and the dynamics of domination and surrender.
2017 Bessie Award Nomination for Vanessa Anspaugh, Outstanding Production at Joyce Unleashed/Abrons Art Center
Featuring Sound, Text and Dramaturgy by Ryan MacDonald, performers Gilbert Reyes, Lacina Coulibaly, Massimilliano Balduzzi, Simon Thomas-Train, Jesse Zaritt, Tristan Emanuel Koepke, Tsiambwom Akuchu, Connor Voss, Brandon Washington, Lights by Kathy Couch, Dramaturgy by Susan Mar Landau.
Zero: 05/21-23, 2015 (excerpt) Animation/sound design for projection in contemporary dance piece by choreographer Aretha Aoki and artist Ryan MacDonald. At A.P.E. Gallery Ltd. (Northampton, MA)
The Multiple by Aretha Aoki and Ryan MacDonald. Starting with the assumption that the dancer is a medium for the unknown, The Multiple explores the ghostly presence of actual and imagined beings, and invites the murmurings of past, present and future into the space of performance. A solo edges into a duet, into what is seen and unseen, and into the estrangements and intimacies within and between people and place.
(Northampton, MA) The Multiple, a new interdisciplinary dance work, will be performed at A.P.E. Gallery on Main St, Northampton, on Saturday May 31, 2014 at 8:00 pm.
Funding Support: The Multiple is supported by the Northampton Arts Council.
The Multiple is a collaborative work choreographed and performed by Aretha Aoki and Julia Gladstone with sound, video, sculpture and direction by Ryan MacDonald.
The Turning of Events at New York Live Arts Choreography by Aretha Aoki
Sound Story and Video Projection by Ryan MacDonald. Performance by Aretha Aoki, Vanessa Anspaugh, Kristina Dobosz, and Line Haddad. Lighting by Vincent Vigilante
Ephemeral Evidence as part of Culturebot at Exit Art Gallery, NY NY
Collaboration with Ryan MacDonald, Aretha Aoki and Kimberly Hennessy, Miranda Huba, Lily Gold, and Jessica Ray
Full-length Armed Guard Garden – by Vanessa Anspaugh from vanessa on Vimeo.
Vanessa Anspaugh questions how we maintain or reinforce difference between ”the garden and the world,” between your land and my land, between human and animal or Self and Other? Armed Guard Garden looks to the queer body as a site of resistance and to current “occupations” as a way of imagining and critiquing notions of paradise and “resting place.” The work features performers Aretha Aoki, Niall Noel Jones, Molly Leiber, Lydia Okrent, and Mary Read; Dramaturge Susan Mar Landau; Costume Design by Emily Roysdon; Lighting Design by Vincent Vigilante; Sound Design by Ryan MacDonald; Conceptual Collaborator Cassie Maude Peterson.
Ryan A MacDonald 