Dancers and dance aficionados ages 14 and up are invited to collaborate with internationally known, Seattle-based choreographer Pat Graney when she returns to the Arts Center in September to create the House of Mind dance piece.
This Connecting Communities Collaboration explores the creation, accumulation, loss, and destruction of memory through a multisensory gallery installation, and a dance theatre work developed in collaboration with community members and performed in the gallery space.
Graney’s zany and visionary dreaming has always undergirded her choreography and infuses the triptych. In the reverie that inspiredFaith, Graney was a space-age anthropologist: “I have on a white space suit with a white hat and we are actually rappelling down these buildings, me and these two bearded white guys.” In her dream excavation, Graney comes upon a huge wire sculpture:
House of Mind, Pat Graney‘s work in multiple media (installation, sculpture, video and choreographed performances), is probably the most ambitious project ever taken on at DiverseWorks. It’s an exhaustive tribute to memory — that of the artist, of her mother and of a lost bit of America — and it’s worth it to get down and see the show before it closes, even if you’re too late to catch one of the staged performances.
The walls of Pat Graney’s House of Mind seemed to murmur that familiar 2nd-wave feminist anthem, “the personal is political.” I couldn’t help but ask myself—is this still true? “The personal,” at least in the visual arts, has been an icky topic during the last decade. Many contemporary artists weave multi-layered narratives, but have preferred to explore the topic of identity in more abstract terms (think Mika Rottenberg or Harry Dodge and Stanya Kahn). But House of Mind, Diverseworks’ most ambitious project to date, unabashedly embraces the personal. Graney, a Seattle-based choreographer, merges stunningly elaborate installation with contemporary dance, seeking to (obsessively) catalog the depths of her personal experience through epic visuals and movement.
Seeing Pat Graney’s House of Mind at DiverseWorks reminded me that one of the perils of being a visual-arts writer is that you tend to get sucked into strictly going to arts events that pertain to your beat to the exclusion of, say, the performing arts. That’s one reason I’m grateful to Graney for crossing genres by creating an installation in which to stage her dance company’s terrific performance — and to DiverseWorks for encouraging her to do so.
Internationally renowned choreographer, Pat Graney, makes a grand return to Houston as she takes over DiverseWorks’ entire building with her latest site-specific exhibition and performance House of Mind.
In an amalgamation of female memory, collective unconscious, and family and cultural histories, Graney creates an expansive kinesthetic sense of her work that takes the audience on an intense and thought-provoking journey through her past, her mother’s battles with Alzheimer’s and the quirky imagination that Houstonians saw in The Vivian Girls (2005) and Sleep (1998).
Amid the sounds of pounding hammers, Seattle choreographer Pat Graney navigates the rooms and hallways of what will become a huge houselike environment that takes up all of DiverseWorks’ public spaces — not just its theater but its main gallery and project space, which normally are devoted to visual-arts exhibitions.
Created largely from her childhood memories, the rooms of Graney’s House of Mind have lots of projected imagery, sound scores and surreal touches thrown in.
Visionary artist Pat Graney's site-specific work takes place in a vacant City Light building in Lower Queen Anne. Patrons will tour various rooms representing compartments of memory and then view an hourlong performance, which includes the onstage preparation of a meal.
The year that is almost over has not been a banner year for many. Pat Graney is an exception.
The choreographer, who moved to Seattle nearly 30 years ago and has been making dances ever since, won an Alpert Award in the Arts for Dance in June and a United States Artist Fellowship earlier this month. And the awards come with $175,000.
Is it a dance? A visual-arts installation? A ritual meal? With all-around artist Pat Graney in charge, you won't know until you show up and experience it. The work is titled "House of Mind," and it takes place in a vacant City Light building in Lower Queen Anne that's been renovated to Graney's specifications. Patrons will tour various rooms representing compartments of memory and then view an hourlong performance, which includes the onstage preparation of an elaborate meal.
