“Dear Haiti, …Yours,” Artist Bios

Kim Burgas — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 19:35:43 +0000

Bora Yoon

Bora Yoon is an experimental multi-instrumentalist, composer and performer, who creates architectural soundscapes from found objects, chamber instruments, digital devices, and voice. Featured in WIRE magazine and on the front page of The Wall Street Journal for her musical innovations—Yoon has presented her original soundwork ( (( PHONATION )) ) internationally, at Lincoln Center, the Nam June Paik Museum in Seoul, Patravadi Theatre in Bangkok, the Bang on a Can Marathon, BAM, and John Zorn’s Stone. Her music has been presented by Samsung and the Electronic Music Foundation; commissioned by the Young People’s Chorus Chorus of NYC and SAYAKA Ladies Chorale of Tokyo; awarded by Billboard, BMI, and Arion Foundation; and published by Swirl Records, MIT Press, and the Journal of Popular Noise. Upcoming plans include scoring and performing the multimedia stage adaption to Haruki Murakami’s “Wind Up Bird Chronicle”; custom instrument design and performance with LEMUR; recording and remix projects with DJ Spooky, Meredith Monk, and early music group New York Polyphony; and a wax cylinder record for UK phonograph artist Aleks Kolkowski’s museum collection— while ( (( PHONATION )) ) continues to resonate and rarefact in concert. www.borayoon.com

Vangeline

Vangeline is a butoh dancer from France and the Artistic director of the Vangeline Theater, a New York dance company firmly based in the tradition of Japanese Butoh while carrying it into the 21st century.

www.vangeline.com

Photograph is by Yi Chun Wu

Irem

Irem’s life as a dancer started in Istanbul, at the Theater Research Lab with Mustafa Kaplan. Being deeply moved by a Butoh performance she saw in Istanbul, she went on to complete a Master’s thesis on Butoh and post war politics in Japan at the Anthropology Department of UMass, Amherst. She has studied Butoh with Min Tanaka, Akira Kasai, and Ko Murobushi, Body Mind Centering with Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen and Modern Dance at the Cunningham School for Dance. She has danced with Ko Murobushi, Takuya Muramatsu, Mari Osanai and Leimay. She has shown work in various venues in Istanbul and New York including Movement Research at Judson Church, Dixon Place, NY Butoh Festival, the CAVE, Construction Company, Cunningham Studio and CATI Dance Studio. http://www.iremcalikusu.com/

Ye Taik

Ye Taik is a brooklyn-based performing artist who was born in Rangoon , Burma.Since his move to New York as an independent artist ,he began his avant-garde Butoh dance training under the direction of Vangeline , Ko Murobushi and Degio Pinon.He loves to collaboration with others.

Nino Trentinella

Nino Trentinella was born in 1979 in Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia and now lives and works in USA.Nino earned her Bachelor of Art degree in Animation and Photography in 2001; and her Master of Fine Art in Imaging and Digital Arts (Film & Photography emphasis) from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County in 2005. Some of the awards Nino received include: Presidential Scholars Program Teacher Recognition Award (2008), Carver Foundation Grant (2008), GSA Research Grant (2002-2005), Soho Photo Gallery’s National Competition Winner Award (2001, 2002), Jeanie Druck Riebling Memorial Scholarship, (1998), Victoria & Albert Museum and Baltimore Museum of Art: “A Grand Design” Competition Grand Prize (1998).Nino’s artwork is based on narrative storytelling and personal narratives. Her work is exhibited internationally and is in the permanent collections of the Library of Congress, Washington, DC and Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts, Kiyosato, Japan.

Melissa Lohman

Melissa Lohman is a dancer/performer based in N.Y.C.Butoh in various forms,is at the core of her training. She is currently focusing on her solo work,and collaborating with jazz and avant-guarde musicians.Most recently,she danced at Douglass Street Music Collective with renowned jazz musicians Rob Garcia (drums) and Michel Gentile (flute).Melissa is also in ongoing collaboration with Butoh master Katsura Kan.

Aung Way

date of birth – July 23 , 1954
place of birth – Burma (Myanmar)

1982 – became poet

1976-78, 1988, 1989-91 – three times in prison

2007 – left for Thailand

2008 – arrived in America

“Dear Haiti, …Yours,”

Kim Burgas — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 20:59:44 +0000

“Dear Haiti, … Yours,”

An evening of Butoh, Avant-garde dance, Poetry and Visual art benefiting relief efforts in Haiti

Brooklyn, NY February 19, 2010 — “Dear Haiti, Yours,” is an evening of Butoh, avant-garde dance, music, poetry, and visual art benefiting relief efforts in Haiti. The event will take place on Saturday, March 6th at 8pm at the Center for Performance Research (CPR) in Brooklyn, located at 361 Manhattan Avenue, Unit 1 Brooklyn, NY 11211. Tickets are $15 and can be purchased at the door. All proceeds will go to Partners in Health .

Internationally-recognized and award-winning musician Bora Yoon will conclude the evening’s showcase. Other acts include Vangeline, Artistic Director of the New York-based Vangeline Theater, including Butoh and avant-garde dance performances by Melisa Lohman , Irem Calikusu, Ye Taik and Kim Burgas . Visual artist Nino Trentinella and a reading by Amy Bonnaffons of a Aung Way poem will kick off the night.

Curator / Organizer: Ye Taik

(917)716-1202
yetaik@hotmail.com

Co-Curator / Co-Organizer: Kim Burgas

(513) 519-6515
burgaska@gmail.com

Another oldie but goodie

Kim Burgas — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 20:58:06 +0000

From class last night…

Kim Burgas — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 14:41:09 +0000

I can’t avoid sketching bad-ass old men. I really don’t see it as a problem, per se, but the characters are not very conducive to an anything-but-terrifying children’s book. Which I’m okay with, really. Sorry future.

I always wondered…

Kim Burgas — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 04:02:48 +0000

I realize its been a month since I’ve posted. I do have a good explanation for this. Aside from moving out of my apartment in Cincinnati, moving into an apartment in New York City, starting a new job and bouncing around from couch to couch in the meantime, my dog ate my computer. And sketch pad. And pens. Yep.

The other day on my way back to one of the many places I called home over the past month, I sat across from an elder woman. She was incredible, a beautiful woman so expressive in her silence and public solitude. I couldn’t tell if she was reading or staring at the pages deep in thought. I liked to think the later. The corner of her mouth dipped so low it nearly fell off her face. This woman had stories. She carried them in her drooping eyes, in her side-swept pewter hairs neatly tucked in place by the coarseness of the fiber, in the folds of her skin – a roadmap to the gatekeepers of her life’s past and present. After seeing her, I knew she would become my next sketch.