FrenetiCore Presents 9th Annual Houston Fringe Festival

Contact:
Adam Castaneda
adam@freneticore.net
(281) 979-4982
www.houstonfringefestival.org

Dates: August 24-28, 2015

Locations: The Pilot on Navigation, 5102 Navigation Boulevard, Houston TX 77011

Tickets: $10 per individual performance/ $40 5 show pass/$80 All festival pass.
Anything Goes – $15 presale
Purchase tickets at https://freneticore.secure.force.com/ticket.
For more information please visit www.houstonfringefestival.org.

The 2016 Houston Fringe Festival is a 5-day celebration of independent performing arts by performers from the Bayou City and beyond. This year marks the Ninth year of the festival, as well as an all-new format. Previously, the festival was held across three different venues in Houston’s historic East End; this year all shows will be held at the newly named Pilot on Navigation (formerly Frenetic Theater). The new round-robin format promises a more comprehensive festival format and allows for greater interaction between audiences members and participants.

This year’s lineup features a diverse line-up of performers representing a wide range of disciplines, including circus arts, original drama, narrative dance, ballet folklorico, musical comedy, postmodern dance, butoh, and poetry-based theater.

Other Fringe Happenings:

Opening Night Party August 24 at 9:30pm – The 2016 Houston Fringe Festival opens with the premier of Exposed by Cirque La Vie (7:30 pm) and Harold Trotter’s Can’t Keep Waiting (9:00 pm). After you catch a show at the Pilot on Navigation, enjoy live music by Ryan Adams Wells out on the Pilot patio! Get a chance to mingle with the cast of Cirque La Vie and other fringe performers!

Anything Goes August 28 at 8:00pm – The Houston Fringe Festival’s signature closing event includes ten-minute-or-less work by some of Houston’s most treasured performers. Line-up includes performances by Heather VonReichbauer’s Bones and Memory Dance, Felicia Thomas, Cori Capetillo, Ryan Adams Wells, Ayokunle Falomo, Emily Roy Sayre, Holding Space Dance Collective, and more!

Show Descriptions

Exposed – Cirque La Vie

8/24 @ 7:30pm, 8/25 @ 9:00pm

Cirque La Vie opens the Ninth Annual Houston Fringe Festival with Exposed, a new circus program featuring the company’s most daring acts. Cirque brings together its professional players and brightest student talents on one stage to showcase their communal love of all things circus. The company meets every Sunday at the Pilot on Navigation’s Studio F, and out of the blood, sweat, and tears of their intense training, they have formed a family that together combats the banality of everyday life. Exposed to each other, Cirque La Vie now exposes itself to the Fringe Festival audience with a show that is as emotionally charged as it is physically awe-inspiring.

Beers About Songs – Ryan Adams Wells

8/27 @ 7:00pm

Original songs outline a tale of love, danger, and drunkeness. Join singer-songwriter Ryan Adam Wells for some sad, funny, and poignant true stories about alcohol and relationships. Offer up a prayer to the Beer gods and enjoy the tunes. (Non-drinkers welcome!)

Ryan Adam Wells describes his show as “A personal story of my life that includes funny and thoughtful anecdotes of drinking and relationships. I am playing my guitar for the entirety of the show whilst sharing stories and performing an array of original songs.” Although thoroughly entertaining, Beers About Songs communicates an underlying theme that will make you both laugh and cry. With personal stories and touching songs, it is guaranteed to make you open your eyes to the world of relationships.

Worn Out Soles – Destyne Miller

8/25 @ 6pm, 8/27 @ 4pm

Destyne Miller’s Worn Out Soles returns to the Pilot on Navigation as part of the Ninth Annual Houston Fringe Festival! Worn Out Soles is an original stage play written to challenge misconceptions while forcing the audience to take a walk in the shoes of the people we judge most. This play tackles the ugly side of human interaction: the way we judge those that are different from us and less fortunate than we may be. After watching the show, the audience will feel something, be it guilt, shame, sympathy or empathy. Worn Out Soles has the potential to tap into that hardened place in the hearts of many and allow them to see people in a different and more human way.

Middle school teacher, poet, actress, playwright and mother, Destyne Miller, is the founder of Destyne Fulfilled Productions.  She is a graduate of Grambling State University with her B.A. in Theatre Arts.  She is presently working on her M.A. in Theatre Education at the University of Houston. Through personal experiences and life lessons she hopes to bring a different perspective to everyday issues in a simple, straightforward, yet positive way. With her free spirit and ever evolving thought process, she takes on the challenge of bringing people together- not to make them think the same but to be able to exist as different and unique individuals.

CarnEvil – ReFine Arts

8/27 @ 10:00pm, 8/28 @ 6:30pm

ReFine Arts presents a collection of loved pieces from past shows as well as a sneak peek at a few pieced from their upcoming full-length production, CarnEvil. Step right up. Behold boggling, bizarre bafflements. Join the most dastardly villains in the world’s greatest freak show. Enter a world where insanity is celebrated, evil is exonerated and happy endings are annihilated. Witness a crazy creation of dance, acrobatics, contortion, curiosities and more. Welcome to CarnEvil. Enter if you dare, but beware, no one who enters come out again!

ReFine Arts was founded by dancer/choreographer Melody Johnson with the aim to create a production company that brings all forms of movement together to create shows that are accessible to a mass audience. Previously she created Reconstructing Alice and Before Never, dark, twisted retellings of the Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan story books. Both productions premiered in Houston at the Pilot on Navigation, and the full-length version of CarnEvil will open in the space in September 2016.

Los Conquistadores – HANA HANA Performance Collective

8/25 @ 7:30pm, 8/27 @ 11:30pm

As a society, we face enormous challenges of cultural and personal identity crisis amid rapid mass-media/globalization/digitalization. What Butoh founder Tatsumi Hijikata said has a deep meaning still now: “Why don’t we return to just our body?”. The body contains it ALL: birth and death, male and female, the East and the West, the Oppressed & the Oppressor, the ancestors, the earth and the universe are all in the body. The body is a country of our spirit and Butoh is the roadmap. Butoh empowers us to go deeply into the UNIVERSE of our BODIES, to go beyond our ego and to metamorphose into everything of the universe.

In this performance, the dancers will interchange past with present. Los Conquistadores were the solders of the Spanish Empire that sailed to the Americas to conquer lands and conquer peoples. What can we learn about ourselves and each other when we emBODY these ancient narratives? What can we discover when we emBODY our own ancient hiSTORY? Excavating the shadow of our cultural lineage, facing the uncomfortable and the unpleasant truths of our own ancestry, investigating the Oppressed and the Oppressor both rooted in our bodies and in our consciousness…acknowledging, honoring, letting go and transcending the dark past of yesterday as we responsibly step towards the Light of tomorrow.

Born and raised in the concrete jungle of Houston, Ivan Espinosa is a performance artist and social activist currently based in Olympia, Washington. Ivan’s work, primarily influenced and inspired by Japanese Butoh, explores how we can use the body to inscribe the political/social narratives & counter-narratives of liberation and awakening that our society is yearning for. As a choreographer, Ivan has performed dozens of original works everywhere from college campuses and outdoor festivals to living rooms and underground dance parties, including a recent debut at the Seattle Butoh Festival. Ivan’s newest work was a Memorial Day performance on the steps of the Washington State Capitol in memoriam of the civilians killed by U.S. bombings in the 21st century (Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria and Yemen). Ivan is currently completing his Bachelor of Arts degree at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, where he leads a Butoh study and performance group called the Embodied Arts Tribe.

The Human Zoo – Invisible Lines

8/26 @ 11:30pm, 8/28 @ 5pm – The Barn
Invisible Lines brings back The Human Zoo to the Pilot on Navigation after a successful July run. Co-directed by Bucky Rea, Amyna Dosani, and Joseph Machado; choreographed by Autumn Kiskinis; and with musical direction by Baltazar Canales, The Human Zoo utilizes poetry, music, and dance to express the constraints and strains of twenty-first century life.

“The voice of poetry is not heard; it is over-heard. It is our inner silent confession of who we are, inside our social cages,” says Invisible Lines principal Bucky Rea. “And so we use words and dance and song to reveal the intimate truth onto the stage and into the minds and hearts of our audience. Five unique poets have offered us their words, and our troupe, in response, will tell them with voice and dance and music how we hear their human cries.”

Featuring the poetry of…
• Robin Davidson (Houston Poet-Laureate)
• Billie Duncan
• Savannah Blue (Bayou City Grand Slam)
• Mike McGuire
• Rebecca Oxley

Can’t Keep Waiting – Harold Trotter

8/24 @ 9pm, 8/26 @ 8:30pm

Can’t Keep Waiting is a romantic comedy all about sex, love and revenge! This late night presentation is perfect for date night, a night out with the girls, or just good fun.

The story follows three couples as they discover a few things you just can’t wait for and the unfortunate truth that all good things must come to an end.

Why aren’t you here? – Lori Yuill and Anneke Hansen

The “F” Word – Tina Mullone

Tangled – Daniela Antelo

8/27 @ 7pm, 9/28 @ 2pm

Choreographers Lori Yuill (Houston) and Anneke Hansen (NYC) are separated by thousands of miles yet bound by thousands of hours spent dancing together over more than ten years of collaboration and friendship. In, “why aren’t you here?”, these two women use their history as the foundation for a long-distance choreographic collaboration. The intimacy of their relationship serves as the playing field wherein imagination freely ties the fantastic (a Rapunzel-like mane, a talking polar bear) to the procedural (accumulated choreographic structures, for example). Using movement and written correspondence to generate a new vehicle for this artistic relationship, they challenge traditional modes of making dance by working separately and coming together only a week before the performance to create the final structure. What can be communicated at great distance, and how effectively? How does a long-standing working relationship allow for both like-mindedness and difference to be expressed under these particular constraints? This is an impractical approach to a form that demands physical presence in a shared space and time. It remains to be seen whether this will yield a whole that is representative of the relationship these women share, or a work fragmented in a manner that speaks to the constraints of separation and technology.

The “F” Word is a theatrical multi-media work that looks into the culture, expectations and offensive nature of feminism. What does it mean to be a feminist? A cultural feminist? Is there such a thing as the 2010s feminist? Looking at several personalities from Eve (both the 1st woman and the 1st lady of Ruff Ryders) to Pocahontas to today’s latest and greatest.

Movement with props and site-specificity are explored in the film Tangled to create both an abstract and visceral experience through film. The circular choreography develops within the restrictions of the fabric strips that connect the two movers (Daniela Antelo and Christina Maley). The performance repeats itself in different Houston sites, but naturally changes by their individual characteristics. The video is shot and edited by Brenda Cruz-Wofk, who creates a relationship between the bodies and the sites.

Emergence – Brittani Broussard

Glow – Kendall Kramer

…in all her glory, Pretty Cultured

8/27 @ 5:30 pm, 8/28 @ 3:30 pm

Says Brittani Broussard of her stunning performance artwork: “My entire body will be covered with different colors and textures using fabric, yarn, paper, plastic, sequins and other objects. These materials will be attached to a full body suit from head to toe.There will be one wall behind me covered completely with the same materials. My objective is to interact with the wall by initially camouflaging myself with it. Throughout the performance, I will dance and create movements with my body in front and along the wall. Audio will be playing in the background to go along with this. I will end the performance by camouflaging back into the wall.”

Glow is a magical ritual that is both communal and secret – it happens (mostly) in the dark. This show is different! GLOW merges performance, art, dance, meditation and LED balloons. The audience participates from their seats and it makes or breaks the show. It is an opportunity for our community to create something beautiful together. Do we not need more of that? The show features gorgeous professional dancers, LED balloons*, and YOU!
“…in all her glory” is a piece that represents just a fraction of the journey of 3 women to womanhood and accepting their womanhood in the context of society. 3 different women share their what it’s like to put their confidence in “false goods” versus developing confidence from within. They share their disappointments, their spiritual awakening, and finally acceptance using wit, truth, and contemporary movement fused with movement from the African diaspora. In the end, they realize they are still on an ever-evolving journey. However, instead of waiting for the end of the journey for glory, they find the glory within.

Vivimos Mexico – Sin Fronteras

8/26 @ 10 pm, 8/27 @ 8:30 pm

Under the direction of Xavier Tamez and Azahel Vasquez, Sin Fronteras is one of Houston’s premier folklorico dance company, specializing the cultural forms of the diverse regions of Mexico. Sin Fronteras’ presentation marks the first time the Houston Fringe Festival program includes a world dance company.