ATLAS Black Box theater: Previous performances
I Am Watch Television Zombie
is an interdisciplinary production that explores our addiction to television with a team of 20 actors, musicians, technicians and aerial dancers. With no seating, audience members will wade through a transformed theater space waist-deep in balloons, immersed in thousands of animated TV images projected on four walls.
The show's rich mix of aerial dancers, actors, live music and thousands of moving images and balloons may create moments of sensory overload, overwhelm and laughter.
The production was conceived and produced by Hunter Ewen, a CU doctoral candidate in music and Nicole Predki of Frequent Flyers (MFA Dance 2009). As there will be no general seating, those with disabilities are asked to email
hunter.ewen@gmail.com for arrangements that will allow them to be seated during the show.
7:30 p.m. Friday-Saturday, Feb. 3-4
Avant Guerre
A multi-media performance evoking multi-eras, it is produced in collaboration with 11 dancers, a cinematographer, composer/artist Albert Mathais, choreographer/producers Mollie Wolf and Judd Tank. "Using modern media, we reference the past to create a feeling of timelessness," director Wolf explained. 8 p.m. Thursday - Friday, Nov. 17-18
Vantage Points
An original, immersive, multi-sensory exploration of abstract video and sound by artist/composer Cole Ingraham. The performance includes live instrumentalists, synthesized sounds and a combination of 2D and 3D animated graphics. Ingraham is a doctoral student in CU’s College
of Music.
7:30 p.m. Friday-Saturday, Oct. 28 – 29
Black & White
A coming of age story told through multi-media dance, theater and video performed by choreographer Gabriel Masson in collaboration with video artist Tara Rynders. Masson is assistant professor in CU's Department of Theatre and Dance. Rynders is an MFA student in multimedia dance.
8 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 3
Note: For mature audiences.
Striking the Match
A one-woman theater performance debut by writer/performer Beth Osnes who presents a series
of original, short pieces inspired by contemporary social issues. Interactively, audience members will choose from among 20 or more original pieces, thus influencing the flow of the evening and sequence of the production. Osnes has toured her original works around the world. Locally, one of her works was presented last year as part of the Boulder International Fringe Festival.
7:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 5
Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema
This film and dance event is a niche film festival specializing in dance cinema as an art form and incorporating live performance. With an expansive definition of dance and an appreciation for experimental and interdisciplinary forms, this unique festival presents a wide variety of film and video in a wide range of venues, plus performance. Visit http://sanssoucifest.org/demoreel/.
7:30 p.m. Sept. 16 - 17, Friday – Saturday, ATLAS Black Box theater
Casanova at Twilight
An original musical theater piece written by Bill Mooney who for 14-years was a cast member
of ABC's All My Children as well as a performer both on and off-Broadway. See the tale of Casanova's exploits, based on his autobiography. Music is composed and conducted by Hunter Ewen, a doctoral student in CU’s College of Music. Singer/actors include baritone and CU graduate Garrett Smith as young Casanova and Leigh Holman, director of CU’s Opera Department, who plays one of Casanova’s loves.
7:30 p.m. Friday - Saturday, Sept. 23 - 24, Sept. 30 - Oct. 1
2 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 25 & Oct. 2, ATLAS Black Box theater
Tickets are $30 and available at the CU Presents Box Office (located in the University Club)
or buy tickets online at cupresents.org. Phone: 303-492-8008 or email: musictix@colorado.edu.
Note: For mature audiences.
7:30 p.m. Saturday, July 9, ATLAS Black Box
Folk/rock artists Andy Hill and Renée Safier, founders of the L.A.- based band Hard Rain, perform more than 200 concerts a year. Their 11 independent CD releases have won them numerous awards including "Best Duo/Group" from the International Acoustic Music Awards.
In Colorado, Safier's prodigious blues and jazz vocals won the acoustic blues competition at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival in 2005.
They will perform at ATLAS with E-town bassist Chris Engleman, Bruce Springsteen-sideman Marty Rifkin on pedal steel and electric guitar and Denver's Mike Marlier on drums.
Get more details and reserve your seats
here. Visit their website: http://www.andyandrenee.com/.
What have reviewers said about Andy Hill and Renée Safier?
"America's best kept secret."
- B. Noel Barr, Random Lengths
"Andy Hill is rapidly becoming a songwriter to watch..."
- Michael Sullivan, Here, There and Everywhere E-Zine
"Safier's voice... drips with an aching sensitivity filtered through delicate beauty and a fragility that would break and disappear in less capable hands..."
- Mark S. Tucker, Folk Music Exchange
Tyrannosaurus Sex (and other truths)
7:30 p.m. Friday-Saturday, June 3-4, ATLAS Black Box
Tyrannosaurus Sex (and other truths) takes the audience on a journey that begins millions of years ago and arrives at the present day. We follow a lead character from a time of reptiles to the various stages of growth that brings us to adulthood–all on a path marked by chaos, passion and growing consciousness.
With drama, humor and song, the production recalls the joyful, light moments of early childhood mixed with darker scenes of sadness, confusion and loss. We watch the lead character confront those day-to-day events that shape us, take away our innocence and confound our best intentions. And see emerging growth and self-acceptance as well.
Live music from an ensemble of musicians will amplify and illuminate this coming-of-age story. A few of the original songs are jazz/blues oriented. Music accompanies the spoken dramatic scenes, heightening mood and emotion. Colorful, changing multimedia images will fill an entire wall of the theater and provide further context and content.
“The production attempts to depict our universal desires, passions or life energy– those ever-changing forces shared by all life through all of time. It’s the energy that pushes green shoots out of the ground, gets us out of bed every morning and keeps the adrenaline flowing,” writer, director and producer Ira Liss explained.
Commenting on the title of the production, Liss continued, “It’s fun to open the show with a tyrannosaurus character. The idea of a giant reptile brings something monumental or mythic to the stage.” He added with a smile, “Also, you don’t see a lot of eloquent, passionate dinosaurs speaking onstage that often. It could be memorable.”
Admission is free and open to the public. Seating is limited. Reservations recommended. Reserve your seats: http://othertruths.eventbrite.com/.
About the artist/producer:
For more than 20 years, Ira Liss has performed solo concerts and musical comedy one-man shows in NYC, Arizona and Colorado – including the Boulder International Fringe Festival where he won an audience-choice award. He has performed at various venues around Boulder, Denver and NYC and is a member of Boulder Playback Theater.
Tyrannosaurus Sex (and other truths) is an interdisciplinary, multimedia collaboration of artists, actors, dancers, musicians and designer/technicians (most of whom are from CU’s College of Music and Department of Theatre and Dance).
Carnivals and Snowstorms
7 p.m. Friday, April 29; 7 & 9 p.m. Saturday, April 30, ATLAS Black Box
Carnivals and Snowstorms, an interdisciplinary theater production, explores the nature of dreams, memory and the afterlife.
The production is designed to evoke an otherworldly atmosphere of haunting nostalgia and beauty.
To achieve this, it uses an all encompassing projection screen that immerses the audience in film and graphics of another time and place, a set design derived from vintage carnival booths, the elegance of 1930s-inspired costumes and retro-inspired choreography.
The production will utilize projected images that contribute to the ambience and mood of the piece, novel and experimental video surfaces, and direct interaction between live performers and film.
Vinitski concluded, "Carnivals and Snowstorms aims to demonstrate a new voice in multimedia that successfully merges theater and technology in a unique style."
Admission is free and open to the public. Seating is limited.
Get more details and reserve
your seats here.
7 p.m. April 14-15, Thursday-Friday
Communikey Festival of Electronic Arts
Learn more.
7:30 p.m. April 2, Saturday
Three Vignettes of Job
Anthony Green, a graduate student at CU’s College of Music, presents Three Vignettes of Job, a multimedia production based on the Book of Job that includes live music, dance, theater and film.
The first vignette is a dramatic retelling of the story using narrators, musicians, actors and mime.
The second part features improvisational musicians who play against the prepared, rhythmic sounds of a laptop – all providing background for a sonnet written by Green and performed by artist/musician Mark McCoin.
A film by Green will be shown in the third vignette, accompanied by a live orchestral performance of his musical compositions. Text in the film raises spiritual issues and tells several stories of modern-day, real-life “Jobs” who transcended their trials.
The production will touch on the age-old question, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” while exploring issues of theodicy, that is, the branch of theology that defends divine attributes in the face of evil.
Anthony Green is producing this performance with the support of an ATLAS Fellowship, the ATLAS Center for Media, Arts and Performance and the CU College of Music.
(Note: Not appropriate for children; contains nudity.)
To reserve tickets for this free performance, click here.
7:30 p.m. March 17-18, Thursday-Friday
Oedipus (complexly) is an interactive, audience-participation play produced by CU theater faculty Chip Persons and international theater group, HoME Theatre of Prague. Reserve your space.
Note: Audience members are asked to arrive 15 minutes before curtain time
and gather in the ATLAS main lobby on the 1st floor.
5 p.m. March 12, Saturday
Brakhage Symposium:
Enjoy performance artist Nao Bustamente.
See her bio, links and reviews.
8 p.m. March 5, Saturday, ATLAS Black Box 
Tim Eriksen performs solo acoustic, co-leads new,
experimental rock band, Batteries Die Media Ensemble,
with CU's Michael Theodore
Tim Eriksen is widely regarded as "the best ballad singer of his generation" (BBC Radio). He combines spellbinding vocals with arrangements for fiddle, banjo, guitar and bajo sexto, transforming American tradition with a "northern roots" Americana sound that embraces old New England murder ballads, "shape-note" gospel and haunted originals alongside Southern Appalachian and Irish songs.
The evening will open with a set of Tim Eriksen performing solo acoustic, and will then move into the amplified sound of the Batteries Die Media Ensemble, which Eriksen co-leads with CU faculty member Michael Theodore. Batteries Die is part rock band, part experimental sound collective, and features guest artists Janet Feder, Mark McCoin, Lina Bahn, Glen Whitehead, Sam Gathman, Curtis Broome, Cole Ingraham and Ryan Wurst.
Seating is limited. Reserve your seats.
7:30 p.m. Feb 25-26, Friday-Saturday, ATLAS Black Box
Boulder Laptop Orchestra (BLOrk) premieres new
works
plus electric compositions by Miles Davis
BLOrk will premiere new works by local composer/performers John Drumheller, Hunter Ewen, Darwin Grosse, John Gunther, Cole Ingraham, E.J. Posselius and others.
BLOrk will be joined by artist-in-residence Darwin Gross and guest artists Hugh Ragin (trumpet), Darren Kramer, Ed Breazeale, Stephen Thurston, Cody St. Arnold plus members of the CU jazz department.
Guest performer Darren Kramer (trombone) will perform with Ableton live looping, electric trombone, virtual synths, Vocoder and Lemur.
BLOrk musicians perform with laptops, hemispherical speakers and a variety of control devices which may include traditional instruments, MIDI controllers, video game accessories, bodily movement and voice. Laptops are used to create sounds as well as process the sounds of acoustic instruments and voice.
(Hemispherical speakers project sound in a way similar to that of an acoustic instrument, allowing for a more seamless integration of electronic and acoustic sounds.)
Seating is limited. Reserve your seats.
7:30 p.m. Feb. 23, Wednesday, ATLAS Black Box
Pendulum New Music Series,
now in its 10th season, presents
the best of new music with CU faculty, students and guest artists.
The evening's program includes:
Kari Kraakevik-Canyons Leading Home: Los Angeles to Lost Angel (2010);
Keane Southard-Two Symmetries for Disklavier (2010);
Cole Ingraham-Chaos Geometry (2010);
Leanna Kirchoff-The House Explodes;
Hunter Ewen-Invasion of the Monkey Mind (2010); also "Open Score," an audience-participation piece with Paul Miller and Jeff Nytch.
Seating is limited. Reserve your seats.
7 p.m. Feb. 11-12, Friday-Saturday
And They Lynched Him on a Tree
(Feb. 11, Friday is an open rehearsal.) A collaboration between CU's College of Music and the Department of Theater and Dance, the production brings awareness to America's history of lynching and to our ever-evolving struggle towards justice. It will incorporate choral pieces, dance and projected photo images.
Get more details.
Seating update: Event is sold out, but it is still possible to see the Black Box performance as a live video feed on the ATLAS video wall in the lobby, 1st floor. 7 p.m. four different performance installations may be seen in several locations in the ATLAS building. A half-hour Black Box performance begins at 8 p.m.
See the flyer.
8 p.m. Jan. 28-29 Friday-Saturday
September Sixth by Nathan Wheeler
is Boulder artist Wheeler's musical/theatrical memoir and response to the devastation of the recent Four Mile Canyon fire.
Free and open to the public. Reservations are recommended.
Reserve your seats here.
CU music graduate Wheeler explains, "September Sixth is my reaction to the Four Mile Canyon Fire which started on September 6th, 2010. The fire burned our home to the ground--home to my grandfather who built the house, my parents, younger brother and me. My mother and her family were raised there, and so were my brother and I. We moved in when I was six."
The piece uses a combination of found art, sound sculpture, dance, music and video to explore the fire, its aftermath and effect on Wheeler's life. Photos of the site taken by collaborators Michael Theodore, Jeff Ruane, Mark McCoin as well as Wheeler will be projected on the video wall of the ATLAS lobby.
The performance features:
- Wheeler on electronics, harmonium, voice, guitar, found objects and live video and dance
- Janet Feder (regular performer with Boulder Laptop Orchestra) on prepared guitar and found objects
- Mark McCoin on found objects
- Curtis Broome on drums
- Also dancers Luke Iwabuchi and Skye Hughes of CU's Music & Dance
"The work mirrors the emotions I continue to go through as a result of the fire--surprise, anguish and suffering, then acceptance, and finally peace, joy and reverence."
Musical genres include a cappella, ambient, drone, noise, post-hardcore rock, and electronica. Live video accompanies most of the performance. Dance includes contact improvisation.
Note: The show will have moments of loud sustained sounds; earplugs will be provided at the door.
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