GUIDE TO ART, VENUES OF WEST AUSTIN STUDIO TOUR
At West Austin Studio Tour, you can find art in a skate park.
As Austin theater spaces become cannibalized by big real estate, the city’s dancers continue to find alternatives, making stages out of breweries, under the Congress Avenue Bridge or, in the case of an upcoming concert from Dance Waterloo and percussion-electronic group the Kraken Quartet, a skateboard park at Shoal Creek Boulevard and 12th Street.
Dance Waterloo’s Artistic Director Morgan Teel zeroed in on one part of the skate park, one you might not notice from the street — the “bowl.”
“I liked how minimalistic it was,” Teel says. For their performance “Off the Wall,” which is part of the West Austin Studio Tour, “the entire bowl will be the stage.”
The music side of things promises to be intense. Tetractys, an experimental music organization, helped find three composers (Chris Ozley, Chris Prosser and Corey Cunningham) to write music for Kraken, a classically trained group of percussionists who met at Ithaca College in upstate New York and have by now drifted to Austin, as well as to the dark side of pop and electronica.
Kraken’s Taylor Eddinger calls the music for this event “highenergy, quirky and sometimes Zappa-esque.”
Playing with two drum kits, vibraphone and a slew of
synthesizers and electronic processors, Kraken, who give off a bit of a Sigur Ros vibe, are more comfortable in music clubs than concert halls these days, Eddinger says. This is their first collaboration with dancers.
And they’ve picked the right ones. Dance Waterloo is used to performing on unusual surfaces, Teel says. They recently performed on top of another piece of art, Orly Genger’s “Hurlyburly” installation of stacked nylon rope adjacent to Lady Bird Lake. For that piece, audience members wore head- phones to select their own playlists of music.
“I haven’t been on a stage since 2013,” Teel says. Around that time the per- forming arts center at her Mississippi university was wrecked by a tornado, and shemovedher dance to an abandoned schoolhouse. Now, with programs that include community dance events and work with chil- dren, Dance Waterloo perform everywhere but.
All their shows are pay- what-you-will, whi ch,inthe- ory, means they’re also free. Audience surveys tell them 50 percent of Dance Waterloo’s audience members simply stumble on the performance as it’s happening.
“It could be a little weird if we tell you, ‘Look away, or pay $15!’” Teel says.
But those who reserve in advance for the West Austin
Studio Tour performances can get primo seats along the rim of the skate park’s bowl, where the Kraken Quartet will set up, looking over the five helmet-wearing dancers, who’ll be using the inside of
the bowl as their stage. The dance and music have three parts, each by different composers and choreographers. The whole thing should feel seamless, Teel says, lasting about 30 minutes without pause.
And there’s no point in performing at a place like a skate park unless you’re goi ng to respond to what makes your environment unique. So both the chore- ographers (Rachel Hulse, Amber Kilgore and Teel) and the composers thought of ways to connect. One part of the dance embodies the movement of wheels, while the Kraken Quartet will mimic skate board sounds using drumsti cksandacon- tact mic.
And that sound may be one of many, because apart from the bowl itself, the skate
park will be open and prob- ably in use by skateboard-
ers and BMX bike riders. Kraken Quartet have more than enough amperage to overcome any background noise. But why the helmets? “I like an accessory that’s slightly off,” Teel says. An item that’s a little out of place. But it’s not just window dressin g.“Theydoslam into the wall some.”