Culver City Celebrates its Centennial with 1988, Four Site-Specific Dance Performances by Heidi Duckler Dance Theater

1988 features four site-specific dance performances by Heidi Duckler Dance Theatre, centering on six featured artworks from Culver City’s public art collection. The 1988 event series celebrates the 1988 adoption of the Art in Public Places Program Ordinance and will highlight the public art and performing arts programs as primary components of the ordinance. Heidi Duckler Dance Theatre joins 1988 Producer and former Culver City Cultural Affairs Commissioner, Marla Koosed, who worked closely on the most recent ordinance update. Together they toast Culver City’s Centennial and present 1988 with performances throughout 2017.

“I loved the idea of collaborating with the Heidi Duckler Dance Theatre to emphasize the City’s public art collection and create an experience for the public to be with the artwork and learn about the ordinance - that was the inspiration for 1988,” says Producer Marla Koosed. “This almost three decades old ordinance is responsible for over 100 public permanent artworks that are accessibly on view for the Culver City community, its neighbors and visitors alike,” Koosed goes on to say.

The series will begin on Sunday, April 23 with Cloud, the permanent artwork by merge conceptual design located at Access Culver City. This intimate viewing performance will feature one dancer, Teresa ‘Toogie’ Barcelo, and live musician, composer Joe Berry (M83) performing on and around the sculpture exploring the earth’s water cycle both above and below the earth’s surface that the sculpture intends to embody. Cloud is made of polished stainless steel, shaped like a Mobius strip, which houses nozzles along the two narrow edges of the band intermittently emitting fog, thus enveloping the sculpture in a cloud.

The second performance in the series will be on Sunday, May 7, 2017 on and around Punctuation Station, the permanent artwork by Jeff Kopp located in Target Court, level 2 and in the Sky Lobby, level 3 at Westfield Culver City. This dance performance is two events in one, beginning with a teaching event from 12:00-5:00PM, followed by the public performance event from 5:30-7:00PM.

This dance piece is based on the learning and educational work of the Heidi Duckler Dance Theatre (HDDT), and will bring together HDDT teaching artists and Culver City High School Academy of Visual and Performing Arts (AVPA) students to explain how original work is created based on a relationship of bodies and objects to space. This process provides guided coursework for the students on how to create a site-specific performance by connecting the artworks punctuation symbols to body language. The AVPA students will gather in the ‘Sky Lobby’ above ‘Target Court’ where some of Punctuation Station is installed to create their own work and observe the HDDT dancers below in ‘Target Court’ rehearsing their piece. The performance will begin at 5:30PM with a brief explanation of the artwork by Jeff Kopp. The HDDT dancers will invite the AVPA students to ‘Target Court’ to share their performance and in turn, the AVPA students will invite the HDDT dancers to see their debut performance in the ‘Sky Lobby’ where Punctuation Station is also installed. The event will conclude with a public talk-back with artists and students.

The final two performances in the series will be later this summer with Technicolor Drip happening at Platform on August 6, 2017, 12 minute performances between 1-3PM; and Hanging Gardens, Panoramic, Quotation Courtyard, and La Ballona at Culver City Hall on September 9, 2017, performances at 5PM and 7PM.

This performance series is made possible with major funding from the City of Culver City Cultural Trust Fund. Additional sponsorship made possible by The Culver Studios, The Lapis Press and The Culver Hotel.

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Admission is free, RSVP required.