Extinction Burst: a dance of lost movement September 15, 2011

9/15 at 7:30pm, 9/20 at 11am, 9/22 at 2pm, 9/27 at 2pm, 9/29 at 11am

Award-winning choreographer Chris Black is back with Extinction Burst: a dance of lost movement, a dance installation that sources photographs, illustrations and written descriptions to reanimate the movements of various lost species.

Extinction Burst is being created at and for the California Academy of Sciences, where Chris Black is an Artist in Residence from April to September 2011 and was commissioned by ODC Theater.

Designed to play like an old school break-up album, it chronicles our deteriorating relationship with the earth and its other inhabitants in order to put a face on the statistics and history of extinction.

The cast of five performers will provide a memory-filled musical soundtrack that will include references and some acapella snatches of such songs as One (is the loneliest number) by the late great Harry Nilsson, It's Too Late by Carole King, Sinatra's smirking and sarcastic I Wanna be Around, Judy Garland's rendition of After You've Gone (as performed at the Live at Carnegie Hall album), Ain't No Sunshine by Bill Withers and other gems that allow us to dwell, mourn, and if we're lucky, move on.

The performance will be 100% analog with the performers channeling their late antecedents-the Great Auk, Passenger Pigeon, Thylacine and the Quagga among others- through movement and vocals only, with no costuming to suggest what they might be.

Official Website: http://www.calacademy.org/events/