Laura Curry is an interdisciplinary Seattle artist with a background in dance and choreography. Her artistic focus is on the psychology and sociology of a public in a chosen environment. Through increasingly site-specific work, Laura creates environments that challenge traditional roles and expectations of both the audience and artist. Laura’s work has been presented by On the Boards, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, and toured nationally through SCUBA to name a few. Other select venues include: the W Hotel, the Marqueen Hotel, Vain Beauty World, The Finerie, as well as Craig’s List, the World Wide Web, and KCTS TV Channel 9. In 2006 Laura was commissioned by D-9, where she choreographed and built the audio score from the recorded story work with the company members. In her work for architecture as well as her own projects, Laura’s methodologies identify and capture the community voice. Laura has been supported with two Artist Trust Fellowships for Choreography and a GAP Grant, as well as funding from the Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs, City of Seattle, 4 Culture, Meet the Composer, West Sound Arts Council, and Arizona State Arts Commission, among others. Currently, Laura is co-directing Performance Memoirs, an interactive performative work set in a hotel room, with artist collaborator Lori Dillon. Performance Memoirs will premiere in Seattle in 2008, and Laura is thrilled to receive support for this project from Art Patch, 4Culture Special Projects, and 4Culture Site Specific Art Happenings.
Laura is Creative Director of Research and Consumer Insight with Mithun Architecture.
Lori Dillon has an extensive contemporary dance background as a performer and has worked with Pat Graney, Molissa Fenley, Li Chiao-Ping Dance and Jin-Wen Yu, among others. Through these experiences, she has toured to Taiwan, South Korea and several major cities in the U.S. and worked on several site-specific video dance projects. Lori has been a member of Seattle's d9 Dance Collective since 2004. In 2003, Lori began her artistic relationship with Laura Curry as a principal member of "pinkk," an interactive performative experiment of sight and sound that evolved over several years and toured to several venues in Seattle, Portland, Bellingham, San Francisco, and Minneapolis. Lori and Laura now work together as co-Directors of "Performance Memoirs," an interactive dance-theater experience built for a hotel room. It will premiere in Seattle in early 2008. Lori is a proud recipient of a 2007 City Artist Award from the Mayor's Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs for "Performance Memoirs."
Pamela A. Gregory graduated Summa Cum Laude with a BFA in Dance from Towson State University in 1993, and has been dancing and performing in Seattle for the last fourteen years. She was a founding member of Rockhopper Dance in 1997, and with the company had the opportunity to work with many local choreographers as well as create her own work. Since then, she has danced with Seattle choreographers Corrie Befort, Laura Curry, Brian Dawbin, Rob Kitsos, Michele Miller, Jessie Smith as well as performed extensively with Locate performance group, co-directed by Paige Barnes and Pablo Cornejo and d9 Dance Collecitve 2004-2007. Currently, Pam is a producer/performer of Buttrock Suites (a Seattle pop-culture phenomenon) and continues to work as a principal artist for Laura Curry. Pam began working/collaborating with Laura Curry in 1996, and looks forward to the newest project, Performance Memoirs, an artistic collaboration between Laura Curry, Lori Dillon and Pamela Gregory, to premiere fall 2007.
Performance: THU 27 SEP 10 AM - 6 PM
Click here to see live streaming webcast of performance
In a hotel room, three women chat, paint their nails, drink vodka, get dressed, run a bath, surf the web, take photos, etc., all while reminiscing on past experiences and creating new ones in the moment. An audience of 10 is drawn into the action through conversation, and invitation to explore the room: dresser drawers, suitcases, bathroom cabinets, lounging on the bed. No one disappears without first leaving behind a personal memento, which becomes fodder for the next 10 people to play with. And, for those who prefer some voyeurism or distance, a webcam captures it all in real-time. This is Performance Memoirs.
Created and performed by Laura Curry and Lori Dillon, with collaborative artist Pamela Gregory, Performance Memoirs is an intimate, 60-minute interactive experience in a hotel room. Participants are immersed in the sights, sounds and smells of a space that has been used – in any number of different and intimate ways – by the people before them. Questions about identity, privacy, risk, and proximity are vividly explored. Audiences are free to immerse themselves in alternate realities and identities – guided by the three artists - as the limits of performance expectations are pushed to the extreme. Ultimately, the space becomes a playground, ripe with discovery, experience and intrigue.
Through a number of different methods including spoken word, movement, media, and current events, true stories are crafted and revealed to the audiences in the hotel room. Performance Memoirs is the latest incarnation of Laura Curry's pinkk project. Presented by On the Boards and Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, among others, pinkk engaged audience participants in interactive performances in reconfigured theater spaces, art galleries, and storefront retail windows. The narrative for Performance Memoirs is generated from the alternately absurd and personally moving stories collected from pinkk audiences, as well as the artists’ observations of these stories. New and critical information is added to each new performance as the artists conduct hotel cycles and performance installations to gather personal accounts.