dance card

Christian Swenson plays

human jazz

An explosion of sound and movement

April 26
Saturday @ 7:30 p.m.

Tickets:
$15 for adults, and $10 for seniors, military, students and youth

2006-2007 Media Sponsor: Bainbridge Island Review

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“He’s a one-man animal kingdom...” – Karen Mathieson, The Seattle Times

“Swenson is that rare soloist who can fill a stage, a mind, for a whole evening. He makes you feel you might be eavesdropping on genius.” – Carole Beers, The Seattle Times

“...inspired absurdity!!” – Micheal Upchurch, The Seattle Times

“...the quintessential vertebrate.” – Jake Selunik, Port Angeles Fine Arts Center

“When Swenson dances, it's as if he’s the most perfect toy a child could imagine...he has found a pure, magical source for movement and sound.” – The Seattle Weekly

“I’ve seen a lot of things, but I’ve never seen anything like this.” - 5th Grader in Yakima, Washington

Part dance, drama, concert, sacred ritual, and comedy, Christian Swenson’s performances are unclassifiable. Through his improvisation, Swenson fills each moment with surprise. He follows no trail, but bushwhacks, rock hops, and body surfs through the landscape of imagination. Using only body and voice, he draws from a global palette of styles including Indian dance, Balinese drama, scat-singing, mime-morphing, eccentric buffoonery, and Central Aisian throat-singing to take the audience on a one-of-a-kind adventure.

Swenson collaborates in one piece of this production with eight Bainbridge Dance Center (BDC) students: Meredyth Branaman, Alyson Butte, Alec Chupik, Alaina Gatzke, Caroline Reis, Hallie Rosner, Brooke Schulte and Constance Wellman are dancers from BDC’s Advanced Repertory group, all of whom also study composition. These dedicated students of dance will participate in three workshops with Swenson this spring and are honored to explore and perform in this Improvisation format with such a masterful professional.

The show includes fast-paced rhythmic explorations, word improvisations, poetry interpretations and many varieties of DanSing – wherein a song is danced and a dance is sung. Renowned for his pioneering work in "Human Jazz," a fusion of dance/drama/music for body and voice, Swenson’s performances have been met with rave reviews.

Swenson calls his art-form/play-form/mystical practice “Human Jazz” for several reasons: It is “playing” the body and voice simultaneously. It is acting like music. It uses a global palette of sound and movement. It is rooted in rhythm, tone and shape and grows itself through improvisation and exploration. It is about performing one’s “humanness” with integrity, spontaneity, and just the right mix of contrivance and abandon. But, as the late Louis Armstrong once said, “If you can explain it. It ain't jazz.”

With a global aesthetic, Swenson has drawn far-reaching inspiration from Bobby McFerrin, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Jimi Hendrix, Balinese dance/drama, slide guitar, the African “talking drum", plus the sculptures, speaking, singing and dancing of other peoples and creatures, and the “shapings” of the land itself. He says, “With an open heart and mind, I freely imitate other ways of being. It is through this experience of imaginative imitation that I hope we can gain greater understanding and appreciation of our world.”