Rose Blue

An evening-length duet performance by Befort & Graczyk

 

Thursday, November 30th, 8pm
Friday, December 1st, 8pm
Saturday, December 2nd, 2pm
Saturday, December 2nd, 8pm

Base, 6520 5th Avenue South, #122, Seattle, WA, 98108
Buy Tickets - $20 general, $15 student/senior
Run time: 1hr 10min, without intermission. No late seating.
Accessibility: Base is wheelchair accessible. Please email corriebefort@gmail.com to receive complete entry-point information.

 

Befort & Graczyk emerge out of celebrated Seattle performance company Salt Horse, whose "expertise lies in the ability to fashion elusive, shape-shifting work…" (Amy Mikel, Seattlest) to premiere evening-length duet Rose Blue at the artist-driven, experimental performance space, Base, in Georgetown. Befort & Graczyk is a new, bi-coastal performance company created by long-time collaborators Corrie Befort (Seattle) and Beth Graczyk (NYC).

Befort & Graczyk offer a meticulously crafted duet that transforms a narrative of their shared, 15-year history including being present at the birth of a friend’s child, loss of a parent, living in a foreign country and a divorce. Within the range of these potent and universal life-altering human events, Graczyk and Befort examine the specificity of memory, both accurate and blurred. From their own shared experiences they re-create the sensations and images of these extreme imprints while also structurally reflecting their fragmented and “inaccurate” processing over time. Sound artist Jason E Anderson live-mixes original recordings, foley and layered textures to sonically illuminate the action.

At once rowdy, sensual, mathematical and humorous, Rose Blue progresses as a cycling mosaic of lived memories, extrapolated fantasies and appropriated scenes from David Lynch’s "Fire Walk With Me" and Williams/Kazan’s "A Street Car Named Desire". Befort and Graczyk challenge their own history of making work together in this new duet and bi-coastal configuration, but remain true to what they were lauded for having in 2008: "an amazingly raw stage presence and vulnerability that is etched with virtuosic articulation" (Sean Ryan, On the Boards).

Rose Blue has been performed several times in different iterations to reach this final, evening-length version. An initial work-in-progress was showcased in the University of Washington’s 50th Anniversary Celebration of the Dance Department. In October 2016, a longer version was presented by Triskelion Arts Center (NYC) in their Split Bill Series.

This work has been supported by the Bossak-Heilbron Charitable Foundation, 10 degrees, Case van Rij, Tim Summers, Wise Orchid and our 2016 Hatchfund donors.