Degenerate Art Ensemble
| Degenerate Art Ensemble | |
|---|---|
| Choir | |
| Origin | Seattle, Wa USA |
| Founded | 1999 (19 years ago) |
| Genre | Performance and Visual Arts |
| Website | http://degenerateartensemble.com |
Degenerate Art Ensemble (often abbreviated DAE) is a Seattle-based multi-art performance company whose work is inspired by punk, comics, cinema, nightmares and fairy tales driven by live music and visceral movement theater and dance. The group was founded and is co-directed by dancer/performer/director Haruko Nishimura and composer/conductor/performer Joshua Kohl. Degenerate Art Ensemble is both a multi-discipline performance company and a band, having performed major dance and live music works, orchestral concerts, rock shows and site-specific street spectacles.
"We aim to achieve the intensity of a sacrificial rite to tear away the waking world revealing alternate realities filled with characters that are transformers expressing unimaginable possibilities. We throw audiences into this world, asking them to make sounds en-masse enveloping and activating space. Characters climb over the audience – removing the barriers that normally separate us, creating an environment that arouses our interconnectedness." -Kohl
The group has performed both music shows and dance/theater performance works in 10 countries of North America and Europe in festivals, theaters, clubs and museums.
Co-founder Nishimura uses her study of Butoh dance and experimental physical theater to create the imagery Degenerate Art Ensemble has come to be synonymous for. As a director and performer, Nishimura has been inspired to explore the relationship between performer's and the patrons; which can often be experienced in attending one of their performances. Nishimura and the team are inspired by the idea of "collision and conflict—with the goal of awakening and transformation". Kohl, whom both composes and conducts the music for the group, utilizes both traditional and newly designed instruments to create the unique sounds for DAE and the Big Band Garage Orchestra. Kohl's approach to the sound of the group is to create music that is "genere-free"- a sound that crosses boundaries and blurs the lines between classical, punk and indie styles.
In 2001 Degenerate Art Ensemble formed its first "Big Band Garage Orchestra" with a lineup of drums, guitar, bass, two trumpets, tenor sax, violin, percussion and Nishimura on vocals with Kohl conducting. The group played a punk-jazz style with extreme dynamics ranging from gentle lullabies like Dreams from Wounded Mouth (co-composed by Kohl and Nishimura) to furious jazz/punk/thrash tunes like "Oni Goroshi" (composed by Jherek Bischoff). From 2001 until 2006 the big band toured Europe four times with shows in Germany, Netherlands, France, Italy, Slovenia, Slovakia, Czech Republic and Poland including both music shows and dance theater engagements.
The first art exhibition and museum project showcasing Degenerate Art Ensemble was the culmination of a year-long dialogue between Frye Art Museum curator Robin Held and the artists of Degenerate Art Ensemble in 2011. The survey of the group's work filled the entire museum, featuring 14 artists and five large scale works inspired by the ambitious all-sensory productions the group is known for creating: a Weeble Wobble princess that battles ninjas, a surgery ice cream truck, a tuning nest in a listening forest, and the Slug Princess that devours cabbages in a microscopic world.
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