Please join us for a fabulous event to celebrate the festive season, before winter really sets in, with an early offering of glamour, spectacle and party! grunt gallery is pleased to be bringing from New York City, the infamous burlesque performance artist, Chicava Honeychild, renown for her seductive work with Brown Girls Burlesque, and, from Los Angeles Stacy Dawson Stearns aimed to rouse our somatic senses and intrigue new experience of dance, movement and theatrics. There will also be a rare appearance by Vancouver’s own Brown Brother Posse as well as Vancouver’s virile rock band AB/CD.
A special fundraiser not to be missed!! Cocktails, prizes, swag, and much fun will be had!
Saturday, December 1, 2012
Doors: 7pm | Show: 8pm
Location: RUSSIAN HALL, 600 Campbell Street, Strathcona, Vancouver
Tickets sliding scale: $10 – $100
Click here to purchase tickets online! Or you can buy them at the door of the event:
*Tax receipts will be issued for paid tickets $20 and up.
ABOUT THE PERFORMERS:
FROM NEW YORK CITY:
CHICAVA HONEYCHILD
Chicava HoneyChild is a burlesque dancer, actor and producer. She is the Creative Producer of New York City’s Brown Girls Burlesque and teacher at BGB’s Broad Squad. She received her MFA in Interdisciplinary Art from Goddard College where her research focused on performance art, women of color in burlesque heritage, and sacred sexuality and spirituality. She is currently working on a documentary on the legacy of Women of Color in burlesque. http://browngirlsburlesque.com/.
Photo credit: Yule A Go-Go: www.yuleagogo.com
FROM LOS ANGELES:
STACY DAWSON STEARNS
Stacy is a performing artist, trainer, and educator. Her professional performance career began in NYC in 1991 with the internationally renowned company, Big Dance Theater. Based in New York for 15 years and Los Angeles for the past decade, she has shared her choreographic, directorial, and solo performance with regional and national audiences. Stacy has been a part of art collectives Blacklips Performance Cult, Advanced Beginner Group, Big Dance Theater, and Show Box LA. Stacy’s bodywork and performance training embodies the concepts that shaped her as a performer: discipline, generosity, and respect for the path of the individual. In addition to her private teaching practice, she has taught in higher education performing arts programs since 1996: at Marymount Manhattan College, New York University, and currently as adjunct faculty at California Institute of the Arts. Awards include a Bessie (New York Dance and Performance Award) in 2000, and a 2012 CHIME grant. She holds an MFA from Goddard College (Interdisciplinary Art) and a BFA from NYU’s Experimental Theater Wing. http://www.impulseintoaction.com/stacy_performance.html
Chicava (left) Photo Credit: Yule A Go-Go: www.yuleagogo.com; Stacy Dawson Stearns (right) Photo Credit: Deirdre McGaw
FROM VANCOUVER:
BROWN BROTHER POSSE
Brown Brother Posse (a.k.a. BBP) are a boy band from Vancouver, Canada. BBP took the world by storm in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s and to-date have sold 80 million records worldwide. Celebrated for their musical genius, they also gained worldwide notoriety for their scandalous dalliances with numerous celebrities as well as their provocative antics on stage. The group disbanded in 2002 under mysterious circumstances. There was much speculation by media pundits about the reasons for their break-up, but no one knows for sure what happened. Several attempts were made to get BBP back together in ensuing years, all of them unsuccessful. After secretly reuniting in 2012 and recording a new album together, the group have recently returned to Vancouver from their first global concert tour in almost a decade. This is their first performance on Coast Salish Territories since their return and they will be performing their latest number one hit from their new album BBP – Back on the Block.
FROM VANCOUVER:
AB/CD
With Eileen Kage on drums, Laiwan on guitar and Donna Lee on bass. A rock band performing flagrant mash-ups!
—————-
Eileen Kage has been involved with Vancouver’s Taiko community since the early 1980’s, co-founding several groups including LOUD (1996), Uzume Taiko (1988) and Sawagi Taiko (1990). She continues to push the boundaries of taiko through various collaborations with other artists, and continues to study its roots and essence through her work with JODAIKO. She strives to challenge gender role stereotypes through the taiko and other projects including explorations into femme drag. At Spatial Poetics 2011, Eileen rocked-out on the drum kit with wank band collaborators Vanessa Kwan and Laiwan in laiwankwankage.
——————
Laiwan is an artist with a wide-ranging practice that follows her interest in cross-disciplinary projects. She is also a writer, educator, curator and activist. Born in Zimbabwe of Chinese parents, she founded the Or Gallery in Vancouver in 1983 and initiated the First Vancouver Lesbian Film Festival in 1988. Recipient of the 2008 Vancouver Queer Media Artist Award, she teaches at Goddard College in the MFA Interdisciplinary Arts Program. Her premiere performance of laiwankwankage for Spatial Poetics 2011 initiated her into the performative realm exploring somatic intelligence and absurd spectacle.
———————–
Donna Lee has played in various bands and enjoys working with youth, playing soccer and watching her niece grow up.
