UCLA School of Arts and Architecture UCLA’s World Arts
and Cultures department presents "The Last Big Event," which will
features a performance by Shel Wagner.
By Chris Young
Daily Bruin Staff
The entire World Arts and Cultures building, Kaufman Hall, will
become a stage this weekend for the department’s latest
extravaganza.
“The Last Big Event” will be performed Friday and
Saturday and features 25 works ““ including modern dance and
movement performances, fine arts, portrait galleries and music
““ by the department’s students, faculty and staff. The
event uses Kaufman Hall in innovative ways to celebrate the theme
of transformation.
Audience members will be given a map of the building and a
schedule of the performances. They will then be able to decide
which performances they want to see during the two hour event.
“It’s almost like a board game in that so many
things are going on at the same time and that it is one huge work;
you won’t be able to see everything,” said Viva
Liles-Wilkin, a fifth-year WAC student and producer for the event,
while sitting in her departmental office with the sound of dance
shoes on hardwood echoing through the hallway.
“You can see as much as you can see, knowing that somebody
on the other side of the building is having a completely different
experience than you,” she added.
Pieces at the event range from those that are a few minutes long
and repeat several times during the night to exhibits that run
continuously. Artistic Director Dan Froot said that viewers can sit
down and absorb five to eight works or see as many as 15 or 16 in
the two-hour period.
Transformation and site specificity are the main themes of the
event. The biggest transformation is Kaufman Hall itself; it will
be gutted and rebuilt starting in December, responding to the WAC
department’s needs for better performance space and
facilities.
The idea of site specificity in the event means using a given
space to guide and shape a work. Artists look at an object such as
a theater, pool, hallway or staircase and examine how space is
contained in that object’s architecture, using its spatial
characteristics to guide their creative output. Each of the works
featured explores some facet of Kaufman Hall.
“It’s a new way of thinking about architecture, how
it can function as a metaphor, a repository of history, an
expressive tool, a play space,” Froot said. “There are
lots of different ways to approach existing architecture. Site
specific works help us think about space differently. This building
is our subject.”
The dance building has undergone several changes during its
70-year history. Originally the women’s gym, it began housing
the World Arts and Cultures department in the 1970s.
“The building really comes alive; there’s no part of
the building that won’t be affected by all these
performances,” Froot said. “As you travel through the
building, you travel between pieces, and that in-between place is
also an experience of its own … a transformation from piece to
piece.”
In one of the pieces, a student will perform a dance outside of
a window on an office roof; the audience can look through the
window, onto the roof, to see the performance. Froot said that the
student chose that site because he feels he is often seen as an
outsider because of his style of dance.
“Having viewers look outdoors, through a window at him,
created that frame for him,” Froot said.
Cassandra Siegler, a fourth-year WAC student, will use a glass
display case in the lobby of Kaufman Hall for her piece, but
instead of putting a work inside the case, she will put herself
inside it; using it as a stage for a Middle Eastern dance.
The piece, entitled “Exotic Acts,” deals with
stereotypes surrounding
Middle Eastern dance, and explores the transformation of the
dancing body and audience interaction with Siegler. Viewers will be
able to communicate with her through gestures and written
notes.
“People think that Middle Eastern dance is deeply
connected to sexuality, and that’s essentially what my
performance is about,” Siegler said.
This weekend’s event follows the successes of “The
Big Event” in 1997 and “The Return of the Big
Event” in 1998, using the same format for presentations but
with a new theme. The event organizers expect it to be as big as
the first two.
“At the previous “˜Big Events,’ people would be
saying, “˜Did you see that?’ “˜Yeah, did
you?’ “˜No, I saw this.’ There was a buzz in the
audience because they know stuff is going on and they’re
trying to see it all,” Liles-Wilkin said.
Froot said the WAC department can generate these events because
it focuses on anthropological and ethnographic studies of
performance, discarding Western mind-sets in favor of intercultural
interpretations. It seeks new ways to approach performer-audience
connections and defy audience members’ expectations.
“People are used to dance events being in a theater
““ they sit down, watch for an hour, have an intermission,
then an hour of the same dancers; people know what to
expect,” Liles-Wilkin said. “As choreographers,
we’re not limited to a black-box traditional theater. You can
move your art to public spaces, the front steps of a building, put
your work out there wherever you’d like it to be
seen.”
DANCE: “The Last Big Event”
premieres at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday in Kaufman Hall. Tickets
are $10 general, $8 students, $6 WAC students, sold at the door and
at the Central Ticket Office, (310) 825-2101. For more information
go to www.lastbigevent.com.