SORIAH
PERFORMING AT SOMEDAY
Sunday, Oct 1 › 9pm–1am › $10
GEKIKAI: A performative cultural space at the interstices of the radical and traditional arts of Asia and the West. Post-Asiatic: butoh, gamelan, throat singing, Egyptian and Morrocan music, raga, jazz – filtered through a post-modernist and distinctly Western perspective.
Featuring Soriah with Venerable Showers of Beauty Gamelan, Douglas Ridings, Alenka Loesch with Mizu Desierto (with set design by Fredrick Zahl), Nequaquam Vacuum, and Children of Paradise with Auracle Dance Collective.
About the artist
From out of the fir-lined mists of the Pacific Northwest’s primordial musical soup is spawned the singular performance and sound sculptor Soriah. Spilling initially from a rock and roll womb, but building on years of intensive studies in Tuvan throat singing and classical Indian raga chanting, Soriah both subverts and elevates tradition by weaving the avant-garde into the ancient. Whether backed by hand percussion, or accompanying himself on organ, or with electronics, or wailing a cappella, a thick, echoing, thaumaturgic atmosphere is carved out of the thin, vibrating air that rushes between vocal chords. Performance is an integral part of Soriah’s Chao-sphere. Concerts played in haunted tunnels, from trees, in the desert, in churches and other far-flung venues are more the rule than the exception. Elaborate costumes, often incorporating authentic head-dresses and other tribal garments and totems, are another hallmark. The costumes are worn partly in beatific reverence and partly for the sake of how they move. Soriah’s grounding in the study of butoh, yoga and other physically based rituals completes the circle of the experimental shaman; a circle which will continue to propagate as the only constant with Soriah is change...
Performer links
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