Spring Studio Series: Kristopher K.Q. Pourzal @ Harper Joy Theatre, Whitman College

This April, for the first time ever, Whitman College Department of Theatre and Dance will bring the dance program’s Spring Studio Series to Harper Joy Theatre’s black box for three different experimental performances by Kristopher K.Q. Pourzal (New York), Anna Martine Whitehead (Chicago), and Heather Kravas (Seattle) on April 5th, 6th, and 7th at 8 p.m.  Whitman students will kick off each performance with material developed in workshops conducted during the week, and Nina Lerman, Lisa Uddin, and Tia Kramer will each lead one of three distinct post-performance discussions.  I encourage you to attend one (or all three!) of these performances as they culminate an exciting week of collaborative creation, experimental performance, and critical dialogue.

Kristopher K.Q. Pourzal 
two lines barely touching do not make a ghost but do 
make a passage (o, but i have such lines inside of me)
Thursday April 5 at 8:00 p.m.
Freimann Studio Theatre (black box)  
Discussion lead by Nina Lerman

two lines barely touching… is an evening-length solo performance in which
movement, live sound, and objects are continually rearranged and displaced;
material loops and suspends, recklessly-carefully. Pourzal conjures the castrato
—a male singer of the operatic tradition who has been castrated before puberty
to preserve his high singing voice—to probe the shaping of bodies by and for
labor and value. As he wrest(le)s this brutal history, his own severed selves are
thrown into relief. 

Kristopher K.Q. Pourzal, born and raised outside of Washington 
DC, is a performer/performance-maker living in Brooklyn, NY. 
He uses movement, food/stuff, text, and song to make solo works 
that feverishly reconcile his mind-body as a sculpture of socio-political 
conditioning and queer potential. Fundamentally, he is interested in 
what gets concealed in the appearances of things, from the macro 
(e.g. capitalism) to the micro (e.g. a lemon) and the slippage between. 
His work has been presented and/or commissioned by Danspace Project,
Gibney Dance, Movement Research at Judson Church, Roulette Intermedium, 
AUNTS, Center for Performance Research, Dixon Place, and Brooklyn 
Arts Exchange. Kristopher has also worked for other artists including 
Simone Aughterlony, Catherine Galasso, K.J. Holmes, Aaron Landsman, 
Jeff McMahon, Britta Joy Peterson, Will Rawls, Jen Rosenblit, and Eileen 
Standley. He is a 2016-2018 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence. Additionally, 
Kristopher holds an MFA in Dance from Arizona State University.