Kudos to Ron Blessinger and his indefatigable fellow performers at Third Angle for what must have been a great spectacle on Sunday at the various Lawrence Halprin parks near Keller Auditorium (also known as the South Auditorium District).
Here’s an excerpt of the first review:
In the 1960s, people called them happenings, when artists broke down spatial and genre boundaries while raising consciousnesses and inviting their audiences to participate in a new performance experience. They were animated by a spirit of collaboration, experimentation and creative optimism–and that spirit was revived Sunday afternoon in “The City Dance of Lawrence and Anna Halprin,” a major event and brilliant achievement that closed the sixth annual Time-Based Art Festival.
Co-curated by choreographer Linda K. Johnson, Third Angle artistic director Ron Blessinger and architecture critic Randy Gragg, it brought together the movement influence of postmodern pioneer Anna Halprin in spaces designed by her landscape architect husband Lawrence, with music by some of her partners in the 60s San Francisco avant-garde. Along with its audience of well over a thousand, the performance progressed in four episodes through Lawrence Halprin’s public spaces in Portland’s South Auditorium district.
Here’s the complete Oregonian review.
And see photos and Ron’s own commentary at the Third Angle Blog.
Oh, and also check out Third Angle’s newly overhauled website, with details on the rest of the 2008 – 2009 season.
UPDATE: and this from Barry Johnson’s artscatter blog.