Working in Seattle with DAE "Red shoes" for May to June Performance

DEGENERATE ART ENSEMBLE EXHIBITION OPENS MARCH 19

What?! DAE is doing a MUSEUM EXHIBITION?!

Degenerate Art Ensemble has been known for some of the most ambitious collaborative projects anywhere. This year, a collaboration with the Frye Art Museum represents their most important and ambitious undertaking yet.

The first art exhibition and museum project showcasing Degenerate Art Ensemble is the culmination of a year long dialogue between Frye Art Museum curator Robin Held and the artists of DAE. The survey of the group's work will fill almost the entire museum, featuring 14 artists and five large scale works inspired by the ambitious all-sensory productions the group is known for creating: a Weeble Wobble princess that battles ninjas, a surgery ice cream truck, a tuning nest in a listening forest, and the Slug Princess that devours cabbages in a microscopic world.

After the exhibition opens, DAE takes off to New York for the Watermill Residency. Chosen by a panel of performance art greats such as Robert Wilson and Marina Abramovich, the group will focus this prestigious highly-selective program in developing a scene from their upcoming production Red Shoes and perform at the Center for Performance Research in New York. When DAE returns to Seattle, they will complete rehearsals and construction for the full production of Red Shoes. Scheduled to run in May and June, audiences will discover the performance as it sets out onto the streets on parade and unfolds in four magical locations around First Hill centered around the Frye Art Museum. A full marching band, the St. James Cathedral chorus, and a string quartet will sound sublime compositions formed in a musical marriage of Joshua Kohl and Jherek Bischoff. Seattle audiences will get their first treat of guest artist Dohee Lee, with her mesmerizing ability to deeply inhabit powerful personas through vocalizations and movement. Only a year ago, the artist transplanted to San Francisco from Korea and landed in the U.S. performing inKronos Quartet's Perspectives series at Carnegie Hall. Seattle's beloved post-punk performance princess Haruko Nishimura will again enchant audiences as Red Shoes heroine. Recognizable from DAE's iconographic posters, the shape-shifting choreographer/performer drew over-capacity crowds for three unpublicized shows last month in a West Seattle warehouse.

For many, Degenerate Art Ensemble is a performance group that has been elusive, performing one-night huge extravaganzas packed into a two-balcony theater or sometimes an undisclosed location. This is an opportunity to see Degenerate Art Ensemble as no one, newcomer or long time follower, has ever seen them before. Degenerate Art Ensemble exhibition runs for three months from March 19 to June 19 and there will be four performances of Red Shoes in May and June giving audiences an epic evening long, neighborhood wide presence.