Tres Tristes Tigres came little by little. Three people inspired me, one by one, without realizing at first that this was going to be my theme for this year: solo work. I was excited, wanting to know what is inside these peoples’ life and to bring it to the stage. Emma and Jonas are great dancers, Dayton an amazing musician and all of them performers with power and strong stage presence. Their life has social, political and environmental commitments in common. My goal is to share unique aspects of their being with the audience and unveil their vulnerable essence.

The theme was to explore intrinsic aspects of the performers themselves. Peeling layers, without hurry, without expectation, aiming for a balance in which the structure of the pieces wouldn’t take away the sense of improvisation, of presence. Sometimes I was afraid that we will not find specificity since we were focusing so much in improvising but after a while, themes and ideas kept coming back and those are the ones we chose. To improvise can be scary; it produces the feeling of nothingness but it opens paths to the unconsciousness and sensations, and maybe a bit to the real us. Emptiness is a source for the unknown; the most creative part of our being.

SHOULDER
Performed by: DAYTON ALLEMANN

This piece has poetry born of piano music accompanying a bicycle ride over a floating bridge. SHOULDER is made on the side of the street where you find objects and sometimes money, where the traffic makes you feel lonely and the lake looks like ink at night. The hands get cold and hurt after riding during 42’ 47’’, which is the time that it takes Dayton at full speed from Capitol Hill to Pacific Northwest Ballet School in Bellevue. He passes other cyclists, and that makes him feel like a super hero pianist but then he arrives at work and wonders, why do I have to hide in the bushes to change my clothes? How can I be a respected pianist but feel like a bum when I get there on my bike? There seem to be two societies, the one in which you can buy a racing bicycle from a junkie for 10 bucks and ride all the way to Bellevue; and the one in which everything is white, clean and light. Are we princes or bums? Are we the frog or the enchanted kiss?

EMMA
Performed by: EMMA KLEIN

Last spring I packed my belongings into boxes and stored them away for several months of travel and a move into a new home. As I settled back into Seattle, Trini requested I bring one of my unmarked, unopened boxes to rehearsal. I grabbed a medium size box that would fit on the bus and brought it in for show and tell. Out popped lacey dresses, fantastic finds from Value Village, homemade ornaments, photo albums, postcards, scarves, and high heels. As I lay the contents of my box around the studio and squeezed myself into the dresses and high heels, memories spilled out and the bare studio filled with color and personality.
This work is an unpacking of memories and old stories, of family and the mind. It is a collection of what makes a person, what forms a human being, and brings life and history to a body. This piece is about travel and love and family and death. It is about ideals and dreams. It offers the audience a glimpse into the mind of the creators and potentially provides them a peek into their own filed memories.

TEARS
Performed by: JONAS RADVIK

TEARS is about crying, the most susceptible state that one may feel. Crying gives sense to life, if we don’t cry, we die. Crying is the hidden shadow to society. We are strong, roll models, but what is in the other side? What about the void that we experience sometimes? Heartbreak, empathy, exhaustion, loneliness, beauty, grief, anger… But one side doesn’t exist without the other: power and weakness, perfection and clumsiness, laughter and crying. When is one and when the other? We laugh at ourselves, crying… or vice versa. Or we just cry, deep, so deep that the only way out is accepting pain and to embrace it as if it would be the muse of life.

BIOGRAPHIES

TRINIDAD MARTINEZ
Trinidad Martínez (choreographer and dancer) is cofounder of the Magpai Production Group. This company was created in Hamburg in 1998 and now resides in Seattle. Magpai Production Group has shown various productions at Kampnagel, (the main contemporary theatre in Hamburg, Germany) and produced numerous pieces for site specific and unconventional spaces, which have been shown in festivals in Germany, Italy, Spain and the USA.
2007-08 she obtained a Fulbright scholarship which allowed her to travel in the USA and expand her knowledge in dance and performance. At the moment Trinidad Martínez is directing and producing a full evening performance: Tres Tristes Tigres; which will have premier in July at the Freehold Theatre. Tres Tristes Tigres consist of three solos made collaboratively with the respective performers, Emma Klein, Jonas Radvik and Dayton Allemann.
Trinidad Martínez worked as a dancer at the Pat Graney Company, Nationaltheater Mannheim, Theater der Stadt Hagen and Jeune Ballet International R. Hightower. She studied dance and choreography at the Centre de Danse International Rosella Hightower in Cannes, France and Escuela de Danza Internacional Carmen Roche, Madrid, Spain. Later, she studied release technique for two years with the company Labor G.rass in Hamburg.

DAYTON ALLEMANN
Dayton Allemann is a composer and performer who has long been fascinated by the intersections of movement and music on stage. A long-time accompanist for modern dance and ballet, his trajectory has carried him from posts at the Nationaltheater Mannheim and Hamburg Ballet in Germany to numerous collaborations with choreographers of modern dance in Germany, Spain and the United States. This frequently involves performing directly with the dancers on stage, seeking to redefine the role of a performing musician. His pet fascination is the use of programming and digital-manipulation in real-time for live performances.
He studied composition, piano and flute at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, Washington. Over the ensuing two decades, he has received grants and commissions from numerous institutions in Germany and Spain (where he helped create and co-direct the alternative theatre-space La Fragua) to create (and often perform in) works for a wide range of genres and disciplines, including (predominately) dance-theatre, spoken-theatre, puppet-theatre, film and recorded music.

More than anything else, his artistic endeavours have been marked by his collaborations with Trinidad Martínez, with whom he founded the Magpai Production Group. Together, they explore a tantalizingly new performance language, incorporating detailed improvisatory structures and experimental technology.

EMMA KLEIN
Emma has used her body to tell stories since she was an infant. After training extensively throughout the North East she moved to the Pacific North West, inspired by the lush green and exciting artistic energy. Since moving to Seattle, Emma has developed a love for living rooms with Stimulate Dance (Stimulatedance.com). You can find her creating comedic, thoughtful works combining theater, dance, and song while bouncing on couches and crawling on walls. She has danced in rivers, on fabrics, trapeze, and slings with Asterisk Dance Project and spent three months working with women at the Mission Creek Correctional Center with Pat Graney’s Keep the Faith Project. She is inspired and empowered by the beauty and strength of combining art with healing, peace, and justice. Emma has experienced four seasons with Trinidad as they combed through boxes, stories, memories, deaths, births, and family life to develop the work you will see tonight and feels grateful for the opportunity to honor her history through dance and storytelling.

JONAS RADVIK
Jonas Radvik, M.A., choreographer, dancer, and therapist, creates environments for dance where the deepest shadows of one’s being may come into the light. in 1996 Jonas formed FAVAB, a performing arts company. FAVAB premiered BUR II for the Gothenburg Opera in 1997 and went on to tour Sweden. BUR II is a multimedia performance which explored the question, “What happens when we allow the universal fear of losing control to take us over?”. From 1998 to 2002 he was a dancer for major companies in Sweden—Gothenburg Opera, Alsborgs Teatern, and Efva Lilja Dance Company. In 2002 he entered Naropa University in Bolder, Colorado, where he studied Buddhist Psychology. In 2008 he completed his studies at Antioch University, Seattle, with a Master of Psychology. He currently works as a psychotherapist. Since early 2009 Jonas has been engaged in two dance projects—a solo performance and a performing arts group. His solo piece, directed by the Spanish choreographer Trinidad Martinez in Seattle, is inspired by his fascination with the healing power of sadness and grief and his amusement with the mysterious life of emotions.
Jonas’s performing arts group is E-Motions and Performing Arts Lab, and is an environment where performers work to discover and befriend their shadow side where our authentic, raw emotional power lives. The work of the Lab will culminate in a multimedia dance performance created from the lives, experiences and deeply embodied meaning of the participating artists.
Jonas’s choice to become simply “one of the dancers” has led him to create art that challenges how we are encaged by limiting beliefs, and his art continues to explore expression of what is instinctually pushed into the shadow.

DANI PRADOS
Dani Prados (Light Design/Technical Director) is encantada to be playing with such luminous individuals. She moved to Seattle one year ago and has worked with a number of companies in town. Favorite light designs include Kid Simple, Vinegar Tom, Don’t You Dare Love Me, the Bare Bones Dance Benefit, and Mother Courage. She recently directed a workshop production of Passenger[s] for GESAMTKUNSTWERK! Theatre Company, and does various directing, master electrician and other technical work around town. She has previously directed, stage managed, and designed lights in New York, Chicago and London.