Dance and the Poetics of Nothingness
A performance workshop/lecture with Takahiro Yamamoto and Dahlia Li
How abundant can nothing be? This iteration of the dance and poetics series sees artists Takahiro Yamamoto and Dahlia Li engage the possibilities of nothingness through collaborative gesture and poetic language practices. Drawing on Yamamoto’s NOTHINGBEING project and “the possibilities of the unfiltered self” and Li’s research into cultural memory and photographic negation, this participatory performance workshop/lecture opens the intimate fold of nothingness towards the unknown spectator. Together we will probe what it means to witness what unfolds in the present and attend to the rich temporal relations nothingness casts. No prior dance or poetry experience required.
DAHLIA LI (she/her) is an artist and writer currently completing a PhD at the University of Pennsylvania in the Department of English with certificates from the Programs in Cinema and Media Studies and Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies. Her dissertation, Caress without Body: Stranded Affect, Queer Diasporic Dancing and Questions Concerning Technologies examines 20th and 21st-century experimental approaches to dance from QTBIPOC perspectives to forward a theory of danced embodiment as collective technology. She has performed or shown work across a number of venues in the US and Europe. From 2020-2021 she was an EmergeNYC fellow and is currently a Helena Rubenstein Critical Studies Fellow at the Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Originally from Shizuoka Japan, TAKAHIRO YAMAMOTO is an artist and choreographer based in Portland. He has received support from NCCAkron, Bogliasco Foundation, Oregon Community Foundation, MacDowell, National Performance Network, Japan Foundation, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Regional Arts & Culture Council, Africa Contemporary Arts Consortium, and others. Both of his performance productions and visual art works have been presented at Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (Portland), Portland Art Museum (Portland) On The Boards (Seattle), Velocity Dance Center (Seattle), Henry Art Gallery (Seattle), Diverseworks (Houston), Contemporary Arts Center (Cincinnati), GoDown Arts Centre (Nairobi), Holding Contemporary (Portland), Bedlam Lowertown (St. Paul), Rowan Gallery (Los Angeles), and others. He holds MFA in Visual Studies at Pacific Northwest College of Art. He co-directs a performance company madhause with Ben Evans, and a part of Portland-based support group Physical Education with Allie Hankins, keyon gaskin, and Lu Yim.