IN MUSIC AND IN LIFE: Exploration 1, June 10th at 7pm

CONFLICTING SENSUALITY: Solo cello improvisations, June 11th at 1pm

MUSIC AND IN LIFE: Exploration 2, June 11th at 7pm

General admission: $10-$30 sliding scale; Livestream: $10

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IN MUSIC AND IN LIFE

The Intimate Artistry String Quartet renders a breathtaking narrative using emotional embodiment, movement, and technicolor sororities! The journey begins with dynamic explorations of life's delights and challenges through a collection of emotionally immersive musical improvisations. Conceived of by composer Sara Lydia Anne Banks and brought to life by quartet members Charlotte Munn-Wood, Lara Lewison, Lauren Siess, and Polina Bakhtina.

CONFLICTING SENSUALITY

Sara Lydia Anne Banks deconstructs her own relationship to her instrument, fighting to understand her purpose in a soundscape where the rules have changed, and her usual solutions are no longer relevant. Using the Intimate Artistry improv style, Banks picks up her cello to blurt out into the ether the inner conflicts of loss, isolation, ambition, and ecstasy.

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The Intimate Artistry musical language and concert format uses tension and discomfort as a locus for storytelling, inviting the listener to breathe through the raw human experiences along with the performers. The audience's experience builds from a place of embodiment and catharsis as opposed to analysis and a preoccupation for intellectual understanding. To best facilitate this environment of empathetic embodiment, the audience is guided through some basic mindfulness exercise. In between each piece, the audience and performers share reflections of the emotional journey they experienced. That conversation then informs the next improvisation.

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The venue is the historic WOW Café Theater, a women and trans theater collective founded by anarchist lesbian squatters in 1980. This extraordinary organization elevates art-for-the-sake-of-art in a way that resists capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy like nothing else I've ever come across. They deserve all your love, respect, and most of all financial support. Beacons of hope like WOW are rare but still exist! They literally fight on the front lines day-after-day, decade-after-decade, for the need to bolster marginalized voices in the performing arts.