The BASK Collective, an artist collaboration from Moscow, will be showcasing a series of performance vignettes titled “Play Like a Girl,” combining music, dance, visual art and poetry with participation by University of Idaho art students.
They perform free at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 24, in the Administration Auditorium at UI.
Stacy Isenbarger, BASK member, sculptor and assistant professor at UI’s department of art and design, said musical numbers accompany dancers and artists, along with other performances by UI students and community members.
“The piano will have a key role,” she said. “There will be some other music elements added in … it’s not like your typical music performance where you come in and sit still … there is a high level of play.”
Kristin Elgersma, BASK member, pianist and co-director of UI’s Music Preparatory Division, said that two musical pieces will be given the spotlight.
Elgersma said the composer of the main piece, Eve Beglarian, based it on a Bulgarian folk song. Beglarian created eight different variations of the song that can to be played together or separately. In “Play Like a Girl” Elgersma will play the piano and the toy piano. An electronic score will play another variation. Either video or dancers will accompany all the song variations during the evening.
The second piece, Elgersma said, is called “Body of Your Dreams.” Written by Jacob Ter Veldhuis, also known as Jacob TV, the song comprises audio from fitness commercials that have been linked together with a piano. Members of UI dance class created choreography they will perform during Veldhuis’s music.
According to the BASK Collective’s website, the project hopes to “increase student and community awareness of women’s position in the arts.” Isenbarger said that they chose the name Play Like a Girl because it comes off as offensive to some.
“Some of the subjects we are taking on are about women’s roles in the arts … the voice of women, the way we label ourselves and sometimes how we mislabel ourselves,” Isenbarger said.
The BASK collective is a dance, poetry, sculpture and piano collaborative of four artists who work together to create an art community in Moscow. The title is a combination of the members’ initials. The group includes Belle Baggs, a dancer and a faculty member for UI’s department of movement sciences; Alexandra Teague, the group’s poet and a member of the Moscow Arts Commission; Isenbarger; and Elgersma.
IF YOU GO
WHAT: BASK Collective Spring performance “Play Like a Girl”
WHEN: 7:30 p.m., Thursday, April 24
WHERE: Administration Auditorium, University of Idaho Campus
COST: Free
