• Alicia Dvorak
• Annie Rollins, Avye Alexandres, Stephanie Watson
• Ben Garthus
• Elizabeth June Bergman
• Jaime Carrera
• Jason Wasyk and Mark McGee
• Jennifer Arave
• JUHYO
• Kats D Fukasawa

• PreCambrian Productions
• Sheila Regan
• Tim Carroll
• Travis Freeman
• Tullah Sutcliffe
• VAS Littlecrow
• Vena Ambrose & Natasha Hassett
• Venus DeMars
• VESSEL

Alicia Dvorak - An anonymous figure weaves amongst the pillars. It seems to have created a sort of central cocoon out of fabric strips. It keeps expanding and reaching into new areas with no apparent goal, other than creating an endless weave. Each day, the figure adds more fabric, threading its body through a growing web of threads.

Annie Rollins, Avye Alexandres, Stephanie Watson - little BIG world is a small exploration of humanity’s fascination with observing its animated self. Miniature scale models of your favorite Minneapolis locales animated with puppetry, live music , and song. The relationship of audience to performance is once removed through the medium of puppetry and twice through the medium of video. The audience may observe the reenactment or the film of the reenactment, which is the physical creation of something resembling ourselves.

Elizabeth June Bergman - LENS is a site-specific dance and film installation that attempts to foreground the action of watching (how we look and how we watch ourselves be looked at), the reactions and constructions that these perspectives provoke, and the fragmentation of memory.

A new work by Jaime Carrera -
This performance features Ranon Raygor, Kylelonious Potter & Adam Miller Originating with the concept of light as safety, and darkness as danger, Jaime Carrera's new evening-length performance, Obscuro, delves into the intricacies of comfort within an undefined space. Using a combination of stark lightning, complete darkness, movement, and found sound, Obscuro aims to usurp audience perceptions of security, while intensifying moments of fragility for performers and audience alike.

A new performance by Jennifer Arave -

Featuring performances by Jennifer Johanneson, Sinan Goknur, Kimberly Lesik, Scott Reynolds and Germaine "Tazz" Lindsey.

Hero investigates Americaʼs relationship to heroes: hero worship, hero obsession, the need for heroes, media manufacturing of heroes, and the destruction of the hero. Arave is interested in framing the preconditions that lead-up to the heroic moment, the turbulent, violent, explosive, and “extra- ordinary” events that create a hero, and the unraveling of the heroic moment. In this performance, Arave investigates how and when we arrive (in performance as well as in life) at the heroic moment, the transformative moment when a nobody is transformed into a celebrated hero.

Kats D Fukasawa Featuring Mika Turner - Nenkin Butoh Dan presents Kamabuta Tsuitachi, an experimental, site-specific performance installation based on the Japanese Obon Festival. “Obon” camefrom the Buddhist festival “Ullambana,"which celebrates ancestral spirits. “Kamabuta Tsuitachi,” the first day of the festival, is considered the day when the Gates of Hell open and ghosts are permitted to visit the earth for the next fifteen days. This unique project transposes this seemingly culturally specific idea to The Soap Factory, a historical warehouse turned art gallery, in Minneapolis. Within the brick walls, wooden beams and old industrial equipment, many time and space dimensions co-exists with one another. Ghosts move through those walls and roam the factory. Kamabuta Tsuitachi willtransport the audience to another dimension where dead spirits and the living mingle with each other. Nenkin Butoh Dan (translation: Slime Mold Butoh

Collective) was established in 2010 by a group of Subbody Butoh practitioners in the Twin Cities. Led by Kats D, they aim to create performance art based on physical movements that are absolutely free from cultural, social and stylistic constraints. Nenkin Butoh Dan’s mission is to create movements without ego, achieving unity through the freedom of body.

Pre-Cambrian Productions assisted by generalist Rod Smith - multi-disciplinary artist Garland Villanova formed Pre-Cambrian Productions in 2009 as a vehicle for large-scale installation and performance works unconstrained by prevailing notions of propriety, civility, or prudent resource management. Incorporating music, movement, lighting, design, ritual, and random orgone-accumulation gambits, "The True Most Genuine Original Eden" explores an era when life on Earth was simple (as in entirely vertebrate-free), our BFFs bacteria were busy paving the way for terrestrial life, and all the real action unfolded in the seismic, atmospheric, volcanic, and --especially--electromagnetic arenas.

Written and Performed by Sheila Regan -

Directed by Maggie Scanlan Sound Design by Dixie Treichel Movement by Romina Tokimoto

This play is based on the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, a study conducted at the University of Minnesota between November 19, 1944 and December 20, 1945. Led by Dr. Ancel Keys, the study used Conscientious Objectors (C.O.'s) as volunteers to study physiological and psychological effects of severe and prolonged dietary restriction and the effectiveness of dietary rehabilitation strategies. This piece was first presented at Red Eye’s Works in Progress.

Tim Carroll - Tar paper six feet tall by sixty plus feet long is hung on continuous wall(s). Using white chalk, the artist reaches to the top of the material and places the chalk against the surface, dragging the chalk straight down to meet the bottom of the material. This is accomplished as close to the left edge of the hanging material as possible. In continuous fashion, another and another and another one of these marks is accomplished at roughly one half inch intervals. This process continues in until the marks reach the furthest right edge of the tar paper. Each mark is an individual expression unique to the height and weight of the artist, and subject to variation based upon his mental and emotional stability. Endurance will affect the marks as they are constructed over a six-hour period of time. Together, the simple individual marks combine to form a complex piece. The result is a spontaneous, unique whole, constructed by no two lines that are exactly alike. This is the body marking time. Over and over and over again. Time after time after time.

Travis Freeman - Entering a trance state is initiated using any number of self or guided relaxation techniques to bring the body into a near sleep state. The mind remains active throughout the trance and gains access to a dream like consciousness. Awareness of body and place are maintained. However, due to the deep relaxation the normal impulse to react to changes in heat, sound, or light are dulled or deadened. In this way awareness of normal reality is maintained but unimportant. The focus is free to fall upon other more internal information. Similar to a dream, a trance can be a wondering narrative, a series of images, or even a vague bodily sensation. However, unlike a dream the trance state is connected to the waking consciousness allowing the trancer to direct and verbalize the internal experiences, in effect constructing a bridge of communication between a deep internal world and the normal waking world. This deep internal world may give access to deeper understanding of the self, or to subtle energies not constricted by time and space.

Tullah Sutcliffe - Ns&Cs is a dance of small places; of condensation and expansion; of being near but not being there; of sweet separation and nectars unknown. The viewer will receive a map marked with viewing locations in and near The Soap Factory. The audience will be free to choose where and for how long to watch each segment of the performance.

VAS Littlecrow - Back in 2001, I saw a bald eagle flying over Lake Harriet. A few weeks later, I saw another one at Theodore Wirth Park. It was surreal to see such splendid birds of prey in the middle of the city. I wondered how they lived. Did they just hunt fish in the lake or, did they snatch cats and yipping puppies from people's yards? How did they deal with the city noise or, raise their eaglets? These images stuck. I thought they would be excellent muses for my art, but I never really found a way to express my feelings about these raptors. I'm not a wildlife painter. I'm a multidisciplinary artist who mostly cartoons and performs at cabarets. Nature art just didn't seem to fit with what I was doing for years. I noticed a call for Artery 2010 submissions a few months ago. Something clicked when the possibility of creating urban-nature pictures as performance art revealed itself to me. The movement, avian research, and costuming for this piece came easily, but the soundscape, the life blood of the city imagery has been a challenge, providing me with rich learning experiences.

Vena Ambrose and Natasha Hassett Featuring Jason Aaron Magnuson, Pamela Caserta, Scottie Hall, and Towanda LaMay.

Amorous and assaultive, Redder and Redder Still is a life-size diorama concerned with red.

Venus Demars - A visually-based performance of gender, ritual, and acquisition.

VESSEL - How is a viewer impacted/affected by the site/sight of performance? VESSEL makes 'work' - meant in the most physical, labor-intensive sense - that asks the audience to think more about themselves than the spectacle of the performers. Sight of Impact begins in multiple locations throughout The Soap Factory's gallery spaces. Ultimately, isolated events converge in Gallery 1 as ten performers move fluidly between set and improvised movements, working at a fevered pitch. During the performance, we ask the audience to carry out three tasks, meant to alter their experience of the piece: 1) view from a seated position, 2) view from a standing position, 3) change viewpoint site at least once.

Soap Factory September 2010 from Soap Factory on Vimeo.

Soap Factory August 2010 from Soap Factory on Vimeo.