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Linda Austin (born 1954) is an American choreographer and performer based in Portland, Oregon. ^[1] Austin is also the co-founder and director of Performance Works NorthWest, a performing arts non-profit where artists working in time-based mediums create and perform. ^[2]

Early life and education

Austin was born in Medford, Oregon. She is the oldest of 9 siblings.

Linda Austin attended Lewis & Clark College as a theater major and graduated in 1976. ^[3] She moved to New York City with the intention of becoming a writer. ^[4]

Career

Austin started dancing in her mid-twenties. ^[5] She began choreographing dances in 1983, debuting her first dance work at the Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church. Austin participated in the dance and performing arts in New York City, mainly in avant-garde and experimental theaters and venues such as the Kitchen, Movement Research at Judson Church, and P.S. 122. ^[6]

During her time in New York City, Austin also earned a master's degree in English as a Second Language instruction. She and five other people purchased a sixth-floor walkup in Alphabet City in the East Village for $48000. ^[4]

Austin lived and created work in Mexico between the years 1992 and 1994. In 1998, she ventured back to Mexico City for a residency, sponsored by Movement Research and funded by the U.S.-Mexico Culture Fund. Later on that year, Austin relocated her life permanently to Portland, Oregon. ^[6] There, she founded the nonprofit Performance Works NorthWest with her romantic partner, Jeff Forbes. Using money she made selling her New York City walkup, she put a downpayment on a commercial space for the organization. ^[4]

Performance Works NorthWest exists as a platform for Linda Austin Dance, and hosts performances by other artists as well as the Alembic Resident Artist Program. ^[6] Austin continues to choreograph and perform nonlinear and poetic works. She employs improvisation, humor, objects and sound in her performances and her work offers alternatives to “dancerly” movement. ^[1]

Of her own sensibility, Austin has said, "Prettiness is different from beauty [. . .] Pretty is kind of standard. Beauty can be almost anything. A lot of things I see are small moments of beauty that other people don’t see". ^[4]

Personal life

Austin is married to lighting designer Jeff Forbes. Austin and Forbes initially met at Lewis and Clark College, but fell out of touch for many years. The two met again when Austin was visiting Portland in 1997 and began a long distance relationship. ^[5] Austin’s decision to move from New York to Portland was, in-part, to be with Forbes. ^[6]

Major works

An Atrocity Exhibition in Two Parts (1983), Austin’s first work, was part of a series at Danspace Project curated by Craig Bromberg for performers who had never made their own work. Assisted by a deadpan Todd Ayoung, reproductions of art masterpieces were ripped out of a book and displayed as part of a faux auction along with brief stop-watch-timed dances by Austin. In part two, Austin, “a body whose intensities are both discontinuous and mysterious,” segued smoothly through a series of poses, echoing the bodies in a series of larger than life projected images taken from advertising and the news. ^[7]

PIG (1998) was an ensemble work choreographed by Austin and performed in 1998 at Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church in New York, NY. The work was performed by Austin, Sigal Bergman, Clarinda Mac Low, Gwynneth Malin, Katherine Marx, Julie Atlas Muz, and Adrienne Truscott with sound composed and performed by Leslie Ross, and lighting by David Fritz. ^[8] Throughout, the dancers and Ross interacted with objects such as a lamp with a decorated shade, green plastic turf, a large barrel with rubber flippers rolling across the stage, ^[8] as well as “wind-up toys and a field of eggshells crushed by the composer". ^[4] The work comprised three sections taking inspiration from Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector titled, “We Are That Thing Which Must Happen", "In Search of the Real Pig," and "Avid Matter, Hungry Matter". ^[8]

Big Real (2004) was a solo performance by Austin examining constructed and shifting identities via a fascination with imposters and forgers. This work incorporated video, pez dolls, songs, and her own impersonation of Thomas Chatterton as painted by Henry Wallis. ^[9]

Circus Me Around (2007) was a solo, a quartet and a work for six dancers. It took place simultaneously in three different parts of a warehouse space divided into three sections by scaffolding wrapped in shrink wrap—a set designed by the architecture collective Rhiza A+D. After 17 minutes, the audience rotated to a new position, and the piece started over again. Throughout the these repetitions, two dancers inside the second level of the scaffolding took one hour to slowly cross and pass each other. Forbes provided lighting design and Seth Nehil provided music. The work was performed by a cast of 13: Austin, Esther Petrocine, Paige McKinney, Katrina O’Brien, Anne Furfey, Rikki Rothenberg, Kathleen Keogh, David Rafn, Aowyn Jones, Cydney Wilkes, Gregg Bielemeier, Noelle Stiles, and Linda K. Johnson. ^{[10] [11]}.

Along with Linda K. Johnson, Cydney Wilkes and Tere Mathern, Austin was one of four choreographers to animate a site along the Lawrence Halprin-designed Portland Open Space Sequence as part of Frozen Music: The City Dance of Lawrence and Anna Halprin. This work, spearheaded by Randy Gragg, Ron Blessinger/Third Angle Music and Linda K. Johnson, drew more than one thousand people on a hot September day to close out the 2008 Time-Based Arts Festival. Austin’s piece took place in and around the Lovejoy Fountain. ^{[12] [13]}

A Head of Time (2012) was performed in 2012 at Imago Theatre by Austin in collaboration with eight other dancers: Philippe Bronchtein, gin diehl, Catherine Egan, keyon gaskin, Esther Petrocine, Danielle Ross, and Lu Yim. Exploring themes of loss, mortality, the passage of time, and memory, the work was an “abstract, multimedia meditation” dedicated to Austin’s sister and nephew, both of whom died in 2011. ^[14] The work was framed on stage by a structure containing 300 stacked blankets with a video of the changing faces of Austin’s family members projected upon it and small TVs on the perimeter of the stage playing footage of Austin dancing. A Head of Time featured choreography performed often by simultaneous and evolving groups of dancers in unison, the use of objects including blankets, chairs, hammers, and a microphone, song and text accompanying movement. It included sound design by Nehil lighting design by Forbes. Austin’s solo version of A Head of Time was performed in both Mexico and Portland, Oregon. ^[15]

Three Trick Pony (2013)—created and performed by Austin with sculptural props by David Eckard, music by Doug Theriault, and lighting design by Forbes—depicted an intimate face-off between performer and sculptural installation. It has been described as follows: "As Austin passes through the interactive environment, the objects echo, interrupt, and amplify her gestures. This skin-to-skin collision highlights the impressibility of both body and sculpture, a shuttling back and forth of cause and effect that blurs the nominal separation between body and outside world". ^[16] It premiered in 2013 at Portland Institute for Contemporary Art’s Time-Based Art Festival in 2013. ^[17] The props featured were custom-made for the performance, often to the measurements of Austin’s body. ^[18]

Ordinary Devotions (2019), a solo work by Austin, examined the extraordinary and ordinary aspects of the aging body and the “tactile and tender apprehension of the world to hand”. ^[19] Austin’s set was adorned with objects including spools of thread, a white tarp, a twig, cassette tapes, stones, and shoes which were arranged with a “seemingly methodical, even devotional precision. ^[20] Describing her approach to the work, Austin noted, “I’ve always had this fascination with the extraordinary in the ordinary. I like doing something weird with a matter-of-factness…I’m interested in the ‘thingness’ of the body versus the animated nature of things. Finding this commonality and endowing each [thing] with the qualities of the other intrigues me." ^[20] Austin’s collaborative team included sound designer Juniana Lanning, video artist Kelly Rauer, and Forbes.

(Un)Made (2015-2020), a series of three works:

• Solo Relay Series (2015) series was performed over several weekends between March and August at Performance Works NW. Operating like a game of “telephone”, the series began with Austin performing a 30-minute solo, with two performers among the audience who then performed their versions of the solo a month later. The relay teams were made of the following dancers: Relay Team #1: keyon gaskin & gin diehl; Relay Team #2: Linda K. Johnson & Matthew Shyka; Relay Team #3: Robert Tyree & Nancy Ellis; Relay Team #4: Jen Hackworth & Tahni Holt. The series ended with a reprise of Linda Austin's original solo, followed by a group performance of the solo by claire barrera, Danielle Ross, Noelle Stiles and Taka Yamamoto. ^[21] As part of the work, dramaturg/scribe Allie Hankins engaged in a consistent, almost daily writing practice that reflected the process of the performers as they created versions of the solo relay dance from individual memory and notes. ^[22]
• The Last Bell Rings for You (2016) was the second installment of the (Un)Made series. It premiered at Shaking the Tree Theater in November 2016. The cast featured core artists claire barrera, gin diehl, Nancy Ellis, Jen Hackworth, Allie Hankins, keyon gaskin, Danielle Ross, Noelle Stiles and Takahiro Yamamoto, and eighteen other community members, many of whom were not trained dancers. A description of the work by Penelope Bass in Willamette Week stated, “The performers are given free rein in the space, alternately flitting from spot to spot like butterflies before falling into marching band-style formations and quickly dissolving again. Every shuffle of shoe and slap of foot becomes part of the hypnotic rhythm of the sparse and primarily sound-based score. Ordinary objects—a basketball, an empty box, a potted plant—are examined as if alien artifacts or holy relics. Singing and vocalizing ranges from silly to haunting, and light and shadow become performers in and of themselves with the help of lighting designer and PWNW co-founder Jeff Forbes.” ^[23]
• A World, A World represents the final part of Austin's (Un)Made series. Performed in December 2017 ^[24] and January 2020 at Performance Works NW, it featured sound design by Nehil and lighting design by Forbes. The work has been articulated as "a collection of movements taken from the other two phases of the process, reworked and re-imagined into a completely new idea that is performed in two disparate worlds—one oversaturated with repeated patterns in darkness, and the other quiet, clean, and peaceful and full of light". ^[2] The 2017 cast featured Austin alongside claire barrera, gin diehl, Nancy Ellis, keyon gaskin, Jen Hackworth, Allie Hankins, Danielle Ross, Noelle Stiles, and Takahiro Yamamoto. ^[25] The 2020 cast featured Austin alongside claire barrera, Muffie Delgado Connelly, Nancy Ellis, Hannah Krafcik, Danielle Ross, and Noelle Stiles. ^[2]

/ə ˈsɪŋgəl pɪŋk klɑʊd/ (2022) was collaboratively created and performed by Austin and dancer/choreographer Allie Hankins with scenic design by Maggie Heath, sound design by Lanning, and lighting design by Forbes. /ə ˈsɪŋgəl pɪŋk klɑʊd/ took inspiration from surrealist painters such as Gertrude Abercrombie and Leonora Carrington. ^[26] Austin and Hankins used "movement, objects, words, and song to celebrate (or bemoan?) the unstable, unpredictable world and the revelations yielded by a rigorous yet playful devotion to unlikely pairings and (re)combinations". ^[27] The in-person performance premiered in April 2022 at Performance Works NW, and a live stream performance/video iteration of the work premiered during the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2021. ^{[26] [28]}

3 miles of possible (2021-2023) was a long-form solo performance in which Austin explored "what is possible in a world of fluctuating personal, material, political, and artistic contingencies, as she wanders through a variety of movement scores, choreographies, tasks, guest artists, texts, songs, and sound compositions.” These actions took place along specific spatial paths that Austin followed, a trajectory of 3 miles, mostly inside, and partly outside, the performance space. An accompanying artist book designed by Noelle Stiles and with a foreword by Kate Bredeson comprised a constellation of drawings, photos, and language Austin created while working on the dance. ^[29]

Awards

• Regional Arts & Culture Council 2014 Fellowship in Performing Arts ^[30]
• 2017 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Merce Cunningham Award ^[1]
• 2007 & 2019, Oregon Arts Commission Fellowship ^{[11] [31]}

Publications

• Co-editor Movement Research #16 FAME, Spring 1998 ^{[32] [33]}
• “Pigs, Barrels and Obstinate Thrummers” Essay with Leslie Ross for Women, Art and Technology, Judy Malloy, editor. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003 (Leonardo Series) ^[34]

References