Degenerate Art Ensemble: Skeleton Flower
March 15 - 17, 2024
ODC Theater
Skeleton Flower is a semi-autobiographical exploration of complex struggles with identity, depression, childhood trauma, and the awakening of personal power. Degenerate Art Ensemble confronts these issues with humor and imagination—casting family as monsters from a Godzilla movie—and traces personal struggle through three fairy tales. Existing at the intersection of live music, visceral movement theater, dance, projected cinematic imagery, storytelling, and ritual, Skeleton Flower is a multi-dimensional patchwork quilt that conjures and consoles female ancestors through hand felted wools, ten thousand hand painted silk flowers, and knitted sweaters which fill fantastic worlds in the work’s cinematic imagery.
Degenerate Art Ensemble makes performances inspired by punk, comics, cinema, nightmares and fairytales driven by live music and their own style of physical theater and butoh inspired dance. They combine projected imagery with the movement and sound to create new mythologies, revealing other dimensions, challenging reality in a multi-dimensional storytelling experience. Highlights of their work includes a residency at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, a commission from director Robert Wilson and a collaboration with Kronos Quartet. The work Skeleton Flower was premiered at the SPOTLIGHT USA dance festival in Bulgaria presented by American Dance Abroad, and has since been shown at the International Festival of Contemporary Dance in Mexico City, the Hans Christian Andersen Festival in Odense, Denmark and in Seattle at On The Boards. Their new work Boy mother / faceless bloom created with visual artist Senga Nengudi and musician Yuniya Kwon was commissioned by Colorado College, shown at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati and at NY Live Arts in November of 2023.
Made possible with funding from 4Culture and the Seattle Mayor's Office of Arts. Video production made possible by Zoobreak Productions.
Discounted Tickets
Purchase any ticket to an ODC presented performance and get 15% off your next purchase of any ODC presented performance with code ODC15OFF at checkout.
Have a night out with friends at this Winter 23/24 Season! ODC is offering a group discount of 10% off orders of 6+ tickets. Use code ‘ODC10’ at checkout.
Friday, March 15, 2024 at 7:30pm
Saturday, March 16, 2024 at 7:30pm
Sunday, March 17, 2024 at 5:00pm (ASL provided & Addt’l Wheelchair Accessibility)
Curaed by Chloë L. Zimberg
Skeleton Flower making workshop: A Matter of the soul
March 9, 2024
11:00am
Please join the Silk Flowers of Hope and Healing Ceremony with us!
Gather with the artists of Degenerate Art Ensemble where through craft and ceremony we will hold the soul matters most important to you. In this workshop, we will cut silk flowers, paint them, and stitch them onto the Flower Shaman dress. This is the ceremonial garment that helps transform shared recorded stories of pain and trauma into healing and growth in the finale of Skeleton Flower. Workshop participants are encouraged to add their own anonymously recorded voices; These voices will be honored in a ritual portion of the live mainstage performance the following weekend, and the stories are shared with the hope of encouraging others to hold their difficulties, traumas and personal struggles and to find healing in communal ritual action.
DAE artists will do a small ritual at the end of the class, blessing the flowers as animate beings which are now freshly infused with your care, attention, love and life!
Free admission. Reservation required.
Arts Access Tickets
ODC offers a limited number of free and/or lower-cost Art Access tickets to every ODC presented performance. These additionally subsidized tickets, available on a first-come, first-serve basis, are reserved for those for whom price is a barrier.
Accessibility at ODC
ODC Theater is ADA Accessible. For all ODC/Dance and ODC Theater presented performances, ASL is provided for shows with performed text for at least one performance during the show run. Additional wheelchair seating is provided for select shows. Captioning is provided for all Digital Encores. ODC Theater restrooms are All-Gender and All-Gender restrooms are located upstairs, outside of Studio B in ODC Dance Commons. Please see individual event pages for more information. Questions? Please contact the ODC Box Office at boxoffice@odc.dance.
Land Acknowledgement
ODC is on the ancestral lands of the Ramaytush People in Yelamu. We pay respects to elders past and present, who are still here and part of our community. We recognize that regenerative land management is not new, but is a continuation of practices from Native cultures and from our own ancestors. It is our responsibility to steward the land with care, as our elders did before us.