OCTAVIO CAMPOS’ NEW MULTIMEDIA MEDITATION
ON SEX, LIES, AND DEATH-WISH EROTICISM -
Co-commissioned and co-presented by Carnival Center and Miami Dade College Cultura del Lobo
October 25-27 @ 8 p.m.
MIAMI, FL October X, 2007 – Having received rave reviews last season for his dance-theater drama Kitchen Monkey, Miami-based artist Octavio Campos premieres his newest work – The Bugchasers – at Carnival Center for the Performing Arts on Thursday, October 25, with subsequent performances on Friday and Saturday, October 26 and 27. Sensual and violent yet hilarious and heartbreaking, The Bugchasers is a dance-theater meditation on sex, lies, and death-wish eroticism co-presented and co-commissioned by Miami Dade College Cultural del Lobo and Carnival Center. Through high-intensity visuals and provocative texts, the Camposition Ensemble, directed by Campos, tells a dark story of those who would risk their lives to achieve a twisted sense of intimacy. Gay and straight, male and female--anyone could be a Bugchaser.
Featuring a cast of local performers ranging in age from teens to early sixties, The Bugchasers examines “love” in contemporary culture and explores the world of Bugchasers - men who seek to become HIV positive. Through video projections, gripping choreography and in-your-face performance, Bugchasers questions whether the human need for belonging and contact has led to a new eroticism or become a monstrous force for self-annihilation.
Fulfilling Carnival Center’s mission to nurture local artists and its ongoing initiative to present cutting-edge and thought-provoking works to a vast audience.
The show is currently preparing for a world tour beginning September 2008.
For bookings contact touring@camposition.org.
Show pics taken by Jeffrey Delanoy
ARTIST STATEMENT
Octavio Campos ..."I am a choreographer, director and creative surgeon, making cuts inside of social issues, global metaphor’s and life’s ironies. The body - collective and individual, is my special territory and I work deep within it, making incisions where communal consciousness is formed.
My exploratory surgery is created by suturing dance, theater, music, circus, visual arts and science. Combining these resources I approach my subject matter, (sometimes the artist, sometimes the audience) by allowing my specimens to participate in the creation of the work. The instruments used for this procedure are in- depth movement analysis, associative theater technique, improvisation dramaturgy and choreography, motivated by a series of subversive questions provoked by extreme social behavior. My physical examination of these realities become like plastic surgery finding provocative beauty in disturbingly ugly things.
I compose using the research of my choreographic diagnosis preparing an engaging multidisciplinary theater experience to create a language that is guttural, instinctual and controversial. My choreographic treatment of these bodies and phenomenon, express my acute fear of the world we live in. My hybrid dance theater works are a direct response to the world’s staged sensuality and political corruption, as well as the self-destructive practices engendered by the cult of the perfect body. "
Movies
KITCHEN MONKEY (2007)
IPO - MONEY LAUNDERING SERIAL
DEVELOPMENTUS INTERRUPTUS
I AM THE MOON
SHOW WITH JULIE ATLAS MUZ
LUNA DEL PINGUINO
CIRC X
Heroes
Martin Luther "The KING", Peter Brook, Derek Jarman, Klaus Nomi, Antonin Artaud, Bertold Brecht and Pina Baush.
Octavio Campos – Miami born, Cuban American choreographer, performance artist and teacher, has been creating risk taking theater since 1989. After attending SUNY Purchase and the Martha Graham School he went to Germany to work with Birgitta Trommler and studied dance theater at the Folkwang Schule of Pina Bausch. After an extensive performance and directing career in Europe collaborating within the works of Robert Wilson, Philip Glass and Vivienne Newport, he returned to Miami and founded, CAMPOSITION– a multidisciplinary ensemble dedicated to pushing the boundaries between contemporary performance and activism. He has received numerous grants, commissions and awards notably by Miami Light Project, Carnival Center for the Performing Arts, Florida Dance Festival, Miami Dade College, Teatro Municipal Lima, Klapstuk, Berliner Theater Treffen, The Bolschoi Berlin, State Theater Darmstadt and the Civic Theater Munster. He has served on the faculty of the New World School of the Arts since 1995.
Who I'd like to meet:
cultural impressarios, performance artists, progressive thinkers, doers, actorvists, intellectuals, dramaturgs, V J's, freaks, homothugs, designers, art collectors, radical fairies, mac users and their friends.
i wanted to let you know that we're filming at churchills "can you rock a little softer" tonight. i'm trying to help promote r&r and "c.y.r.a.l.s!" we need TRUE FANS to come and support!!!!
I miss you already!! Sorry I did not get to say a proper goodbye. My departure was sudden and unexpected. Thank you for the kind words in your letter. Please get in touch with me when you head this way!! Much love! XOXO
