a one-night only performance
Southern Exposure (SoEx) presents four solo exhibitions and projects by: Mike Lai, Genevieve Quick, Lacey Jane Roberts and Andy Vogt.
Mike Lai’s work explores his fascination with Kung Fu genre films, and in particular Bruce Lee. Interested in how these films have influenced Asian cultural identities through extreme spectacle, Lai’s work incorporates these performative strategies as a way to question cultural implications. For his solo exhibition at Southern Exposure, Lai juxtaposes the traditional with the contemporary in The Legendary Lions versus the Fists of Fury. In a one-night performance, traditional lion dancers and Chinese musicians will face off with Bruce Lee’s life-sized fists accompanied by a local scratch DJ in an epic battle to celebrate the Chinese New Year.
*This project is a one-night only performance scheduled to take place on Friday, February 26, 2010, 8 pm. Doors open at 7:30pm. Stay tuned for more info.
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essay by Weston Teruya
Chinese lion dancers bounce across the floor with staccato movements to the beat of drums and cymbal crashes. After sizing up the performance, dancers draped in oversized, disembodied replicas of Bruce Lee’s fists of fury face off against the lion. The sharp response of a turntable needle at a DJ’s fingers accent their array of dynamic moves. The showdown, Mike Lai’s performance piece titled The Legendary Lions Versus the Fists of Fury, matches the acrobatic athleticism of a traditional lion dance against the analog approximations of martial arts movie special effects used by the Bruce Lee dance crew. This kinetic scene, orchestrated by Lai for his solo show at Southern Exposure, seems equal parts America’s Best Dance Crew spectacle, climactic battle between martial arts masters, and nod to the celebratory blessing typically signified by a lion dance. But these points in his referential constellation are only some of the cultural markers he has been drawing down for years as part of his artistic practice. His recombinant performances, centering on the artist (often in the guise of Lee), use Lee’s pop culture versatility to playfully suggest the flexible possibilities of remixed identities.
More information here: http://soex.org/Exhibit/80.html
