ERIC SLADE: It's Thursday afternoon
in southeast Portland.
In just two days, this vacant warehouse
is supposed to become this.
[ music playing ]
But first, a lot needs to happen.
So talk me through what's happening over here.
Portland Institute of Contemporary Art's
artistic director, Angela Mattox,
checks the progress.
Audience is going to be in this space,
can they be on either side of it or...?
A few days before the festival opens,
it's an incredibly intense time.
It's countless volunteers, all staff working, you know,
through the clock to get this whole festival
to come to fruition.
[ man speaking in French ]
Across town, a French theater troupe
has just arrived in Portland,
and they're struggling to get one last prop in place.
[ speaking in French ]
And, oh, the prop? It's a car.
And their show? It opens tomorrow.
Now imagine this same scene playing out
in nearly a dozen venues across town.
Welcome to the Time-Based Art Festival.
The TBA Festival is an extraordinary convergence
of contemporary art and ideas.
[ hip-hop music playing ]
It's 10 days of performances, visual art installations,
conversations, workshops, and late-night happenings
that take over various spaces throughout Portland.
Time-based art means any creative work
that takes place over time, like theater or dance.
The festival features dozens of artists
from across the country and around the world,
many premiering never-before-seen work.
One of the pieces I think audiences
are going to be most enamored with is a piece
by this French director named Philippe Quesne.
His company is Vivarium Studios, and the piece is called
"Melancholy of the Dragons."
[ audience laughs ]
Open machine!
MATTOX: It's kind of absurd and surreal and otherworldly.
He creates these amazing environments
in order to really share themes around humanity,
camaraderie, compassion, and imagination.
QUESNE: There are seven guys on a trip.
The car is broken, so they need to wait
seven days in the snow.
[ audience laughs ]
They create an amusement park about nature and the landscapes.
MAN: Amazing!
[ audience laughs ]
QUESNE: I really like in my performances
freedom of artists.
It's a very simple message,
but when you're artists, you can invent
and create your own world.
[ music plays ]
This show proves it's possible to be an artist on this planet.
MAN: The final attraction is the panorama.
Wow!
[ audience laughs ]
[ ??? ]
The Portland Institute for Contemporary Art
launched the Time-Based Art Festival back in 2003,
and TBA has grown stronger each year.
MATTOX: TBA is really regarded
as one of the most significant festivals in the country.
So, many people come to discover new artists,
to see new projects with the intention
of bringing that work to their community.
[ indistinct conversations ]
Tonight hundreds of people have come out
for the Portland premiere
of choreographer Amy O'Neal's new show, "Opposing Forces."
Amy O'Neal is a Seattle-based choreographer
who has one foot in the hip-hop world
and the other in the contemporary dance world,
and we've commissioned a new piece by her.
It's been a very interesting exchange
between her and this group of all-male B-boy dancers.
[ electronic hip-hop music plays ]
O'NEAL: My show, "Opposing Forces,"
is an exploration of the fear of the feminine in our culture
through the very masculine dance style of breaking,
or breakdancing, which is the media term.
[ hip-hop music plays ]
Breaking is such a historically very masculine dance,
and I wanted to see what would happen
if we explored what femininity is through that dance.
MAN: Sometimes being sensitive is a masculine trait.
For someone to be comfortable enough to be like that,
it shows a lot of strength.
O'NEAL: When the audience leaves "Opposing Forces,"
I really hope that they see hip-hop culture differently.
I really hope that the piece opens up
a sort of personal meditation on, yeah,
how you've been trained to see other people.
TBA doesn't stop when the show is over.
Workshops and noontime chats offer audiences
a way to connect directly with the artists.
When I was wanting to do this piece,
I was theorizing about the different value systems
between contemporary dance, commercial dance,
battling, ciphering.
Considering the longevity of hip-hop,
have you all seen the transformation
of your community, you know?
So what I'm seeing,
they look very similar to what we look like.
The thing that I am seeing is just growth
in the amount of dancers who are doing it now.
MATTOX: The audience can ask the question
directly to the artist.
For me, that's been a really powerful aspect
to the festival every year.
[ ??? ]
Do you have a voucher?
Dana Michel is a really extraordinary artist.
She's based in Montreal, Canada.
And I saw the piece "Yellow Towel"
about two years ago now,
and it's one of those pieces that just really stuck with me.
-- pay my bills, raise my babies,
take care of my mans, woman, all of them.
I started making this work as a response
to being framed as a black artist.
[ blowing random notes ]
And I realized that I had been
actively avoiding this conversation,
and so "Yellow Towel" is my way
of delving into that conversation.
Some kind of a vinegar,
something that will cut through all the bacterias and...
[ continues indistinctly ]
During the show, you will see me grappling with questions
of how I potentially see myself as a black woman in the world.
[ Jessy Dixon's "I Am Redeemed" plays ]
And you also see me potentially fulfilling
some kind of deep lifelong fantasy
of wanting to be a stand-up comedian...
[ laughs ]
somehow.
MATTOX: The "Yellow Towel"
is definitely a challenging piece for some.
It's... it's experimental, it's a performance art piece.
At the same time, I think that the ideas
are coming through really clearly,
but it will push some audience members, I think.
[ ??? ]
The TBA Festival is multidisciplinary,
and the inclusion of visual arts is really imperative
in terms of our overall identity.
It's so exciting that we're able to support artists
working in various kinds of visual art practice,
and it's so important to be able to have that range
of artistic disciplines and perspectives in the festival.
One of the real cornerstones of this year's festival
is a world premiere
by one of Portland's most interesting artists,
Holcombe Waller.
Holcombe's a really extraordinary composer,
songwriter, singer.
[ singing ]
WALLER: My project, which is titled "Requiem Mass,"
is about using some ceremony
rooted in the Roman Catholic requiem mass,
invoking the peaceful repose
of people of gender and sexual diversity who have died,
who have suffered persecution.
So as people walk into the church,
they're handed cards that ask them why requiem mass
commemorating people of gender and sexual diversity who've died
is important to them personally,
and it prompts them with the sentence, "Because 'blank.'"
So we're going to collect those cards,
and then an usher's going to hand them to me
when I approach the podium
and during that specific section of the mass.
? Because my aunts couldn't get married or adopt a child ?
? Because differences shouldn't matter, mm-mmm ?
? Because Jessie's suicide broke Judy's heart... ?
It's designed to be very quiet and open and spacious at the top
so that the audience can really hear
the things they've written down,
and they can hear their own statements read.
? Because reclaiming is an act of love ?
? Because I want to be a part of something beautiful... ?
And then it builds to create a sense
of poignancy and fervor around them.
? Because they are my family, because they are my elders ?
? Because I have been targeted since childhood
because of my gender expression... ?
Anything I would hope that a requiem mass like this,
and the beauty of the cathartic experience
for the audience and the choir, really,
would be to mitigate violence and hate.
CHOIR: ? Amen ??
[ hip-hop music plays ]
? TBA festival havin' fun in here ?
? Come on, let's do it, let's do it... ?
But TBA isn't just theaters and shows.
It's also a place to party
and dive into late-night, high-energy performances.
MATTOX: Throughout the festival,
people are really rigorously engaging
with challenging projects,
and we want, at the end of the night,
to provide another space for them to relax
and make sense of what they experienced
and to meet people.
ANNOUNCER: And now you both get to work it together.
Work it out, girl!
[ audience cheering and music plays ]
MATTOX: One of the highlights is an event
called "Critical Mascara."
It's this amazing contemporary drag ball.
ANNOUNCER: And pause.
Yes, final pose. Yes, hold it!
MATTOX: And we really decided this needed to be
an annual event at The Works.
[ ??? ]
Seventy-five events, 380 volunteers,
15,000 audience members all in just 10 days.
Those who show up are thrilled, entertained, challenged,
and sometimes perplexed.
And for Angela Mattox, that's just the way she wants it.
The TBA Festival is a bit of a place of utopia for me.
I love this idea of a community coming together
and creating something, a much bigger conversation.
The TBA Festival, it's about nurturing openness and dialogue,
and I think the world needs more of that right now.