By JOHN BURNETT
By JOHN BURNETT
Tribune-Herald staff writer
Lee Michael Walczuk and Friends are presenting a free evening of multimedia performance art Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at the East Hawaii Cultural Center in downtown Hilo.
The artistic ensemble features: Walczuk, a master mask maker, performance artist, actor and teacher, and family members Renata and Piotr; painter and poet Tomas Belsky; Maui composer-pianist Robert Pollock; Maui painter-jazz guitarist Andrea Razzauti; musician-poet Gene Tamashiro; and performance artist Linda Kane.
The performances include: “Radio Music” by composer John Cage; multimedia experiments featuring painting, dance, and music; shadow theater; original video; a group improv with audience participation; poetry; and works for solo piano by George Walker, Edward T. Cone and Henry Cowell, as performed by Pollock.
“I’ll use that misunderstood word ‘abstract,’” Walczuk said Wednesday. “This is meant to be an abstract creative evening. You might not be able to follow an exact storyline, this is where it begins and this is what happened. No. You might see a dolphin; another person might see an atom bomb. That’s what it’s meant to do, to stimulate the audience to the point of creative experience.”
Walczuk said the collaborative multimedia show germinated from an idea by Pollock, the director of Ebb & Flow Arts.
“He basically had a very powerful avant garde music group, and he was interested in showing some light (and) doing some vocal work along with his music, and I introduced him to shadows and projections and masks and puppets,” he said.Walczuk said the audience will “be invited onto the stage … to choose music and images to help Robert decide which way the score of the music will go through the evening.” The goal is to create a “multi-imagery, multi-music, multi-movement” experience.
“I even have what I call a moving shadow screen, where there are, like, three dancers inside, and they move, and we project light on it, and light will (also) emanate from inside,” he said. Walczuk said he hopes the music, poetry and images will move the audience to dance, as well.
“I don’t want to use the word ‘happening,’ although some of us do hark back to the ’60s,” he said.
Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.