Performance Art

It sounds fun and funny: Native artists riff off their favorite TV shows that feature Indians, such as the "Seinfeld" episode when Jerry buys Elaine a cigar store Indian. "It's Not TV, It's Indians!" would be the first-ever piece of performance art at the National Museum of the American Indian. Yet here is Skeena Reece, of Métis, Cree, Tsimshian and Gitskan heritage, wearing a nurse's uniform and menacingly tapping an oversize syringe against her palm. She glares at the crowd seated in the Rasmuson Theater.

The Washington Post is proud to sponsor SUPERNOVA, a Rosslyn Arts Project, in its inaugural year. SUPERNOVA runs from June 7-9 and features free performance arts piece in public spaces all over Rosslyn. Emerging and established local, regional, national and international performance artists will come to Northern Virginia to present an expansive range of positions and approaches to performance art. Performance art, live art, body art, relational art, action art, happenings, actions, interventions and more will take place in raw spaces,...

It seems like your average Friday, as the sweaty, suited masses ascend the Rosslyn stairmaster and enter Washington's alcove of white-collar ennui. From Metro, they will travel their usual routes: left to Deloitte or the Corporate Executive Board. Right to the media mills of Politico. Up Wilson Boulevard to buildings with blacked-out windows, places where 4G networks mysteriously shut down. But if all goes according to a loosely devised plan, Rosslyn's workers will pass through the looking glass into the...

It seems like your average Friday, as the sweaty, suited masses ascend the Rosslyn stairmaster and enter Washington's alcove of white-collar ennui. From Metro, they will travel their usual routes: left to Deloitte or the Corporate Executive Board. Right to the media mills of Politico. Up Wilson Boulevard to buildings with blacked-out windows, places where 4G networks mysteriously shut down. But if all goes according to a loosely devised plan, Rosslyn's workers will pass through the looking glass into the...

Many contemporary artists marry art and politics in pursuit of a social agenda or to expose a political peculiarity. But in Russia, one group of artists is weaponizing performance art, turning it into a tool to terrorize the state. Since 2007, Russian activists operating under the name "Voina" — the Russian word for "war" — have been performing anti-state, anti-authoritarian, frequently violent and patently illegal acts as artworks. They hosted a sit-down dinner party on a Moscow subway train,...

The Washington Post is proud to sponsor SUPERNOVA, a Rosslyn Arts Project, in its inaugural year. SUPERNOVA runs from June 7-9 and features free performance arts piece in public spaces all over Rosslyn. Emerging and established local, regional, national and international performance artists will come to Northern Virginia to present an expansive range of positions and approaches to performance art. Performance art, live art, body art, relational art, action art, happenings, actions, interventions and more will take place in...

At 10 a.m. on Aug. 11, Kathryn Cornelius will wear a white gown and walk toward her betrothed to exchange vows before a crowd of assembled guests. An ordained minister will officiate, then the pair will drink champagne, cut the cake and gaze into each other's eyes as they dance their first dance. And then they will divorce. At 11 a.m. she'll do it all over again with someone new. And at noon, 1 p.m., 2 p.m., 3 p.m. and every hour on the hour until she has wed and divorced seven people.

Selling contemporary art is one thing. Selling performance art is another. But selling performance art for charity is nearly unheard of. Yet the District of Columbia Arts Center in Adams Morgan is betting that it can not only build a fundraiser out of performance, it can make a performance out of a fundraiser. On Thursday, DCAC is hosting its first experience auction — a live auction in which experiences, not things, will hit the auction block. Attendees will have the opportunity to bid on...

The problem with reviewing a performance-art piece like the "Tactile Dinner Car," which depends on constant surprise, is that one cannot actually reveal anything about the play. We can tell you it is futurist, that it is held in the middle of the Capital Fringe Festival's crowded beer garden, and that when you check in you will receive a menu of dishes (each a performance-art piece) with names like "Devil in Black Key" and such descriptions as "contrasting free-form arabesques of cream...

Dada, in case anyone slept through art history class, was a movement that was inherently anti-art. It is purposefully meaningless, every piece of nonsense a rejection of the art world. In a way, Dada is all about the confidence to say what is and is not art — but mostly it becomes a philosophical Mobius strip. Everything we say is meaningful is a joke we're playing on ourselves, it tells us, and when we as an audience find meaning in it, we're proving the natural human tendency to make nonsense...

Randall Fleischer is a Los Angeles-based composer and music director. But he's also a dance dad, which means he spends a lot of time waiting in the lobby of his daughter's ballet studio. That's where Fleischer got the inspiration for one of his latest works. A few years back, he picked up a dance magazine in the lobby and read about Step Afrika!, the Washington company that has elevated stepping to a high art. Stepping, which originated in the fraternity and sorority system at historically black colleges, is a...

Darkness permeates choreographer Nora Chipaumire's latest work, " Miriam . " The hour-long piece begins in near blackness, forcing viewers to let their eyes adjust and, Chipaumire hopes, activate their other senses. "It is disconcerting, but I think it is also liberating at the same time," the Zimbabwean-born choreographer says of dancing in the dark, with sometimes just a headlamp or a bare light bulb illuminating the stage. But the murkiness clears up when Chipaumire explains...

More than 40 University of Maryland, College Park, architecture students are creating environmentally conscious designs for a proposed performing arts center in North Beach. On Feb. 8, the students and their professors met with North Beach residents and community leaders to discuss the town's regulations for designs and development, and how the community wants the center to look. Mayor Mark Frazer said the town connected with the architecture class months ago through Aaron Warren, a resident on...

T aryn Simon's art doesn't look like it was made by an individual. Her photographic displays are so orderly and spare that one might think they were assembled by a committee, perhaps human rights activists documenting some horrendous government crime, or lawyers laying out their case for a class-action suit. Row after row of relentlessly similar portraits have the limited expressive power of a high school yearbook, or a Most Wanted poster on a post office...

Floating in the pool of the Capitol Skyline Hotel, Chajana denHarder has begun "Singularity," a performance-art piece involving a clear plastic ball. Nearby, the turntables and mixer are in place for a DJ set by Thievery Corporation's Eric Hilton. In the underground garage, two Corcoran students in eight-foot-high satyr/centaur get-ups readily pose for photos, although they decline to speak. Outside, on South Capitol Street, cars and trucks thunder by artlessly. The...

On Thursday, while on a campaign trip to Florida, President Obama held an impromptu photo op with a gaggle of day campers. The president leaned down to address the crowd of mostly brown-skinned children and asked, "Are you reading?" Saturday night at Dance Place , a performance-art piece about the myths of success in black America offered a response: "I'm reading! I'm reading! I'm reading!" exclaimed Jaamil Olawale Kosoko. He was rolling on the floor chained to a basketball at the time.

A number of questions run through your mind during a John Maus concert. What's he saying? Is he being serious? Is he okay? Isn't this a Kajagoogoo song? Who told that kid dancing up front that was an acceptable haircut? One question comes up more than any other: What's the point? When Maus performs, as he did Tuesday at the Black Cat's backstage, it's like '80s karaoke night minus the hits — plus a hint of crazy. For 25 minutes, the 31-year-old electronic-music composer stalked the stage, leapt into the air, pulled his hair and...

CORRECTION: The article gave incorrect dates for the visual and performance art event "G-40: The Summit. " It will be open in Crystal City on Wednesdays through Sundays, March 3-27. Opening night is March 3, not March 1 . Saturday and Sunday: Breaux Vineyards in Purcellville hosts a Chocolate and Cabernet Weekend in its intimate barrel room decorated with candles and roses. Eight cabernets are paired with exotic truffles and treats from Chocolaterie Wanders. (Then stay for lunch or wine in the tasting room.)

At 10 a.m. on Aug. 11, Kathryn Cornelius will wear a white gown and walk toward her betrothed to exchange vows before a crowd of assembled guests. An ordained minister will officiate, then the pair will drink champagne, cut the cake and gaze into each other's eyes as they dance their first dance. And then they will divorce. At 11 a.m. she'll do it all over again with someone new. And at noon, 1 p.m., 2 p.m., 3 p.m. and every hour on the hour until she has wed and divorced seven people.