“Show me some physics, baby!” cries out the tall scientist in the white lab coat, rallying her students to move their molecules. Except in this case the students’ experiments are more Dancing with the Stars than Bill Nye the Science Guy.
GASP! was born five years ago out of CL’s desire to add a performing arts component to Gasparilla Arts Month (aka March), whose multiple festivals showcased visual art, music and film but didn’t include dance, theater or other performance-based hybrids. Tampa’s beautiful museum, which had been open just a few years at that point, was interested in finding new ways to re-introduce itself to the community, and GASP! (as in the last gasp of Gasparilla, and also the name of an erstwhile TMA journal) proved to be an ideal opportunity for a partnership. With the solid support of the Tampa Downtown Partnership, Mise en Place, and Tampa International Airport, we’ve been able to steadily expand the scope and ambition of the fest each year.
Air-Earth-Fire-Water is a case in point. It represents the first time we’ve been able to spread out to the slope at the western end of the museum, just above the Riverwalk — and it’s also the first time we’re adding a free component to the festivities. If you’re out for a stroll by the river Friday night, you’ll be able to see A-E-F-W’s billowing blue parachutes and dancing scientists without walking around the museum to the GASP! ticketing table. If so, enjoy! A-E-F-W boasts about as stellar a local dance/theater lineup as you’ll find in these parts. Written by arguably Tampa Bay’s hottest playwright, Sheila Cowley, and choreographed by Helen Hansen French and Paula Kramer of St. Pete’s burgeoning dance scene, its cast includes Eugenie Bondurant (aka The Hunger Games’ Tigris) and Chris Rutherford, and dancers Alex Jones of Collective Soles, Erin Cardinal and Brian Fidalgo of Moving Current fame, and the Juilliard-trained Buglisi Dance alum French. It’s literate, funny, moving and profound, and I highly recommend it.
Below is a full-on schedule of what’s happening when — because, like any festival, you’re going to have make some difficult choices. If you opt for VIP tickets, you’ll gain early entry (6-7 p.m.) and improve your chances of seeing the supremely talented Roxanne Fay and Jan Neuberger in solo performances, the mesmerizing Santiago Echeverry and company in the atrium, and Tom Sivak’s Frankie and Gianni. But you may be distracted by Kasondra Rose on the plaza stage — or by the first performance of A-E-F-W at 6:30 (it will be repeated at 7:30 and 8:30, so you’ll have other chances to see it, or to see it more than once).
But come 7, will you watch the Irish step dancers or step down the hall to Ari Richter’s “Arioke?” Will you catch the perennial favorites from the Heard Em Say Youth Arts Collective between 8 and 9, or will you chill in the Infinity Lounge with Billy Mays III? And will you plan to be in place to dance your ass off when The Real Clash makes its return to GASP! at 9, or linger inside to watch the endlessly varied dance offerings?
Or you could also leave it all to serendipity. Don’t make a plan, just go wherever your heart, your feet, your stomach or your head lead you.
And check in once in a while on Brian Feldman, won’t you? He lasted four hours inside that cramped skill crane machine last year, but his GASP 4 Hours project is a whole nother thing.
GASP!ARILLA SLOPE
6:30, 7:30 & 8:30: Air-Earth-Fire-Water
Two actors, four dancers, and a hill — plus parachutes, a kiddie car and who knows what else? Scientists wrangling with the real world join dancers exploring imaginative movement in this joyous outdoor work created especially for GASP! by an all-star team of local artists: playwright Sheila Cowley, dancer/choreographer Helen Hansen French, co-choreographer Paula Kramer, actors Eugenie Bondurant and Chris Rutherford, and dancers French, Erin Cardinal, Brian Fidalgo and Alex Jones.
6-6:30: Kasondra Rose. A singer whose voice has variously been described by press (including CL) as silky, buttery, warm and enchanting, Rose will perform a set from her latest album of original music, Out of Thin Air, that utilizes the TCHelicon VoiceLive Touch, a vocal/instrument looper that allows her to layer vocal sounds and effects to deliver a rich, textured performance.
7-7:30: Jim Chambers Music Box presents Sick Hot. The Best of the Bay-winning music academy turns out great young bands, and Sick Hot is one of the best: three teens who will rock your world (including a guitarist Chambers calls a “borderline prodigy”).
8-8:30: Zerobabies. CL alum Joe Bardi returns to make some big noise with his band Zerobabies and their brand of “instrumental rock/punk/funk/whatever-it-is” — plus fractals!
9-9:30: The Real Clash. This hip-hop-influenced band of “harmonically apt beatniks” has made a big mark since graduating from SPC’s Music Industry Recording Arts program. At last year’s GASP! they tore the place up, and they’re eager to do it again with a set of “awesome new material.”
9:30-10: Frankie and Gianni: A Mini Rock Opera. In award-winning composer Tom Sivak’s humorous twist on the traditional tale of Frankie and Johnny, rock ‘n’ roller Frankie discovers her man has done her wrong — by singing opera! Colleen Cherry and Brandon Evans star.
MID-PLAZA
6-9, various times
Body art by The Curiositorium (Nicole Hays & A.J. Vaughan). We saw one side of Nicole’s unique talents last year at GASP! as she contorted herself acrobatically inside a sphere and danced playfully with A.J. Vaughan. But Nicole is also a superb body artist — she made it to the Final Four in the first season of Skin Wars — and this year that’s the genre in which she’ll be making us gasp.
Mark Byrne’s Balloon Fashions & Poppin’ for Dollars. He’s the man who popped out of a giant balloon at GASP! 2017, leaving an indelible impression on all who saw it. This year he shows us another side of his ballooning talents: eye-popping balloon fashions, like the ones that he’s dazzled audiences with at Dunedin Fine Art Center’s annual Wearable Art show. Plus, there’s a bonus for the luckiest balloon-poppers.
ChaseDance: Heavy the Rise. Dancer/choreographer Mary Chase Doll is known for site-specific work in surprising places. Maybe she’ll surprise you, too.
Noel Rochford on electric ukulele. The rollicking, roving electric ukelele virtuoso will once again be all over GASP!, playing solo as well as providing improvised sounds for Moving Current and other dance artists.
Jonelle Meyer: The ever-hilarious and versatile actress will be present in multiple guises, including her Best of the Bay-winning newscaster Mort LaCourt.
6-7: Crane Wives, w. Santiago Echeverry, Marie Yoho Dorsey and Elena Cifuentes. UT’s resident visionary returns to GASP! in a new collaboration with acclaimed multi-disciplinary artists Dorsey and Cifuentes that incorporates dance, theater and fabric art. It’s based on the Japanese fable “The Crane Wife,” in which a man rescues an injured crane and returns it to the wild, then marries a mysterious woman whose talent for weaving greatly increases his wealth — and his greed.
7:00: Step dancers from Scariff/Gilleoghan School of Irish Dance. GASP! takes place on St. Paddy’s Day Eve, so who better to join the festivities than a troupe of fast-stepping Irish dancers from the area’s leading Irish dance school?
7:30: Hip Expressions Belly Dance. The inimitable, exuberant corps takes belly dance to new creative realms, including the contemporary fusion piece “Like a River” and a thrilling sword dance (perhaps you’d better not stand too close for this one).
7:40: Moving Current Dance Collective, HCC Dancers & Heidi Henderson. Now celebrating its 20th anniversary of producing contemporary dance in Tampa Bay, MC will present an improv project choreographed by guest artist Heidi Henderson especially for Moving Current and the HCC Dancers. An internationally recognized artist recently seen on tour at HCC with her troupe elephant JANE, Henderson will perform “posture,” an examination of standing that will enliven the space of the museum with oddities of the body. “There is something about working quietly that quiets a room of watchers,” says Henderson. “The quiet is a shared experience.”
8:00: Collective Soles’ I AM MY (word). An excerpt from a full-length interdisciplinary work that premiering in St. Pete at the Studio@620 March 17-18 and in Tampa at CASS Contemporary Art Gallery March 24-25. Part of the company’s ColLab series, it wlll feature dance students from the University of South Tampa, University of Tampa, and Manatee School for the Arts.
8:15: Hip Expressions. They’re back with the swords and some gypsy magic, too.
8:30: Hip-hop dancers from VYB. The dynamic Tampa-based hip-hop troupe whose witty, perfectly executed moves took 1st place at World of Dance Atlanta 2017.
8:50: HCC Dancers’ Choose Your Own Distraction. Choreographer Christina Acosta’s light-hearted dance pokes fun at the dichotomy between news broadcasts and children’s toys. Performed by Caleb Baker, Kiara Bussey, Dani Heagey and Sam Wilson.
9:00: Mark Byrne. Poppin’ for Dollars winner.
9:05: RogueDance. The sparkling contemporary dance troupe from St. Pete led by powerful dancer/choreographer Kellie Harmon brings two new pieces, infused with R&B and hip-hop — plus a bit of improv, too.
9:25: Hip Expressions. An encore of “River.”
9:35: Moving Current: Structured improv.
9:45: Group improv: Everybody dance!
Various times: Jonelle Meyer as Mort Lacourt and others • Noel Rochford on electric ukulele • A.J. Vaughan on electric violin
THE INFINITY LOUNGE
(Classroom, Third door on the right)
6-7:30: Terrapin. St. Pete synthwave artist Nick Capone brings his own brand of ambient groove to the Infinity Lounge, where some folks may just want to hang out all night long.
7:30-9:15: Infinite Third (Billy Mays III). Billy Mays’s Ambient Installation mesmerized audiences at GASP! 2017, and this year he returns to what we’re now calling The Infinity Lounge with excerpts from Infinite Third’s latest album, Channel(s).
9:30-10: Kasondra Rose (See GASP!arilla Plaza listing above.)
(Lecture Hall 2, second door on the right)
6-6:40: Jan Neuberger & Roxanne Fay. See two of the area’s finest actresses in this round-robin of solo performances. Roxanne does an excerpt from the hilarious, harrowing Jobsite Theater production of HIR by Taylor Mac, and Jan performs an original work inspired by Rob Tarbell’s “Rabbits,” currently on view at the museum,
6:40-7:10: Frankie and Gianni: A Mini Rock Opera. (See GASP!arilla Plaza listing on p. 29.)
7:10-7:30: Ari Richter’s “Arioke.” Richter, a comedian, singer, performance artist and Blake High grad, returns from Brooklyn to share his slightly warped variation on karaoke — think the satirical bent of Weird Al Yankovic, presented with a style that’s all Ari’s own.
7:30-8: Slim Figga. A Sarasota-based rapper who’s proudly staking his own path with music that consciously rejects lyrics that degrade women or promote drug use and crime.
8:00-9:00: Heard Em Say Youth Arts Collective: “This Land is…Whose Land?” The young wordsmiths of Heard Em Say are always a GASP! highlight, and this year they’re tackling such highly topical subjects as immigration, education, politics, diversity and culture. Come hear our future.
9-9:30: Slim Figga.
9:30-10: Ari Richter’s “Arioke.”
THE 4 HOUR GASP! ROOM
(Lecture Hall 1, first door on the right)
6-10: GASP 4 Hours. Endurance artist Brian Feldman (“The Skill Crane Kid” from GASP! 2017) will gasp every minute for four hours. Really.
(Upstairs, 6-10; no food or drink, please)
• Having a Ball: George Sosnak’s Striking Portraits from America’s Pastime
• Inspired by Nature: Vases, Birds, & Flowers
• Made in Tampa: Selections from the Permanent Collection, from the 1970s to Now
• Claudia Ryan and Rob Tarbell: Skyway Curators’ Choice
• Elizabeth Condon and Bruce Marsh: Skyway Audience Choice
• The Classical World
GASP!ATERIA
(6-10, Sono Café)
GASP!tastic foods from Mise en Place
This article appears in Mar 15-22, 2018.