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Dance, poetry featured in Poetry Group-sponsored event

UA's Poetry Group is co-sponsoring an event this Saturday that will join literature and visual art by showcasing the works of Bay area poet Lyn Hejinian and local choreographer Anne Bunker.

The event illustrates the groups underlying tenets of uniting artists working in different mediums - poetry and dance - and spotlighting artists that are considered experimental in their respective fields.

Charles Alexander, director of Chax Press, which co-sponsors the event, commented on the intersection between the experimental aspects of each of the featured artist's works.

"Anne Bunker's choreography emphasizes the experimental abstract of human emotion," he said.

Hejinian's poetry, Alexander added, addressed the same type of abstracted emotion through its style of language.

Alexander explained that Hejinian belongs to a group of poets known as "language poets" or "language-centered poets" who rejected narrative-oriented poetry in favor of works that allowed readers to make discoveries without being led through a narrative.

These poets considered such narrative-centered contemporary to be too self-centered and narcissistic.

Bunker sees a connection between her work and the poetry of Hejinian, citing the spontaneity of her creative process in producing a work of dance. She said her dance refutes similar ideas of self-centered art where the medium is not allowed to speak for itself.

Alexander also recognizes Bunker's self-acknowledged spontaneity present in her work.

"There is a sense of playfulness in her choreography, and a willingness to do movements you wouldn't normally expect," he said.

"I never want to create a piece of choreography that looks like anything else I have created," Bunker said, explaining the reasoning behind her improvisational method which often utilizes props - ranging from toilets to huge butterfly nets.

Growing up watching dance, she noticed that "usually seven times out of 10 it was the same dance being done over again" where only the dancers and music changed. Bunker's choreography represents her desire "to go beyond that point."

The piece that Bunker will be performing at the upcoming event will be improvisational. She opted to do the performance instead of delivering a talk on her creative process, preferring to let the work speak for itself.

For inspiration for the performance, Bunker said she was looking towards her refrigerator.

"Everybody's refrigerator is a statement of who they are on the inside as well as the outside," she said, noting ever-changing pieces of children's artwork and magnetic poetry and the idiosyncratic quality of its contents.

Bunker said she will be "sharing the inside of my refrigerator with people" during her performance.

Hejinian will be reading works from her most recent book "Chartings," which she co-authored with poet Ray DiPalma, as well as some more recent works which are as yet unpublished.

The event will be held in the Orts Theater of Dance, which is founded and directed by Bunker, located at 121 E. Seventh St., at 7 p.m. There is a suggested donation of $5 for admission. For more information, contact Chax Press at 620-1626.