todd thomas brown

Scarlett Cushion is a performance ensemble formed by Todd Thomas Brown, Iu-Hui Chua, Hien Huynh, and Aaron Kierbel. Selected for the 2017 EDGE Residency at San Francisco's CounterPulse, Scarlett Cushion focuses on the nature of resilience in its first collaborative work, The Bell in the Blood. Seeking a tool that can empower positive change in our world and communities, the artists use performative research methods to identify the core of a resilient presence.

Part investigation, part interdisciplinary performance, The Bell in the Blood poses a suggestion that within the quiet inner domain our personal being there is a sound, a tone, that is unique to each person. In the sublime moments when we achieve  to be ourselves, in the truest, most spontaneous sense, this tone sounds out its unique quality. In our investigation, we observe that when we are genuinely aligned with this tone, we are able to move people, and be moved by them. By contrast, we witness how people often come into conflict by way of  their attachment to different beliefs. And, so we ask and explore, what brings us deeper into our body and being, to become more bodyful of the mind? To engage this inquiry, we begin by observing the physiological principle of homeostasis as it continually brings the body's systems into balance. How might this principle inform and sustain our personal and collective efforts to catalyze positive change?

About Scarlett Cushion members

Todd Thomas Brown’s (interdisciplinary artist) career spans disciplines of dance, music performance, a visual arts practice, and projects rooted in social practice. He is the founder of the Red Poppy Art House, The Mission Arts & Performance Project (MAPP), and recently initiated the Mission Stoop Fest. His performance work includes, Teobi’s Dreaming, This. Now., and music ensemble Nefasha Ayer: The Space of In Between (with Meklit Hadero). His work has been supported by the San Francisco Arts Commission, the San Francisco Foundation, The Zellerbach Family Foundation, the California Arts Council, and the de Young Museum.

Iu-Hui Chua (choreographer, video artist, performer) has danced with Anna Halprin, Ledoh, Dandelion Dancetheater, Headmistress, Labayen Dance and Disneyland. An artist in residence at Djerassi and the Penasco Theater Co., er works have been supported by Puffin Foundation Ltd., Theatre Bay Area’s CA$H Grant, Creative Capacity Fund’s Quick Grant Award, and the Consortium for Women and Research. She has been awarded the Cass Calder Smith Artful Harvest Fellowship and UC Davis’ Dramatic Arts Fellowship.

Hien Huynh (performer) is a freelance experimental mover. His movement practice stems through somatic senses in fusion of hip hop, contemporary, and break dance. He’s danced for Robert Moses Kin,John Jasperse,Raissa Simpson, Kim Epifano, David Grenke, and the Barton Sisters. He has been awarded UC Davis’ Jere Curry for excellency in Dance. Through kinetic art he aims to investigate the inner truths, stories, and the heart to heart of human connection.

Aaron Kierbel (composer, musician) is a drummer, teaching artist and Rhythmologist, touring internationally since 2006 with Rupa and the April Fishes, sharing the stage with artists Manu Chao, Anjelique Kidjo, Susana Baca and….Iron Maiden! s studies span a diversity of musical genres and traditions, including jazz, Norteño, Klezmer, Dixieland, Brazilian funk, and old soul. He teaches critical thinking skills an violence prevention to youth using drumming, dancing and singing through organizations such as Destiny Arts, Performing Arts Workshop and Bread and Roses.

Photography all shot on location at CounterPulse, San Francisco, California.
B&W images by Marc Hors  are watermarked. All other B&W and color images by Robbie Sweeney. (except for the first top image).

Performed at Dance Mission Theater, San Francisco, California
February 6 & 7, 2016. 
D.I.R.T. Dance in Revolt (ing) Times Festival

Conceived and directed by Todd Thomas Brown in creative collaboration with Iu-Hui Chua, Valeska Castaneda, Hien Huynh, and Tania Leullieux . Crocheted tapestries by Ramekon O’Arwisters.

THIS, NOW. 
This, Now represents an inquiry into the kaleidoscopic journey of the human organism, a bio-poetic being evolving across millenniums. It is a gaze into the past, through the lens of immediate family, as we attempt to comprehend the enormous passage human beings that came before us. As an ensemble of artists coming from different artistic aesthetics, cultural legacies, and lived experiences, we enter this work/process as a means of digging under the narratives of identity, to see what pulses there, below, when we become fully present and still. A river of ancestors too many to number arrived to become the human beings that we each are today. THIS is our inheritance, and NOW is where we find it, manifesting without explanation or apology, continually into the only moment in which we live and act. And, what is most striking, is how little we know.

Images by Anastasia Kuba

A Performative Inquiry Into Biology and Being

Teobi’s Dreaming is a multi-disciplinary theatrical performance that explores questions on human biology, ancestry, and the fleeting moments of spontaneous presence that we experience in our daily lives. Consider how we walk though life confident about certain facts; we know where we live and where we keep our plates, sneakers, and laundry, and yet we are mostly unaware of what goes on inside our bodies in each passing moment. Teobi asks, where is my spleen? Do I know? Is it that I have a body, or does my body have me? Teobi’s Dreaming plays upon the idea that our biology and DNA are not aspects of some biological machinery storing genetic information and code, but rather they represent a continuity of stories, poetry, and dreams, moving forward through time – a bio-poetic organism, the body-being in which we live.

Conceived as a “performative inquiry,” during Todd Thomas Brown’s Artist Fellowship at San Francisco’s de Young Museum, Teobi’s Dreaming engages stillness, humor, reflection, challenge, and insight, to facilitate the capacity within us to hold questions that we cannot answer. As the poet Rilke said, “Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

Conceived and Directed by Todd Thomas Brown
Assistant Director: Tom Sway
Music: Camille Mai, Schuyler Karr, and Tiffany Austin
Choreography/Dance: Ellen Oliver and Kenya Moses
Visual poetry/performance: Adrian Arias

Teobi’s Dreaming thanks the San Francisco Arts Commission and the Zellerbach Family Foundation for their support.