Portland's butoh outpost, Water in the Desert, is known for striking, and even spectacular experimental performances, of this Japanese, most modern of dance forms. They have been hosting Yukio Suzuki for a workshop. Tonight the workshop participants perform a work of their own making with Suzuki. At the Headwaters Theater, by www.witdpresents.com 55 NE Farragut St. #9. The theater is in the back of the building by the railroad tracks facing Winchell Street. 7PM $5-10
Disjecta holds their annual art auction party this evening. It's a good opportunity to see the work of a great cross section of Portland artists, and chat with fascinating individuals in the art community. At Disjecta, in the shadow of Paul Bunyan www.disjecta.org 8371 N. Interstate Map 7PM-late $20 advance, $30 door
The Towne Storage Building is a longtime artist studio spot which you have seen crossing the Burnside Bridge. Tonight over 25 studios in the building will be open for an inside view of art making and an opportunity to purchase work directly from the artists. Note carefully parking signs, the area is known for towing. At the Towne Storage Building 17 SE 3rd 6PM-10 Free
Music schools are by nature sprawling affairs. They comprise musics past, present and future. The staff and students have ever evolving interests. Each student is an individual performer and member of a rotating cast of ensembles. The concert this evening is a demonstration of that creativity mixed and remixed.
The Venerable Showers of Beauty Gamelan collaborates with Ki Midiyanto from UC Berkeley, vocalist Peni Candra Rini from Java and musicians from Seattle’s Gamelan Pacifica, Portland's Northwest New Music and the college chorale.
The program has contemporary work, the 1982 Double Concerto for Cello, Violin and Gamelan by noted microtonal composer Lou Harrison and Missa Gongso, a 2005 mass written for gamelan choir by Neil Sorrell. At Lewis and Clark College www.lclark.edu and www.vsbgamelan.org Evans Auditorium 0615 SW Palatine Hill Road 8PM $20, $15 students
Interior Margins opens today, but it is not open. It will be open later in the week though. Portland curator Stephanie Snyder from Reed and Sarah Miler Meigs have curated a show women artists to the Lumber Room. The Lumber Room is the project space of noted Portland collector Sarah Miller Meigs, arguably Portland's most serious contemporary collector. Artists selected are Judy Cooke, Léonie Guyer, Victoria Haven, Midori Hirose, Linda Hutchins, Kristan Kennedy, Michelle Ross, Blair Saxon-Hill, Lynne Woods Turner, Nell Warren and Heather Watkins. It's a show of quiet abstraction by primarily mid- to late-career artists from Portland, Seattle and San Francisco. Public viewing Thursday, Friday and Saturday, November 17-Januray 30 excepting holidays. At The Lumber Room 419 SW 9th, above Liz Leach. 11AM-6PM Free
Jeff Jahn, artist, curator and creator of Portland's big art blog PORT has organized a show, foreGround, at PSU's premier gallery the Littman. ForeGround is inspired by geology. The artists are Ben Young, Jim Neidhardt, Zach Davis, Arcy Douglass, Jacqueline Ehlis and Matthew Picton. Jahn gives a curator's talk about the show this afternoon. At the PSU Littman Gallery in the Smith Center 2nd Floor 1825 SW Broadway. Talk 2:30PM Free
Recess Gallery is back in session with (Im)material by Chase Biado, Alex Mackin Dolan, Michelle Liccardo, Kyle Raquipiso and Jay Spicero. Their statement is too good to pass up: "(Im)material addresses the divide between what’s there and what’s not. What does it mean to be made of material? How is our visceral existence affirmed when we encounter other beings? There’s no room for bodily detritus in the quick and effortless navigation through what we call the virtual. As the technicolor veil slips away, one is left amidst a seemingly immaterial atmosphere . A zone where physical contact is confined to the brushing of ‘cookies’ off a hard drive or the deep pulsing of fiber optics under our feet. By and large, artists in our technological zeitgeist - like those represented in (im)material - are moved by this abandonment. As with any disturbance, they are compelled to respond with divergent methods. In this case, across a spectrum from a primordial return to brute physicality to reappropriations of the digital that exacerbate their dystopian worldview". At RECESS recesspdx.blogspot.com at Oregon Brassworks Building, 1127 SE 10th 6:30PM-10:30 Free