Ward of Court: County of Origin

2006; Dance/Animation Performance; Portland, Oregon

Ward of Court: County of Origin is a multiple lensed evocation of an endless procession of children carrying fractured family memories through a social service system with many revolving doors. The multi-media collaboration is based on Bond and Joella Jackson’s work with children and youth remanded to day and residential treatment centers.

Those institutional echoes haunt Heather Perkin’s textured soundscape as performers and projections make their way through layered transient spaces. Matt Cartwright’s steel and light sculptures suspend from the cathedral-like centrum of The Plant, a SE industrial design house in Portland, Oregon. Performers include dancers Joella Jackson and Daniel Addy, six screens of composite animation created by Bond, and an original music/sound score by Heather Perkins with lighting design by Clint Kaster.

This is the face of a new wave in Portland dance….Ward of Court isn’t so much raging against the machine as it is observing it through a smart, cinematic eye. And it’s the best case made this season for dance that lets the visual arts share center stage. —Catherine Thomas, The Oregonian, April 2003

Partially funded by: