NEOFEST ’88 : Sushi Readies Outlandish, <i> Outr</i> e for Festival

What do you do for an encore after a musical extravaganza with dancing bulldozers, honking auto horns, and a potpourri of plugged-in household appliances? Or a concert set in the midst of the Cuyamaca Mountains?

No problem for the adventurous Sushi Gallery. This little pocket of cutting-edge performance art, tucked in a second-story loft in the downtown area, has been a haven for experimentation in the arts for years. Local critics laud Sushi’s innovative programming, and prominent artists around the country are spreading the word.

As a result, more and more performers are seeking Sushi out when they want to expand their horizons to the West Coast. And Sushi pulls out all the stops to create an unusual mix for its annual Neofest celebration, a five-week festival that pays homage to excellence in interdisciplinary arts.

This year’s slate, which begins today, will include an exploration of the Charles Lindbergh myth--staged in an airplane hangar at Montgomery Field, a Skid Row odyssey by the critically acclaimed Los Angeles Poverty Department, and the West Coast premiere of a dance work by one of the leading post-modernists in the country, Bebe Miller.

By the time Neofest VI packs its tent on May 28, the series will have showcased seven diverse pieces and involved audiences in a free panel discussion confronting pressing issues for performance artists.

Despite its offbeat venues and nontraditional forms, Sushi takes its art very seriously. And the faithful who flock to its performances for these unusual forays into the avant-garde expect--and usually get--big things from this little inner-city enterprise.

Sushi’s curators import nationally known artists from New York and San Francisco, the most fertile breeding grounds for the multimedia mix known as performance art, but rarely bypass local talent in their quest for quality, originality, and diversity.

This year, the staff has ferreted out three San Diego artists for the Sushi spotlight, and commissioned them to create new works for the festival.

“We think it’s important to generate work for small, independent artists,” founding director Lynn Schuette said, “because, when it comes to funding, they’re always on the low end of the totem pole.”

Sushi’s grant-giving policy has attracted national attention, even from the prestigious Ford Foundation, which is studying this program as a model. But, ironically, Sushi is hard-pressed to make its own ends meet, in spite of a growing reputation across the country.

“We’ve proven ourselves to audiences over the past eight years,” Schuette said. “People tell us they admire us for the quality of our performances, and we’re always one of the top-ranked arts organizations by the California Arts Council’s peer panel. They value us so much that we always get 80% of what we request on our grant applications. That’s higher than the Old Globe, the La Jolla Playhouse, and the Rep.”

However, since public monies are meted out in proportion to annual budgets, Sushi never qualifies for the big grants, which leaves the management looking to the private sector for support.

“The problem is local philanthropists are set in their ways. They only want to give to the larger organizations,” Schuette said.

This economic shortfall means that six of this year’s events will be held in Sushi’s low-tech studio, since last year’s attempt to attract mainstream audiences at the Lyceum was unsuccessful, and that the Neofest series will break even--at best.

The kickoff concert today and Saturday will feature a solo by Laura Farabough, a pioneer in the fusion of video and live performance. Titled “Bodily Concessions,” this study in self-awareness plays with physicality, sexual fantasy, and Freudian ideology. Like all Neofest events, the Farabough concerts will take place at 8 o’clock this weekend. But Sushi has added a 10 o’clock show for Saturday night as well.

On May 7, Sushi-buffs will trek out to Montgomery Field for “Lindbergh’s Flight,” a collaborative work by Michael Kantor and James Murphy Jr. that employs Lindbergh memorabilia, a live choir, film footage, text, and the ambiance of vintage aviation to demystify the media hero Charles Lindbergh.

Patricia Sandback’s “Gallery Dances,” a melding of architecture, photography, music, and sculpture with modern dance, will follow May 12-14. The San Diego-based choreographer, will be among the five dancers in this mixed bag of “New, Used, & Improved Dances.”

On May 15, the Los Angeles Poverty Department will continue its saga of life below the poverty line. This time, the work will be inspired (and even inhabited) by some of San Diego’s homeless.

A free panel discussion with the witty, long-winded title “Extra! Extra! Performance Art Collides with Money & Culture--Thousands Lost at Sea” will take place May 18, with a panel of four hashing out the problems. Tim Miller, a well-known performance artist currently based in Los Angeles is one of the panelists.

The weekend of May 20-21 will bring John Fleck to town with his one-man tour de force. The irreverent, unpredictable performer promises to scale new heights of multiple role-playing in his two-piece program. Fleck has a reputation for switching sexes, ages, and species as rapidly as a car changes gears.

Neofest will also present a world premiere by Las Gringas. “You’ve got to be careful when you ask questions. You just might find out something you don’t want to know, there are 206 Bones in the Human Body,” Las Gringas warns in this new collaborative effort by five San Diego artists. They will attempt to bring the fact and fiction of Central America into bold relief through dance, music, theater, and visual art. The troupe will perform this politically motivated, multimedia work Sunday and Monday, May 22-23.

Neofest should end on a high note when Bebe Miller’s “The Hell Dances” makes its only West Coast appearance. The La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art is teaming up with Sushi to sponsor the performances on May 27 and 28. This highly acclaimed choreographer snared the coveted “Bessie” (New York Dance and Performance Award) twice, in 1986 and 1987, and was the hit of the season for Sushi last year.

Except for Bebe Miller and Company’s concert, which is slated for Sherwood Auditorium, and the site-specific work created for Montgomery Field, all Neofest concerts will be performed at the Sushi Studio.

Schuette has improved the performance space at Sushi Gallery and increased the level of technical support, although the facility remains bare bones by theatrical standards. However, she is determined to preserve the intimacy that the loft-style setting provides.

“That’s why we’ve decided not to grow. It’s important to have a small space, so the artists can maintain their sense of immediacy and intimacy,” she said. “We don’t want to be one of those institutions that can’t afford to turn on the lights.”