Passage into Paper Sea

A recent edit of an outdoor performance done at Wellspring, Stinson Beach,California in roughly 1994. Sha Sha was going through converting these older tapes. The retired costume travels now as a sculpture.
Sha Sha Higby's work occupies a unique place in the history of art for its fusion of elements from traditional performance genres- including costumes, masks and rituals-and contemporary stylistic languages. Not only is her work highly imaginative, witty and emotionally moving, but she is a consummate craftsman.
Sha Sha Higby approaches theater and dance through the medium of sculpture. She has an almost painterly manipulation of physical materials and textures made from wood, paper, silk, ceramic, and gold leaf; interwoven with a labyrinth of delicate props. The development of a performance is the final stage of Sha Sha's process of creating rich textural objects. It becomes a ritualistic spectacle for these objects to come alive.
When we move about, the space around us is filled with invisible drawings, colorful sketches and complex patterns. The work strives to create a path where movement and stillness meet. Shreds of memory lace into a drama of a thousand, intricate pieces, slowly moving, stirring our memory toward a sense of patience and timelessness. It is an anatomical and emotional inner vision of the body styled into a whimsical sculptural costume that comes alive in non-linear story of transformation.
Sha Sha studied for 1 year in Japan, 5 years in Indonesia under a Fulbright Scholarship, and 6 months in India. Affected strongly by studies and travels abroad to Indonesia and Viet Nam, she has received numer­ous awards and grants and has been performing since 1982 internationally and nationally mainly as a solo artist. She is sometimes in collaboration with musicians and visual artists.
After Higby returned from Indonesia in 1982, she developed her own form of sculptural theater and performed in universities and museum Touring Subsidy roster and also performed throughout the U.S., Europe, the Singapore Festival of the Arts, the Hong Kong Fringe Festival, the Bali Arts Festival, and the Sydney Festival of Arts. And received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts in Theater, and the Japan-US Friendship commission, and recently from Theater Bay Area CASH and the Zellerbach Family Fund.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• dance
• theatre
• mask
• costume