Arts picks: falling to fly, cello findings, and internment anniversary reflections

It's Friday and the skies are clearing, so it’s time to look outside our caves and wonder what we can do this weekend. KUOW’s Kim Malcolm got these suggestions from Brangien Davis, Crosscut’s arts & culture editor.

Streb Extreme Action’s Time Machine: From Ringside to Extreme Action

It's pretty intense action, all involving falling and bouncing back, which seems like the metaphor we need right now. The founder, Elizabeth Streb, was always obsessed as a child with learning how to fly, and quickly figured out humans aren't built to fly. She set out to figure out the human version of flying, and it's basically falling.

What she does with her dance company is figure out those exciting moments between falling and hitting the ground, and how you can hit the ground safely, just embracing the fall and the forces of gravity and then getting back up.

Gretchen Yanover’s Findings Night: Cello in Connection

Gretchen is a local cellist and has been the most recent artist in residence at Town Hall. Findings are new songs. She'll be performing some contemporary classical pieces that she's written, but then she also swaps out her traditional cello for an electric cello. She creates these sort of dreamy soundscapes using a looping pedal. It's kind of an amazing sound. It sort of puts you in this meditative state.

Lauren Iida’s Citizen’s Indefinite Leave at ArtXchange Gallery

Lauren is a Cornish graduate. She does paper cut art. She usually starts with a photograph and translates it into these delicate cut-paper images that replicate the original image but entirely with paper.

We’re coming up on the 80th anniversary of Executive Order 9066, which cleared the way for the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. The imagery she's using here is based somewhat on her own family photographs from the incarceration camps.

Some of them are based on her grandmother's older sister, who was in the camps. Others were taken from historical archives. Some are more stark, but others she's added this very rich, vivid, colorful imagery with persimmons and lemons and dragons, sort of bringing the surreal into this very real and very sad imagery.

Listen to the interview by clicking the play button above.