• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Home
  • Contact
  • Donate
  • Classes | Workshops
    • Awareness Through Movement (ATM)
    • Death and Art in Everyday Life
  • pearl ubungen
    • Curatorial Projects
    • Critical Response
    • Trance Dancer
  • Community | Site Work
    • Community-Based Performance
    • No Justice, No Peace!
    • Refugee
    • Take Me to the Tenderloin, Now!
    • I-Hotel | The Fall
    • Where the Waters Meet
  • Videos

Pearl Ubungen

choreographer | cultural activist pearl ubungen | west coast performance works | praxis | interdisciplinarity | site work | embodiment | community | dharma | art

  • FACEBOOK!
  • New Works
    • San Francisco Labor Force
    • Sacred City
    • Red Shift
    • Queen of Broken Hearts
  • Diamante
  • Ensembles
    • Contemplative Labor Pool
    • West Coast Performance Works
    • Pearl Ubungen Dancers and Musicians
  • Collaboration
    • Community Engaged
    • The Power of Place
    • Cultural Flow | Hybridity
  • Interdisciplinarity
    • History | Memory
    • Ritual | Art | Activism
    • Critical Theory | Praxis

History | Memory

interdisciplinary

Ubungen began to compose interdisciplinary work, crossing the boundaries of academia and art making, upon leaving graduate school in history after completing her first year. Desirous to continue research and investigation in theater/performance as well as in a range of academic fields (social history, ethnic studies, race relations, critical theory) Ms. ubungen resisted the isolated specialization of both fields and envisioned work that expanded to include communities in a more socially relevant way.

Utilizing historical sources and research methodologies in the context of developing new work, Ms. ubungen disrupted conventional notions of constructing historical narrative while embracing content to inform the creative process. Her large-scale dance theater works incorporated the focused rigor of intellectual inquiry allowing for the constraints of academic study to inform the shaping of work. In tandem, ubungen utilized embodied research, structured improvisation and a dialogic process to create a spacious performance environment where content was allowed to breathe. In this way, the historical content became a visually memorable and viscerally powerful live experience.

With her former company Pearl Ubungen Dancers and Musicians (PUD&M) Ms. ubungen created a body of work drawn from the  history of relations between the Philippines and the United States. These epic works highlighted the  obscuration of history/memory through powerful dance theater – amongst them Pinay (1992)  Bamboo Women (1994) Tagulaylay: A Requiem for Lives Lost during the Philippine American War (1999-2000) and the Makibaka! CD-Rom and Performance Project (2001-2002).

Ms. ubungen continues to produce work informed by multiple, disparate fields often extending the research and development phase of the work over a period of years.

PHOTO: Historical image from research for Tagulaylay: A Requiem for the lives lost during the Philippine American War
World Premiere at El Polin Spring in Tennessee Hollow in the San Francisco Presidio (2000)
Photo Courtesy Golden Gate National Recreational Area, Park Archives
(PAM Original  Prints B9 F8),”Have you a pass? Scene on the firing line, Philippine Islands.” circa 1899.

 

← Ritual | Art | Activism Cultural Flow | Hybridity →

Connect

new-facebook-logo-50x50Stay connected with pearl on Facebook!

Sacred City: Contemplations on Loss, Betrayal and Death by Gentrification

pearl-as-lady-justiceSacred City | pearl ubungen utilizes an interdisciplinary process that brings activism, the arts and dharma practices into close proximity. Sacred City centers the urban terrain of Occupied Yelamu (San Francisco) and extends to ancestral homelands. Through contemplative practices and community engagement Sacred City cultivates resistance to erasure, displacement and the violence that accompanies hyper gentrification and its root causes.

Awareness Through Movement (ATM)

ATM_sidebarpearl ubungen teaches Awareness Through Movement (ATM) of the Feldenkrais Method in large class and intimate group settings. Created by Moshe Feldenkrais, ATM is a form of  somatic education that encourages deep relaxation as well as embodied learning through  subtle, gentle movements of the body.

Refugee

Refugee (1995) Pearl Ubungen Dancers and Musicians • United Nations Plaza, Civic Center, San Francisco • Watch video at larger size.

Refugee tells the story of universal human rights from the perspective of those who have been displaced from around the world but who continue to form new cross cultural communities as they resist the pressure of dislocation.

© 2013-2023 Pearl Ubungen