Erika Tsimbrovsky

 

is an innovator in the field of improvised dance performance. Born in Kazakhstan, she studied modern and contemporary dance in Belarus, Moscow, and Amsterdam. In Israel, she co-founded the award-winning experimental performance group EVM Laboratories to research the interaction between diverse media structures and to develop specific improvisational performance techniques. Avy K Productions is the San Francisco-based incarnation of her and visual artist Vadim Puyandaev's twenty-four-year collaboration, featuring their signature “audio-visual-kinetic” approach, which brings together contemporary dance, live painting, evolving material installation, video projection, and live music to create unique and vital performances. The core idea is to facilitate a dialogue between artists of different media and unite them under a common theme. Everything occurs in real time so a conversation between artists can emerge.

 

She has worked collaboratively in multimedia performance with a variety of artists, like Peter Chaika, an outsider artist with Down Syndrome, Slava Ganelin, the legendary pioneer of the Russian avant-garde jazz movement, cellist Joan Jeanrenaud, formerly of Kronos Quartet, film artist Paul Clipson, composers Grundik Kasyansky, Ken Ueno, Matt Ingalls, and Alexander Sigman, light/video artist Lucas Krech, choreographer Scott Wells, visual artist and long-time collaborator, Vadim Puyandaev, and many others.

 

Her work aims to achieve a dynamic equilibrium where balance is found in the shifting contradictions. Themes she explores and are most often found in her work are the presence of ancient archetypes in our urban reality; the flow of information from past centuries into our technological and mass media world; and the intersection between the rational and the irrational within ourselves and nature.

 

Currently, dance installation projects are her primary focus. She is interested in exploring her ideas in different sites (open/alternative spaces, galleries, museums etc.) that invite new ways of perceiving dance and other traditional art mediums (painting, sculpture etc.). 

 

With Avy K Tsimbrovsky premiered her work in the Bay Area with The Garden (2007), presented at Stanford University and Noh Space; Scrap Soup (2008), premiered at Theater Artaud; Nocturnal Butterflies (2009), also at Theater Artaud; "Full Moon Syndrome" (2010), premiered at WestWave Dance Festival; The Book (2010), a series of performances culminating in an installation-performance at SOMArts Center in July 2011; Rustling Silk (2011) presented by CounterPULSE as part of the Summer Special Program; Ir-Rational (2012) premiered at ODC Theater; The Book: ‘Page Two’ (2013) at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, this page included an installation/performance with Puyandaev’s sculptures; PSi19 at Stanford Now Then (2013); LAByrinths: audio-visual-kinetic #1 (2013) installation/performance at the Center for New Music in SF; Minotaur (2015) at NOHspace, SF; Avy K/Erika Tsimbrovsky have made a collaborative work Mutually Assured (2015) with Bay Aria choreographer Scot Wells, that was premiered at ODC Theater, SF, her recent work Red Wind / Ruah Aduma, a poetic abstract installation-performance presented at the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum, Hollins University, VA and the Joe Goode Annex San Francisco, CA (2017-18). 

 

She was awarded the Commons Curatorial Residency at SOMArts Main Gallery for July 2011 for her installation/performance The Book and the Paul Dresher Ensemble Residency for an installation/performance Minotaur, as well as the CHIME mentorship program for Ir-Rational.

Since 2007 she has received funding from the Stanford Arts Initiative, CA$H grant, LAD grant, the Zellerbach Family Foundation, the Guzik Foundation, and Lincoln University. While in Israel from 2000-2006 she received numerous grants from the Ministry of Culture for EVM Laboratories.