World Premiere Commissioned by PDX Jazz

Shaun Keylock Company

Founded in 2018, the Shaun Keylock Company (SKC) is one of the Pacific Northwest’s leading contemporary dance companies. It is the resident dance company of Conduit Dance, Inc. based in Portland, Oregon.

As a commissioner, collaborator, and presenter, SKC performs locally and nationally with the top choreographers, artists, and dancers while proudly celebrating LGBTQ+ identity in dance and the performing arts. Since its founding, the organization has been an originator of many unique projects and collaborations, from staging the first queer chamber opera “When the Sun Comes Out” to preserving the archives of community dance elders.

In the progressive, independent spirit of Portland, the mission of SKC to advance new developments in contemporary dance while expanding our understanding of the art form’s history, practice, and performance. We create, preserve, perform, and make accessible materials on performance and contemporary dance to support learning, appreciation, and creativity within a national community of artists, researchers, and the general public.

Through modular exhibitions, screenings, performances, artist residencies, and education programs, SKC acts as a platform for new movement research and interdisciplinary collaboration. In our programs, SKC is committed to serving the needs of established and emerging artists, providing opportunities to participate in cultural experiences that further stimulate new ideas and enhance the understanding of contemporary dance and queer performance today.

In January 2020, SKC opened our creative studio inside the historic Baker Building in North Portland. The studio serves as a central hub for our mission, providing a space for connections between dancers, musicians, choreographers, and other artists interested in working with dance. It is both the primary rehearsal venue for the company and a community resource, offering classes and workshops, as well as free and reduced cost creative space and residencies for artists.

SKC believes a community is most alive when there is dialogue, interaction, collaboration, networking, and critical discourse. We value diversity in our programming and are committed to fostering an environment in which students, dancers, and artists from a variety of backgrounds are able to collaboratively learn, work, and perform.

We embrace inclusion, diversity, equity, and access, and recognize our responsibility to be an open, welcoming, and anti-racist organization. This is instrumental in the fulfillment of our mission and core values and continues to inform the development of our growing organization.

METHODS BODY

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John Niekrasz: drums and percussion
Luke Wyland: keys and electronics

Methods Body (Portland, OR, USA) creates original sound art and music using custom tuning systems, involuted polyrhythms, and the cadences of language. John Niekrasz (Ecstatic Peace, ESP-Disk') and Luke Wyland (The Leaf Label, Hometapes, Crammed Records) use bespoke live-sampling technologies and meta-cognitive compositions to inhabit waves of subliminal melody and deep, uncanny grooves.

Methods Body builds on the non-traditional tunings of Terry Riley, the experimental energy of Éliane Radigue and Silver Apples, and the refracted electronics of Aphex Twin to create a sonic language completely their own. Together, Wyland and Niekrasz have been pushing the bounds of rhythm and melody for more than a dozen years. Their duos, AU and Why I Must Be Careful, were lauded as groundbreaking and breathtaking. Both Niekrasz and Wyland are idiosyncratic innovators on their instruments and use performance as an arena for legitimate connection and energetic exchange. Methods Body’s first full-length album is born from long-term composing and recording sessions held in old-growth forests and remote deserts.

View all 2024 Biamp Portland Jazz Festival events at Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall and the Newmark & Winningstad Theatres.