origami night

Created by Christopher Annas-Lee and Graham Cole

Elenaluisa Alvarez, performer

Pamela Annas, author

Christopher Annas-Lee, lighting, sound, and scenic designer; librettist

Virginia Belt, costume designer

Graham Cole, choreographer & producer

Luz Nicolas, narrator

Sound sourced from the public domain on freesound.org

about origami night

Origami Night is a multidisciplinary work utilizing poetry, dance, and sensory design to trace a woman’s life from working class navy brat to radical feminist to mother, and explore aging, love, loneliness, and the revolutionary act of self-examination. The driving force behind Origami Night is the poetry of Pamela Annas, a Boston-based poet known for her role in radical pedagogy, feminist writing, and working-class literature.

This production is the third collaboration between choreographer Graham Cole and Designer Christopher Annas-Lee, and the second to premiere in Portland, OR.

about the artists

Pamela Annas grew up in the Navy, constantly moving from country to country. She chased spawning grunion across the beach in southern California, went to first grade in post WWII Japan, lived for two years in a village in Turkey where she rode her Arabian mare along the beaches of the Bay of Mamara, and another two years contemplating the northern lights dance across icebergs in the North Sea off Bremerhaven, Germany. In San Francisco she snuck over the fence at the Cow Palace to cheer her roller derby team on Friday nights and graduated high school in Yokohama, Japan, into an era of burning draft cards and Vietnam War protests—to be followed a few years later by the burning bras and consciousness raising groups of second wave feminism.

She taught for thirty-five years at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and a couple of years at Goddard Cambridge Graduate School for Social Change—Working-Class Lit, Science Fiction, Personal Narrative, Contemporary Women Poets, Writing as Women-, directed the English M.A. Program at UMass, directed American Studies fall semesters on Nantucket (our working-class university’s version of a semester abroad), coached UMB’s award-winning ballroom dance team, and raised a child before serving for six years as Associate Dean, after which she retired to write poetry and tend her organic vegetable garden.

Pamela has written books and articles on poetry and pedagogy, including Sylvia Plath: A Disturbance in Mirrors and, with Bob Rosen, edited four editions of the textbook/anthology Literature and Society. She is a member of the Radical Teacher editorial collective and its Poetry Editor. Her chapbook, Mud Season, was published by Cervena Barva Press in 2011. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in Atlanta Review, Patterson Literary Review, Slipstream, nibble, Istanbul Literary Review, Ibbetson Street, Pemmican, Poiesis, and Thimble, among other journals and anthologies.

She is currently at work on a new collection of poems.

Christopher Annas-Lee is a multimedia artist based in NYC, specializing in all things light. His primary work is as a lighting, scenic, and projections designer for Theatre, Opera, Dance, and Concert. He is also an associate designer and automated lighting programmer. Christopher is the founder of Annas-Lee Design Group, a firm dedicated to lighting solutions for business & architecture.

He is also the co-founder and Resident Designer of The Circuit Theatre Company (MA, 2010>2014); Resident Lighting Designer of Night Drive (NYC, 2015>Present), GALA Hispanic Theatre (DC, 2014>2018), Mimi Garrard Dance (NYC, 2016>Present), Boston Dance Theatre (2019>Present), Flamenco Aparicio (2015>Pres); Tabula Rasa Dance Theatre (2020>Present) and formerly Lighting Supervisor for The Washington Ballet’s The Nutcracker (2019>2021).

Christopher is the recipient of three Helen Hayes awards (On Your Feet!, In the Heights, and Yerma), and four DC Broadway World Awards (Fame, En El Tiempo De Las Mariposas, and In The Heights) including their 2020 award for Best Lighting Design of the Decade. He holds a BFA from North Carolina School of the Arts, and was the 2014/15 Kenan Lighting Fellow at the J.F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and the 2017 Princess Grace Design Fellow (Fabergé Theater Award). His portfolio is available at www.annaslee.com.

Graham Cole holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. His choreography has been commissioned by the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, the Cameron Art Museum, and the Cirkus Project, a collaboration between the University of North Carolina School of the Arts and Cirque du Soleil. He has performed in New York City and throughout North Carolina with Alison Chase/Performance, Eryc Taylor Dance, Anabella Lenzu/DanceDrama, Greenville Civic Ballet, and Daniel Gwirtzman Dance Company. He also produced several productions of his dance-theater works in both New York City and Wilmington, NC.

Graham serves as the Executive Director of White Bird, a Portland, OR-based dance presenter and the sole dance-only presenter west of the Rocky Mountains. As Executive Director, he organizes and programs White Bird’s annual season of contemporary dance performances and community events, featuring world-class dance companies from around the world. In 2022, he was named one of Willamette Week’s “25 Influential Portlanders in the Arts”.

Graham is a Portland native, and returned to the city he loves in 2019 after schooling in North Carolina and working as a dancer, choreographer, and dance administrator in New York. He enjoys watching the work of Portland’s many other talented dancemakers, as well as building support and visibility for the dance community as a whole. He also loves to bust moves on the dance floor, hike, bike, and play cards with friends. You can read more about his past work at grahamcole.com/creates

Virginia Belt is an award-winning costume designer who has designed for Smokey Mt. Shakespeare Company, Knoxville TN, Spectra Productions at NYMF Festival NY NY, North West Children’s Theater, JANE a Theater Company, and Stark Raving Theater, Portland OR.

A multi-disciplined artist Virginia danced professionally with American Festival Ballet, Indianapolis Ballet Theater and Duluth Ballet and co-founded Dance for Parkinson’s Oregon. She has directed “Much Ado About Nothing” for Portland Actor’s Ensemble, acted in “Labyrinth of Desire” for Teatro Milagro and choreographed “The Oldest profession” for Profile Theater.

With a Business and Theater degree from the University of Idaho Virginia has worked as Educational Outreach Coordinator for Tygre’s Heart Shakespeare Company, taught as adjunct-professor of dance and acting for Willamette University, and artistic directed Willamette University Dance Concert and Shakespeare to Go’s programs. This past year she created the Purple Umbrella entity to produce dance and theater works. Her first sponsorship of the new musical “Woven” at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Edinburgh Scotland this past summer drew full houses and strong reviews.

Elenaluisa Alvarez started her dance career in Peru with the Ballet Municipal de Lima. She was mentored by Galina Panova before participating in the Masa program with Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company (Israel). Returning to the United States, Elenaluisa joined Bowen McCauley Dance Company and Vaught Contemporary Ballet and later on Wonderbound. She now lives in Portland and is a company member with BodyVox and director of the youth program. Her repertoire includes works by David Ingram, Rami Be’er, Matz Ek, Ilana Goldman and Garrett Ammon amongst others. In her spare time, she sews and makes jewelry with a cat or two on her lap.