Musician, educator, and writer Aaron Pond arrived in Philadelphia from Florida in 2018. He was immediately taken by the city’s improvised music scene. When he missed the sounds of the natural world that surrounded him growing up near the Everglades, he formed an ensemble, BORBS, and presented a series of concerts at the Discovery Center in Fairmount Park.
With that program now on indefinite hold, PONDora’s Fish Sauce is Pond’s latest eclectic new monthly series. “One of the reasons I love fish sauce is that it was introduced to me as a way of developing improvisation in cooking,” he explained. “It’s the flavor that unlocks other flavors.”
The Fish Sauce series brings together Philly’s improvised music and dance communities in new ways. Each show — or “bottle” as Pond refers to them — includes combinations of artists encouraged to take risks together. These collaborations often take novel and unexpected forms, like these offbeat highlights:
Grackle Grabble Grapplers
Professional wrestling rose to new heights of popularity in the 1980s via the Rock ‘n’ Wrestling Connection, which brought together the likes of Hulk Hogan and Rowdy Roddy Piper, with rock stars like Cyndi Lauper. That concept gets an avant-garde update, with the musical tag team of Pond and percussionist Tracy Lisk accompanying wrestlers Mik Phillips and Tori Breen. It should prove a thrilling spectacle for anyone who’s decried the WWE and its ilk as over-choreographed. The night’s bill will also feature Native American dancer Vaughnda Hilton with jazz-klezmer trombonist Dan Blacksberg and brass player Michnari Robinson; and the dubsmith duo of Ihba Baskette and Ryoko Ohara. (Feb. 17, Chi Movement Arts Center)
Sina Tafazoli
A great performance can feel like it has rewired your brain, but few artists set out to accomplish that with quite the authority of Sina Tafazoli. A neuroscientist at Princeton University, Tafazoli has also studied dance and butoh performance and will merge these diverse disciplines through movement that aims to explore the depths of the unconscious, accompanied by a guest musician. The evening will also include performances by the classically-trained chamber trio of Mekhi Gladden (oboe), Sonali Singh (bassoon), and Dylan McDonnell (flute), as well as Pond’s Green Plum Ensemble. (April 21, Chi Movement Arts Center)
Matt Lavelle and McKenzie Dreher
Philadelphia-based clarinetist and flugelhorn player Matt Lavelle has crafted some contorted sounds. A longtime improviser, he’s studied with the iconic Ornette Coleman and worked with such free jazz legends as William Parker, Steve Swell, Daniel Carter, and William Hooker, all of whom are adept at music that twists and bends in unpredictable ways. Lavelle will meet his match in New York-based McKenzie Dreher, whose instrument is her own body. Though Pond was foiled in his attempt to facilitate Dreher’s gift for working suspended from the ceiling by her hair, she’ll doubtless find ways to fold her anatomy into bizarre angles at Lavelle’s prompting. They’ll be joined by the electroacoustic duo Argyle Torah and keyboardist Susanna Payne-Passmore’s P.I.L.O.T.s or Oblivion. (May 18, Headlong Dance Theater)
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Information and tickets: pondora/ticketleap.com