Works & Process at the Guggenheim
presents
Treasure
by Machine Dazzle
September 5-7, 2019 at 7:30pm

“Costume designers generally work within a realistic tradition. But the only script that the theatrical genius Machine Dazzle follows is an emotional one.”
-The New Yorker

“Meet the Gender-Bending Costume Designer Who’s Re-creating Queer History” – The Cut

Works & Process, the performing arts series at the Guggenheim, presents Treasure by Machine Dazzle, made-to-measure for the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed theater at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum on the occasion of New York Fashion Week.

Distant dreams come full circle in this Works & Process commission of multidisciplinary artist, maximalist, and 2018 New York City Village Halloween Parade Grand Marshall Machine Dazzle. Undressing layers of his past to make sense of the present, Machine Dazzle will introduce new looks inspired by his original songs and stories written for Treasure. Machine Dazzle will be joined on stage by Music Director Viva DeConcini and musicians brought together especially for this collaboration.

Conceptualist-as-artist meets DIY meets “glitter rhymes with litter,” Machine was a co-recipient of the 2017 Bessie Award for Outstanding Visual Design and the winner of a 2017 Henry Hewes Design Award.

See Taylor Mac and Machine Dazzle discuss their 2017 collaboration, A 24-Decade History of Popular Music. Video Link

Treasure by Machine Dazzle is commissioned by Works & Process at the Guggenheim with support from Pomegranate Arts and a creative residency at LUMBERYARD.

Machine Dazzle (né Matthew Flower) has been dazzling stages via costumes, sets, and performance since his arrival in New York in 1994. Credits include Julie Atlas Muz’s Am The Moon And a You Are The Man On Me (2004), Big Art Group’s House Of No More (2006), Justin Vivian Bond’s Lustre (2008), Taylor Mac’s The Lily’s Revenge (2009), Justin Vivian Bond’s Re:Galli Blonde (2011), Taylor Mac’s Walk Across America For Mother Earth (2012), Chris Tanner’s Football Head (2014), Soomi Kim’s Change (2015), Pig Iron Theater’s I Promised Myself To Live Faster (2015), Bombay Ricky Prototype Festival (2016), Taylor Mac’s A 24-Decade History of Popular Music (2016-Present), Opera Philadelphia’s Dito and Aeneus (2017), Spiegleworld’s Opium (Las Vegas 2018). Conceptualist-as-artist meets DIY meets “glitter rhymes with litter,” Machine was a co-recipient the 2017 Bessie Award for Outstanding Visual Design and the winner of a 2017 Henry Hewes Design Award.

Viva DeConciniplays guitar like a flaming sword, a screaming train, a ringing bell, and a scratching chicken. She sings like if Freddy Mercury had been a woman. She is influenced by diverse artists and styles including Jimi Hendrix, Dolly Parton, NYC, disco and jam band music, and has played everywhere from Bonnaroo with Cyro Baptista to Monterey Jazz Fest with Peter Apfelbaum. She has produced sell out music, burlesque and variety shows at The Slipper Room and Joe’s Pub and is one of the few females to be featured in Guitar Player Magazine. Viva moved to NYC in the 90’s and began performing with legendary downtown Brazilian Percussionist Cyro Baptista’s innovative funk theater/band Beat The Donkey. After ten years and hundreds of shows, Viva left Beat The Donkey to pursue her own music. In 2008, that music came to fruition in the form of “Electric Cabaret”, a burlesque-fueled album, critically lauded for the front woman’s stand-out guitar. Her second record “Rock & Roll Lover” (2010), charted on CMJ and she was hailed by Vintage Guitar Magazine as having written some of the best rock songs in a decade. In 2011, Viva made her NYC theatrical debut as the musician in Taylor Mac’s play WAAFME, which the The New York Times hailed as one of 2011’s ten best.

TICKETS & VENUE
$45, $40 Guggenheim Members and Friends of Works & Process
Box Office (212) 423-3575 or worksandprocess.org
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Avenue, New York

Lead funding for Works & Process is provided by The Christian Humann Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the Evelyn Sharp Foundation, with public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts and New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

Works & Process at the Guggenheim
Described by The New York Times as “an exceptional opportunity to understand something of the creative process,” for 35 years, New Yorkers have been able to see, hear, and meet the most acclaimed artists in the world, in an intimate setting unlike any other. Works & Process, the performing arts series at the Guggenheim, has championed new works and offered audiences unprecedented access to generations of leading creators and performers. Most performances take place in the Guggenheim’s intimate Frank Lloyd Wright-designed 273-seat Peter B. Lewis Theater. In 2017, Works & Process established a new residency and commissioning program, inviting artists to create new works, made in and for the iconic Guggenheim rotunda.

.