Skeleton Flower by Degenerate Art Ensemble

Degenerate Art Ensemble’s (Seattle) Skeleton Flower is a performance of live music, visceral movement theater and dance, projected cinematic imagery and storytelling ritual. It is a semi-autobiographical exploration of Haruko Crow Nishimura’s (DAE’s director) struggle with identity, depression, childhood trauma, and the awakening of personal power. The piece deals with these issues with humor and imagination, casting her family as monsters from a Godzilla movie, and traces her personal struggle through three fairy tales which were read to her by her mother growing up (The Fitcher’s Bird, The Wild Swans, and The Red Shoes). The world of Skeleton flower is a multi dimensional patchwork quilt that conjures and consoles her female ancestors through the use of hand felted wools, ten thousand hand painted silk flowers, and knitted sweaters which fill fantastic worlds in the work’s cinematic imagery.