International performance/sculptural artist, Sha Sha Higby is known for her evocative and haunting performances using the exquisite and ephemeral body sculpture she creates herself and moves within. Join us for an amazing evening as we explore magic and emotion through dance, puppetry, and sculptural costume.
Tonight Higby premiers “a Paper Wing II,” he
r latest Wing developments – a whimsical journey of life, death, and rebirth through ephemeral images that evoke the passage of time and day, or the shifting of the seasons. Using the manipulation of hand-craftedmaterials, textures and exotic sculptural costume interwoven with glass finger puppetry, dance and intricate props, it takes Higby two years to make and develop a new costume. Higby’s work “strives to create a path where movement and stillness meet. Shreds of memory lace into a drama of a thousand intricate pieces, slowly moving, stirring our memory toward a sense of patience and timelessness.”
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Sha Sha Higby received a BS in art from Skidmore College. She studied for one year in Japan in 1971, observing the art of Noh Mask and theater and then received a Fulbright-Hayes Scholarship to study dance & shadow puppet making and performance arts in Indonesia for 5 years at the Academy of Music, Central Java, Indonesia. In addition to traveling throughout Southeast Asia to Thailand and Myanmar (Burma), she received an Indo-American Fellowship to study the textile arts of India, and a Travel Grants Fund from Arts International to study in Bhutan.She has also recently studied lacquer arts in Tokyo and Kyoto, Japan through the auspices of the Japan-United States Friendship Commission.
Ms. Higby has performed her unique body of work throughout the United States, and internationally in Korea, Japan, Indonesia, Slovak, Bulgaria, Singapore, Australia, Switzerland, England, Belgium, Germany and Holland. She is the recipient of numerous grants and awards including the National Endowment for the Arts Solo Theater Artist Fellowship, The Zellerbach Family Fund, the California Arts Council New Genre Individual Artist Fellowship.
