Mother

Using gesture-based electronics, multimedia artist Michiko Theurer reimagines an inherited koto as a portal into community-based ritual. The performance explores themes of motherhood, immigration, displacement, and embodied constriction, and what it feels like to expand in the arms of community and chosen family.

Bio

Michiko Theurer (Michi) interweaves violin performance, installation art, and facilitation in the service of ecological and social connection. Her performance practice embraces a generous and collaborative virtuosity, drawing listeners into active dialogue with shared spaces and intentions. She has performed with Meredith Monk, Mazz Swift, Tyshawn Sorey, Claire Chase, eighth blackbird, and with experimental improv ensembles Treebird and fff. Her site-specific installations have been supported by the Ucross Foundation, Craigardan, Banff Centre for the Arts, the Boulder Public Library, and the Canada Council for the Arts. She holds a PhD in musicology from Stanford University, with a web-based dissertation exploring the in-between spaces of disciplines, media, and cultural inheritances, and a second doctorate (DMA) in violin performance from the University of Colorado at Boulder, where she studied with Harumi Rhodes and Edward Dusinberre. She loves dogs, shared pots of tea, and spontaneous kitchen dance parties.

PHOTO CREDIT Lore Stacey