Going strong since August 2010, NICOLE DISSON PRESENTS: THE SERIES is part show and part event, and its performers move continuously around The Standard, Downtown LA’s rooftop terrace, and among the hotel’s patrons, blurring the line between the show and its audience.

The lineup of contributors to THE SERIES’ exceptional twelfth show–which took place on March 20th–featured a slew of voices new to the event, including choreographer SuzE Q, who partnered with multimedia artist and VJ Justin Hammond (aka MC THIS), and dancer Janet Pants Dans. Dans has garnered a following by bringing experimental dance to the underground music scene, and for the show partnered with SERIES veteran Anna Oxygen.  Pugatory Arts Collective presented a site-specific installation piece using The Standard’s signature water bed pods, while sound installation artist Sadie Siegel and performance artist Claudia Slanar contributed individual installations.

Performance artist Darcy F-M, whose work rejects the fourth wall, returned to direct her third SERIES, looping the acts of the evening together by examining the repetition-based theme THE SERIES: SERIES.

Additionally, the evening featured the return of musician Emma Ruth Rundle (of the bands The Nocturnes, Red Sparowes and Marriages), veteran site-specific theater collective Opera Del Espacio and performer Kate Bergstrom, who lead an ensemble of individuals clad in plaid throughout the evening. Disson partnered with musician Evan Koga (of the bands Chief and Kobra) in singing an original Motown medley.

The list of collaborators for March’s event—all envelope-pushers from LA’s vibrant arts scene—also included performance artist Drew Denny, who remained stationed in the pool hooked to an oxygen tank, writer Mandy Kahn (coauthor of the book Collage Culture, which recently launched at Colette in Paris), who wrote a piece performed throughout the night by actress Jessica Wycoff, DJ Jung Hollywood, contemporary dancer Cristine Diana Tatomer, performer Ashley Hendra and her new collective “The Polylingual Often Somatic Church of I LOVE YOU” and two outstanding fine art photographers: Austin Irving and Kate Johnson.

The SERIES will return to the Standard’s rooftop on Tuesday, June 19th for its thirteenth show, so mark your calendar now. Photos by Tiffany Roohani.

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