Nimbus Dance at Gallery 164

Could be I’m afflicted with attention deficit disorder. Maybe I don’t like to make choices. Or I just want more more more. In any case, I’m drawn to the performances whose architects describe their work with words like “multimedia,” or “genre-defying,” or some more current shorthand that says neither fish nor fowl, or fish and fowl and everything else.

My first pick, the show I’m most looking forward to, takes place at Gallery 164 next weekend, Friday and Saturday, August 3-4. Nimbus Dance presents Triple Flicker, a group show of video artists using the gallery’s unique three-screen setup, in conjunction with live performance by Nimbus Dance. The video artists include Brad Wales and Beth Elkins (principals in the gallery and the dance company), Vince Mistretta, Jax DeLuca, Jan Nagle, Courtney Grim, Holly Johnson and Brian Milbrand. Milbrand serves as the curator of the show. Gallery 164 is small, and Nimbus shows are popular, and tickets are first-come, first-served. So arrive well before the 8pm start.

At least year’s festival, movement artist Aaron Piepszny joined Nimbus Dance and found himself hanging from straps in Gallery 164; this year he’s solo, and he’s everywhere. This Sunday and next he’s at College Street Gallery performing Walk In In Rhythms; this Sunday he’ll also be across the street in the parking lot at Allen and College, for Tribal Bugout/Drum and Dance Shindigery. On Thursday, August 2, he performs Tomatoes Mime/Land Mimes Everywhere at Hallwalls. On Monday, July 30, he performs Rolling, Jumping, Spinning, Smiles at Nina Freudenheim Gallery. He also will do two performances of a show called Architecture’s Sister: Sculptural Anatomy at Rust Belt Books, July 8 and August 4. Certainly he can be caught in between shows, as well, and at others’ shows, in or on the verge of performance, which is Piepszny’s natural state.

A favorite from last year, the S. Vestas Flaming Circus takes up residency in Days Park from August 1 to August 5. The fire show begins at 8:30pm each evening.

Space 224, at that address on Allen Street, has offered itself up to a number of unconventional performances, including Call It Chocolate Cake, which promises to address same-sex marriage through dance, performance art and comedy. (Perhaps Space 224 will also play host to Le Jardin Nous Aimous—“integrations of dancers’ shadows with projections, poetry, and live music (drums, guitar, and toys)”—venue TBA as of press time, according to in festival’s Web site.) It will be profitable to poke your head into this new gallery space any time you’re walking down Allen Street. I will do so, for example, on my way to Nietzsche’s on Monday, July 30, to see The Tell-tale Heart: A Soundpainting Opera, presented by Buffalo Soundpainting Ensemble. Soundpainting “is the live composing sign language created by composer Walter Thompson for musicians, dancers, and actors working in structured improvisation.” I know nothing about it, but I’m game. The show repeats at Nietzsche’s and at the College Street Gallery.

I will also, despite a natural reticence, visit Rust Belt Books and partake in Self-infringement (Pick a Performance), conceived by Brian Milbrand and Ron Ehmke—and executed, presumably, by the participating passerby. You reach into a box in the window and retrieve instructions for a creating a performance of your very own. That natural reticence will prevent me from attending The Art of Ypsilform Dining, a cunnilingus workshop at Squeaky Wheel, though I do list it as one of my picks. Note that the July 27 and August 1 sessions are for ladies only; the July 28 and August 4 sessions are open to all.