LIVE PERFORMANCE

 ITCHY-O

woah……

If you’ve never experienced the disorienting power of this throbbing 50-piece troupe of masked chaos, you’re about to get another chance to join the apocalyptic party that is itchy-O. Infamous from Colorado to Tasmania for astounding unsuspecting audiences with their aural and visual insanity, this year their particular brand of juju will infect the Sleeping Giant.

Based in Denver Colorado, the percussion-centered electronic performance group has brought their otherworldly, arcane, and sweat drenched shows to audiences around the world with their sophisticatedly savage sound enlivened with the sheer ecstasy of instruments untethered and running free. The hive-mind of itchy-O has declared war on today’s predictable mediocrity and have blind- sided audiences with their unique music and astonishing live performances since forming in 2009.

THE INVITATION

Lauded as one of today’s most unique musical-performance groups. With a driving drum corps battery, taiko drummers, an arsenal of electronics including synthesizers, theremin, vocoders, and other custom-made sonic devices, itchy-O completely engulfs an audience from every angle in an electric bog of music, ephemera, and spectacle. The group disrupts traditional performance protocols with a form of chaos that unifies spectators and audiences with a powerful and immersive musical experience that features elaborate costumes, large-scale puppets, teams of provocateurs, and SpFX engineers. Drawing inspiration from many cultures – Japanese Taiko drumming to Chinese Lion dancing, Mexican street processions, ancient esoteric symbolism and American drum corps, itchy-O offers a transcendental musical experience that dissolves the divide between performer and spectator. Itchy-O performances awaken the senses, test assumptions, and create an opening for new experiences where identity and boundaries surrender and disband.

CONTENT AND FORM

Itchy-O creates transcendent musical experiences by blending many cultural iconographies in an effort to provide a distinctive offering that dissolves familiarities, awakens possibilities, and employs the true nature and power of hive-minded ceremony. With a performance troupe of over 50+ musicians, dancers, puppeteers, and special effects experts itchy-O creates a space where the performer and audience co-create an ecstatic artistic experience.  Shaking all tenants of tradition, the percussive rhythms of the drum battery and taiko drums intermingle with unique custom-crafted electronic devices, providing a primal-futuristic spiritual immersion.

IMPACT~ ARTISTIC, INTELLECTUAL, COMMUNAL, CIVIC, SOCIAL:

Societies today largely choose what to see, hear, and believe. Our lives are carefully curated and programmed by ourselves and outside influences. Itchy-O challenges that hierarchy of choice and control by inserting its one-of-a-kind creative chaos. We invite our audiences to embrace mystery by passing between knowing and unknowing, self and other. Performances create a temporary community of co-creators who surrender control as observers to become a part of manifesting a shared artistic experience.

THE CALLING

RADICAL, TRANSCENDENTAL, MUSICAL-PERFORMANCE, INCLUSION

ITCHY-O aspires to create transcendent spiritual experiences with performances that confound the senses and disorient perceptions of place, time, order, reason and categorical identity. We invite our audiences to embrace mystery and join us in passing between knowing, unknowing, self and other.