Olivier Taparga’s I Guess You Solved the Question
Dancers from Philadelphia and Burkina Faso perform a new work inspired by an infamous story of destruction in an architectural wonder.
On Sept.19th, the multi-disciplinary artist Olivier Tarpaga’s new work “I Guess You Solved the Question” premiered to a sold-out audience during the Chicago Architecture Biennial. The performance was commissioned by PUIC, in partnership with The Arts Club of Chicago, and depicted one of the most violent, mysterious, and repressed stories in modern architectural history, the story of Julian Carlton’s massacre and destruction of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin.
This tragic and compelling narrative was delivered by dancers from Baker and Tarpaga Dance Project, a transnational company based in Burkina Faso and Philadelphia through dramatic movement, words, sound, and images.
Olivier Tarpaga is the Artistic Director of Nomad Express International MultiArts Festival in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso and a Lester Horton award-winning musician and choreographer. He is currently a dance lecturer at the Lewis Center for the Arts and a music lecturer at the Department of Music, Princeton University.
Since 1916, The Arts Club of Chicago has been a preeminent exhibitor of international art, a forum for established and emerging artists, and a celebrated venue for performers from around the world. For over 100 years, The Arts Club has opened its membership to artists and patrons of the arts, and its exhibitions to the public. At its inaugural meeting, the mission of the Club was defined as: “to encourage higher standards of art, maintain galleries for that purpose, and to promote the mutual acquaintance of art lovers and art workers.”