"Dancing is existing." — Gertrude Stein

As part of the March Music Moderne 2012 festival, Liminal performance group curated Liminal presents Gertrude Stein, an immersive multimedia performance installation that responded to the writings of 20th century modernist master Gertrude Stein. Celebrating the sensual musicality of Stein’s own spoken language, as well as many of the musical settings of her texts, Liminal brought together the best of Portland’s diverse arts scenes. Luminaries from every discipline join forces to create a total sensory music experience in a warehouse performance environment.

Virgil Thomson’s Capital Capitals became a video-opera in the hands of Leo and Anna Daedalus; director Camille Cettina and composer John Berendzen premiered One Dancing, an original music-theatre piece based on Stein’s portrait of Isadora Duncan; Doug Theriault (sound) and Stephen Miller (video) turned Stein’s Plays into a media environment, David Abel performed ambulatory readings of her early works, Liminal co-founder Bryan Markovitz and video artist Ben Purdy created an installation based on Stein's novel, The Making of Americans, and Sandra Gibbons showed her Tender Buttons series of comic panels. Other collaborators included JoAnn Johnson (performance), Margie Boule and Andre Flynn (voice), Stephen Alexander (piano), Jen Raynak (sound), James Yeary (performative bartending), and many more.

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