DAM! Lake Elmendorf: Art, Sound and The Nature of Water

Immersive creator Pamela Martinez presents Teletextile’s DAM! Series, a celebration of Nature, Art, & Sound with two performances in March featuring local artists.

Pamela Martinez, local composer and sound artist, presents free and open-to-the-public sonic art performances at two San Antonio dams this March that explore water as a carrier of culture throughout our city. Martinez leads a rotating cast of collaborators to create sound and ceremony under the name Teletextile. These performances are sponsored by the City of San Antonio Department of Arts & Culture.

A celebration of nature, infrastructure, and performance, this free public series seeks to bring awareness to local waterways and their importance in cultural connection. The inaugural event for the series took place last October at the Espada Dam in collaboration with the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park and highlighted the historical landmark as well as the acequia system created there during Spanish colonial times.

Two new events are set for the series for March that highlight the infrastructure around the water.  Martinez remarks “When I look at a dam, I see an opera house. The majestic stage is set for the drama that is our lifeblood in the inevitable overflowing of water.”  Saturday, March 4th is at Lake Elmendorf’s 19th Street Dam at 5:00 pm with two acts. The first act, dubbed Transformation, is a 30-minute immersive performance where the audience is invited to walk into the labyrinth dam’s teeth and experience a collaborative interpretation of transformation as it relates to the different states of water and a person’s ability to transform. The second act, Our Power Together, invokes the power that humans, nature, and music can make together to carry and hold the culture like the water in the dam. Our Power Together features an original score from Teletextile’s Pamela Martinez for percussion, horns & choral elements.

The second event set for Saturday, March 25th 5:30pm at the Roosevelt Tunnel Outlet begins with musicians floating on kayaks in the San Antonio River for the reprisal of Our Power Together.  The second act, dubbed Flow, will invite guests to parade with singers and musicians along the river up to the floating pavilion above the river and the unseen three mile water tunnel beneath their feet.  As a conclusion to the artistic experience, there will be a repeat rendition of Martinez’s composition DAM! A Song of Water performed at the Spanish Colonial Mission which originally opened the event in October.

Both performances will be about an hour long.

EVENT SCHEDULE:

Lake Elmendorf’s 19th Street Dam

Sat Mar 4, 2023, 5:00pm – 6:00pm

3700 W Commerce St, San Antonio, TX 78207 Google Map Link to exact location

Eventbrite Link

Roosevelt Tunnel Outlet

Sat Mar 25, 2023, 5:30pm – 6:30pm

655 Lone Star Blvd, San Antonio, TX 78204 Google Map Link to exact location

Eventbrite RSVP Tickets

Echoes geomap audio experience

Teletextile has created a listening experience for you to explore leading up to the events. In order to listen to the audio collage you must download the Echoes app which enables audio-mapping via gps.  Through the DAM! audio tour different spaces will trigger different sounds on your phone’s speaker.  We recommend using headphones.  Near the dam the tour is meant for walking, but you can keep listening to and from your drive home as the audio expands to highway 1604.  This audio piece includes interviews about water’s nature, field recordings of the San Antonio River and music written and recorded by Pamela Martinez for The DAM! Series. Many of these recordings were created with the local community at Espada’s DAM! event Oct 9, 2022.  Listen Here via Echoes

Both performances are free to attend, but please RSVP via Eventbrite. This will reserve you a program and get you any need to know details before the show.

Note to audience:

Performances will be inside of the dams and near the San Antonio River. There will be wet areas. Please wear closed toe shoes or waterproof shoes with traction especially for Lake Elmendorf’s 19th St dam. For safety reasons, performances will be rescheduled if there is rain because we will be inside of the dams.

RSVP for free tickets. You can also upgrade your ticket to 1) Buy a digital download of the music being made and recorded for the project and 2) reserve a seat (though walking is still part of this performance).

More information:

ABOUT PAMELA MARTINEZ / TELETEXTILE:

San Antonio native Pamela Martinez spent her early career as an international touring musician until switching gears and working on Whisperlodge, an immersive theater work that gained national attention including reviews in the New York Times, the Atlantic and Netflix. After her return to the River city Martinez began blending her musical talents with her ability to create immersive site specific performing arts and has won numerous grants in support of these ambitious and unique projects. Martinez is a musician in healing, immersive performer and creator, reiki master, and composer specializing in deep listening, sound baths, and sonic expressions with a bachelor’s degree in Music Education from Berklee College of Music in Boston.

Pamela created The Teletextile Ritual Arts Ensemble, a cast of rotating collaborators that weaves together a tapestry of music, movement, reiki, and other healing rituals to create a mixture of performance and wellness practice.  Martinez has worked with The Park Ave Armory, REDCAT: Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater, Brooklyn Greenway Initiative, Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning, The Tobin Center, SAY Sí, Trinity University, UTSA, The Parks Foundation, The River Foundation, Jump-Start Performance Co, The McNay Art Museum, Luminaria Contemporary Arts Festival, and Blanton Museum. Martinez passes on the craft of music and wellbeing by teaching and leading workshops at the Southtown Music Studio (SATX) located at Mercury Project Contemporary Art Space.

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