5th Annual FACT/SF Summer Dance Festival

FACT/SF presents its 5th Annual Summer Dance Festival bringing together an array of contemporary dance works by choreographers from the Bay Area and beyond. FACT/SF Artistic Director Charles Slender-White, explains, “The purpose of the Festival is to juxtapose a variety of works to spur dialogue, support artists and artistic growth, and present to audiences a range of perspectives.” The 5th annual Summer Dance Festival contains two programs, seven artists/companies and a total of nine premiers. Program One, which runs August 16, 17 and 18, features the world premiere of Half Time, Full Out by FACT/SF and the West Coast premiere of Varvara by Jenna Riegel (Amherst, MA). Program Two runs August 23, 24 and 25 featuring seven world premiere works by the Bay Area’s FACT/SF, Maxine Flasher-Düzgüneş, Zoe Huey, and Erin Yen alongside visiting artists Sophie Allen (Chicago, IL) and Summation Dance / LA (Los Angeles, CA). The FACT/SF Summer Dance Festival is part of FACT/SF’s Fieldwork, a set of programs that provide resources and opportunities to contemporary dance artists from the Bay Area and beyond. All artists in Program Two were curated by an eight-person panel via an open application process. FACT/SF received applications from 50 artists, and all were paid to apply. In its inaugural year, Heather Desaulniers of DanceTabs calls the FACT/SF Summer Dance Festival, “a very strong debut and a great addition to the SF dance festival circuit.” Program One - August 16-18 Performed by a cast of eight performers and directed by Charles Slender-White, Half Time, Full Out is a non-stop dance routine inspired by halftime shows, aerobic gymnastics competitions, cheerleading, pop music, and sparkles. The work is the culmination of Slender-White’s larger project, QAF (Queer Athletic Futurity), which imagines athletic spaces that celebrate queer identity. The piece is informed by Slender-White’s own experience as a competitive gymnast and cheerleader, and former member of the UC Berkeley Men’s Diving Team. Slender-White was one of only two out athletes while competing for Cal from 2002-2004. Previous iterations of QAF have been produced at the Presidio’s Tunnel Tops Park, in collaboration with the Presidio Trust, CHEER SF, and SF Gay Softball League, with support from the Presidio Trust, National Park Service, Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, and the California Arts Council. Varvara, a solo work by Jenna Riegel, is inspired by the life and creative work of Russian Constructivist artist, Varvara Stepanova. Konstantin Rudnitsky wrote, “The human body was perceived as a machine: man had to learn to control that machine. It was the theatre’s function to demonstrate the fine-tuning of the human ‘mechanisms.’” Varvara comments on this Constructivist view of theatre's function by exploring the body’s reaction to considering it as a mechanization versus allowing it to be its own chaotic mess of expression. The work weaves together the worlds of Stepanova and Riegel through an interplay of what is real and what is imagined. Program Two - August 23-25 The fruits of your labour (world premiere) performed by a multi-generational cast of Summation Dance / LA (Los Angeles, CA) investigates how capitalism lives in our bodies, from the intrusive thought patterns that consume us to the ways we conform to the systems in place. Maxine Flasher-Düzgüneş’s duet the ends of Axis (world premiere) highlights the experience of mental illness from two perspectives: to witness and be witnessed within the complexities of a crisis, and the sense of loss that results when there are few directions to turn. With original sound by Panamanian composer David Caparó, projection design by New York-based video artist Cameron Surh, and performance by local dancers Tamara Chu and Maddy Bullard, the work explores how the incorporation of visual art in performance can enhance the audience’s understanding of the internal conflict of the performer. Erin Yen’s contemporary solo Run-On (world premiere) draws inspiration from her late grandmother, Honey Heaney, who was known to weave a tale at the kitchen table. Run-On invites audiences to view storytelling from multiple perspectives as they go on a journey that meanders, backtracks, and has a clear point… eventually. The solo Hot, live and otherwise (world premiere) by Sophie Allen (Chicago, IL) is inspired by the 1981-2000 anti-nuclear protests of the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp in Berkshire, England and is catalyzed by divergent familial tracings and other unsettled life fragments that get stuck between rocks and hard places. In the duet Sister Score (world premiere) Zoe Huey engages performance as a site of dialogue between drawing and dance. FACT/SF will premiere two works directed by Slender- White: Transform, a solo performed by Slender-White, and Extra, a quartet performed by Keanu Brady, Katherine Neumann, LizAnne Roman Roberts, and Slender-White. Both are works about birth, death

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Tickets: https://go.evvnt.com/2462971-0

Website: https://go.evvnt.com/2462971-2

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