Published by Dancers' Group, In Dance is discourse and dialogue to unify, strengthen, and amplify.
JUNE 2018
CubaCaribe Festival of Dance and Music, Jun 15-28 Photo by Andy Mogg
Mahealani Uchiyama, Jun 8 Photo by RJ Muna
RAWdance's ChoreoFest, Jun 2-3 / Photo by Hillary Goidell
Welcome by MICHELLE LYNCH REYNOLDS, PROGRAM DIRECTOR
To live in the San Francisco Bay Area is to reckon with striking paradoxes. Rising wealth contrasts with persistent homeless- ness. Socially progressive values butt up against NIMBY (not in my backyard) indi- vidualism. Residents of “Sanctuary” cities continually face biased policing. Conversa- tions abound about racial equity while the sizes of local black communities are shrink- ing. This list alarms me, yet is incomplete. We are far from being untethered from his- torically damaging ‘isms’ – classism, sexism, racism. Within this context, the current land- scape of social movements like #metoo and #blacklivesmatter is long overdue – world- wide, nationwide, and locally. When #metoo started gaining steam, I celebrated as abusive men fell from grace. I winced when those I had respected were called out. I had multiple soul-searching conversations with fellow female-identified friends about what consent means to each of us. We talked about desire, women’s lib, and deeply socialized tendencies to feel re- sponsible for other people’s emotions. And I groaned at the reality that as a society we need a hashtag to raise awareness of the lived experience of no less than 50% of the population. In contrast, I find myself humbled to be learning more about the ‘isms’ I am privi- leged to ignore at my choosing. Being white,
the #blacklivesmatter and concurrent racial justice movements have illuminated aspects of the lives of people of color I hadn’t previ- ously considered. This is particularly the case in news stories involving police interactions but extend to day-to-day agressions. In a re- cent interview with Terry Gross, comic Roy Wood Jr. described his dismay when a white cashier at a Best Buy was adamant that he didn’t need a bag for a small purchase. Wood’s response was similarly adamant: as a black man, he would never leave a store without a bag and a receipt in hand, for fear of being accused of theft. Needless to say, I decline bags and receipts all the time with- out recourse. This anecdote is also worth a groan: how could I be that oblivious \to the lived experience of so many? It is no one’s job to teach me, or anyone who is part of a structurally advantaged population, about the ways in which system- ic oppression and injustice reveal themselves in daily life, yet I am grateful for any oppor- tunity to continually learn and grow. This is why I’m particularly excited for readers to dig into this month’s issue of In Dance . Sev- eral of the articles within grapple with these social realities and the broader context with- in which dance artists practice, teach, create and present work. Heather Desaulniers writes of Gerald Ca- sel’s eponymous company as it prepares for
its 20th anniversary season, with work that interrogates the racial politics of postmod- ern dance. Casel’s Not About Race Dance will have its first showing, calling attentions to what he describes as the “invisibility of whiteness in postmodernism.” Sima Belmar’s “In Practice” features a conversation with acclaimed performer and producer Tonya Marie Amos, who recounts the racism she encountered throughout her ballet and modern training in San Francisco and New York in the not-so-distant past. Her annual Juneteenth show in Oakland seeks to remember and celebrate black artists. Seven female-identified teachers at the upcoming West Coast Contact Improvisa- tion Jam respond to the question “How do you see the #metoo movement impacting the CI community, or not?”Their responses are varied and rich, reflecting the complexities of participating in a physical and oftentimes intimate movement practice. And on the back of this issue is a piece by Jochelle Pereña, who considers how her teaching practice relates to the “systems of injustice and oppression” that her students are growing up within. She asks “What do people need in order to feel the exhilaration of freedom and power in action?” and forms strategies for the classroom. I continually learn from choreographers, teachers, performers, and writers – among
Janet Collard, Jun 29-30 Photo by Ricardo Esway
IN PRACTICE: Tonya Marie Amos by SIMA BELMAR
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IN A 1993 INTERVIEW, T oni Morrison said, “The people who practice racism are be- reft. […] It feels crazy. It is crazy. […] If you can only be tall because somebody’s on their knees, then you have a serious problem.” 1 I thought about Morrison’s words as I sat in the Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts theater on June 25, 2017, witnessing Grown Women Dance Collective’s annual Juneteenth celebration, Fallen Heroes, Rising Stars . The performance com-
And “that Black” was Eurydice [Ross], one of the original members of GWDC. She was the only Black concert dancer I’d ever seen in my actual conscious memory. SB: What happened after you missed your chance to be the single Black snowflake? TA: I went to Janet Sassoon’s Academy of Ballet. Richard Gibson had just come from the Joffrey. I walked in, this little 12-year-old with flawless turns and arabesques behind my head, 42 pounds in the 7th grade. I was skin and bones, which is why my ballet teachers loved me… SB: …because they could see the lines… TA: …right. American teachers often had been really mean to me. But Richard, who was really nice to me, jumps me to the 15-17 year old girls, until Janet comes in and says I’m in the wrong class and puts me back with the 12-year-olds—and I was thrown to the wolves. Then, one day Janet looks at me and says, “Dear, your hair is very ethnic.”At that point I was 13 and starting to notice what I looked like in the world. I never went back. I couldn’t enter another dance studio for 7 years. SB: So you just stopped dancing? TA: Yes, until 1986 when I left for UCLA. I was the first person in my lineage since slav- ery to go to college. I went to UCLA because in that time period all of my friends were being murdered and locked up under Three Strikes for a joint in their pocket. The depres- sion and survivor’s guilt is really bad when you come from an environment where people are actually being targeted to not make it. When I transferred to Cal in 1989, I bought $5 rush tickets to Cal Performances—Ailey, Dance Theatre of Harlem, Garth Fagan, and Bill T. Jones with Uncle Tom’s Cabin . I’m one of the only brown folks in the theater and just crying. In that moment I realized you can cre- ate social change with the arts. In my junior year there was a company called Voice the Movement, a project put to- gether by Anne Reeb, daughter of the white minister [James Reeb] who was killed dur- ing the Civil Rights Movement. In 1989, she made a piece about Medgar Evers. Reggie Savage was Medgar and I was his wife, Myr- lie. During this process, I figured out that people can actually do this as a job. So my senior year, instead of scooping ice cream on campus, my job was dancing. “At that point I had convinced myself that dancing was the only thing I was good at.” –TONYA AMOS SB: Did you dance with the Graham folks at Cal? TA: I did not. I was an Anthropology ma- jor. I was studying African American history and taking Egyptian hieroglyphics. I was like, we need Black people who can read primary documentation, so I did three years of glyphs, which when I moved to NY in 1991, two weeks after I finished college, kept me out of trouble because I had like $200 and had no place to live, no job, no food. I would go to the Met and pay 24 cents to get in and I would spend 8 hours and just translate stuff off the walls. When I graduated from Cal in 1991, people kept telling me to take [class] with Alonzo [King]. And I was like, Who is this Alonzo? Finally, someone dragged me in there and I was like, He’s Black! Why didn’t anyone say he was Black! None of the Black folks in his class had done any ballet but they were just so happy to be in his presence. And he treated everyone with loving respect. He encouraged me rather than flattening my already low self-esteem.
bines concert dance and a multimedia presentation to honor the Black musi- cal artists we’ve lost since 2000. When I saw that much talent on display in a society that works hard to vilify the bearers of that talent, combined with that much loss, the cognitive dissonance of anti-Black racism was laid bare. I realized I was listening to the sound of social life in social death, the sound of uplift, the sonic landscape
(top) Tonya Marie Amos and Andrew Pacho / photo by Lois Greenfield, (left) Tonya Marie Amos/ photo by Femi Corazon
SB: Where did you take these classes? TA: When I was a kid I was at ACT. For dance, I was at San Francisco Ballet. We’re talking about the 1970s. I was literally the only child of color in the studio. Every other kid in the school got
of Black joy— and the soundtrack of my life, to this American life. In the face of the sheer dominance of these voices, I could sense in my bones the crazy Morrison describes, the pathology and supreme waste of time of white supremacy—to work that hard to build yourself up by shooting down what so clearly soars. My generation’s K-12 history books never mentioned Juneteenth, so Tonya Amos, Grown Women Dance Collectives’s artistic director, had to educate me. 2 In sum, on June 19, 1865, two-and-a-half years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, Major General Gordon Granger and his Union sol- diers arrived in Texas to read the proclama- tion and make official that which slave own- ers had sought to keep secret: slaves were now free. Jubilation among former slaves ensued, followed, unsurprisingly, by a tenaciously ad- hered to revisionist history. So, white folks get to honor Lincoln, the white man who freed the slaves without any muddy chronology to contend with. On January 1, 1980, Juneteenth became a Texas state holiday, and there ap- pears to be a steady rise in consciousness and celebrations nationwide. In the spirit of "In Practice," this interview focuses on the labor of Amos’ dance journey, and the love that established and maintains GWDC’s Juneteenth project. It’s about Amos’ dance training history and how it reflects the racializing and racist history of American con- cert dance. GWDC is comprised of concert dancers, currently between the ages of 48 and 54, who come out of retirement each year for Fallen Heroes —from my point of view, they only get better with age. Amos, like so many dancers, was hesitant to talk to me, afraid to expose things about elite concert dance company culture. Many, many dancers grin and bear it for the chance to dance. Amos and I spoke at Peet’s Coffee on Col- lege Avenue on August 22, 2017. In Dance is publishing our interview now to coincide with the 9th Annual Fallen Heroes, Rising Stars Ju- neteenth performance at the Malonga Center, June 23-24. Tonya Amos: I grew up in San Francisco, Sunnydale neighborhood -- no running wa- ter, no electricity, no food. My parents put all of their money towards our education. I went to fancy schmancy schools, and I took ballet classes, acting classes, and all this stuff that kids in the projects didn’t do. Sima Belmar: You’re a Bay Area native. Tell us about your early dance life here.
to be in The Nutcracker , but I was never al- lowed on stage. So, after three years my dad went and spoke with the director of SFB and they were like, Yeah, Blacks can’t be on stage. I remember my dad saying something not very nice, and then, “We’re going elsewhere.” SB: Where did you go after your dad took you out of SFB? TA: So this was pre-BART and there was tons of traffic in northern California, unlike now [laughs]. My parents were in the car all the time trying to make sure we had access and to minimize the racial trauma of being a Black kid in the 70's. I ended up at Diablo Gymnas- tics in Walnut Creek (the kids were horrific to me there). A woman who was watching prac- tice said to my mother, “Why isn’t she danc- ing?”This was Lareen Fender of The Ballet School. Lareen approached me with my mom’s permission and said, “You’re beautiful. You should be dancing.”And I said, “I don’t want to dance anymore.”And she asked, “Why not?”And I said, “Well, Blacks can’t be on stage.” I was 9. And she said, “Nonsense. You can be on stage with me.” So Lareen trained the hell out of me for a couple of years. She was wonderful to me and made sure to never let the racial undertones that were thrown out by kids and their parents become overtones. At the same time, I was going to school at Nueva Day in Hillsborough with people who had 18 burners in their kitchen and horses. Anybody like me was cleaning someone’s house. Meanwhile, in my house it’s pouring rain and my whole family is in my bedroom because it’s the only room that doesn’t have water pouring through the ceiling—mom, dad, two sisters, two dogs, and the cat. When my mom got pregnant with my third sister, she couldn’t drive me to Walnut Creek anymore. So I went back to train in the city, bouncing around between pretty major acad- emies. One of them is gone, a boarding school for ballerinas, LaNova Academy [Ballet Ce- leste International of San Francisco]. 3 I didn’t live there, but ballerinas came from all over the country to study there. I remember there was a Nutcracker audition. I was about to go home when people asked why I wasn’t audi- tioning. I was like, Well, Blacks can’t be on stage, and they were like, “Oh, that’s right. Ok! See you next week!”They were kind of glad—the little girl with the leg behind the head and the three pirouettes en pointe at age 11! But on my way out, one of the moms said, “I hear what you’re saying, but Ms. LaNova is very open-minded. You should go talk to her.” So this old Russian woman looks at me and says, “Nonsense, dear. Blacks can be on stage. There’s a black snowflake in Nut- cracker . But we already have our Black this year, dear. You should come back next year.”
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CONTENTS
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ON THIS PAGE / In Practice:
Tonya Marie Amos by Sima Belmar 4 / A Lifetime of Acheivement for Lily Cai by Rob Tayler 5 / Contact Improvisers Consider #metoo by Cathie Caraker, Rosemary Hannon, and Miriam Wolodarski Lundberg 6 / June Performance Calendar 8 / Traveling and Touring by Katy Dammers 10 / GERALDCASELDANCE at 20 by Heather Desaulniers 12 / Cultivating Freedom and Power in the Dance Classroom by Jochelle Pereña
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SB: But you chose NY over SF, and you went to NY to dance, not to be a museum docent, right? TA: I went to New York to dance. My first Ailey audition was for the company, at Zeller- bach [Berkeley]. I made it through a cut and then Ms. [Denise] Jefferson, who was the head of the Ailey school at the time, pulled me aside and asked me to come to the audition for the Ailey school’s Summer Intensive in NY. She saw my really good ballet foundation from years before. Years later, I worked for Ms. Jefferson—I was her student assistant, her house sitter, her friend. She was the one who built that school. She was my mentor and I loved her so much, my NY dance mom. Several women were accepted into the sum- mer program, but—two of us, myself and Phyllis Byers—were asked to attend the schol- arship audition in New York. This moment changed the entire course of my life. There were 600 girls at the Ailey school audition. They give 35 scholarships a quarter, and they try hard to make sure that African American dancers are represented in that group. I audi- tioned for the scholarship and got it. TA: I would not have danced without Ailey. I owe Ailey a lot. But back then, Black women couldn’t have braids, locks, twists—the same reason I was ousted from ballet was happen- ing there. My generation got that changed. Ms. Jefferson went to the International Blacks In Dance conference where somebody talked about self-hatred, and she came back and changed the policy. All the higher level bal- let classes were mostly white. I’d be put in the back line, told by a (non-Black) teacher, “You’re fat, you’re lazy, you’re never going to dance.” It wasn’t always like that but even in a Black organization, that European body type is preferred, that ballet line. I defended my scholarship for 9 semesters. After a year and a half I looked around and everyone else was gone. And I kept defend- ing it. They make you audition every single semester. SB: Talk about precarity. TA: If your lines and turns don’t keep getting better, you’re gone. TA: During the New York years, I danced with Cleo Parker Robinson (in Denver), one of the Black rep companies. Basically all the repertory gets shared between Cleo, Dayton Contemporary Dance, Philadanco, and Ai- ley—we all did Donald McKayle, Talley Be- atty, Katherine Dunham. For example, I was a soloist in McKayle’s Nocturne , which was Sylvia Waters’ role at Ailey, but during a dif- ferent time period. SB: Was this supporting you? TA: Oh yeah. Once I went to New York all I did was dance professionally. When I was at Ailey I did three hours of answering phones in the morning. But I was at Ailey 12 hours a day. I was off on weekends. I taught some gymnastics on the weekends just to make some extra money. Once I was in New York, I was a dancer. I never got a “real job” ever again. I danced with Cleo in Colorado from 1994- 1996. Back in New York, I danced with Foot- prints, an Ailey spin-off, and Amy Pivar, a Bill T. spin-off. It was all concert dance, until the last four years. I had a career-altering abdomi- nal surgery, I’d say career-ending, but it wasn’t really career-ending, I just couldn’t do concert dance anymore because it was 12 hours a day of hard core physical work and partnering. SB: So what was it like at the Ailey school for you? SB: So who did you dance with during the New York years?
I couldn’t support weight on my pelvis any- more. I didn’t trust my body at that point. I’d be okay for two weeks and then I’d be dou- bled over in pain, I didn’t realize that for years I was working with scar tissue and internal bleeding. I was just in pain all the time. So my last four years in New York I turned to musi- cal theater, because I could be a dancer but not be a dancer. So I did the international tour of West Side Story and some other Broadway tours and reviews, including playing Ernie in a ginormous, hot costume in the national tour of Sesame Street . I did a lot of fitness model- ing, so when you see someone flying through the air in a business suit, that was me. TA: After 9/11, my husband and I backpacked through Latin America for a year. When we came back to New York, my apartment was sublet, so I stayed in California after visiting my parents. I’d been trying to retire for 10 years. At that point I had convinced myself that dancing was the only thing I was good at. I couldn’t start over. I [didn’t] have any real skills. The dance career is really bad for the self-esteem—you’re yelled at non-stop, people are throwing chairs at you and cussing at you, with the occasional getting swatted on the butt by a choreographer. That abuse over a long time, that’s in your nervous system at that point. There was one other choreogra- pher that I still wanted to work with and then I found out he was doing the same thing to his dancers so I was like, Yeah, done. I was using my return to the Bay Area as an excuse to do something new. At this point I’m 35 years old. After two years trying actively to teach, I opened a Pilates studio in Concord. I opened in 2006 with no business experience. From concept to opening day was six weeks. I wasn’t supposed to make it out of the projects. I definitely wasn’t supposed to have a 15-year dance career after not danc- ing for seven years. I wasn’t supposed to have a really successful concert dance career as a Black dancer, period. Luckily I had people around me saying do it. I’ve won five busi- ness awards—Small Business of the Year, Best Woman-Owned Business of the year, Female Entrepreneur the Year, 100 Influential Women of Pleasant Hill, and Best Pilates Studio. SB: No one had related to you that being a dancer involves a whole range of skill sets… TA: …I had no idea! I went from a ballerina to the Ailey institution, and whether you like it or not, when you’re part of the incredible Ailey institution, you don’t know anything else is out there, that’s the only thing that’s legitimate. You go out into the world and you can dance circles around everyone else but if you stand next to Desmond [Richardson] ev- ery day in class, of course you think you suck! TA: After opening my studio, I started get- ting really itchy artistically. At the turn of the millennium, we were losing some really kick- ass people in the African American commu- nity—Ossie Davis, Gregory Hines, Nina Sim- one, Rosa Parks, Coretta Scott King. Michelle Ned, who I danced with in Voice the Move- ment, and I thought, someone has got to do something to honor these people. We decided to make a show, just bring our friends and family to see it. I called Eurydice and Marisa Castillo. My husband, who’s a computer geek, put together a multimedia to tie the dances to- gether and holy shit, we have a show! Our first year was at Laney College in 2009. We had 150 people in the audience. They were mostly all my clients. So we moved it closer to my studio to leverage my clientele. For the next six years we did [it at] Pleasant Hill and Concord, we sold out our shows, 600 people, lines down the street. In 2015 we moved the show to a new theater in Pittsburg to try to reach the Black community there. SB: So what was the straw that broke the camel’s back? SB: So what drew you back to dance and the formation of GWDC?
But folks didn’t know concert dance and be- cause we don’t have funding, the tickets were too expensive. We always sponsor 100-150 kids, but I couldn’t get the tickets cheaper than $28. Then, most of my clients wouldn’t come to Pittsburg because there were too many Black people. Y’all want a dance history con- cert but you don’t want to be around black people! Black people were afraid to come to Pleasant Hill for fear of being pulled over. White people were afraid of Black people. So I moved the show to Impact HUB in Oakland 2016, and this year [2017] to Malonga. I think it will stay there. My dream is to get it in a bigger space and make the tickets $5. SB: For those who’ve never seen Fallen Heroes, Rising Stars , the multimedia presen- tation of images and songs by Black musical artists alternates with dances choreographed by GWDC. And the dancing is amazing. TA: I only work with people who are kick-ass dancers who I trust intimately because I’ve worked with them in companies. SB: I feel like your story demonstrates that dancing is not about ability, but about a com- mitment to changing approaches over time. Aging dancers teach audiences that it’s not about being in shape… TA: …it’s about sharing wisdom. The power you have in your little finger, the experience you have in your body. If you can walk onto
the stage and snatch the air out of the theater, then I trust you. Tonya closed her Pilates studio this past March to focus on GWDC and expanding Fallen Heroes, Rising Stars to create a robust Civil Rights program. “As a dancer I didn’t have voice. Now, I know: I started something from nothing. There’s a part of me that needs to go back to dancing, not for the sake of dancing, but to use dance as a modality for social impact and civil rights work. We are grown-ass women, carrying on the Black tradition of protest, agency, and providing access. We can do anything we put our brains to. It might be hard, but we’ll figure it out.” 2. For more information about Juneteenth, take a look at Emmaly Wiederholdt’s article about Amos in the June 2012 issue of In Dance . http://dancers- group.org/2012/06/juneteenth-a-celebration-to- remember/ 3. Merriem LaNova Bischof had been a dancer with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. SIMA BELMAR , Ph.D., is a Lecturer in the Depart- ment of Theater, Dance, & Performance Studies at the U Ohio. Her scholarly articles and book reviews have appeared in TDR , the Journal of Dance & Somatic Practices , Performance Matters , Contempo- rary Theatre Review , and The Oxford Handbook of Screendance Studies . 1. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=CGeNJewyo4o&t=2381s
Grown Women Dance Collective presents Fallen Heroes, Rising Stars: June 23-24, Malonga Arts Center, Oakland. grownwomendance.org
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in dance JUN 2018
A LIFETIME OF ACHIEVEMENT FOR LILY CAI by ROB TAYLOR
mad!,” she says, “and that kind of dedi- cation is something I pass on to my own dancers.” Lily’s journey reached her next impor- tant milestone when she began teaching dance at Galileo High School in San Fran- cisco in 1986. It was primarily with danc- ers she worked with during her Galileo experience that she formed her dance com- pany in 1988. This was what she called her “first generation” of dancers
process built out of an ex- tended, improvisatory re- hearsal. She says, “we spent a lot of hours in the studio, as if we were in a lab re- searching our own bodies... there aren’t any counts that you can follow, it has to be from your breath, from your spirit.” Lily records her dancer’s improvisa- tion, and studies them with her dancers. When C-oNe, watches the videos, “the
THE SAN FRANCISCO ETHNIC DANCE FESTIVAL is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, and as part of the festivities, the Festival will be awarding the Malonga Casquelourd Life- time Achievement award to choreographer Lily Cai. Lily is a well-deserving recipient of the award, not only for the signature beauty and power of her voluminous body of work, but as the leader of a dance company that has been such a regular part of the Festival. As the Festival enters its 40th year, Lily Cai Chinese Dance Company is turning 30. Both entities have helped one another on their journeys. And according to Lily, “it's a great jour- ney, one I really enjoy. You know many times parents will say this [being a dancer/chore- ographer] is not a real career. Parents think a real career is either a lawyer or doctor or technician working in the computer field.” For Lily a career means to be “stubborn like myself [and] speak to what it means to be human, not just only the money making ca- reer.” Is it rough? “Yeah, it's a challenge. It's not easy, but [there’s] a lot of excitement.” Lily’s journey began in Shanghai, where she danced as principal dancer with the Shanghai Opera House Dance Troupe be- fore moving to the US in 1983 and founding her dance company in 1988. Her father died when she was young and wanted her to be a doctor to help people who were sick like him heal. When I point out that the young girl who was guided towards a career heal- ing bodies as a doctor has become the wom- an who works with the bodies of dancers to bring joy and transcendance to audiences, she agrees there may be a parallel there. She credits much of her persistence to- wards her career to her mother. Growing up they made their own clothes, and Lily would often want to give up midway through a project. “If I started knitting a sweater, and wanted to give up, oh she would be so
and as the company grew its reputation during the 90s, she began attracting her “second generation,” dancers who came to her with more pro- fessional training and experi- ence, primarily in ballet. One of the dancers that started with her in 1986, Phong Voong, is still in the company and
(top) LIly Cai Chinese Dance Company / photo by Will Lee, (left) LIly Cai / photo courtesy of artist
way I learn best is to study the breathing aspect, as op- posed to the timing, I’m not even thinking about the music.” Alexandra Nguy became entranced with the Lily Cai Chinese Dance Company when she saw them as a high school student, and a few years after college she joined the compa- ny. She says Lily is “a visionary when it comes to her creative direction, using many different metaphors and methods and life experiences” to illustrate what she wants her dancers to do. She also credits Phong Voong: “we all strive to be like her. When I joined the company, I had to unlearn a lot of what I thought was dance...and having Phong in the company is wonderful – Lily’s technique is in her body al- ready and it comes out like Tai Chi.” As Lily’s dancers describe her method, it re- minds me of the methodology of the late film director Robert Altman. Lily gives her dancers a concept, they improvise around that concept, and then Lily sets the work on the dancers using the movements they’ve discovered that she finds most compelling. Lily’s vision guides the entire process, and the final result is strong and fully formed, and she is a master of her medium the way Altman was a master of his. After the Lifetime Achievement Award is given to Lily Cai at noon on June 8th at San Francisco City Hall, Lily Cai Dance Company will perform Silk Cascade as a part of the Ro- tunda Dance Series, re-staging the site-specific work that won her an Izzie award in 2016. Creating a performance that integrates the grand staircase is a particular challenge that Lily is proud of having achieved and earned acclaim for doing. “When performing [on the staircase] when you go up it’s not too difficult, but when you go down you need to go very slow, because the steps, they’re all the same color, no difference, no edge mark. And we can’t mark the edges, so when you make big movements they [the stairs] disappear and it creates dizziness. It’s very difficult, but when I asked my dancer’s if we should use the staircase or the floor, they said “staircase, staircase.” “My goal is to create signature work, so that when people see it they say that is Lily Cai’s work. My own signature is beautiful, powerful, one-of-a-kind, and unique. Every year is getting richer...I’m accumulating e xperience…knowledge...wisdom. It’s like a warehouse that’s constantly getting bigger.” This warehouse will not stop expanding anytime soon, “it’s so exciting…I look back at [what was created] five years ago, or even one year ago and I think about things differ- ently now. I’m just constantly working on new developments and new discoveries.” She tells me she never even thinks of taking a year off, so while she may receive a life- time achievement award this year, we should expect to see new Lily Cai work for years to come. “I never think about what’s done, I’m al- ways thinking about what’s next. It gives you lots of power and lots of energy.” ROB TAYLOR was born in Kansas, but educated by California’s public schools. He’s been thinking about dance in the Bay Area since 2001.
opportunity to do my dream, challenge myself, put my pas- sion on the stage, in a studio, and that kind of journey is so much fun. But it’s not easy, it’s never easy... when they say ‘it's easy’ that means they've never done it before.” She continues: “this is our 30th anniver- sary. I do a new show every year [and] just like a chef has a delicious new creation on the table for your guest to enjoy with you,” so does Lily create something special for her au- diences. She is also adamant that she shares her lifetime achievement award with “my dancers, Gang Situ [her musical collabora- tor], it’s not just me. People say ‘you’ve been doing this for so many years,’ I say yeah, I’m stubborn. But Lily Cai being stubborn doesn’t make it happen. You need a great team to make it happen.” A lot of our conversation was about her method for developing choreography that she’s developed over a lifetime of refinement. She explains that “there is something cultur- ally different [between Western and Chinese dance forms], just like writing. English writ- ing is through the space. Chinese writing is in the space.” Lily holds up some notes writ- ten in the respective languages. “Can you tell? I think this makes a wonderful world, not all the same...It’s apples and peaches, which one is more beautiful? Both of them are beautiful.” “For me it’s about the body,” and when she says the word “body” she enunciates it slowly, imbuing the word with the weight and sig- nificance of someone who has dedicated a life to understanding how a body can express an idea or an emotion. She pauses for a moment after saying the word “body”, and then con- tinues: “What people see are body motions – the body comes first, and [her dancers] are aware of their body. That’s why many times people say our dances are very sensual.” “Movement is a result. I train my dancer on how to arrange the energy in their bod- ies, and the movement comes from how that energy is arranged. And you never make movement from thinking – you making from feeling.” She continues, “Feel it, don’t think. Thinking is a scientist’s job. Scientist says 1+1=2, but an artist says 1+1=100.” People sometimes watch dance for the physicality of it, for reasons that I think are somewhat similar for why other people watch sporting events. They are looking to see bodies test their limits. But dancers know that the process for getting to that point where the audience says “wow” requires a complicated internal workflow. The deeper that internal process takes a dancer, the more subtle and nuanced a performance can be. Lily’s method for creating work is based on an extended and creative rehearsal process that allows her dancers the freedom to take an inner journey, and is a key element con- tributing to her exquisite choreography. I spoke to a couple of her dancers to get a better idea of what the process of work- ing with Lily is like. C-oNe Tang, who joined the company in 2008, describes an organic
shares that when she started taking Lily’s class as a high school freshman in 1986, “I knew nothing about dance before taking Ms. Cai[’s] class. Once I stepped foot into her class, I’ve never stopped dancing!” Lily says Phong is her best dancer, and one the other dancers look to- wards for guidance. She says “Phong is a beau- tiful dancer, she is my delicious soup that has been simmering and getting richer over time.” Over the decades the company has toured around the country and internationally, as well as presenting new work every year in her home season. Lily has received commis- sions from the Santa Fe Opera, Memphis Ballet, and the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival. She has received support to create new work from Creative Work Fund, San Francisco Arts Commission, and the Rock- efeller Foundation. And of course, every year she creates new work for her home season. Regarding her strenuous work ethic, she tells me “that’s not easy…[but it] gives me the
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Rotunda Dance Series and Lily Cai Chinese Dance Company present Silk Cascade: June 8, City Hall Rotunda, SF. dancersgroup.org/rotunda
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CONTACT IMPROVISERS CONSIDER #METOO
community news Dancers’ Group Announces 2018 Lighting Artists for Dance Grant Recipients
NOW IN ITS 11TH YEAR, the Lighting Artists in Dance program provides lighting designers, working with choreographers and dance companies, access to funds that will support their artistic collaborations, which culminate in the creation of dance performances taking place in the Bay Area. The program is unique in its focus on supporting Lighting Designers for dance. Dancers’ Group’s executive director, Wayne Hazzard states that, “The designers and artists working in the Bay Area continue to engage in invigoratingly good and one-of-a-kind collaborations that are represented in this year’s grantees. The depth and range of projects are an inspiration for artists and audiences alike.” The 2018 Lighting Artists in Dance grantees are: Rogelio Lopez , lighting designer for Nina Haft & Company Jack Beuttler , lighting designer for Simpson/Stulberg Collaborations Tony Shayne , lighting designer for Hope Mohr Dance Kaveri Seth , lighting designer for Paufve Dance Harry Rubeck , lighting designer for African & African American Performing Arts Coalition Stephanie Anne Johnson , lighting designer for Deep Waters Dance Theater Delayne Medoff , lighting designer for Monique Jenkinson dancersgroup.org/lad Dohee Lee Receives 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has announced its 2018 fellowships, including two joint fellowships, to a group of scholars, artists, and scientists. The recipients were chosen from a pool of three thousand applicants and were selected based on their prior achievements and potential to make significant contributions to their fields. Oakland’s Dohee Lee is part of the 2018 cohort, in the Drama and Performance Art category. gf.org
Sadly though, I still hear from young women about the ‘creepy guy’ factor at jams. Wom- en, especially younger women, are still feel- ing a need to dodge certain men at certain moments. So we do have some work to do, still, as a community. What gives me hope is that the jam is a place where I learned to practice strong boundaries and to keep my- self safe. It is a fertile learning ground for finding one’s best self. Taja Will I personally have not seen it impact my pri- mary CI community but I’ve been hearing from other communities that the #metoo movement has liberated incidents and feel- ings around safety and respect in their com- munities, some folks have been called out for recurring behavior that makes others feel unsafe. Anya Cloud It impacts everything. As dance artists I be- lieve that we are the material of the work. And that includes our complex histories that often relate to trauma. I think it is expos- ing the need for more explicit and nuanced consent practices with CI. I think that the #metoo movement is facilitating some space for more transparent questioning/discourse of patriarchy, white supremacy, and hetero- normativity that can be quite pervasive in the CI community. It is ongoing and incre- mental work to move against these dominant systems. The current statistics are that some- one in the U.S. is sexually assaulted every 98 seconds. We can't ignore this within the CI community. And I do notice people talking more about power, consent, agency, preda- tory behavior, gender, and assumptions now than I have in the past. We can do better. It is vital and important work in terms of vision- ing and manifesting the kind of CI culture and practice that we want in the future. It is all quite intense and necessary. Cathie Caraker I can't speak for the whole CI community but I can say that my own approach has changed. I’m much quicker to speak up now when my ‘ick radar’ goes off. I recently approached an organizer who had invit- ed me to a workshop with a male teacher who's long had a reputation for being one of “those guys” who hits on female par- ticipants. I told the organizer that I wasn't comfortable being at an event with this teacher, and told him why. His response was quite defensive. However, he passed on what I'd said and that teacher reached out to me. We ended up having a very good conversa- tion, in which he shared with me that he's been working on changing his behavior. It was one of those moments where I felt a clear shift because I'd spoken up. It feels awkward and even scary to stick your neck out. As women we're socialized to be nice. We want people to like us. We're afraid of offending, or god forbid, making a mistake. We can teach young women about healthy boundaries and consent and blah blah, but we're still not addressing the core problem, which is patriarchy, male entitlement. The imbalance of power is very old but we can change it. We can support female-identified artists and boycott dance institutions that don't. We can ask our male peers to take a step back, to listen more and ask how they can help. We can facilitate discussions on diversity and power sharing at our dance festivals. It’s happening - there is a sea change afoot.
THE WEST COAST CONTACT IMPROVISATION JAM in Berkeley (wcciJAM) has been a hub for the investigation of the form for over 25 years. Contact Improvisation (CI), which grew out of choreographic experiments in the early 1970s, is a relational dance form in which dancers improvise around touch, weight exchange, and the physics of equilib- rium and falling. CI challenged assumptions about dance, but has since developed into a form practiced widely by both professional and recreational dancers around the world. “Contact Improvisation's influence can be seen throughout modern and postmod- ern dance choreography, performance, and dance training worldwide, especially in re- lationship to partnering and use of weight.” ( Contact Quarterly ) Contact Improvisation's open-ended physical dialogues between dancers offers a platform for critical inquiry of movement possibilities. Can it also cultivate a ques- tioning of the cultures we inhabit? In wc- ciJAM 2017’s Statement on Inclusivity and Assumptions, teachers and organizers cre- ated a statement acknowledging that while our dance is not enough to change the larger sociopolitical context, we must grapple with the issues that are present in the room at ev- ery jam. Each of us arrives at the dance with our own personal histories, at an intersec- tion of specific identities. Can awareness of how culture and socioeconomic structures inhabit our bodies, minds, and habits, help us avoid perpetuating inequities? How do we continue to question both our dancing and the subculture that we've built to sup- port its practice? What are the form’s poten- tials for disrupting oppression and privileges based on identity? The practice of CI is uniquely positioned to offer a space for the investigation of how we express our personal boundaries through touch and movement. A statement most often attributed to dancer and choreogra- pher Steve Paxton says that CI should deal with “physics, not ‘chemistry.’” Neverthe- less, this boundary is not always respected, nor is it easy to define. The dancing body and the social body coexist. Learning CI can involve learning to navigate complex experi- ences and interactions where a strong sense of personal agency is called for. This can be particularly challenging for younger women, gender non-conforming folks, dancers with disabilities, or other structurally disadvan- taged groups. In this moment of #metoo, we – Cathy, Rosemary, and Miriam along with the rest of the team organizing the wcciJ AM – are committed to empowering danc- ers to maintain healthy boundaries, to cul- tivate self-care and agency in their dance relationships. With that in mind, “De/con- structing Power” was chosen as this year’s festival theme. What follows are responses to the ques- tion, “How do you see the #metoo move- ment impacting the CI community, or not?” from some of this year’s female-identified teachers: Jo Kreiter I stepped away from the contact community in 2004 when my son was born and came back to it in 2016, when he was old enough to stay home alone for a little while, so I could go to the jam. When I came back, I was so delighted to see a younger generation had taken up the form, and to see tremen- dous thoughtfulness around inclusivity and power. There are many more brown bodies on the dance floor then when I left. And gen- der non-conforming bodies. There is spoken, articulate language, and even written decla- rations, for how to be in a jam with respect for all. I think dancers are some of the best creatures on earth, so I am not surprised by these evolutions of thought and practice.
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calendar JUN 2018 VISIT THE ONLINE COMMUNITY CALENDAR, to find additional events and to submit a performance. dancersgroup.org
San Francisco International Arts Festival Various SF Locations In the 2nd week of the festival, 26 Bay Area artists present their work. Wed, May 30-Sun, Jun 3, see website for more details. sfiaf.org Oakland Ballet Company Odell Johnson Performing Arts Center, Laney College, Oakland "Scene and Heard" features the world pre- mieres of five new story ballets by choreog- raphers Bat Abbit, Antoine Hunter, Michael Lowe, Graham Lustig and Danielle Rowe. Thu- Fri, May 31-Jun 1, 7:30pm; Sat, Jun 2, 2:30pm & 7:30, $35-50. oaklandballet.org Non Stop Bhangra Children’s Garden @ Yerba Buena Gardens, SF Performance celebrating the spirit of this tra- ditional Punjabi folk music and dance. Fri, Jun 2, 11am & 12:15pm, FREE. ybgfestival.org Smuin Ballet Sunset Center, Carmel-by-the-Sea "Dance Series 02" features If I Were a Sushi Roll by Val Caniparoli; Helen Pickett’s Oasis ; and Amy Seiwert’s Falling Up , an exploration of trust between partners set to Brahms. Fri, Jun 1, 8pm; Sat, Jun 2, 2pm, $57-74. smuinballet.org ChoreoFest Yerba Buena Gardens Festival, SF A site-specific dance festival curated by RAW- dance’s Wendy Rein and Ryan T. Smith featuring nine local companies and leads audiences on a journey throughout the lawns and architecture of the Gardens. Sat-Sun, Jun 2-3, 1pm, FREE. ybgfestival.org Keith Hennessy/Circo Zero Joe Goode Annex, SF SINK’s approach to current politics waivers be- tween punk and contemplative, transformative and fucked. Loneliness, a lifejacket, a white man, a shadow dance, a long angry sad song, and love, suspended. Fri-Sat, Jun 1-2, 8pm, $0-20. circozero.org
Gamelan Sekar Jaya, Jun 9 / Photo courtesy of Yerba Buena Gardens Festival
RAW presents Chelsea Van Billiard, Emergence Dance Company, and Nitya Narasimhan SAFEhouse Arts, SF Narasihmhon will present Maathe , a Bharatanatyam solo. Van Billiard presents The Wave , exploring adaptation to shifts in energy. Moving Forward is a work by Emergence Dance Co. RAW is SAFEhouse Arts’ Resident Artist Workshop. Fri-Sat, Jun 1-2, 8pm, $15-20. safehousearts.org
Planetary Dance Santos Meadow @ Mount Tamalpais State Park, Mill Valley Anna Halprin will lead the 38th Annual Plan- etary Dance—a community dance for peace among people and peace with the Earth. All ages and abilities are invited to join this year’s call for “Sanctuary.” Sun, Jun 3, 11am, FREE. (parking passes required). planetarydance.org Oakland Ballet Company Odell Johnson Performing Arts Center, Laney College, Oakland “East Bay DANCES ’18” features AXIS Dance Company, Ballet Folklórico México Danza, d’Naga, Jubilee American Dance Theatre, Linda Steele II, Marika Brussel, Savage Jazz Dance Company, Shabnam Dance Company and Urban Jazz Dance Company. Sun, Jun 3, 4pm, $25. oaklandballet.org Danse Lumiere Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Woodside Featuring choreographers: Julia Adam, Jen- nifer Archibald, Dalia Rawson, Lissa Resnick, Kathryn Roszak, with Lauren Jonas, Artistic Director Diablo Ballet and Composer Audrey Vardanega. Sun, Jun 3, 1pm, $50. dlkdance.com RAW presents Adric Alvaro SAFEhouse Arts, SF M4M LWG (Living With Ghoul) explores how music connects us to our memories. RAW is SAFEhouse Arts’ Resident Artist Workshop. Sun, Jun 3, 10, 8pm; Thu-Fri, Jun 21-22, 8pm, $15-20. safehousearts.org
AguaClara Flamenco & SF Flamenco Dance Company, Jun 2 / Photo by Arthur Wilinski
AguaClara Flamenco & SF Flamenco Dance Company Gallery 308 @ Fort Mason Center, SF A spirited troupe of flamencos hot on the trail of Don Quixote embark on a journey filled with colorful characters, dazzling footwork and silly sing alongs. A whimsical take on the passion- ate Spanish art form that will captivate children and adults alike. Sat, Jun 2, 1pm, $12-25. sfiaf.org
Kristi Williamson & Adrian Arias
Firehouse @ Fort Mason Center, SF In-finite Beauty is dance, theater, live music, body painting, and visual arts establishing a sacred space to explore the essence of beauty. Sat, Jun 2, 8pm; Sun, Jun 3, 1pm, $25. in-finitebeauty.com
Oakland Ballet Company, May 31-Jun 1 / Photo by John Heft
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Footloose Presents Shelton Theater, SF
GERALDCASELDANCE ODC Theater, SF
RAW presents Student Showcase SAFEhouse Arts, SF RAW Teachers Program presents work by Caroline Liviakis, Mariana Sobral, and Cookie Harrist. Sat, Jun 23, 8pm, $15-20. safehousearts.org
Dancers, musicians, actors and filmmakers bring original stories about the changes to San Francisco. The multi-talented performers play different characters and are part of the ensemble in this anthology of satirical, comic and dramatic original pieces that range from romantic and idyllic to the gritty and not so pretty. Thursdays, Jun 7, 14, 21, 28, 7:30pm, $20-40. ftloose.com Mahealani Uchiyama Children’s Garden @ Yerba Buena Gardens, SF A cross section of classical and contemporary Hawaiian hula as well as joyful rhythms of the traditional Tahitian 'ōte'a and 'aparima. Fri, Jun 8, 11am & 12:15pm, FREE. ybgfestival.org As part of the 40th San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival, this performance features a reprise of an Izzie-award winning work by the Lily Cai Chinese Dance Company, followed by the presentation of two Malonga Casquelourd Lifetime Achievement Awards: to Lily Cai and lighting designer Patty Ann Farrell. Fri, Jun 8, Noon, FREE. dancersgroup.org RAW presents Silk Worm and Jose Abad SAFEhouse Arts, SF Bottom Bride is a Southern Gothic rom-com, a monologue, and a wedding gone wrong. Also presenting a new work by Jose Abad in collaboration with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto // Faluda Islam. RAW is SAFEhouse Arts’ Resident Artist Workshop, co-presented with National Queer Arts Festival. Fri-Sat, Jun 8-9, 8pm, $15-20. safehousearts.org Gamelan Sekar Jaya Yerba Buena Gardens Festival, SF The most celebrated gamelan ensemble out- side of Bali, Gamelan Sekar Jaya performs a breathtaking mix of traditional and contempo- rary music and dance works. Sat, Jun 9, 1pm, FREE. ybgfestival.org Keith Hennessy/Circo Zero The Lab, SF The 10 year anniversary of Hennessy’s Bessie winning performance Crotch references the images and actions of artist Joseph Beuys. Thu-Sat, Jun 7-9, 8pm, $15. circozero.org Rotunda Dance Series: Lily Cai Chinese Dance Company City Hall Rotunda, SF
Presenting two world premieres: Cover Your Mouth When You Smile and Not About Race Dance , a preview. Wed-Fri, Jun 13-15, 8pm, $20-25. odc.dance
Fresh Meat Festival Z Space, SF
Grown Women Dance Collective Malonga Arts Center, Oakland
This year’s festival of transfender and queer performance features artists from across the US performing bomba, hip hop, theater, bachata, contemporary dance, opera, spoken word, and ballroom. After-show lobby-parties every night with DJ, go-go dancers, Fresh Meat photo booth, drinks and dancing. Thu-Sat. Jun 14-16, 8pm, $15-25. freshmeatproductions.org Parangal Dance Company Children’s Garden @ Yerba Buena Gardens, SF Performing Filipino folk dances from around Philippines, from the warrior dance of Kalinga Province to Tiniklink from the central island of Leyte. Fri, Jun 15, 11am & 12:15pm, FREE. ybgfestival.org
In the 9th annual "Fallen Heroes Rising Stars - Juneteeth," former soloists with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Dance Theatre of Harlem, Martha Graham Company, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, Complexions, Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble, & over 40 Broadway shows, perform pieces to songs by iconic musical artists. Sat, Jun 23, 6:30pm; Amy Seiwert’s Imagery ODC Theater, SF The eighth annual SKETCH series featuring new ballets by three female choreographers including: the Bay Area debut of NYC-based choreographers Jennifer Archibald and Gabrielle Lamb, and Artistic Director Amy Seiwert. Each choreographer will self-identify a creative risk they want to tackle, with the goal of breaking habits. Thu-Sat, Jun 28-30, 8pm, $20-50. odc.dance Sun, Jun 24, 2pm, $25-125. grownwomendance.org
Keith Hennessy/Circo Zero, Jun 1-2 / Photo by Robbie Sweeny
Emergence Dance Company, Jun 1-2 / Photo by Leopard Lady Productions
Embodiment Project ODC Theater, SF
Shabbat Art-In CSUEB Dance Studio, PE 140, Hayward
A new work using street dance, live song, choreo-poetry, and documentary theater to explore a timely conversation on the school- to-prison pipeline, childhood trauma, Restor- ative Justice, race, power and healing as a call to action. Thu-Sat, Jun 7-9, 8pm, $30. odc.dance/embodiment
Experimental performance events that weave together dance, music, theater, bodywork, napping, projections, community gathering, play, inquiry, discussion, meditation, healing, jam session, Shabbat service, choose-your- own-adventure, psychedelic journeys, hanging out, and whatever inspirations you bring! Performances by Bandelion, CSUEB DanceSing Drum Company and guests. Fri, Jun 15, 6:30p, FREE. dandeliondancetheater.org
Flyaway Productions / Jo Kreiter Cadillac Hotel, SF
A site-specific aerial dance celebrating 100 years of “outcast activism” in the Tenderloin, Tender spotlights the young, single, working women who moved into the neighborhood in the early 1900s, the transgender activists of the 1960s, the Vietnamese leaders who fought for immigrant rights in the 1970s, as well as Kathy Looper, who purchased the Cadillac Hotel, the first nonprofit of its kind dedicated to low- income housing for people in recovery. Thu, Jun 7 & 14, 8:30pm; Fri, Jun 8 & 15, 12:30pm & 8:30pm; Sat, Jun 9 & 16, 8:30pm & 9:30pm, FREE. flyawayproductions.com SFDanceworks Cowell Theater @ Fort Mason Center, SF World premieres by Danielle Rowe and James Sofranko, as well as Nacho Duato’s classic Jardí Tancat, and a duet by Penny Saunders. Fri-Sat, Jun 8-9, 8pm; Sun, Jun 10, 2pm, $20-60. sfdanceworks.org ANAR DANA San Francisco Bay Area Douglas Morrisson Theatre, Hayward The show includes dances from: Kabyle Berbers of Algeria, Assyria, Croatian Silent Dances, Ottoman Court, Georgian Mountain, Persian Neo-Classical Dance, and Balochi (Sindh Pakistan). Sat, Jun 9, 8pm; Sun, Jun 10, 2pm, $10-20. anardanasf.weebly.com Sha Sha Higby Throckmorton Theater, Mill Valley Using the manipulation of hand crafted mate- rials, textures and exotic sculptural costume interwoven with puppetry, dance and intricate props, Higby’s work creates a journey in which movement and stillness meet. Sun, Jun 10, 7:30pm, $15-20. throckmortontheatre.org
Footloose Presents Exit Stage Left, SF
Yes to Everything has dance, physical theater, music, monologues, spoken word and com- edy. Featured artists are Bob Ernst, Jovelyn Richards, Julie Drucker, Kathleen Denny, Ron Jones, and Elizabeth Simone’s physical com- edy troupe. Fri-Sat, Jun 15-16, 22-23, 29-30,
FRESH Meat Productions, Jun 14-16 / Photo by Kegan Marling
8pm, $15-25. ftloose.com
CONCEPT series Green Room @ SF War Memorial & Performing Arts Center, SF RAWdance’s CONCEPT series shares contem- porary dance works by Nichele Van Portfleet, Jhia Louise Jackson, Lenora Lee Dance, Na- tasha Adorlee’s Concept o4, and Sarah Bush Dance Project. Fri, Jun 29, 8pm; Sat, Jun 30, 3 & 7pm, Pay What You Can. rawdance.org Janet Collard Temescal Arts Center, Oakland Performing Valeska is a dance theater solo project based on the life of 20’s cabaret performance artist, Valeska Gert. Fri-Sat, Jun RAW presents Cellula and Steven Horner SAFEhouse Arts, SF Cellula , a movement based collective led by three female artists presents a patchwork woven together by female narratives explor- ing bodies, memories, emotions and taboos. With HOMeOstatis improviser Steven Horner explores his state of personal physiological, emotional and mental equilibriums. Fri-Sat, Jun 29-30, 8pm, $15-20. safehousearts.org 29-30, 8pm, $15-20. janetcollard.com
CubaCaribe Festival of Dance and Music
Various, Oakland & San Francisco The 14th annual festival presenting popular, contemporary and folkloric cultural expres- sion, religion, history, and politics of the Afro-Caribbean Diaspora. Fri-Thu, Jun 15-28, $12-30, see website for details. cubacaribe.org
Sammay Dizon SOMArts Cultural Center, SF
H.O.L.Y. (Hate Often Loves You) CITY is a mul- timedia, experimental, contemporary dance theater work that investigates what it means to cultivate “sanctuary” in San Francisco/Yelamu. Sat, Jun 16, 8pm; Sun, Jun 17, 2pm, $15-50. urbanxindigenous.wordpress.com RAW and National Queer Arts Festival present fem(me) SAFEhouse Arts, SF Curated by Bhumi Patel, a program of works that explore the intersectionality of queer femme identities with works by Patel, Zackary Forcum, Jory Horn, Maria David, and STEAM- ROLLER. RAW is SAFEhouse Arts’ Resident Art- ist Workshop. Sat-Sun, Jun 16-17, 8pm, $15-20. safehouse.org
SFDanceworks, Jun 8-10 / Photo by Andrew Weeks
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