Lesbian and Gay Dance Festival 2001

Lesbian and Gay Dance Festival 2001
Friday, June 15-Sunday, July 1
Location: Dance Mission Theatre & Shotwell Studios
Tickets/Info: 415.273.4633

Queer Dance: Sex and Comedy
Friday-Sunday, June 15-17; 8 pm
Location: Dance Mission Theatre, 3316 24th St @ Mission
Tickets/Info: 415.273.4633
$15 with a reservation, $17 at the door

Laura Bernasconi, Tara Brandel/MnaRua, Sean Dorsey, Kim Epifano, Michelle Ito, Julie Kane/Mercy Sidbury, Jared Kaplan/Gabriel Todd, KT Nelson/Brian Fisher

Panel Discussion: Body Image & Dance
Sunday, June 17; 4pm
Location: Shotwell Studios, 3252A 19th St @ Shotwell
Free

Panel Discussion: The Politics of Art
Sunday, July 1; 4 pm
Location: Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St @ Mission
Free

Cosponsored by the Harvey Milk Institute

Moveable Feast / Commissioned Works: Weekend 1
Friday & Sunday, June 22, 24; 8pm
Location: Dance Mission Theatre, 3316 24th St @ Mission
Tickets/Info: 415.273.4633
$15 with a reservation, $17 at the door

Yannis Adoniou/KUNST-STOFF, Jesselito Bie/STEAMROLLER, Remy Charlip, Krissy Keefer/DANCE BRIGADE, Sue Roginsky/Stephanie Schaaf

Moveable Feast / Commissioned Works: Weekend 2
Friday-Sunday, June 29-July 1; 8 pm
Location: Dance Mission Theatre, 3316 24th St @ Mission
Tickets/Info: 415.273.4633
$15 with a reservation, $17 at the door

Yannis Adoniou/KUNST-STOFF, Jesselito Bie/STEAMROLLER, Anne Bluethenthal/ABD, Krissy Keefer/DANCE BRIGADE, Sue Roginsky/Stephanie Schaaf

Lesbian and Gay Dance Festival
The SF Lesbian Gay Dance Festival (LGDF) was founded in 1996 to address the need-among artists and among audiences- for specifically lesbian and gay dance expression in the Bay Area. The Festival addresses the lack of visibility for L & G artists in the cultural landscape of the Bay Area. L & G dancers and choreographers contribute greatly to the arts in the region, and yet their contributions continue to be lost in the ubiquitous aesthetic of mainstream, heterosexual dance art. By providing L & G artists with a safe space for expression, the LGDF is breaking down artistic barriers. LGDF has received awards and nominations from the Isadora Duncan Dance Award Committee. Our intent was not only to construct the environment for the creation of excellent queer dance art, but also to create dialogue among the many diverse artists in our community.

Lesbian and Gay Dance Festival
Artist Biographies and Performance Information

KUNST-STOFF performing “EVERYTHING UNDER CONTROL”
Choreography: Yannis Adoniou
Music: Kevin Donlon
Media Work: Evann Siebens
Company: Nicole Bonadonna, Kara Davis, Juliann Rhodes, Leslie Schickel, Nol
Simonse, Nora Heiber, with Phaedra Jarrett and Samuel Pott, courtesy of Oakland Ballet.

“Everything Under Control” is about the power of having choices. The body is an exploration into the language of beauty. One must continually recognize whether a body is in motion, emotion, tension, or stasis. Phrases and sequences take on their own life as they unfold at the speed of thought.

Yannis Adoniou’s dance career began at The National Ballet School of Athens, Greece and the prestigious Hamburg Ballet School. He has danced with the Hamburg Ballet, the Osnabruck National Theater, the Bonn State Ballet, and Lines Contemporary Ballet in SF. Adoniou’s works have appeared at Summerfest, the Lesbian and Gay Dance Festival, and the Jon Sims Center for the Performing Arts, among many others. In 1998 he joined forces with Tomi Paasonen to found their own multimedia dance company and art forum called KUNST-STOFF, which has won critical-acclaim for synthesizing theatrical dance, film, and visual art. KUNST-STOFF is an SF -based organization that creates experimental and eclectic “art forums” featuring 8 versatile dancers and two in-house choreographers. KUNST-STOFF brings visual artists, dancers, musicians, filmmakers, writers, and personalities under one umbrella to create cohesive, dynamic experiences that provoke change as they educate and entertain.

Laura Bernasconi
“Quatro”
Choreography: by Enrico Labayen
Music: Shostakovich
Description: This contemporary ballet reflects the passionate and sometimes violent nature of relationships crossing and redefining gender boundaries.

Laura Bernasconi grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area of California and was awarded scholarships throughout the United States to schools such as the San Francisco Ballet, Cleveland Ballet, Marin Ballet, Sacramento Ballet, The Academy of Ballet in San Francisco, and to the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. Some of her most influential teachers have been Enrico Labayen, Robert Joffrey, Peter Appel, Benjaman Harkarvy, David Howard, Alonzo King, Stanley Holden, Richard Gibson, Milton Meyers, and Lynn Simonson. While studying hatha yoga and meditation in India, Laura learned and performed the East Indian Temple Dance “Odissi” with Jyoti Rout and the Nupur Dance Organization.

Ms. Bernasconi has been a member of Ballett Mainz in Germany, the Berne Ballet in Switzerland, Labayen Dance/SF, Joyce Trisler Danscompany, Dance Express NYC, and Margaret Wingrove Dancers of San Jose. She has performed the choreography of George Balanchine, Hans van Manen, Samuel Wuersten, Milton Meyers, Carolyn Carlson, Yannis Adoniou, Fabrice Lemiere, Margaret Wingrove, and Ricarda Ludikgeit. Laura was a teacher on faculty at the San Francisco School of the Arts, and guest teaches at Ballet Nordhausen, Ballett Mainz, the Berne Ballet, San Francisco Dance Center, Smuin Ballet/ SF, KunstStoff/SF, and San Jose Dance Theater.

FLAUNT
A new work by STEAMROLLER Dance Company
Choreography: STEAMROLLER
Sound Design: Jesselito Bie
Running Time: 10-15 minutes

Come watch the sequins fly in STEAMROLLER’s new performance for the 2001 San Francisco Lesbian and Gay Dance Festival. FLAUNT turns the 24th Street BART station plaza into a large outdoor stage/runway where discordant images (athletic movement and flamboyant gesture, powerful women lifting pretty boys in dresses) clash in an examination of how fashion dictates codes of gender in contemporary American society. Performers navigate a macabre obstacle course of costume changes and ill-fitting shoes to an accompanying text that describes the painful ritual of Chinese foot binding. As viewers watch a pas de deux performed in oversized wigs and platform shoes, FLAUNT uses the transgressive qualities of drag to redefine our conceptions of masculinity and power.

Jesselito Bie, Artistic Director of STEAMROLLER Dance Company, studied at San Diego State University before joining The High Risk Group in 1992. During his time in the Bay Area, he has worked with Scott Wells, Kathleen Hermesdorf, Stephen Pelton, Kulintang Arts, OnSite Dance Company and POTRZEBIE Dance Project before forming STEAMROLLER in 1993. Applying his streetwise approach to performance, Jesselito has taught dance workshops in the Bay Area at ODC/SF Theater, Rhythm & Motion Studio and as part of LYRIC’s 1997-1998 Summer of the Arts program. He has also taken part in panel discussions for The Talking Dance Project (How to Make Dances In an Epidemic), the 1998 San Francisco Lesbian and Gay Dance Festival (What Is Lesbian/Gay Dance?), and a discussion on site-specific work at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. He was awarded a 1999 Goldie award for Outstanding Local Discovery in Dance from the Bay Guardian.

STEAMROLLER presents physically explosive work, blending athletic precision with irreverent theatricality. We explore the collisions of race, gender and sexuality, and celebrate the intersection of pop culture and identity. We dance in the streets to challenge conventional notions of performance. Founded in 1995, STEAMROLLER has presented work in the Bay Area at venues such as The 1996 Bay Area Dance Series at Laney College, Double Feature at ODC Theater, The Festival of Bay Area Dance at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, The 1996-2000 Street Theater Festivals, and The 1996-2000 Lesbian and Gay Dance Festivals.

Tara Brandel
“Under Wear”
“Under Wear” is a solo show that takes a look at how one lesbian’s butch identity has been influenced by her father’s sexuality, and which. The “Cock Dane” is a 6-minute excerpt from the show using dance, spoken word, and drag.

Tara Brandel has been running her own dance company, Mna Rua Dance Productions since 1991. (Mna Rua is Gaelic for Red Woman). Her work has been performed in London, Ireland, Berlin, and San Francisco. She has been living and working in San Francisco since January 1999. Her one-woman show, “The Kali Project” was presented at 848 Community Space, November 1999. She has also performed at Studio Valencia, Dancers Group Studio Theatre, Venue 9, Cell Space, and Dance Mission Theater. Tara Currently has an Airspace residency at Jon Sims Center for the Performing Arts, and is the recipient of a CASH award to choreograph “Breath.”

STRONG
Solo piece: “my unmistakable chosen”
Our genderqueer bodies are not only sites of struggle, judgment, and resistance; they are also beautiful, anomalous, strong, sexy, capable, and extraordinary.

Sara Sean Dorsey fell in love with San Francisco last summer while performing with Kokoro Dance at the SF Butoh Festival. At the same time, Sean was blessed with the invitation to return and join Lizz Roman and Dancers. Since arriving back a few months ago, Sean has worked with LR&D and Tara Brandel, and has been spending a lot of time wide-eyed and upside-down. A graduate of Main Dance in Vancouver, Sean has danced with Kokoro Dance, SMcK Dance, Blinded by Vision, Eye of Newt, and with independent filmmakers and musicians. Sean has waited years for the chance to be and work amongst other queer dancers, and would especially love to talk with any other genderqueer/trans folk who dance, perform, or dream of one day doing either.

Kim Epifano
All in a Day

For the LGDF 2001, Kim will be presenting a new solo work, titled All in a Day, that explores extremism, physicality, and the edges of brilliance. Part of an exploration for a new, upcoming group work, Epifano will work with the edges of extreme to which one can push the mind and the body. What is brilliance? What is creativity? What is strength? What is the female body? What is the female mind? How can one woman fly, cook, create, clean, dance, nourish, pay bills, live and love … ALL IN ONE DAY?

Kim Epifano explores the integration of body, breath, theater, and voice in versatile and thought provoking styles. Epifano’s has a 20-year history in the Bay Area as teacher, choreographer, and solo performer. She has worked as a key collaborator with the influential dance companies, Contraband and The Dance Brigade. She has taught workshops to children, adults, professional dancers, developmentally and physically challenged people both here and abroad. For the past several years, Epifano has been teaching and creating new work in Mexico, Indonesia, Germany; New York, NY, Colorado, and multiple locations on the West Coast. In spring of 2000 she was Guest Professor at UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures. She has also taught and performed at the San Diego Dance Theater Festival, the Colorado Dance Festival, Bates, Jacob’s Pillow, the Seattle Festival of Alternative Dance and Improvisation, the Tanzolten Festival in Zurich, Switzerland and others throughout the US, Europe and Asia. For the past fourteen years she has co-directed the MuddButt Mystery Theater Troupe with Sally Davis and John Fago in Telluride, Colorado.

Michelle Ito
Safety Features

Michelle Ito is a Japanese-American Lesbian who grew up in Los Angeles. She has performed with UAF Theater in Fairbanks, Alaska; Theatre Mu in Minneapolis; Liquid Fire 2000, Asian AIDS Project, Pearl Ubungen Dancers and Musicians and the Asian American Theater Company, in San Francisco. The piece Safety Features was originally developed by Michelle Ito for Liquid Fire 2000: Unleash the Fire, directed by Veronica C. Combs. It was conceived on a flight from Japan to Hawaii while fantasizing about the flight attendants.

Gabriel Todd & Jared Kaplan
The Bus Duet

The Bus Duet is a chance encounter between two male strangers at a bus stop on the streets of San Francisco. A site-specific piece that was originally created and performed at 11th and Mission as part of Gabriel Todd and the Freaksoul Project’s residency at the Jon Sims Center, it utilizes improvisational structures inside of set choreography placed in a live, unaltered street environment. As such the piece changes with each performance, uniquely reflecting the time, space, and setting in which it is placed. In the past, performances have inspired live drumming and have made a bus stop full of waiting people move far away from the action.

Jared Kaplan received a BA from Wesleyan University in 1999. Since moving to San Francisco he has worked with and performed the works of Sara Shelton Mann, Annie Rosenthal, David Dorfman, Kim Epifano, Chainlink Inquiry, Steamroller, Body Cartography Project, and Freaksoul Project. He received a Merit Scholarship to the Bates Dance Festival in 2000 and has studied with Ron Brown, Kathleen Hermesdorf, Kim Epifano, Doug Varone, and many others. He is currently making his own work (recently shown at ODC Theater and Dance Mission) and performing with Scott Wells & Co. in July.

Gabriel Todd and Jared Kaplan have been growing their artistic collaborations, unique in its eclectic fusion of contemporary and diverse influences since they met in San Francisco. They are proud to share their work. Some of their influences include modern/post-modern dance, contact improv, hip-hop, West African, tap, and various vocal techniques.

Trouble in Paradise
conceived and choreographed by Mercy Sidbury with Julie Kane
performed by Julie Kane and Mercy Sidbury
text: Edward Lear, “The Owl and the Pussycat”
The adapted text relies on the original sequence of the words from Lear’s poem with omissions made to alter its content.
The Owl and the Pussycat went to
see if they could tolerate
what she calls “charmingly sweet”
and he calls a “lovely pussy”

Julie Kane, dancer, teacher, performer, creator, has been dancing for a long time. She teaches in the Theatre Arts Department at Sonoma State University as well as other Bay Area colleges and elementary schools. She is an aspiring Pilates Trainer and will be teaching/performing at the
Seattle Festival of Alternative Dance & Improvisation this summer.

Mercy Sidbury is a former member of the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, Oberlin Dance Collective, among others. Her work has been seen throughout the US, Europe, and Canada. Her movement and performance training includes Cunningham, ballet, yoga, voice, contact improvisation as well as various somatic training’s including Pilates. She has taught in the UC and California State University systems as well as other professional and university settings since 1988. She has received numerous grants, commissions and awards for her choreography, performance and work in the field of dance over the past 20+ years.

KT Nelson
Hot Flash
performed by Brian Fisher

Hot Flash is a solo created by Nelson for dancer Brian Fisher.

KT Nelson, co-artistic director for ODC/San Francisco is originally from Los Angeles, California. Nelson has choreographed more than 40 works, as well as composed and commissioned numerous sound scores from such artists as Raz Kennedy, Gunnar Madsen, Gina Leishman, Bobby McFerrin, Kevin Thaddeus Paulson, Jaime Kibben, Rinde Eckert, Marie Daulne of Zap Mama, and Bob Franke. She has directed and/or constructed the following sound scores for her dances: Beach, Worksite, No Secrets, Angel’s Doll, Scout, The Confessions of a Jaywalker, River, Things Happen, The Velveteen Rabbit, and Course of Time. Her acclaimed choreographic style has been awarded the Isadora Duncan Award in 1986 for Outstanding Achievement in Performance, and the 1996 Isadora Duncan Award for Outstanding Choreography for Scout, a full company work. Ms. Nelson’s choreography has been commissioned by numerous companies nationally and locally. In addition to her choreographic accomplishments, Ms. Nelson is an educator of the creative process in both adult and children’s dance/art curriculum. Ms. Nelson is head of ODC’s Outreach Program and the founder and co-artistic director of ODC Dance Jam, a company of 9 young professional dancers, who perform original choreographic works at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, SF public schools and community centers throughout the SF Bay Area.

Brian Fisher, dancer and assistant to the choreographers of ODC/San Francisco, is originally from Maine and earned a BFA in dance performance from New York University. He has performed as a featured dancer on Broadway and national television and as choreographer’s assistant and dance captain on national tours. He has performed in works by Alvin Ailey, Kurt Joos, Rosalind Newman, Lar Lubovitch, Doug Varone, Igal Perry, Kevin Ware and Robert Moses, among others. He has been a guest artist with Berkeley Ballet Theater, the Mark Foehringer Dance Project, and the San Francisco Opera. Brian Joined ODC in 1992. He would like to thank MG and the pack for their years of support.

Sue Roginsky & Stephanie W. Schaaf
DUST

DUST is Schaaf and Roginsky’s second major collaborative work. The movement of the dance is inspired by the rush of movement in one’s life after the event of a loss. These choreographers are committed to making dances that use as their core the vast capacity of the expressive body. Their goal is to unearth, edit and weave movement invention to illuminate specific aspects of the human experience.

Sue Roginsky graduated from the North Carolina School of the Arts and Wesleyan University where she studied Dance and Psychology. She has been a collaborating member of the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company since November 1992 and currently performs with Dancdelion Dance Theater. This year Sue, along with the ’98 ensemble of the MJDC, was awarded an Isadora Duncan award for company performance in Fault. She was artist in residence at Jon Sims Center for the Performing Arts in 1999, and has produced her own work as well as performances to benefit Project Inform, Breast Cancer Action, and Women’s Cancer Resource Center. Sue portrayed Aphrodite in Samuael Topiary’s dance film Atalanta, and performed in the dance/theater piece Dykes Do Attitude at Theater Rhinoceros under the direction of Adele Prandini, Anne Bluethenthal, and Mercy Sidbury. Sue has performed in the works of James Aarons, Mercy Sidbury, Contraband, Kneejerk Dance Project, Kim Sargent, Hermesdorf/Wells Dance Company, Chelley BonDurant, STEAMROLLER, Nd Jose Navarrete. Her collaboration with Stephanie Schaaf began in 1999.

Stephanie W. Schaaf received her BA in English from Tufts University and her MA in Dance Education from Stanford. She was a collaborating member of the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company for four years. Since moving to the Bay Area in 1992, she has performed with Colleen Mulvihill, Diane Frank, and Nancy Karp+Dancers, and was involved in Wendy Rogers’ “MAKESHIFT dancing.” Stephanie began her collaborative partnership with Sue Roginski in 1999. Schaaf has choreographed and performed her own dances and presented them in venues including Dancers’Group Studio Theater, Cowell Theater, Venue Nine, and Stanford University. Stephanie currently works at St. Francis Memorial Hospital’s Center for Sports Medicine as a Dance Medicine Specialist, teaching rehabilitative movement and exercise.