Siamese Dream – Steamroller
May 25, 27, 28
QCC, SFIAF & STEAMROLLER Dance present:
Siamese Dream
Fort Mason/Firehouse, Times vary
$25, Students & Seniors Discount
More Info & Tickets: http://www.sfiaf.org/steamroller_dance_company_2017
To commemorate the 20th anniversary of its debut, STEAMROLLER Dance Company presents a reimagining of their signature work, Siamese Dream. Siamese Dream takes the sweep of classic Hollywood musicals and the physicality of Hong Kong Kung Fu movies to create a fantasia of Asian Americana. Siamese Dream flips off (or at least lets fly) all manner of notions, artifacts, media, and commentary impinging on Asian-American identity. Awash in the dancers’ movement are music from Rodgers & Hammerstein’s classically racist The King and I, where barbarian East meets sensible West; semiotic analysis of Asians as represented by popular culture; Chinatown Buddha-kitsch; the cool, plush tick of Riyuchi Sakamoto; and soundtracks from head-spinning Hong Kong action flicks. Siamese Dream looks at the intersection of identity and media representation.
Biographies
STEAMROLLER Dance Company
In 1993, a loosely knit group of artists came together to create guerrilla performances to address the spread of HIV/AIDS to other communities (women, people of color). The company is currently under the direction of founding member Jesselito Bie. In addition to various SF parking lots, STEAMROLLER has also presented work in the Bay Area Dance Festival, the 1996-2000 In the Street Festivals, the 1996-2001 San Francisco Lesbian and Gay Dance Festivals, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Festival of Bay Area Dance, Asian American Dance Performances and Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica.
Artistic Director Jesselito Bie moved to the Bay Area in 1992 to dance with the High Risk Group and has since performed with many local companies such as Scott Wells and Dancers, Stephen Pelton Dance Company, Cid Perlman/Nesting Dolls, Kulintang Arts, Erika Shurch Performance Project, Jerome Bel, Krista DeNio/ETS, Joe Landini and Kim Epifano/Epiphany Productions. He has also received awards for his choreography from the SF Bay Guardian, the 360 Award from CSUEB for all around Outstanding and Outrageous Queer Dance Work and the Tobie from Bay Area Dance Watch for Best Male Solo. He was also a participant in ODC Theater’s Sandbox residency program. He is currently a lead artist at Safehouse Arts.
Jory Horn took his first dance class at the age of 20, studying ballet with Nolan T’Sani at CSU Sacramento. He graduated with a BA in Dance and a minor in Recreation Administration in spring 2015 from CSU Sacramento. Jory was an aerial hoop instructor at Aerial Evolution in West Sacramento. What Jory hopes to do in the future is combine his passions of Cambodian culture and dance, as a means of advocacy to address challenges of the Cambodian-American community and Cambodian-American Diaspora at large. He draws inspiration from other Cambodian-American artists of various arts backgrounds.
Kim Ip plopped into Oakland in 2010 and is not-so-freshly hatched from Mills College. When she’s not dancing, she works as a Pilates teacher and a faux-mommy with the babies of SF. She completed a residency at SAFEhouse Arts in 2016 and is an Artist in Residence at Shawl-Anderson. She has loved every minute of working with the talented cast of “Siamese Dream” and is extremely honoured to be dancing with Steamroller!
Wailana Simcock was born in the Philippines to a Pinay mother and a New Zealand father and was raised in O‘ahu, Hawai‘i. He is fluent in Tagalog and Hawaiian languages and is deeply informed by his own and of Hawaii’s indigenous ways of knowing. Within his experience of his own Asia-Pacific diaspora, Simcock continues to navigate through issues of indigeneity, colonization, globalization, gender politics, and environmentalism, which have become influences in the kind of creative work and research that he finds so important.
While growing up swimming and surfing in the warm ocean of Hawai‘i, Simcock became a nationally awarded figure skater at age 12. At age 21, he embarked on his professional career as modern dancer with cultural activist and choreographer Pearl Ubungen of Pearl Ubungen Dancers and Musicians (PUDM) in San Francisco in 1996. He later became PUDM’s principal dancer and subsequently traveled all over the US continent and to the Philippines with them. He has studied with dance luminaries Joe Goode, Kathleen Hermesdorf, Stephen Pelton, Barbara Dilley, and aerial dance with Terry Sendgraff, Iona Dance Theater, Samadhi Hawai‘i, Ana Prada, and Air Aligned. Most noteworthy of his many performances are his work as a dancer and chanter for the groundbreaking production of ‘Ulalena (2007-08) and as the lead dancer in Garin Nugroho’s latest dance film, Salesi (2016).
Janine Trinidad began her dance training at the West Coast School of the Arts in Orange County where she won numerous awards in the national competition circuit for excellence in jazz, lyrical and tap dance. She received a BA in Rhetoric and a minor in Dance and Performance Studies from UC Berkeley. She has studied qi gong with Daria Fain and Master Mantak Chia of the Universal Healing Tao. Most recently, Janine has been developing her own performance projects, teaching movement workshops, as well as playing music, teaching Lotus Flow/Yin/Restorative yoga and offering love and heavenly guidance through her work as a certified Reiki Master/Teacher. Fore updates on upcoming projects visit www.j9trini.com
Alberto Vajrabukka is excited to be part of the 20th anniversary edition of STEAMROLLER’s Siamese Dream. It feels like getting back to his many roots as a multi-ethnic queer Gen X artist moonlighting as nurse. And then braiding those roots, having a quick BDSM sesh with them, smoking some of them, & swinging from the rafters with the rest. This one is dedicated to my sexy breathy butch queen power versabot cognoscenti slut-arati.
