The News | June 3

 

June 3, 7–9pm
The News: Fresh, Queer Performance
Hosted by Christine Bonansea & Hallie Dalismer
SOMArts Cultural Center
$5 admission, tickets: http://www.somarts.org/thenewsjune2014

On the first Tuesday of each month The News, presented by SOMArts Cultural Center, features new, queer work by Bay Area artists. The News is a monthly cabaret style evening that spotlights 10-minute or less performance pieces, experiments, and works in progress by pre-selected solo artists, groups, or troupes.

This June’s hosting guest curators Christine Bonansea & Hallie Dalsimer invite KHAOS ThaD3ViL AddamZ, vîv, Kolmel WithLove, Women’s Werk (Elizabeth McGrath and Jeana Pfeifer) and additional special guests to the stage for an evening of wild machinations & intimate thoughts.

BIOGRAPHIES

KHAOS ThaD3ViL AddamZ is the pup your drag mother warned you about. Self-taught in both the art of stage performance and artistic theatricality from a very young age, it’s no wonder why he is known as KHAOS. As drag’s self-proclaimed bad boy pup and leader of The H3LLHoundZ, an up and coming all male BOYLesque pup drag troupe, AddamZ brings to you entertainment unlike anything you have never seen at a typical drag show. AddamZ blends an androgynous style with a provocative BOYLesque attitude, resulting in a twisted gender-fucked psychotic episode that will leave you stunned. Journey to a show where he’s performing and it’s a possibility you’ll leave questioning your sexuality, religion and probably your sanity as well. Don’t bother trying to fight it because this leather-bound bondage pup is going to be your new fantasy. So you might want to go ahead and take that picture.

Christine Bonansea is a multi disciplinary performer, artist, teacher and choreographer. Bonansea has 10 years of ballet and modern dance training. She studied Literature at the University La Sorbonne (Paris) and pursued her training at ENMD La Rochelle. Over the last 10 years, Bonansea has explored visual arts as well as physical performing techniques in collaboration with artists from various fields, including music, visual arts and filmmaking. She recently performed in San Francisco (ODC theater), New York City (Movement Research), Berlin (Dock11) and will be performing in Tokyo at the Whenever Wherever Festival in October 2014. She’s supported by US Grants, Theater Bay Area, The Zellerbach Family Foundation, and the French Consulate of San Francisco.

Hallie Dalsimer is a movement-based performing artist and aspiring maker of things. As a ponderer of life, Dalsimer is deeply curious about the intersection of the human condition and societal conditioning. Dalsimer is a founding member of vîv, a dancer run company which is actively reimagining the possibilities of building a life in dance. She also collaborates with the inimitable Bad Unkl Sista, and the Sound Cave Road Show, and was formerly a member of the Santa Fe based collective Meow Wolf. Dalsimer grew up in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and thus developed a deep and abiding love for green chile, big skies and outdoor dance parties. She holds a B.A. in Government from Wesleyan University. She is a certified Gaga teacher (no relation to the Lady) and has worked as a freelance dancer and presented work in Santa Fe, New York, Maryland, Tel Aviv, and the Bay Area.

vîv (Roche Janken, Samantha Stone, Katie Griffin, Katherine Hawthorne, Hallie Dalsimer, Alex Crow, Alison Williams, Virginia Broyles) is dancer powered dance. vîv began as eight artists rethinking how we practice and train together, create work and build community together.www.withviv.com

Kolmel WithLove is the creator of The News. WithLove curates, builds cameras and costumes, collaborates with other artists, makes films, and performs. Their films have screened in a variety of settings including Frameline Film Festival, MIX Mexico, Seattle Center of Contemporary Art, RAID Projects and in the book and DVD project “Strange Attractors.” WithLove has performed in venues including SOMArts Cultural Center, CounterPULSE, Highways Performance Space, The Velaslavasay Panorama Theatre, The Garage, various galleries, a few living rooms, two very nice leather bars, and a piano lounge. Their most recent vision and collaboration, Womenhouse, is a feminist drag queen collective, pulling together nine other local drag queens to re-imagine groundbreaking feminist performance works from the past.

Women’s Werk (Elizabeth McGrath and Jeana Pfeifer), based on the belief that what becomes known cannot be forgotten and what is seen can no longer remain invisible, seeks to bring femme from the constant amorphous background of queer culture into its own spotlight of unique identity.

Elizabeth McGrath is seventy-two things at one time, all of them fabulous and intersecting: performance artist, adult performer, dancer, writer, social agent provocateur, femme fatale. A classically trained ballerina from the age of four, McGrath was a nationally-ranked dance champion through college when she began to explore contemporary dance and hip hop performance, dancing with Soul Force Hip Hop Dance Company and at ODC. McGrath has performed at Counterpulse, Yerba Buena Center For The Arts, The Garage, SF MOMA, SOMArts Cultural Center, as well as clubs and small-venue stages across the Bay Area. In addition to recognized forms of dance, McGrath is proud to use her ten-plus years of exotic dance, lap dancing and burlesque skills in creating and developing performances that utilize and represent multiple aspects of movement. McGrath believes in the gospel of all that is glamourous and that creating art is the path to freedom.

Jeana Pfeifer comes to San Francisco by way of New York, where she studied under many of the great dance legends, including Ballet Master David Howard and Karla Wolfangle of the Paul Taylor Dance Company. Pfeifer is a graduate of Eugene Lang College, where she completed a dual degree in Sexual Health Education and Modern Dance through The Joffrey Ballet program. At the ripe age of 19, Pfeifer began work in all-women produced events as a lap dancer, burlesque performer, pole dancer, and performance artist. Pfeifer has performed everywhere from basements in Brooklyn to the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater, and feels contemporary dance can be a wildly transgressive medium. In addition, Pfeifer is also an experienced pole dancer, and has trained across the world with many international performers & title winners. It is at this intersection of sexuality, movement, and identity that she is thrilled to explore narrative & dance through her collaboration as Women’s Werk.