Yerba Buena Center for the Arts today announced new programming for 2012–2013 which includes in visual arts, the United States premiere of David Shrigley’s Brain Activity, new works from Nayland Blake, and Nathalie Djuberg’s The Parade; plus performing arts pieces: Keith Hennessy/Circo Zero’s Turbulence (A Dance About the Economy), the Bay Area Premiere of Voices of Strength: Contemporary Dance & Theater by Women from Africa, New Frequencies Fest 2012, the World Premiere of Clas/sick Hip-Hop with Les Twins, return of the world renowned Wooster Group, the West Coast Premiere of Shen Wei’s Undivided Divided, and San Francisco’s own Grammy Award-winning Kronos Quartet with Kronos: Listen Local that includes two world premieres and one West Coast premiere.
YBCA noted in an email that it “utilizes four Big Ideas” to organize its wide-ranging programs and provide a context with which to engage the art. These ideas, which encompass art from all disciplines, are designed to focus an investigation of contemporary art and its relationship to the larger world. Using the Big Ideas as portals, YBCA has established a framework of thought that invites exploration and risk taking, quiet reflection and active engagement. The Big Ideas are: ENCOUNTER: Engaging the social context; SOAR: The search for meaning; REFLECT: Considering the personal; and DARE: Innovations in art, action, audience.
VISUAL ARTS
Sole U.S. Presentation
David Shrigley: Brain Activity
Now through Sunday, September 23, 2012/YBCA Galleries
Admission for All Galleries: $10 adults; $8 students/seniors/teachers; FREE YBCA Members, YBCA: You
Big Idea: Soar
The work of David Shrigley effortlessly infuses a comedic sensibility into a serious fine art practice. David Shrigley: Brain Activity showcases the diversity of the artist’s work— seemingly amateurish, crude drawings, sculptures made of unusual materials, and installations characterized by incongruities of scale—offering insightful and often surreal commentary on the absurdities of life, death and everything in between. Irreverent and mischievous, Shrigley’s art presents the kind of odd scenarios you never come across in real life, but wish you did.
When was the last time you laughed out loud inside an art gallery? And I don’t mean sniggering at contemporary art… [David Shrigley’s exhibition] should come with a promise: laughter guaranteed, or your money back. —Alastair Sooke, The Telegraph, London
YBCA is the only United States venue for this exhibition, which comes to YBCA directly from the Hayward Gallery, London. It was curated by Cliff Lauson.
David Shrigley (b.1968, Macclesfield, England) lives and works in Glasgow. He has had solo exhibitions at venues including UCLA Hammer Museum of Los Angeles, Kunsthaus Zurich, Malmo Konsthall, Museum Ludwig, Camden Arts Centre and the CCA Glasgow. His work was featured weekly in The Guardian from 2005 to 2009 and he has had a number of books of his work published, most recently the retrospective What the Hell Are You Doing?: The Essential David Shrigley. He collaborated with animator Chris Shepherd on the film Who I am and What I Want in 2005. Worried Noodles, a CD released in 2007, features settings of the lyrics from his book Worried Noodles – theEmpty Sleeve by artists as diverse as David Byrne, Franz Ferdinand and TV On The Radio.www.davidshrigley.com
Occupy Bay Area
Now through October 14, 2012/YBCA Galleries
Admission for All Galleries: $10 adults; $8 students/seniors/teachers; FREE YBCA Members, YBCA: You
Big Idea: Encounter
Since the Occupy Movement took hold across the country in the fall of 2011, protesters in Oakland and San Francisco have produced a substantial output of art and writing in support of the principles of economic fairness, equality and reform. One of the legacies of the culture of activism in the Bay Area is this rich tradition of creating imagery in support of political and social causes. YBCA has curated an exhibition of political posters, and documentary photography and video stemming from the Occupy movement; and several projects by contemporary artists, representative of the spirit of Occupy.
Additionally, to connect to earlier movements and provide a historical context for the project, the exhibition includes posters and photographs from other political struggles, including the Black Panther Party (1966-82), I-Hotel (1968–77); the ARC/AIDS Vigil (1985–95); the occupation of Alcatraz (1969–71); the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley (1964–65); and the San Francisco State University protests, to gain an ethnic studies program (1968–69). While these earlier movements certainly differ in ways from Occupy, they all are the result of a deep desire for the representation and equal treatment of often underrepresented people.
Nayland Blake: FREE!LOVE!TOOL!BOX!
Friday, October 12, 2012-Sunday, January 27, 2013/YBCA Galleries
Admission for All Galleries: $10 adults; $8 students/seniors/teachers; FREE YBCA Members, YBCA: You
Big Idea: Reflect
In the 1990s, Nayland Blake was known for his pioneering work in performance art. Since then, he has created an impressive body of work that includes conceptual video, sculpture, participatory performance, as well as self-deprecating cartoonish drawings. Blake was a major force in the San Francisco Bay Area art scene from 1984-1996. An avid AIDS activist, he promoted an aesthetic that combined politics, biography, and queer practices such as cruising and chance encounters.
Blake’s most recent sculptures are created through spontaneous processes reminiscent of his working method during his early years in San Francisco, where materials are manipulated into surprising and oftentimes amusing forms that are informal, odd, and unpredictable. For his upcoming solo exhibition at YBCA, Blake will create works onsite using memories from his life as a creative catalyst. An important reference and inspiration for this exhibition is a videotape by the late fashion designer Alexander McQueen titled The Bride Groom Stripped Bare(2002). While this video is not part of the exhibition, the deconstruction and reconstruction of the fabric wrapping and shaping is representative of mutability in art making. Blake’s work involves a certain amount of risk, coupled with a capacity to yield elegant works from found, banal, and abject materials. For one artwork in the exhibition, audience members are invited to DJ from the artist’s collection of over 3,000 LP albums.
During his years in San Francisco, Blake taught at the San Francisco Art Institute, and served on the board of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and New Langton Arts. He also was a co-curator, with Larry Rinder, of a ground-breaking exhibition, In a Different Light (1995) at the Berkeley Art Museum that explored new ways to examine questions of queerness in art.
This exhibition is organized by YBCA and curated by Betti-Sue Hertz, Director of Visual Arts.
Nayland Blake Opening Night Party
Friday, October 12, 2012
Tickets: $12 advance; $15 at the door; FREE YBCA members, YBCA: You
The Parade: Nathalie Djuberg
Music by Hans Berg
Friday, October 12, 2012-Sunday, January 27, 2013/YBCA Galleries
Admission for All Galleries: $10 adults; $8 students/seniors/teachers; FREE YBCA Members, YBCA: You
Big Idea: Soar
Swedish-born artist Nathalie Djurberg’s unsettling avian menagerie takes flight this fall at YBCA. In addition to the wild flock of more than eighty freestanding bird sculptures on view, the exhibition also includes five animated films, in which avian psychology is superimposed upon human behavior with extraordinary results. Using actual bird species as inspiration for her sometimes grotesque figures, Djurberg explores physical and psychological transformation as well as pageantry, perversion, and abjection. Her clay animations are set to music and sound effects by her partner and collaborator Hans Berg. Djurberg’s nightmarish cinematic tales depict the depths of jealousy, revenge, lust, submission, gluttony, and other primal emotions with an unblinking eye.
This exhibition comes to YBCA from the Walker Art Center and was curated by Eric Crosby, curatorial assistant of visual arts and Dean Otto, associate curator of film/video.
Nathalie Djurberg was born in Lysekil, Sweden, in 1978. She studied art at Folkuniversitetet (1994–1995) and Hovedskous Art School (1995–1997), both in Gothenburg, Sweden, before receiving her MFA from Malmö Art Academy in 2002. She has honed a distinctive style of stop-motion animation since 1999, when she first taught herself how to make films. Using the pliability of clay, her handcrafted narratives explore the vicissitudes of revenge, lust, submission, gluttony, and other primal emotions, in wry allegories of human behavior and social taboo. Increasingly, her practice has blurred the cinematic and the sculptural in immersive environments that integrate moving images and sound with related set pieces. She currently lives and works with Hans Berg in Rättvik, Sweden.
Hans Berg
Born in Rättvik, Sweden, in 1978, Hans Berg works as a techno and house music producer. He is a self-taught musician who began playing the drums in punk and rock bands at the age of fourteen. A year later, he started creating electronic music—which he has made ever since—when he purchased his first synthesizer and sampler. In addition to his many live concerts, Berg also has an extensive discography with releases by Kant Recordings, Tsunami Productions, and other labels. He met Djurberg in Berlin in 2004, and since then he has composed the music for all of her films and installations.
The Parade: Nathalie Djurberg with Music by Hans Berg
Opening Night Party
Friday, October 11, 2012
Admission for All Galleries: $12 Advance; $15 Door; FREE: YBCA Members, YBCA: You
Without Reality There is No Utopia
Friday, February 15-Sunday, June 9, 2013/YBCA Galleries
Admission for All Galleries: $10 adults; $8 students/seniors/teachers; FREE YBCA Members, YBCA: You
Big Idea: Encounter
The central premise of Without Reality There Is No Utopia is that in the Age of Information—where actual reality has been supplanted by virtual reality, computer simulation, and false narratives—it is no longer possible for utopia to exist. Since utopia is based on the improvement of reality, the disappearance of the real also signals the end of utopia. The exhibition illustrates this by examining the false narratives that masquerade as truth: the collapse of Communism in the 1980s, the current financial crisis facing its counter-utopia—Capitalism, as well as the contradictions inherent in geopolitics and the explosion of democratic uprisings around the world. The exhibition is organized into two asymmetric sections that consider shifts in global political realities. This international exhibition exposes the political and social functions of “reality” through a focus on the collapses of communism in the 20thcentury and capitalism in the 21st; the recent rise in popular rebellions; and the future of democracy.
Without Reality There Is No Utopia was organized by the Centro Andaluz de Arte Conteporaneo in Seville, Spain; and curated by Alicia Murría, Mariano Navarro, and Juan Antonio Álvarez Reyes.
Visual Arts: PAUSE: Practice and Exchange
PAUSE: Practice and Exchange activates YBCA’s Gallery 3 by creating an exciting new series of process-based exhibitions with artists in residence from the Bay Area and around the world. These works include lectures, performances and workshops that transform the exhibition space into a fluid and active experience for audiences. Key components are cross-generational projects and multi-disciplinary collaborative artworks with a focus on influence, process and mentorship from both international and local artists. Artists are in residence for two weeks after the opening of their exhibition for talks and events.
William Cordova: Smoke Signals – Viviendo para La Ciudad
October 26, 2012-February 17, 2013/YBCA Galleries
Admission for All Galleries: $10 adults; $8 students/seniors/teachers; FREE YBCA Members, YBCA: You
Big Idea: Reflect
William Cordova attempts to reconcile ideas of displacement and transition through the use of ephemeral residue and vernacular architecture that continually shifts and shapes what could be described as our contemporary situation. His installation at YBCA explores the rich and diverse cultural landscape of the Bay Area. Components include a series of works on paper with various symbols related to the Pacific Ocean, and a suite of 150 drawings—based on geography and architecture—on reclaimed letter size paper.
William Cordova was born in Lima, Peru, in 1971. He received his MFA from Yale University in 2004 and his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1996. The artist has been featured in solo exhibitions at Fleming Museum, Burlington; Artpace, San Antonio; Threewalls, Chicago; PS.1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City; and Arndt & Partner, Zurich. His work has been included in many international exhibitions and biennials, including San Juan Triennial, San Juan (2009); Whitney Biennial, New York (2008); Utopia Station, 50th Venice Biennale, Venice (2003); and several groundbreaking group shows, such as NeoHooDoo at the Menil Collection in Houston, TX (2008), and Street Level at the Nasher Museum at Duke University in Durham, NC (2007).
Shih Chieh Huang
March 1- June 30, 2013/YBCA Galleries
Admission for All Galleries: $10 adults; $8 students/seniors/teachers; FREE YBCA Members, YBCA: You
Big Idea: Encounter
Shih Chieh Huang creates a sculptural ecosystem using found and collected objects that he animates into beautiful installations that seem unexpectedly organic and life-like. For his exhibition at YBCA he will create a work that reflects on the Bay Area’s rich legacy in both the machine performance movement and the countercultural aesthetics of psychedelia. He works with found and collected objects—including toys, plastic bags, electrical devices, and sensors—which are reassembled in a way that subverts their intended function. Constructed from junk and animated by sophisticated technology they become organic and life-like.
Shih Chieh Huang received his MFA from the School of Visual Arts. He has exhibited his sculptures and installations at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, Busan Biennial, Aichi Triennial, 52nd Venice Biennial, Biennial Zero1 San Jose, Biennial Cuvée in Austria, the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, and Museum of Contemporary Art Shanghai. He has had solo exhibitions at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art, Beall Center for Art and Technology, and Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei. Huang’s awards include an Artist Research Fellowship from the Smithsonian Institution, a Rockefeller Foundation New Media Arts Fellowship, a Joan Mitchell Foundation Sculpture Award, two New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships, and residencies at Art Omi, Skowhegan, and The Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation.
PERFORMANCE
Keith Hennessy/Circo Zero: Turbulence (A Dance About the Economy)
Thursday, September 27-Saturday, September 29, 8 p.m./YBCA Forum
Tickets: $20-$25 advance; $25-$30 at the door; $20 YBCA Members/students/seniors/
Big Idea: Encounter
A member of Sara Shelton Mann’s legendary Contraband performance troupe, Keith Hennessy has been a revolutionary and influential force in the Bay Area’s performance community for more than 25 years. In response to both the recent economic and ecological crises, his newest work, Turbulence (a dance about the economy), was instigated before the recent Occupy Wall Street uprising . Like the Occupy movement itself, Turbulence plays with and disregards the generally accepted rules of engagement. A collaborative creation, the work is a hybrid of contemporary dance, improvised happening and political theater and is intended as both a provocation and affirmation of the current global movement for economic justice. It is an experiment not only in performance, but also in developing alternative modes of producing performance. Integrating new cast members for each performance, Turbulence resists fixed or predetermined outcomes; improvisation is seen as both a survival strategy and political tactic. Among the guest performers are well-known Bay Area artists Laura Arrington, Jesse Hewit, Emily Leap, Jorge De Hoyos and Hana Erdman.
Bay Area Premiere
Voices of Strength: A Two-Night Celebration of Contemporary Dance & Theater by Women from Africa
Program One: Nelisiwe Xaba & Kettly Noël, Correspondances, Nadia Beugré, Quartiers Libres
Friday, October 19, 8 p.m./YBCA Forum
TICKETS: $5 Friday. All seats $5.
Program Two: Maria Helena Pinto (Sombra), Bouchra Ouizguen, Madame Plaza
Saturday, October 20, 8 p.m./YBCA Forum
Tickets: $20-$25 advance; $25-$30 at the door; $20 YBCA Members; FREE YBCA: You
Big Idea: Soar
As part of our commitment to supporting the work of contemporary African choreographers, YBCA welcomesVoices of Strength: A Two-Night Celebration of Contemporary Dance and Theater by Women from Africa, a U.S. debut tour that celebrates the stylistic diversity of contemporary performance across the African continent. Created and performed by Nelisiwe Xaba (South Africa), Kettly Noël (Haiti/Mali), Nadia Beugré (Côte d’Ivoire),Bouchra Ouizguen (Morocco) and Maria-Helena Pinto (Mozambique), the works in Voices of Strength use humor, irony, poignancy, and power to confront personal obstacles, address political and social issues, and paint true and vivid pictures of the lives of contemporary African women.
Program One:
Kettly Noël (Haiti/Mali) and Nelisiwe Xaba (South Africa), Correspondances
Noël and Xaba met through a friend in Johannesburg, and a year later they decided to create a piece together. Thus began a series of correspondences on diverse subjects addressing the intimate fabric of friendship while exploring themes of race, culture, and gender. The work they created,Correspondances, is a lively and sophisticated duet that is part theater, part dance, and part storytelling.
Nadia Beugré (Côte d’Ivoire), Quartiers Libres
A solo by Nadia Beugré, Quartiers Libres draws from her heritage and daily experiences to express, in an emphatic and intangible way, a woman’s journey to reclaim power and purpose. Beugré has a commanding onstage presence that in this piece is matched by a live-mixed interactive sound design. A former member of the stunning all-female Compagnie TchéTché, founded by the legendary Béatrice Kombé, Beugré leads the way for a new generation of contemporary choreographers from Côte d’Ivoire.
Program Two:
Maria Helena Pinto (Mozambique), Sombra
Sombra (Shadow) is a stark and poignant solo that gives voice and light to the hidden women of our societies. With an overturned bucket on top of her head, both obscuring her vision and keeping the viewer from seeing her face, Pinto imagines women who are central to life—those who idealize, imagine, create, construct, plan, organize, and execute—but exist in shadow.
Bouchra Ouizguen (Morocco), Madame Plaza
An ensemble piece created by Moroccan choreographer Bouchra Ouizguen, Madame Plaza is performed with three traditional Moroccan cabaret singers called Aïta—vocalists whose custom includes guttural wailing and incantations. In Morocco, the Aïta are paradoxically the object of admiration and fantasy, but also contemptuous rejection. Their artistry is often classified as folklore, but their presence is immediately and profoundly contemporary. With touching directness and surprising humor, Madame Plaza comments on traditional notions of femininity and celebrates the essential freedom of both the body and the voice.
San Francisco Contemporary Music Players in Association with YBCA Presents
John Cage: Musicircus
Sunday, October 28, 2012, 1 p.m.–5 p.m./YBCA Forum and Galleries
FREE admission
Big Idea: Reflect
American composer John Cage was one of the most influential and controversial musical voices of the 20th century. For three days at the end of October, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players celebrate the centennial of Cage’s birth with performances and activities that explore the magic and mayhem that defined his long and notorious career. The celebration culminates at YBCA with a new production of Cage’s exuberant musical carnival Musicircus. In this free marathon concert, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players and friends will perform Cage’s music and writings simultaneously throughout YBCA’s Forum and galleries. Audiences are invited to come and go throughout the afternoon and to experience the full range of Cage’s genius, from exuberant periods of raucous energy to moments of silence and contemplation. The day also features a variety of food carts, student performances, and a self-guided sound walk, and is appropriate for all ages and all levels of musical knowledge or experience.
New Frequencies Fest 2012
Friday, November 16-Sunday, November 18, 2012
YBCA’s annual music series, New Frequencies, gets a makeover this season and returns as New Frequencies Fest 2012, a three-day mini-festival of music from around the world. New Frequencies Fest 2012 expands your musical horizons with a wide range of programming, including: Women, Strings & Song, an evening of song from some of the finest contemporary American women songwriters and composers; Descarga SF/NY, a lively celebration of Afro Cuban music and dance; and Chamber Music Day Live + Free, a melodic buffet of chamber music from around the Bay Area.
New Frequencies Fest 2012: Women, Strings & Song
Friday, November 16, 8 p.m./YBCA Forum
Tickets: $15-$20 advance; $20-$25 at the door; $15 YBCA members; FREE YBCA: You
Big Idea: Soar
Women, Strings & Song is an evening of song by contemporary women songwriters & composers who use the voice and strings as their principal instruments of expression. The lineup includes Brooklyn-based cellist Marika Hughes; San Francisco’s acclaimed bassist and composer Lisa Mezzacappa who will be joined by New York vocalist, poet & improviser Fay Victor; and the remarkable Parkington Sisters from Cape Code making their San Francisco debut.
New Frequencies Fest 2012: Descarga SF/NY
Saturday, November 17, 2012, 8 p.m./YBCA Forum
Tickets: $15-$20 advance; $20-$25 at the door; $15 YBCA members; FREE YBCA: You
Big Idea: Soar
Join us for a lively celebration of Afro-Cuban folklore and creative jazz improvisation, featuring the inimitablesounds of the Proverb Trio. The evening opens with performances by Oakland-based Cuban drummer Sandy Perez y Su Ladé and the Ramon Ramos Alayo Dance Company, and culminates with a dance party featuring contemporary Cuban dance music by Rumbaché playing timba, son, and fresh originals.
New Frequencies Fest 2012: Chamber Music Day Live + Free
Chamber Music Festival in Association with YBCA
Sunday, November 18, 2012, 12 noon-7 p.m.
YBCA Forum, Galleries and Novellus Theater at YBCA
FREE admission
Big Idea: Soar
Chamber Music Day Live + Free is a unique, day-long showcase of performances designed to spotlight the breadth and variety of professional chamber music in the Bay Area. Produced by the San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music, Chamber Music Day, now in its fifth season, unites the community of ensembles, presenters and arts organizations to feature 30 of the San Francisco Bay Area’s finest baroque, classical, contemporary, cutting-edge improvisation and jazz ensembles-in 30-minute performances created to delight new listeners and seasoned concert-goers of all ages and backgrounds.
World Premiere
Clas/sick Hip-Hop
Friday, November 30 and Saturday, December 1, 2012, 8 p.m./ Novellus Theater at YBCA
Featuring: Les Twins, Daniel Bernard, Roumain, Rennie Harris
Tickets: $15 advance; $20 at the door; $10 YBCA members/students; FREE YBCA: You
Big Idea: Dare
What happens when you pair an up-and-coming violin virtuoso with five hip-hop dance acts on the same stage? We call it Clas/sick Hip-Hop—a two-night mini-festival featuring YouTube sensations Les Twins, legendary hip-hop pioneer Rennie Harris, trail-blazing b-girl Rokafella, Bay Area new comers Ladia Yates and I Dummy, and virtuoso violinist Daniel Bernard Roumain in a mashup of music and movement you won’t want to miss.
The hip-hop dance duo Larry and Laurent Bourgeois, popularly known as Les Twins, are identical twin brothers who have set fire to the global hip-hop dance scene. Les Twins have toured with Beyoncé and their videos have been viewed over 20 million times on YouTube.
Internationally renowned award-winning choreographer Rennie Harris is hailed as one of the godfathers of hip hop in America. With his company, Rennie Harris PureMovement (founded in 1992), he brought hip-hop dance to the concert stage as an alternative to the stereotypes and negative images of it created by television and to recognize its myriad influences, inventive spirit, and potential to bring people together.
Better known as Rokafella, Ana Garcia burst through the concrete ceiling of the male-dominated hip hop scene. Through her music, dance, and recent film All the Ladies Say, highlighting the lives of six iconic female street dancers, she has become a mentor to the many young b-girls now emerging worldwide.
Richmond-born Ladia Yates and 19-year-old Oakland native Levi “I Dummy” Allen provide a look at the diversity of dance styles overtaking the Bay Area. One of the rising stars of the Bay Area hip hop scene, Ladia has been described as “the Queen of Jookin;” and I Dummy wowed the So You Think You Can Dance judges during his audition for Season 8 with his turf (“taking up room on the floor”) dancing.
Daniel Bernard Roumain melds his classical music roots with his own cultural references and vibrant musical imagination. He has carved a reputation for himself as an innovative composer, performer, violinist, and band leader and is perhaps the only composer who has collaborated and performed with Philip Glass, Cassandra Wilson, Bill T. Jones, and Lady Gaga.
West Coast Premiere
Bebe Miller: History
Friday, January 25 and Saturday, January 26, 2013, 8 p.m./YBCA Forum
Tickets: $20-25 advance/$25-30 door; $20 YBCA Members/students/seniors/
Big Idea: Reflect
For more than 25 years, ward-winning dancer and choreographer Bebe Miller’s has been exploring the unruly edges of the heart and mind to create a unique physical language that fully expresses the complexities of the human condition. Her newest piece, A History, is an evening-length duet that invites audiences to experience what it feels like to make and perform a dance. Part performance, part installation, part interaction, A History shifts the focus from performance to process and can be seen simultaneously as both the evidence and result of artistic creation, exposing how we do what we do and what the outcomes are.
Bay Area Premiere
Wooster Group/New York City Players: Eugene O’Neill’s Early Plays
Three One-act Plays
Thursday, February 14-Saturday, February 16, 2013, 8 p.m./YBCA Forum
Thursday, February 14: Thrifty Thursday: All Seats $5
Tickets: $20-25 regular; $20-30 at the door; $20 YBCA Members; FREE YBCA: You
Big Idea: Reflect
A reprise of thee one-act plays by Eugene O’Neill known collectively as the “Glencairn plays” — Bound East for Cardiff (1914), The Long Voyage Home (1917), and The Moon of the Caribbees (1918) — Early Plays recounts the tales of a group of sailors on a tramp steamer as they go from port to sea and back again, exposing the under belly of turn-of-the-century maritime life and the longing and loneliness of life at sea. The episodes are threaded together with haunting melodies, composed and written by director Richard Maxwell, and staged with a simplicity and grace that allow these simple stories to resonate deeply and emotionally.
Since its inception in 1975, the Wooster Group has been celebrated as one of the most vibrant and vital voices in contemporary American theater. Known for their pioneering explorations with new technology and multidisciplinary art forms, they have left an indelible mark on contemporary performance, which has resulted in an Obie Award for direction for Richard Maxwell.
West Coast Premiere/World Premiere
Kronos Quartet’s Kronos: Listen Local
Thursday, February 21 and Friday, February 22, 8 p.m./Novellus Theater at YBCA
Tickets: $20-$30 advance; $25-$35 at the door; $20-25 YBCA Members; FREE YBCA: You
Big Idea: Encounter
San Francisco’s own Grammy Award-winning Kronos Quartet concludes its multi-year partnership with the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts with this program highlighting the vibrant creative voices of its hometown composers. Internationally renowned for scouting the world over for exceptional collaborators, Kronos turns its focus to its home turf for two world premieres, including a new work for string quartet and electronics by San Francisco’s celebrated composer/performer and media artist Pamela Z, co-commissioned by YBCA and the Kronos Performing Arts Association; and a new piece by Nathaniel Stookey, who at age 17 was the youngest composer ever commissioned for the San Francisco Symphony’s New and Unusual Music Series. The program also features the West Coast premiere of Carrying the Past by Dan Becker, chair of the composition department at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and works by other San Francisco musicians.
West Coast Premiere
Shen Wei: Undivided Divided
Thursday, March 21-Saturday, March 23, 2013, 8 p.m./YBCA Forum
Tickets: $20-25 advance; $25-$30 at the door; $20 YBCA Members; FREE YBCA: You
Big Idea: Soar
Best known for choreographing the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Shen Wei was a founding member of the Guangdong Modern Dance Company, China’s first contemporary dance company. He has been widely celebrated for his sophisticated choreography, breathtakingly powerful cross-cultural performances and gorgeous visual imagery, and was hailed by the The Washington Post as “one of the greatest artists of our time.” The company’s newest piece, Undivided Divided, is a unique performance installation comprised o a grid divided into 30 squares inhabited by 16 dancers.Audience members are invited to stroll amongst moving “displays” of painted dancers, projected videos and sculptural installations. Set to an original score by Sō Percussion and concrete sound design by Lawson White, the multimedia work envelopes the audience not only through its spatial design but also via multi-track sound creating an exciting new type of immersive interaction between audience and performer.
Axis Dance Co. – 25 Years of Daring Dance!
Friday, March 29 and Saturday, March 30, 8 p.m./YBCA Forum
Sunday, March 31, 2 p.m. and 7 p.m./YBCA Forum
Tickets: $25 general; $20 seniors/people with disabilities/students/YBCA Members; $15 youth 14 and under; FREE YBCA: You
Big Idea: Dare
AXIS Dance Company, one of the world’s most acclaimed and innovative ensembles of performers with and without disabilities, invites you to share in their celebration of 25 years of excellence in creating and performing physically integrated dance. You can expect a thrilling evening of breathtaking dance and bold ideas as AXIS presents two world premieres, one by Victoria Marks set to an original sound score from San Francisco-based composer Beth Custer, and one by San Francisco’s own Amy Seiwert. These performances will change the way you think about dance and the possibilities of the human body forever.
David Dorfman & Future Soul Think Tank: Prophets of Funk
Thursday, April 25-Sunday, April 28, 2013, 8 p.m./YBCA Forum
Tickets: $20-25 regular; $25-$30 at the door; $20 YBCA Members; FREE YBCA: You
Big Idea: Dare
David Dorfman Dance delivers a blast from the past as Sly and the Family Stone, one of the the Bay Area’s favorite funk bands comes alive again on stage at YBCA with their newest work, Prophets of Funk, an electrifying performance that celebrates the band’s groundbreaking and original sound and salutes the struggles and achievements of everyday people. Audiences are encouraged to sing – and dance – along with their favorite oldies, including Stand, Let Me Take You Higher, Dance to the Music and (of course) Everyday People
FILM/VIDEO
Tahrir: Liberation Square
Thursday, July 26 and Saturday, July 28, 7:30 p.m./YBCA Screening Room
Tickets: $10 regular; $8 YBCA Members/students/seniors/
Big Idea: Encounter
A real-time, cinéma vérité-style chronicle of the two most exciting weeks in the history of modern Egypt. Together with thousands of other citizens, Noha, Ahmed, and Elsayed have been involved in a massive movement of street protest for political freedom. Day after day, sleepless night after sleepless night, until the capitulation of the defeated pharaoh, the film follows these young and unexpected heroes and their shattering fight to attain freedom. (2011, 90 min, digital)
Kaneto Shindo Remembered
Thursday, August 9-Thursday, August 26, 2012/YBCA Screening Room
Tickets: $10 regular; $8 YBCA Members/students/seniors/
Big Idea: Soar
The exceptional Japanese filmmaker Kaneto Shindo died in May at age 100. In tribute, we present this series of three of his very finest films. Haunted by the devastation of his native Hiroshima, Shindo was a life-long socialist and directed almost 50 films over the span of his career. He left a remarkably diverse body of work, from humanist docu-dramas to expressionistic ghost stories. In the 1940s, he was a screenwriter, and then began working as an assistant director to such major filmmakers as Kon Ichikawa and Seijun Suzuki. He eventually formed his own production company and made politically conscious features, culminating in The Naked Island, his mesmerizing wordless study of Japanese farmers, considered by many to be his masterpiece.
Amos Vogel and Film as a Subversive Art Remembered: L’Age d’Or (The Age of Gold)
By Luis Buñuel
Thursday, September 6, 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, September 9, 2 p.m./YBCA Screening Room
Tickets: $10 regular; $8 YBCA Members/students/seniors/
Big Idea: Dare
Founder of the legendary Cinema 16 film society as well as the New York Film Festival, Amos Vogeldied at the age of 91 in April. He is best remembered by some for his seminal book Film as a Subversive Art. This amazing text illustrated the power of cinema to challenge aesthetic, political, sexual, and ideological ideas. In tribute, we present Luis Buñuel’s rarely screened classic L’Age d’Or, co-written by Salvador Dali. Vogel wrote this about the film: “In accord with surrealist ideology, only love—wild, anarchic, irrational love—is acceptable. Everything else is subverted; the rich, the church, the state, the military, as well as those pervasive bourgeois vices of sentimentality and romanticism…” (1930, 63 min, 35mm). Preceded by the unhinged Laurel and Hardy short Big Business, directed by James W. Horne and Leo McCarey (1929, 19 min, 35mm).
Femina Potens’ ASKEW Film Festival
Thursday, September 13–Saturday, September 15, 7 p.m./YBCA Screening Room
Tickets: $10 regular; $8 YBCA Members/students/seniors/
Big Idea: Dare
ASKEW is an experimental interactive exploration of performance, activism, and counterculture through documentary and experimental film coupled with performance art, readings and dance. The festival spans three evenings, each thematically curated and followed by an interactive panel with the audience. Guest curated by Madison Young.
Femina Potens is a nationally recognized non-profit arts organization, established in 2000, and dedicated to the advancement of LGBTQ & Allied Artists and Communities. Femina Potens is a leading queer organization in San Francisco and in 2012 launched new programming in NYC and Los Angeles.
Intersections: LOVE:SEX:PORN:ART: Our Intimate Identity
Thursday, September 13, 7 p.m.
Featuring works by Oriana Small aka Ashley Blue, Lorelei Lee, Cheryl Dunye, Chloe Camilla, and Dylan Ryan.
Oriana Small and Lorelei Lee present excerpts from their respective novels and memoirs presented in conjunction with silent short films composed of both moving and still images based on their individual experiences within the adult industry.
Hima B will be screening an excerpt from License to Pimp, her feature documentary about the dilemmas that strippers face when they must pay for the privilege to work in strip clubs where management violates their labor rights. Filming in San Francisco, the filmmaker, an ex-stripper, investigates the various factors that enable the strip clubs to pimp their workers and deny them basic rights that workers across America are guaranteed.
Cheryl Dunye presents Mommy is Coming. Set in the international creative melting pot that is Berlin, this raunchy romantic comedy of errors confronts the last lesbian taboo: Mommy. A take on screwball comedies and porn topped off with Dunye’s ingenious form of storytelling.
The Birth of Something New: Explorations of Queer Home, Family & Community
Friday, September 14, 7 p.m.
Featuring works by Sadie Lune, Madison Young, and Hima B.
Sadie Lune presents EGG, a collaborative work by Sadie Lune and Kay Garnellen. EGG is a sexy, funny, romantic, and dirty visual poem; an intimate collection of erotic moments between two lovers infused with food, fertility, surprises, joy, and love; and one woman’s journey toward motherhood with her ftm transgender partner.
Hima B presents Coming Out, Coming Home: Asian and Pacific Islander Family Stories. One Filipino and three Chinese families and their gay and lesbian children engage in dialogue about shame, grief, love, growth, living with HIV/AIDS, the acceptance of homosexuality by family members, and the cultural perceptions of homosexuality. The Gay Asian Pacific Alliance in San Francisco awarded this documentary with the 1997 George Choy Memorial Award.
Madison Young presents Down the Rabbit Hole: A Year in the Life of a Sexy Mama, which explores theatrically and cinematically the transformative first year of motherhood for a woman immersed in alternative sexual subculture. Cinematic elements consist of several parodies of queer-sploitation films that illustrate the societal fear of non-traditional parenting and non-traditional family dynamics that include LGBT and sex workers. Video elements also include interviews from other queer and sex worker moms and parents about their first year of motherhood and their transformative experience. Young’s onstage character resembles Alice from Alice in Wonderland, modified with autobiographical elements from her life as seen through the looking glass. Become immersed in Young’s new surroundings of “Mama-land” in this experimental performance and multi-media presentation.
In/Visible: Women fighting for visibility & survival in a world that doesn’t always celebrate difference
September 15, 7:00 p.m.
Featuring work by Lisa Bufano, Mollena Williams, Dylan Ryan and Rozen Debowe, Vixen Noir, and Midori.
Lisa Bufano presents an exploration of body movement, performance and film in this new visual and performance work. The dominating theme is the visceral experience of alienation, embodied by creatures, real and imagined.
Mollena Williams presents a new short interactive film exploring BDSM, race, culture, and emotional reaction to consenting adults engaging in impact play. How does an audience perceive a black female being “beaten” by a Caucasian male upon her own direction and choosing? How does a viewer’s reaction alter as the race of the “sadist” changes?
Vixen Noir presents a multi-media performance and video work that melds poetry/spoken word, singing, burlesque and video projection while exploring how Audre Lorde’s essay and speech The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power sparked a major transformation in Noir’s life as an erotic being, queer woman, and artist.
Midori addresses the in/visibility of aging women in Japan by utilizing film and performance. Midori asks you, the viewer: When the Yamamba passes, will you see her? Will you meet her gaze? She seeks and seeps into the psyche of those who will not see her. There she makes new nightmares. Yamamba ( 山姥 ) lives in the dusky edge of the primordial forest, on the fringe of civilization’s subconscious.
Dylan Ryan and Rozen Debowe present Tooth&Nail, a short erotic film that thematically deals with the dichotomy of reality and fiction within the context of the sexual mind and mental health. Played out by the dynamically striking Dylan Ryan, this intricately woven femme expertly walks the battlefield that can only be created within the confines of the imagination. As she addresses the fine lines of reality, Ms. Ryan fleshes out a relationship with herself that is accessibly controversial.
Special Engagement – New 35mm print!
Celine and Julie Go Boating
By Jacques Rivette
Thursday, September 20 and Friday, September 21, 7 p.m.
Saturday, September 22, 2 p.m. and 7 p.m.
Sunday, September 23, 2 p.m.
Tickets: $10 regular; $8 YBCA Members/students/seniors/
Big Idea: Dare
Finally available in a new 35mm print, Celine and Julie Go Boating is a brilliant meditation on the art of cinema and the nature of fantasy. This magical tale recounts the adventures of Julie, a librarian, and the flamboyant Celine, a magician of sorts, and a White Rabbit who leads Julie right through the Looking Glass into a world of her imagination. One of the seminal films of the seventies as well as a key feminist work, it’s regarded by many as New Wave master Jacques Rivette’s most accomplished film. (1974, 193 min, 35mm)
Special Engagement – New 35mm print!
We Won’t Grow Old Together
By Maurice Pialat
Thursday, September 27–Saturday, September 29, 7:30 p.m.;
Sunday, September 30, 2 p.m.
Tickets: $10 regular; $8 YBCA Members/students/seniors/
Big Idea: Reflect
This autobiographical film from French master Maurice Pialat (À nos amours, Loulou) is the harrowing account of a relationship in breakdown, with Jean Yanne (who won Best Actor at Cannes for this role) as a domineering and philandering filmmaker whose behavior threatens to destroy his relationships with both his wife and mistress. Painfully intimate and marked by Pialat’s trademark blend of naturalism and psychologically penetrating formalistic experimentation, We Won’t Grow Old Together is a wrenching account of emotional masochism. (1972, 102 min, 35mm
YBCA
701 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94103
Gallery Admission: $10 adults; $8 students/seniors/teachers
Gallery Hours: Thursday-Saturday, 12 noon-8 p.m.; Sunday, 12 noon-6 p.m.
Free First Tuesday of Every Month: 12 noon-8 p.m.
