DANCE

 

The 2005 Black Choreographers Festival: Here & Now@ Artaud & ODC

The 2005 Black Choreographers Festival: Here & Now is an annual event celebrating African and African American Dance and Culture with two weekends of dynamic performances, Friday-Sunday , February 4-6 and February 11-13 featuring award winning Bay Area choreographers and companies.Lead organizations AAAPAC and B-PAN have joined forces to present a comprehensive festival celebrating the diverse artistic expression within the context of African and African American dance and culture. The festival strives to offer multi-faceted programming that addresses the needs of artists: networking, mentoring, training, outreach; and the community: affordable/accessible programming, cultural enrichment and arts education.   The festival is hosting two pilot programs this year: a mentor program- sponsoring 3 emerging artists, working with mentor choreographers, culminating in new work being presenting in the Festival and a technical training program – sponsoring 6-8 African American men and women, from local high schools and colleges (ages 17 – 25)  to train in aspects of technical theater, culminating in working on the stage crew amongst seasoned professionals running the Festival.  Encouraging community participation and arts education, the festival will sponsor a series of master classes , in Bay Area schools and dance studios; a symposium, featuring a panel of artists, scholars and arts activists;  and post-performance curtain talks, offering the opportunity for dialogue between audiences and artists.   It has been 10 years since  a Black Choreographers Festival has been hosted in the Bay Area.  There  is a vibrant African and African American Arts scene here that will be acknowledged and celebrated.  The entire community has pulled together to make this event possible – partnering organizations include: ODC Theater, Dimensions Dance Theater, Stanford University, Dance Mission Theater, SF State University, and Laney College.

 

Joanna Haigood, choreographer, relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area from New York in 1979 and co-founded Zaccho Dance Theatre. Her creative work focuses on making dances that use natural, architectural and cultural environments as a point of departure for movement exploration and narrative. Haigood's work involves in-depth research into the history and the character of sites and typically integrates aerial flight and suspension as a way of expanding the dancers' spatial and dynamic range. Her work has been commissioned by leading arts presenters both nationally and internationally. Among them are the National Black Arts Festival, Festival d'Avignon and Festival d'Arles in France, the Exploratorium Museum, Capp Street Project, Dancing in the Streets, the Walker Art Center, Jacob's Pillow, the San Francisco Art Commission, Kaatsbaan International Dance Center and the Tryon Center for Visual Art.

 

 

Founded in 1992 by Artistic Director, Reginald Ray-Savage, Savage Jazz Dance Company is a convergence of artistic forces, where the energy, improvisation, and syncopation of jazz is expressed through athletic, lyrical, and explosive dance. The only all-jazz concert dance company in Northern California (and one of the few in the US!), Savage Jazz’s repertory includes works to the music of such jazz legends as Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Dave Brubeck, and Charles Mingus, as well as some of the country’s best contemporary jazz composers, including long time collaborator and award-winning jazz bassist, Marcus Shelby.

 

Savage Jazz Dance Company combines the fundamental movement vocabulary of contemporary dance, jazz dance, Dunham technique, and ballet to draw out the complexity of jazz music. This mixing of styles perfectly echoes the fusion of cultural influences, individual improvised expression, and classical technique that make up jazz music. Savage Jazz Dance Company and its Artistic Director, Reginald Ray-Savage have been awarded numerous grants and awards for its original and innovative blending of dance and jazz music.

 

 

     The New Style Motherlode Dance Company was founded in 1997 by Corey Action Harrison and Teela Shine Ross. The directors envisioned a company that fused hip hop, jazz, ballet, modern, and theatrical themes to present a realm of dance never seen before. With this vision, they formed a unique and dynamic dance company, consisting of dancers from all walks of life. Harrison and Ross aspire to develop a multi-dimensional training and performance curriculum that explores all facets of dance and dance production.  

   New Style Motherlode is a culturally diverse dance company which strives to promote self-expression, cultural relativity, training and education through dance. In addition, New Style is a community-service oriented dance company which aims at exposing inner-city youth to the arts by organizing master classes, performing at local high schools and community sponsored events.