one year and more

July 11-12 The Top of the Structure is Not Empty, 2 Evenings of Contemporary Dance

July 17-18 New choreography by U Dance Electra and Ishika Seth, also featured PJ Johnson, Suzanne Beahrs

July 19  Cabaret, partying and BBQ celebrating Joe’s birthday. The performance will feature cabaret superstar Veronica Klaus and a special performance by the House of Garza

July 26-27 (Sat-Sun) An evening of new choreography by Daina Block, Kerri Myers, Brianna Taylor and Julie Wolfrum.

July 30-31 (Wed-Thu) Wickie Stamps’ Fugue State

Aug 1-2 (Fri-Sat) An evening of new dance by Push Dance Company, also featuring choreographers Laura Arrington and Ara Glenn-Johnson

Aug 6, 13 & 20 (Wed) New one-woman performances by Alicia Dattner (The Punchline), Barbara Michaels (The Doormen) and Katie Rubin (Indecision Collision)

Aug 8 (Fri) An evening of new dance by the students and teachers from Shoebox Dance Studio

Aug 9-10 (Sat-Sun) Nitya Venkateswaran and Deepa Subramaniam will present an evening of South Indian Classical Dance.

Aug 14-15 (Thu-Fri) SPF3 presents Sharon Mashihi, Jaimie Venci, Susan Kanga & Observational Science - new experimental dance-theatre

Aug 21-22 (Thu-Fri) new choreography by Denia Dance, Jorge De Hoyos & Tunuviel Luv, Pearl Marill

Aug 23 24 (Sat-Sun) VaBang! Dance Company featuring choreography by Jessie Feller and Julia Sabangan and GUT DANCE with choreography by Giavanna Enriquez

Aug 27-28 (Wed-Thu) Thandiwe Thomas DeShazor presents Children of Last Days, an evening of spoken-word, hip hop and video.

starts Jul 26 (Sat) A new video installation by Daniel Konhauser on performance nights 7-8pm & 10-11pm

All tickets $10-$20,  www.BrownPaperTickets

SPF3 presents:  SoShe’s Performance Collective

Postcards, two evenings of contemporary dance.

Kerri Myers is a dancer, choreographer and performance artist based in San Francisco. Her work has been performed in Boulder and Denver CO, at Perseverance Theatre in Juneau AK, at the American College Dance Festival in Bellingham, WA, and at ODC Commons, Counterpulse, Dance Ground Keriac, Shotwell Studios and The Garage. Kerri is a core member of the award-winning samba/burlesque troupe Hot Pink Feathers, and performs with Dance/Theater Shannon. Kerri holds a BFA in Dance from the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Brianna Taylor hails from Portland, OR, and received her BA in dance from the University of Colorado, Boulder in 2003. Her movement and performance inspiration comes largely from modern and african dance, as well as yoga, flamenco, salsa, butoh, the movement of nature and the movement of travels. She was co-producer and choreographer for the performance collective Separation Anxiety in Boulder, CO, and has produced work in the Boulder and Capital Fringe Festivals.  In Boulder she was also a member of Logo Ligi West African Dance Ensemble with the Mensah Brothers, and The Skeleton Dance Project with Onye Ozuzu.  She has performed with various artists in Washington, DC and Portland, OR, and also had the privilege to perform with African Footprint International in Ghana, West Africa.  In San Francisco she has performed with David Dorfman, Shifting Forces Productions, and Kerri Myers in ODC's Pilot 52.

Julie Wolfrum graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2003, with a B.A. in Dance and Communication. She has had the pleasure of working with such artists as Maya Dorn, Lara, Maykovich, Dancers without Borders, the House of Love, Onye Ozuzu, and the International Tap Association.

Daina Block studied at the Victorian  College  of  the Arts  in  Melbourne,  Australia,  she simultaneously  developed  her  kinesthetic  relationship  to  movement  with  the  dance  craft  of choreographic  design. Her dedication  and  contribution  as  a  dancer  during  her  college  years later paved  her  way  to  receive  support  from  the  Australian  Arts  Council   in  the  category recognizing  young  and  emerging  artists.   She fulfilled  this  grant  and  continued  for  an  additional two  years  with  the  Australian contemporary  dance  company  Dance Works  under  the artistic direction  of  Sandra  Parker . Since  having  moved  to  the  Bay  Area,  Daina  has  contributed choreographically  to  the  San  Carlos  Children’s  Theatres’  Little  Mermaid  and  most  recent production  Get  Smart.  She  has  performed  in  an  ODC  pilot  program  and  been  a  past performer at  the  Garage.

SPF3 presents

FUGUE STATE
by WICKIE STAMPS

An evening of staged readings from Fugue State, Wickie Stamps’ New Gothic crime novel-in-progress. Fugue’s sketchy characters—a queer girl out for revenge, her troubled sister, a “defrocked” psychiatrist and his incarcerated brother, and more—will read from their journals, prison files and psychiatric records.

Wickie Stamps is a widely published writer and emerging screenwriter whose work has appeared in The Advocate, OutWeek, Gay Community News, Pucker Up and over a dozen short-story collections. Prior editor of the notorious hardcore gay-boy sex mag Drummer as well as Socialist Review a left-wing journal, Wickie is the lead writer of the award-winning short film Foucault Who?,  Co-partner of Heads Will Roll Productions www.headswillroll.net, a rag-tag media biz, Wickie’s current obsessions —showcased on HWR’s Head Wound podcast—include crime, horror, and esoteric spiritual research and practices. Find Wickie's latest written ravings can be found at Heads Will Roll Productions blog. Also check out her work on wild rocker sitcom Rock Court at rockcourt.net and her creative co-conspiratorial coaching biz Monstre Sacré www.monstresacre.net.

SPF3 presents  

PUSH Dance Company, Ara Glenn-Johnson and Laura Arrington

Push Dance Company provides visual stunning athleticism to the broadest audience possible with its Seasonal Performance -Short Stories, collborations & touring; offering emerging choreographers & established artists performance opportunities, as well as reaching students through performance opportunities with dance workshops. Push Dance Company is a contemporary dance company formed in 2005 by artistic director, Raissa Simpson. By combining exquisite film, music & gadgetry with daring dances, Push Dance Company addresses race, identity, mythical storytelling, history and spirituality with the goal of incorporating modern high-technology. Raissa Simpson and her Company have been honored with grants and awards since founding the company in 2005. Her conceptual incorporation of modern technology & dance can be described as “reflective contemporary choreography,”- Dance Spirit Magazine. In SPF3 the company presents “Judgments In Milliseconds”, a quartet “Buried Alive” and solo “Adinfinitum”.

More info: http://www.pushdance.org/performances.php  Artist bios here

All tickets $10-$20 brownpapertickets.com

Alicia Dattner, "Eat, Pray, Laugh"

Eat, Pray, Laugh is the story of one woman's journey through India, Thailand, and Cambodia in search of God, Truth, and Air Conditioning.  Alicia takes on the Indian Mustache Epidemic, French yoga teachers, "Spiritual Materialists" and New Age seekers, the sideways head nod, chicken tikka masala, meditation and "monkey mind," Annoying American Tourists, expatriates living in India, Bollywood and water buffalo, the nature of reality and fabric of time and space, being a stowaway on the Indian Railway, eating with your hands, and pooping in holes.

Artist bios here

Tickets: $10 - $20

Brown Paper Tickets

Katie Rubin, "Indecision Collision"

As Indecision Collision's protagonist, Katie, continues to walk her spiritual path, we meet several characters (10 all told) whom Katie has either dated, asked for advice about dating, or decided to avoid the dating topic with entirely.  What makes this piece as potent and relateable is both the narrating voice's poetic quality and the writer/performer's ability to move seemlessly back and forth between a wide array of characters.  She plays a neurotic, Jewish CEO (her father), a saccarine Yogi with a sex addiction problem, an aggressive Landmark Workshop Leader, a disempowered midwestern housewife, a supercharged, raw food and juicing junky of a jewish mom of three, an angel/healer/spiritualist, a controlling therapist, a real Buddhist, and several others.  The dating struggle, she finds, is truly a search for self.  Can she stand in her full power and vulnerability?  Or will she shrink from it and sell herself short?  Or will it be a bit of both?  Come see.  It'll be fun indeed.

Barbara Michaels, "The Doormen"

Lovers and others change our lives, opening doors for us that we may ultimately walk through alone... Sometimes that door bangs your butt across the threshold. Sometimes you shake the handle hard, but it's locked tight, or so it seems. Sometimes you dive through with glee only to crumble with longing on the other side. Sometimes you're looking for someone who will both open the door and walk through it with you. And all these moments, the searing and the cheering, are precious, shared, and finally appreciated. The Doormen, as presented here, is an excerpt of a longer show being developed under the wing of the San Francisco Circus Center Clown Conservatory. Look for a daytime walking tour version of The Doormen at the 2008 San Francisco Fringe.

More info: BarbaraInCharacter.com

Shoebox Dance Studio

An evening of new dance by students and teachers from Shoebox Dance Studio (www.shoeboxsf.com),

with guest performances by Claire Furlotte,

Damage Control Dance Theater

(www.damage-control.org),

and UNMATA (www.unmata.com)

Tickets: $12

Brown Paper Tickets

Nitya Venkateswaran and Deepa Subramaniam will present an electrifying evening of Bharatanatyam, South Indian Classical Dance, highlighting the athleticism and grace of this dynamic art form. The dancers will present traditional and original choreographies, depicting Hindu mythology and present day themes. More info: www.nityav.com

Nitya Venkateswaran: Immersed in Bharatanatyam (South Indian Classical Dance) since the age of 4, Nitya Venkateswaran has dazzled audiences in the Bay Area and India with her athleticism, grace and charming stage presence. She has performed in the prestigious Music Season and Shivarathri Festivals in India and was featured as a soloist in San Francisco's 2005 Ethnic Dance Festival.  A Bay Area native, Nitya is the senior disciple of Vishal Ramani, Artistic Director of the Shri Krupa Dance Company in San Jose.

Deepa Subramaniam began learning Bharathanatyam since the age of seven under Indumathy Ganesh of Nrithyollasa Dance Academy in 1988. In 1998 she traveled with the Nrithyollasa Dance Company to perform in South India and in 2005 performed with Nrithyollasa Dance Company at the New Prague Dance Festival in the Czech Republic. She has performed as a solo artist in numerous Bay Area/San Francisco events as well as being a company dancer with NATyA, an innovative dance company blending world dance and music at http://www.natya.info

, Brown Paper Tickets

Tickets: $10 - $20

Observational Science presents:

In "Things That Are Not Obsolete," a short solo work, Channing Sargent charts a path toward identity and meaning of self and other.
"Fine Feathers Make Fine Birds"
Two birds chirp on issues, theories, considerations, hypotheses, global concerns and stuff.

Observational Science is dedicated to the creation of new theater works through cross-disciplinary experimentation and collaboration. Drawing inspiration from a broad range of subject matter and creative media, its central purpose is two-fold: 1) To cultivate new theatrical forms and techniques that both challenge and reflect contemporary society; 2) To disrupt the containment and stability of theatrical tradition. Company co-founders and co-directors are Celeste Martinez and Channing Sargent.

Sharon Mashihi and Jaimie Venci present "The Light Under the Blanket" - Bay Area dancer Jamie Venci teams up with New York storyteller Sharon Mashihi to tell secrets in a fort in the darkness as the two women explore the bittersweetness of nostalgia and the collective cultural impulse to own and lock up both traumatic and delicious memories. The mutli-tasking performers do all of this while spontaneously bursting into arabesques and orchestrating a soundscape live using a dozen vintage analog tape recorders.

SPF3 presents

Sharon Mashihi and Jaimie Venci

Susan Kanga

Observational Science

Artist bios here

Tickets: $10-$20

Brown Paper Tickets.com

SPF3 presents

Denia Dance, Jorge De Hoyos & Tunuviel Luv, Pearl Marill

An experimental dance-theater piece exploring concepts of time and the search for an ultimate truth between two people who experiment on and exploit each other in service of their pursuits.

Artist bios here

Tickets: $10-$20

Brown Paper Tickets.com

Photo: Denia Dance

VaBang! Dance Company,   www.vabang.org/archives/category/events,  Tickets $10 - $20,    BrownPaperTickets

Thandiwe Thomas De Shazor as AlphaHydroxy

photo: Ri Ri Garcia

for Rimarkable Things

AIRspace and SPF3 present

CHILDREN OF THE LAST DAYS       Thandiwe Thomas De Shazor

Children of the Last Days is a semi-autobiographical, multi-media performance piece that explores, juxtaposes and satirizes the modern Black church and the Black gay community. Thandiwe Thomas De Shazor uses prose, monologue and dance in this colorful and comedic commentary on the past, present and future.

Thomas has been performing for over ten years in such shows as Oklahoma, The Music Man, Lysistrata and Ron Allen’s Tibetan Book of the Dead.  Thomas has studied under Hilary Ramsden, co-founder of the Furniture Factory and was an apprentice at Oakland University’s Meadowbrook Theatre. As a writer, he was first published at age 19 in Between the Lines Newspaper where he became a staff writer and wrote the weekly entertainment column “Check This Channel Out”. Most recently, his story “Pussy Pass it On” was published in If We Have to Take Tomorrow, an anthology of black gay writers. Since moving to California he has toured singing with artist Ri Ri Garcia, performing at The House of Stormz and San Francisco Gay Pride. Thomas also performed at the 2007 NQAF event Why are Faggots so Afraid of Faggots?

Tickets: $10 - $20, Brown Paper Tickets.com

A new video installation

by Daniel Konhauser

“Endless Landscape” is an image filled maze, a sequence of sights and sounds in a narrow corridor that the audience will pass through, which examines the ways in which modes of transportation affect our perception of our environment, our relationship to it, and the stories we construct as we travel through it.

The Garage has a sprung dance floor with mirrors and is available for
performances, workshops and classes.

joe landini (The Garage artspace / director)

michael michalske (The Garage artspace / technical director)

RAW, a 12 week residency program offering approximately 4-6 hours of free rehearsal space that culminates in a
two night performance. performance artists of all disciplines are encouraged to apply.

SPF3 (third annual summer performance festival) late june and july
artists participate in shared two week programs. artist fees available.

AIRspace, a 12 week residency program for bay area queer performance artists.
culminating in a performance at the national queer arts festival.

the raw & uncut performance showcase (march), all disciplines encouraged.

please contact joe landini 415 885 4006 for more details.