Performance

 

New Frequencies @ YBCA

New Frequencies @ YBCA features both emerging and world class musicians that expand the global landscape. In the Forum, international as well as local Bay Area pioneers from the experimental world music and avant-garde music scenes present an array of sound styles from around and out of this world. In the galleries, musicians have the opportunity to respond directly to the work of the eight visual artists commissioned for Wallworks.

NEXT WAVE OF GLOBAL SOUNDS

Aug 15, 2009–Tanya Tagaq / KIHNOUA
Tanya Tagaq has created a major buzz in the alternative music scene with her experimentation of traditional Inuit throat singing. Tagaq's unique voice has attracted the attention of some of the world's most groundbreaking musicians, including Björk, who invited her to participate on her album, Medúlla, and the soundtrack to the Matthew Barney film Drawing Restraint. KIHNOUA is an all-star band composed of trailblazer musicians from the Bay Area formed by the inimitable saxophonist Larry Ochs of Rova Saxophone Quartet …

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Aug 22, 2009–Juana Molina / Amy X Neuberg & The Cello ChiXtet
Argentine singer Juana Molina defies categorization. Her music features elements of folk, ambient and eledtronics and she is often compared by critics to ö, Beth Orton and Lisa Germano. Amy X Neuburg is a unique Bay Area musician. Part storyteller, percussionist, and cultural commentator, she constantly pushes the limits of creativity and experimentation with the traditional art form of cabaret …

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MUSICIANS RESPOND TO WALLWORKS
FREE w/ Gallery Admission

Aug 6, 2009–Pinkoya / T.I.T.S.
Pinkoya ignites in explosive and lyrical improvisations which expand the vocabulary of their traditional acoustic instruments. Veteran virgin-rockers T.I.T.S. have been described as "doom-laden garage rock stompers" with "witchy" vocals and "simmering and pulsating sonics." …

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Aug 13, 2009–Lisa Mezzacappa & Nightshade / Shimomitsu
Bassist/composer Lisa Mezzacappa and her ensemble Nightshade perform a new series of wordless chamber songs. Shimomitsu is an experimental music collaboration whose sound lies in a blissfully uncomfortable place between tribal doo-wop and a psychedelic surf experience, that they like to call ocean rock …

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Aug 20, 2009–Jackeline Rago & Steve Hogan Duo / Kev Choice & Jennifer Johns Duo
Virtuoso instrumentalist Jackeline Rago, known for her Afro Venezuelan rhythms, and renowned beat boxer Steve Hogan combine forces to create a lively, contemporary vocal-percussive extravaganza. Singer Jennifer Johns teams up with jazz pianist Key Choice for a swinging set that is both heart-rending and head-bobbing …

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Aug 27, 2009–Chris Brown / Mason Bates & David Arend Duo
A solo performance by Chris Brown, known for his eclectic and highly imaginative compositions for acoustic and electronic instruments, and computer networks. DJ and electronica artist Mason Bates (aka DJ Masonic) and upright bassist David Arend are well-known in the SF club scene for their futuristic musical blend of jazz, classical, rock and electronic music …

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Margaret Jenkins Dance Company / Guangdong Modern Dance Company

YBCA is thrilled to co-commission Other Suns, a world premiere trilogy of dances created by Margaret Jenkins and her company in a cross-cultural collaboration with the Guangdong Modern Dance Company of Guangzhou, China. With live music composed by Paul Dresher and performed by the Paul Dresher Ensemble, with additional music by Bun Ching-Lam –

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Bill T. Jones / Arnie Zane Dance Company

In celebration of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company's 25th anniversary and the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth, YBCA presents Fondly Do We Hope … Fervently Do We Pray. Blending video, live music, movement and theater, Fondly Do We Hope considers Lincoln's legacy and unrealized vision for the reconstruction of America, exposing that great distance between what is and what could have been …

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Theatre of Yugen

Known for their use of dense, poetic text set to contemporary music, San Francisco's venerable Theatre of Yugen creates a unique and imaginative fusion of traditional Japanese theater with a western sensibility that is at once ancient and avant-garde. Neither docudrama nor overt political propaganda, Dogsbody challenges the concept of child soldiers as a regrettable phenomenon …

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Gregory Maqoma / Vuyani Dance Theatre

As part of its ongoing commitment to the diverse artistic voices shaping the performing arts in Africa, YBCA presents one of South Africa's leading choreographers, Gregory Maqoma in his acclaimed solo performance, Beautiful Me. Paying tribute to three master choreographers who have inspired him, Maqoma builds a bridge to a living past by layering these diverse idioms with his own …

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YBCA and San Francisco Performances present DV8 Physical Theatre

A leader in Britain's contemporary dance scene, London's DV8 Physical Theatre presents To Be Straight With You, an explosive multimedia dance theater piece that examines tolerance, intolerance, religion and homosexuality in the UK. DV8's multi-ethnic cast brings to life stories gleaned from hundreds of hours of audio interviews …

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Youth Speaks' Living Word Project and YBCA present Left Coast Leaning Festival

A revolutionary three-day festival celebrating West Coast dance, theater and music. Curated by Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Left Coast Leaning positions the west coast as the emerging center of a changing world. Each evening features a different line-up of urban-based movement, storytelling and music, showcasing performances and collaborations by some of the west coast's most influential artists …

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Ronald K. Brown / EVIDENCE, A DANCE COMPANY

Brooklyn-based company EVIDENCE fuses traditional African dance with contemporary choreography and spoken word. Founder and choreographer Ronald K. Brown's newest work is an homage to the traditions passed down from one generation of men to another. Inspired by the relationship between Brown's young nephew and his grandfather, Two Year Old Gentleman poses questions about male responsibility—to one's community, to one's family and to one's self …

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YBCA and San Francisco Performances present Akhram Khan Company / National Ballet of China

Cultures from around the world collide in bahok, the eagerly anticipated collaboration by Akram Khan and the National Ballet of China. bahok (a Bengali word meaning "carrier") unites the rich talents of Khan's Kathak-contemporary company with the virtuoso skills of three classically trained dancers from the National Ballet of China. With an original score by Khan's longtime collaborator, award-winning composer Nitin Sawhney …

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Sara Kraft

Bay Area artist Sara Kraft returns to YBCA with the world premiere of HyperReal, blending text, song, sound, movement and live video to examine the complex and conflicted ways we inhabit our minds, our bodies and our world in the digital age. How do we determine what is "real" in a world where our experiences and perceptions are mediated through technology—a world where even our "actual" physical experience can be questioned?

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Reggie Wilson / Fist & Heel Performance Group and Andréya Ouamba / Companie 1er Temps

Brooklyn-based choreographer Reggie Wilson returns to YBCA with The Good Dance – dakar/brooklyn, the culmination of a multi-year collaboration and cultural exchange that melds the rich art, culture and history of diverse ancestral pasts, incorporating the rhythms of African, Caribbean and African-American dance to create a theatrical world that passionately reflects upon the connections, both intimate and metaphoric, of the cultures of the Congo and Mississippi rivers …

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Sara Shelton Mann & David Szlasa

A full-length multimedia performance incorporating movement, video and sound, Tribes maps out the kinesthetic and vibratory shift in our global culture, investigating the ways in which people find, communicate and experience one another in an increasingly interconnected world. Szlasa creates original film and media design elements as the foundation for a live performance by Sara Shelton Mann, founder and director of one of the Bay Area's most exciting performance ensembles, Contraband …