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Free. Outdoors. Fresh. | Yerba Buena Gardens FestivalA two-weekend festival of site-specific work, the Yerba Buena Gardens ChoreoFest showcases the extravagant creativity, diversity and vibrancy of the Bay Area dance scene. After a thrilling 2023 season, YBG ChoreoFest returns with PUSH Dance Company’s Artistic Director Raissa Simpson and Associate Artistic Director Ashley Gayle serving as co-curators with David Herrera Performance Company’s David Herrera. Designed to offer rising Bay Area artists opportunities to shine on a larger platform, YBG ChoreoFest also seeks to present artists of color from outside of the contemporary/modern dance world, particularly hip-hop and global dance traditions. Herrera, a recipient of the National Latino Arts & Culture Leadership Fellowship and many other grants, commissions and residencies, founded his company in 2007 in response to the lack of Latinx visibility and representation on the U.S. modern dance scene. A highly sought after educator, scholar, interdisciplinary artist and award-winning choreographer hailing from African-descended sharecroppers and an immigrant from the Philippines, Raissa Simpson founded PUSH to examine the body as a site for racial discourse. Together, these curators turn the seventh annual YBG ChoreoFest into a glorious profusion of performances amidst the Gardens’ lawns and architecture.
Day One Companies:
David Herrera Performance Company, founded in 2007, prides itself in providing visibility, agency and exposure of a diverse Latinx American experience within an American context. Rich in theatricality and immersed in nuanced, visceral movement, the company makes its statement by weaving dance, story-telling, music and media into a textured conversation between Latinx cultures and a multicultural audience. The company is centered on equity and representation of Latinx peoples in modern dance arts as topic/themes, performers, choreographers, audience, curators, scholars, policy makers, teachers and students. We hope to create a lineage and network from which other Latinx artists can learn from and work with. DHPCo. is one of few predominantly Latinx focused modern dance companies in the United States.
The Turf Feinz is the renowned dance team of Oakland, California. Known for the dance style of “turf”, an acronym for “Taking Up Room on the Floor”, a nod to the expansive footwork and dramatic body movements. The style includes contortionist moves known as bone-breaking and detailed movements like tutting. The team has been in many music videos, commercials, festivals and films but the love for the community is the company’s reason to keep pushing further for greatness.
pateldanceworks is directed by Bhumi B Patel, a queer, desi, home-seeker, science fiction choreographer, movement artist and writer. In its purest form, PDW collaborators create performance works as love letters to our ancestors. PDW moves at the intersection embodied research and generating new futures, using improvisational practice as a pursuit for liberation.
OYSTERKNIFE is an interdisciplinary performance project co-directed by Chibueze Crouch and Gabriele Christian. Since 2017 they have presented a series of works in the Bay Area and Santa Cruz (“mouth full of sea, mouth//full, m|ou|f”, and “Time of Change”, co-directed with Joe Goode Performance Group) most recently the full length premiere of “mouf//full” at Grace Cathedral. They will next choreograph for Crowded Fire Theatre’s “Shipping and Handling”.
Know Before You Go
- Each program day moves to four different locations in the Gardens, spanning approx. 1 city block or .5 miles
- Event staff and volunteers will direct the audience to each location
- Seating at each site is very limited and prioritized for seniors and those with disabilities
- Each performance is about 15-20 minutes in length
- ASL interpretation is provided on both days
- For any other accessibility questions, contact [email protected] or (415) 543-1718
Supported in part by:
National Endowment for the Arts
Zellerbach Family Foundation
Part of Yerba Buena Gardens Festival's Weekend Sessions series. For the full program schedule, visit www.ybgfestival.org
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Yerba Buena Gardens Festival, 781 Mission St, San Francisco, CA 94103-3132, United States,San Francisco, California
