Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture presented Zaccho Dance Theatre’s biennial San Francisco Aerial Arts Festival on the FMCAC campus from August 19, 2022, through August 21, 2022.
The festival featured evening group performances at Cowell Theater, a youth matinee, and the premiere of a new site-specific aerial performance by Robert Moses’ KIN at the Festival Pavilion. Friday and Saturday evening performances included the world premiere of Veronica Blair’s The Rainbow is Enuf, a reimagining of Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf expressed through modern circus, alongside performances by Shannon Gray, Pamela Donohoo, Melissa Knowles, and Terry Crane of Acrobatic Conundrum.
The festival included pre-show screenings of filmmaker Bryan Gibel’s Love, a state of grace, documenting Zaccho’s 2022 Grace Cathedral performance. Artist talk-backs addressed topics including BIPOC body sovereignty in circus and aerial arts. The Youth Matinee showcased young aerialists from Circus Center’s San Francisco Youth Circus, Kinetic Arts Center’s Circus Spire, Mendocino Center for Circus Arts’ Circus Mecca, BANDALOOP & Destiny Arts Youth Company, and Zaccho Youth Company.
Related Programming
New Experiments at CounterPulse (August 21, 2022) provided an opportunity for aerial artists to build community and present short new works. Featured artists included Ciarra D’Onofrio, Faith Elder, Meléa Emunah, Kelsey Keitges, Meche Perez, and Nina Sawant.
FORT MASON ART was pleased to continue supporting the San Francisco Aerial Arts Festival.
The San Francisco Aerial Arts Festival was also generously supported by San Francisco’s Grants for the Arts, San Francisco Arts Commission, National Endowment for the Arts, the Gerbode Foundation’s New Choreographer Award, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Terry Sendgraff Trust, and Zaccho’s community of individual donors.
Joanna Haigood (b. 1956, Japan) is the founder and artistic director of Zaccho Dance Theatre, established in 1980. She founded the San Francisco Aerial Arts Festival in 2014.
Robert Moses is a choreographer, writer, and composer who joined SFAAF during Robert Moses’ KIN’s 27th anniversary season. He has created more than 100 works and choreographed for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, San Francisco Opera, and Lorraine Hansberry Theater. He served as Dance Lecturer and Choreographer-in-Residence at Stanford University from 1995 to 2016.
Veronica Blair is one of the top Black aerialists in the country. A Bay Area native, she began her career at age 14 and has performed in Afrika! Afrika! (Germany’s largest circus event) and worked for Universal Studios Japan. Blair’s The Uncle Junior Project brings attention to the legacy and talent of Black circus entertainers.
Shannon Gray is a Montréal-born aerialist, dancer, and performing artist specializing in dance trapeze. Based north of San Francisco, she is developing The Sentience Project.
Terry Crane founded Acrobatic Conundrum, Seattle’s premier contemporary circus arts company, in 2012. An alumnus of the National Circus School of Montreal and Oberlin College, Crane blends virtuosic circus skill, dance, and physical theater.
Pamela Donohoo is Artistic Director of Awaken Circus and Dance Theater in New England. An international performing artist specializing in socially relevant and globally engaged acrobatic performances, she has performed throughout the U.S. and internationally.
Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture presented Zaccho Dance Theatre’s biennial San Francisco Aerial Arts Festival on the FMCAC campus for FORT MASON ART’s Summer 2022 program on Friday, August 19, 2022 through Sunday, August 21, 2022.
San Francisco Aerial Arts / Zaccho Dance:
Zaccho.org
SFAerialArtsFest@Zaccho.org
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