Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture (FMCAC) presented Zaccho Dance Theatre’s biennial San Francisco Aerial Arts Festival on the FMCAC campus August 16 through August 18, 2024.
The city’s premier aerial arts event, the San Francisco Aerial Arts Festival (SFAAF), featured two evenings of showcase performances, a youth matinee, and a site-specific installation by Flyaway Productions for the fire escapes. New for 2024, a curated film festival captured the grace, strength, and imagination of aerial arts. Accessibility services included Live Audio Descriptions, Haptic Access Tours, and ASL interpretation.
Featured artists included Alice Sheppard/Kinetic Light, Aeriosa Dance Society (Canada), Corporeal Imago (Canada), Cirque Vida/Xochtil Sosa, Ross Travis, Jason Span, and Zaccho Dance Theatre with Veronica Blair. The Youth Showcase featured Zaccho Youth Company, Circus Center’s San Francisco Youth Circus, Kinetic Arts Center’s Circus Spire, Ashland Aerial Arts, Prince Dance Institute & Company, and Sentient Arts.
Support for the 2024 SFAAF was provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, Fort Mason Center for Arts and Culture, San Francisco Grants for the Arts, San Francisco Arts Commission, the San Francisco Dream Keeper Initiative, San Francisco Human Rights Commission, California Arts Council, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation, Fleishhacker Foundation, the Terry Sendgraff Trust, and Zaccho’s community of generous individual donors.
All Fort Mason Art Programs are generously supported by San Francisco Grants for The Arts and the FMCAC Board of Directors.
Joanna Haigood (b. 1956, Japan) is the founder and artistic director of Zaccho Dance Theatre, established in 1980 after relocating from New York to San Francisco in 1979. She founded the San Francisco Aerial Arts Festival in 2014. Her site-specific choreography uses natural, architectural, and cultural environments as points of departure for movement exploration and narrative, typically integrating aerial flight and suspension. Her work has been commissioned by Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Walker Arts Center, Dancing in the Streets, Festival d’Avignon, the Exploratorium Museum, and the National Black Arts Festival. She has received the Guggenheim Fellowship, Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, United States Artist Fellowship, New York Bessie Award, Doris Duke Artist Award, and multiple Isadora Duncan Awards. Haigood has taught at the National École des Arts du Cirque in France, Trinity Laban Conservatoire in England, Spelman College, and Stanford University.
Friday, August 16, 2024 through Sunday, August 18, 2024
San Francisco Aerial Arts / Zaccho Dance:
Zaccho.org
SFAerialArtsFest@Zaccho.org
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