CounterPulse is launching into an electrifying fall season with a series of performances that seek virtual bodies, radical bodies, quantified bodies and missing bodies through movement. We face extinction and environmental toxicity while finding resilience in community, pleasure, and corporeality.

We’ll kick things off with new works from Combustible, CounterPulse’s newest residency program that synthesizes body-based art and creative technology. Residents Freya Olafson and Yagiz Mungan, and Kinetech Arts (Weidong Yang and Daiane Lopes da Silva), have created bold new performances that antagonize and rediscover the corporeal body using virtual reality technology and big data visualization.

The season progresses with Citation, a 37-hour durational performance excavating queer ancestors from Raegan Truax. Later, lemurs and lemurians meet in Clement Hil Goldberg’s Our Future Ends, a sad yet hopeful satire that connects extinction of wildlife and wild life through fabulously choreographed final numbers and stop motion animation. We’ll see new works from the ABD Productions/Skywatchers, the Tenderloin artist ensemble, and Hope Mohr returns for the 2017 Bridge Project with guests including Judith Butler, boychild, Peacock Rebellion and more. We’ll end the year with new works from our Performing Diaspora residents: Javier Stell-Fresquez, Ivan Monteiro, Davia Spain, and Randy Reyes.

Fall 2017 is the CounterPulse you know and love with some surprises up our sleeves. Join us.

Fall 2017 Performance Calendar

The MÆ – Motion Aftereffect

Freya Björg Olafson with Yagiz Mungan

MESH

Kinetech Arts

Sept 7-9 & 14-16, Thu-Sat at 8pm, pay-what-you-can Fridays

The Combustible Residency is a brand-new residency program pushing forward new works synthesizing body-based arts and new technology. This year’s resident artists have created bold new performances that antagonize and rediscover the corporeal body using virtual reality (VR) technology and big data visualization.

Tickets: www.counterpulse.org/event/combustible-residency-2017
Tickets are priced at a sliding scale of $20-$35 and Friday nights are pay-what-you-can, reservable online.

 

Citation

A 37-hour durational performance by Raegan Truax

Friday, Sep 22 at 9am – Saturday, September 23 at 10pm

Open to the public during the entire 37-hours. Come and go as you please.

Exhausted by words, decorating skeletons, erasing everything to begin again. In this consecutive 37-hour durational performance, Truax foregrounds the artistic body as embedded within and creating from its archive and experience. Once the performance begins, Truax will not leave the stage, sleep, or take breaks. She will perform in silence and without a clock.

Tickets: www.counterpulse.org/event/citation-37-hour-durational-performance-raegan-truax/
Tickets are priced at a sliding scale of $15-$35 and enables guests to come and go as they please.

Apocalypse Now or Maybe Later

Work-in-progress showing from Mercilee Jenkins

Thursday, Sep 28, 7pm-8pm

In the 21st Century, life is dangerous and dating is challenging for any age or sexual preference, especially in the Tenderloin, where rich and poor share close quarters and may have to save each other from disaster.

Tickets coming in mid-August.

 

Our Future Ends

Clement Hil Goldberg

Oct 12-14 and 19-21, Thu-Sat at 8pm, pay-what-you-can Thursdays

Clement Hil Goldberg’s Our Future Ends is a sad yet hopeful satire that connects threats of extinction to wildlife and wild life through fabulously choreographed final numbers. The multidisciplinary piece unearths Lemuria in a visual arts installation that unfolds into parallel narratives. Oscillating between video documentation, animation, dance and theater, the work combines live performances from Brontez Purnell, Maryam Farnaz Rostami, and Heather María Ács as both long extinct Lemurians and the voices of stop motion animated lemurs (additionally voiced by Xandra Ibarra, Zackary Drucker, Ben McCoy, Silas Howard and Siobhan Aluvalot).

Tickets: www.counterpulse.org/event/our-future-ends/
Tickets are priced at a sliding scale of $15-$35 and Thursday nights are pay-what-you-can, reservable online.

 

I GOT A TRUTH TO TELL

ABD Productions’ Skywatchers

Oct 26 & 27, Thu-Fri at 8pm

Now in its seventh season, ABD Productions’ Skywatchers brings together Tenderloin residents and community practice artists to collaboratively create original performance work. The culmination of a year of community dialogue, storytelling, and artistic creation, I Got A Truth to Tell weaves together themes of ancestry, cultural gas lighting, and the radical act of having each other’s backs.
Amidst a current national atmosphere trending toward normalization of lying and bullying, misogyny and race hatred, Skywatchers’ I GOT A TRUTH TO TELL brings the voices and stories of those who would be silenced into high relief and a resounding chorus.

Tickets: www.counterpulse.org/event/got-truth-tell/

 

Hope Mohr Bridge Project 2017: Radical Movements: Gender and Politics in Performance

with Judith Butler, Monique Jenkinson, Peacock Rebellion, Jack Halberstam, boychild, Maryam Rostami, Julie Tolentino, Amara Tabor Smith, Xandra Ibarra, Laura Arrington, Maurya Kerr, Scot Nakagawa (ChangeLab), Debra Levine (Hemispheric Institute for Politics and Performance)

November 3-4 & 10-11, Thu-Sat at various times

The 2017 iteration of Hope Mohr’s Bridge Project brings together artists and activists in a series of cross-disciplinary performances and conversations in response to the question: What does it mean to have a radical body?

Tickets: http://dev-counterpulse.pantheon.io/event/radical-movements-gender-politics-performance/

 

Goin’ Home: The Gay Porn Soundtracks of Patrick Cowley

Honey Soundsystem

Thursday, Nov 9, 7-11pm

An evening event celebrating the life of San Francisco-based musician and producer, Patrick Cowley.  Celebrating the worldwide premier of ‘Afternooners’ the “lost” Patrick Cowley gay porn soundtrack finally seeing the light of day after 30 years via Dark Entries Records/Honey Soundsystem Records. The evening will feature a listening session of the remastered “Afternooners” soundtrack as well as video screenings of the gay porn films from the Fox Studio vaults and live performances by Group Rhoda and Jorge Socarras, Patrick’s friend and fellow musical collaborator.

Tickets: www.counterpulse.org/event/goin-home-gay-porn-soundtracks-patrick-cowley/

 

Dance Hack Festival

Kinetech Arts and more

Public showing Sunday Dec 3, at 7:30pm and 9pm

DanceHack is an annual event that brings together performers and developers to inspire one another and experiment with emerging technologies. This year will be the 4th annual DanceHackSF, featuring 2 days of events including Hackathon style collaborative workshops and performance showcases.

Tickets coming soon

 

Lxs Desaparecidxs

Randy Reyes

Mother The Verb

Javier Stell-Fresquez, Ivan Monteiro, and Davia Spain

Dec 7-9 & 14-16, Thu-Sat at 8pm, pay-what-you-can Thursdays 

The Performing Diaspora residency supports artists that are drawing on tradition as a radical way to be responsive, inclusive, and support equity. Queer Latinx choreographer-dance artist Randy Reyes premieres Lxs Desaparecidxs, a performance piece that grapples with its own ephemerality, asking “How do we collaborate with the force of the unseen?” Mother The Verb is a Queer/Trans performance dance produced and created by, Javier Stell-Fresquez, Ivan Monteiro, and Davia Spain, who are a trinity of young, fierce, POC femmes making a new experimental performance piece exploring the glorification and damnation of our many mothers, asking how we can transcend the toxins flowing in our bodies and societies.

Tickets: http://dev-counterpulse.pantheon.io/event/performing-diaspora-residency-2017-2/

 

 

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Photos from top left: Kinetech Arts, pictured Maria Sotnikova, photo by Weidong Yang; Maryam Rostami, photo by Robbie Sweeney; Leroy Staples with and courtesy of Courtesy ABD productions/Skywatchers; Raegan Truax, photo by Stefanie M. Okuda; boychild, photo by Matthew Stone; puppets from Clement Hil Goldberg’s Our Future Ends; Patrick Cowley, photo courtesy Honey Soundsystem