• September 10, 2015

    Ask ME

    By Published On: September 10th, 2015

    Our new Community Engagement Fellow: Alexandra Maricich Photo Credit: Chelsea Rodino This story begins long ago in Seattle. Where I met my dear friend and collaborator at Cornish College of the Arts: Mariah Martens. We have confided, confronted, confirmed, collected, constructed, created, condensed, conversed every part ourselves to each other. In between graduating from

  • September 8, 2015

    80 Turk Inaugural Season Curator’s Note

    By Published On: September 8th, 2015

    80 Turk in Fall 2014, Photo by Kegan MarlingOur Inaugural Season crowns a remarkable, highly anticipated move to a state-of-the-art facility at 80 Turk Street. Appropriately enough, the season, creations from artists variously working in New York, Austin, Ireland, Berlin, and the Bay Area, offers a kaleidoscopic set of reflections on metamorphosis whether in the

  • August 20, 2015

    Tomás and James Talk 80 Turk Street: an interview with our Executive Director

    By Published On: August 20th, 2015

    James: So the first question I have – what’s the first word that comes to mind when you think of our new home at 80 Turk Street? Tomás: Potential – I mean, CounterPulse has the potential to transform the community; it’s something that’s so needed and necessary in the Tenderloin. The Tenderloin certainly has the

  • August 17, 2015

    Exploring Engagement: CounterPulse & Violeta Luna in Salinas

    By Published On: August 17th, 2015

    An update from the field, with CounterPulse executive director, Tomás Riley. With support from the James Irvine Foundation’s Exploring Engagement Fund CounterPulse recently celebrated the stage premier of Como la Tierra/Like the Earth in Salinas, CA. Presented in collaboration with the Alisal Center for the Fine Arts (ACFA), local artist collective Artists Ink and renowned performance

  • August 17, 2015

    Summer Rehearsals: A Visual Post

    By Published On: August 17th, 2015

    Photo of Ben Juodvalkis and Rebecca Siegel at a music rehearsal in Rebecca's garden. Video of creating choreography in the studio:  choreo.video  

  • August 5, 2015

    CounterPulse Interviews: Artist-in-Residency Emily Hoffman

    By Published On: August 5th, 2015

    Julie Phelps: Is there a politic to the ways that the work you are developing in CounterPulse’s ARC Program with the Affinity Project is experimenting with duration, repetition and mutability?  Emily Hoffman: It might be more of an attitude than a politic, but I do feel an impulse to disrupt certain structural tropes in performance. I'm

  • July 25, 2015

    The River

    By Published On: July 25th, 2015

    Focusing on wellness and self help during the process of creating "This Year Is Different..." has been both illuminating and challenging. This morning I read "The River" by Thich Nhat Hanh. I'm sharing it here because it describes a process of self understanding similar to my personal transformation instigated by creating this piece for the Artist-In-Residence

  • July 1, 2015

    Text on stage

    By Published On: July 1st, 2015

    Text does strange things on the stage. For a trained actor, a bit of Chekhov can inaugurate an entire style of performance, with certain assumptions about what's real, what kind of feeling is most powerful, how to get to that feeling. After turning away from text, towards gesture, task, state, other ways of articulating presence,

  • June 30, 2015

    Sourcing, Processing, Book List

    By Published On: June 30th, 2015

    In the studio we are researching the pathways through trauma. We are talking about suffering, grief and how and why people are motivated to move into a new state of being. One of the positive things about trauma is once we begin to climb out of it, I believe we become more open minded, more

  • June 16, 2015

    CP interviews Zürich arts curator, networker, and contexualizer, Marc Streit, for the (X)change micro-festival

    By Published On: June 16th, 2015

    CP: Marc, in one sentence,what is your story? MS: I have a passion for contemporary dance and performance, based in Zurich, loving San Francisco and having a queer mindset! CP: What was the genesis of Zürich Moves? Where did the inspiration to create the festival come from? MS: I wanted to create a platform for

  • June 11, 2015

    legacy, layers and California (by Monique)

    By Published On: June 11th, 2015

    First, I have so enjoyed reading everyone's posts so far. Witches! California! Feminism! Flappers! So in my thinking about the next work I want to make, I am thinking a lot about layers, about simultaneity, and about holding conflict and opposition in one body mind. That which is 'problematic' sometimes enriches, that which is un-feminist

  • May 27, 2015

    Lost and Full

    By Published On: May 27th, 2015

    I am a bit lost with the blog as I have very little time to read the messages of others and when I am trying to write it all goes queer ;-)  I just finished a book by a swiss writer, long time dead by now, Blaise Cendrars "Sutter's Gold"; The story of a swiss