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dark/lessons/rupture features preview excerpts from three new works by Jess Curtis, and Beyond Gravity artists Silk Worm and jose e. abad with collective RUPTURE.
Into The Dark, a new ensemble work instigated by Jess Curtis in collaboration with a diverse ensemble of Blind, Low Vision and Sighted performers, addresses the physical, subconscious, and literal effects of western culture’s binary mythologizing of darkness and light.
Lessons in Anatomy, a new solo(ish) piece from Silk Worm, aims to create a repository for all the negative thoughts, fears, doubts, and second guesses that come with bodily transformation, namely with changing sex. Navigating a medicalized transition, it turns out, produces a landfill’s worth of psychic garbage, and Lessons in Anatomy hopes to take out the trash.
Rupture is a collaborative work by jose e. abad, Gabriele Christian, Stephanie Hewett, Styles Alexander, and Clarissa Dyas exploring which shares some of the group’s research on Afro-Diasporic – primarily African-American – folk games and functions as sites of chance, vernacular, and transformation.
dark/lessons/rupture is made possible with support from Grants for the Arts, San Francisco Arts Council, the California Arts Council, National Endowment for the Arts, The MAP Fund, and The Ford Foundation
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ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Jess Curtis/Gravity creates exceptionally engaging body-based art that physically addresses issues of relevance to anyone with a body. The organization supports the work of founder and Artistic Director Jess Curtis, as well as that of emerging Bay Area dancemakers. Gravity has premiered 13 full-length productions and numerous shorter works with co-producers in the U.S. and Europe, touring to over 70 cities in 15 countries.
Silk Worm’s research-based and interdisciplinary work commingles the worlds of drag, theater, and dance. Silk has presented her work at Berkeley Art Museum, the Cantor Center for the Arts, 2727 California Street, Fierce! Festival, and the Pittsburgh Performance Art Festival. Her practice emerges from eight years of engagement with the Bay Area’s queer nightlife as a drag queen, producer, and barfly. Silk is known as a very good sport.
Rupture is a San Francisco Bay Area collective of movement-based artists, conducting experiments of Black life and living locally and abroad. Parallel with the cohort’s ongoing research, they work with a Wisdom Circle of mentors to archive inquiries and stage instigations into the state of Black making.