Spring 2019 at CounterPulse

In Spring 2019, CounterPulse threads through time in the twilight between performance and uprising.

Our only question is, will you join us?

Spring 2019 Performance Calendar

tiny little get down
tinypistol + little seismic dance company
Jan 25, Fri, 7:30pm-9pm
Need to let off a little steam? tinypistol’s Maurya Kerr and little seismic dance company’s Katie Faulkner invite you to the first tiny little get down of the new year. Founded in 2017, the tiny little get down is a dance party for people who love to dance and don’t want to have to go to a club and look cool doing it. If you’re feeling undone by our state of the union and need a cathartic space that affirms the power of the collective, come sweat, shake, get down, and revel in this subversively joyful dance event designed for all bodies.
Free RSVP >>

UNEARTHED
Titania Kumeh / Sharmi Basu / Semaj Peltier / Silvi Peligras / Catalina Xavlena / Karl Gomez / Chi Chi Castillo / Kelvin Pittman / Jillian Crochet / Drought Spa / Jesse Austin / Angie Holiday
Curated by Angel Castellon and Claire Staples
Feb 2, Sat, 8pm
A night of video installations and performances by emerging Bay Area artists exploring ancestry and diaspora, trauma and healing, vulnerability and sexuality, and questions about our past and future.
Tickets >>

Galatea
Words by Katie Tandy // Direction by Lauren Rosenfield // Music by Geoff Cotter
Feb 21-24, Thu-Sat at 8pm, Sun 2pm matinee
Galatea is a queer rock adaptation of Ovid’s classic myth Pygmalion. This new work, featuring an original rock score, tells a chilling and beautiful rendition of the story of an obsessed sculptor whose statue comes to life.

Galatea surfaces a complex dialogue around race, gender, sexual violence, creator-as-God, bodily autonomy, and what it means to create—and control—your art.
Tickets >>

Broken Seeds Still Grow: Taking Root
Nava Dance Theatre
Created and directed by Nadhi Thekkek and Rupy C. Tut.
Mar 29-31, Fri at 8pm, Sat at 3pm & 8pm, Sun 3pm matinee
Through dance and multimedia, Broken Seeds Still Grow: Taking Root links the hyphenated-American experience to the displacement of our ancestors during the devastating 1947 Partition of British India. Stories of South Asian diaspora create dance vignettes that examine the widespread fear developing towards Muslims and Middle Eastern/South Asian descent. Are we allowed to feel American, even if aren’t always welcome?
Tickets >>

Edge Residency Double Bill
Stephanie Hewett: /soft/c/
Kim Ip/Krimm’s Dance Party: ceremonious present
Apr 11-13 & Apr 18-20, Thu-Sat, 8pm
Pay-what-you-can Thursdays
Edge is an incubation residency and commissioning program for contemporary choreographers whose work is deeply curious about the intersection of art practice and social change.

This year’s resident artists include Stephanie Hewett attempting to embrace the multidimensionality of pleasure in /soft/c/. This work uses various interpretations of contemporary dance forms to create critical musings on fluidity, intimacy, queer futurity, blackness, and power by examining the contrasts of marginalized bodies against hegemonic constructs.

Next, Kim Ip/Krimm’s Dance Party brings us ceremonious present, a story of two womxns’ sexual awakening through investigating Asian womxn ancestry in America and more specifically the Bay Area. The work excavates cultural rejections of sexuality, and unveils one person’s desire to be transposed upon two bodies.
Tickets >>

Thunderstruck
Stina Nyberg
Apr 25-26, Thu-Fri, 8pm
In Thunderstruck, acclaimed Swedish artist Stina Nyberg returns to a time when art and science harnessed natural energy for crafting magical devices. In a wonderful act of science and hubris, mixing intimate storytelling with electronic drones from the deep and a singing Tesla coil, she welcomes us to the twilight zone between showmanship and science.
Tickets >>

Innerspace: The Annual CounterPulse Gala
Thursday, May 16
Welcome to CounterPulse’s starship Gala.
Fly toward a future that keeps arts alive for humans and extraterrestrials alike. At Innerspace, raise the funds that support radical arts in the Bay Area and galaxies afar. This party is for you, our celestial community of freaky artists and arts advocates. Support experimental art by pledging and shopping at the silent auction. Admission is sliding scale and drinks are free all night!

Work MORE 8: Drag House
Created and produced by OX., Artistic Direction by VivvyAnne ForeverMORE!, Production Coordination by Silk Worm.
May 24-25, May 31-Jun 1, Fri-Sat, 8pm
29 drag queens take over CounterPulse. Queens in the basement, queens in the lobby, queens in the bathroom. Experience an accumulation of 48 drag experiments and performances from January 2017 to today.
Tickets >>

Fabric Animal
Sonsheree Giles & Sebastian Grubb
Jun 6-8, Thu-Sat, 8pm
Fabric Animal is a dreamscape event sewn from the personal embodied histories of Sonsheree Giles and Sebastian Grubb. We examine the self as a body-through-time, a psychological and physiological threadwork, leaving poems in its wake. We invite you into our immersive evening of contemporary dance performance and original music composition, featuring Sonsheree, Sebastian, and Caroline Penwarden.
Tickets >>

ARRUDA
Aguas Da Bahia directed by Tania Santiago and Co-produced by Stephanie Bastos
Jun 13-15, Thu-Sat, 8pm
Tania Santiago, director of Aguas Dance Company presents ARRUDA, a performance inspired by the medicinal, sacred and practical gifts of Rue, a medicinal plant known for its powers to protect and make manifest that which is desired. Through live music, vibrant dance, sweet stories and songs, ARRUDA becomes healing medicine remembering the indigenous magic from the Amazon that unifies and manifests the spirits of Brazil. Uncover the underrepresented indigenous presence that holds its forest and plant/spirit’s medicines as an offering to heal the planet.
Tickets >>

Tomorrow We Inherit the Earth: The Queer Intifada
Produced by: Anum Awan, Arshia Haq, Hushidar Mortezaie, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto//Faluda Islam and Saba Taj
Jun 20-22, Thu-Sat, 8pm
Tomorrow We Inherit the Earth reveals a world that has been liberated from Western Imperialism by queer muslim guerrilla fighters, zombie soldiers risen from the dead and aliens summoned from the top of minarets. This collaborative ensemble brings together performance, video, music and fashion that will bring to life what it takes to build a revolution.
Tickets >>

Tickets for all events available at counterpulse.org