FRESH

PRACTICES – WEEKEND 3

Violeta Luna > The Body: Territory and Frontier

Saturday – Sunday
January 25-26, 2020
12:30pm- 5:30pm

This workshop has been created for artists of performance, dancers, actors, spoken word or visual artists interested in performance art and in exploring the intersection of the personal, the theatrical and the political through stage actions. Students in these disciplines are also welcome.

Workshop participants will make use of their personal memory and identity as the expressive territory where they will chart a vocabulary of stage actions.

Drawing on their use of body, participants will also work on imagery related to their individual and social understanding of gender, sexuality and race. Some thematic threads in the workshop include: Body (fiction and non-fiction, presence and inner strength, body as subject/object;) Space (internal and external, spatial relationships, the intervention of public and private space;) Time (real-time, fictional-time, ritual-time;) Action (site-specific, action – reaction, responses to real and imagined stimuli, audience interaction, the creative accident.)

 Who should apply: Professional or students of performance, spoken-word, actors, dancers and visual artists. All applicants should have a basic understanding of the discipline of performance art.

 Maximum enrollment 16 people.

Violeta Luna (Actress / Performance Artist) work engages the relationship between theatre, performance art and community-based practices. Luna uses her body as a territory to question and comment on social and political phenomena. Born in Mexico City, Luna obtained her graduate degree in Acting from the Centro Universitario de Teatro (UNAM,). She has performed and taught workshops extensively throughout Latin America and Europe, as well as in Rwanda, Egypt, New Zealand, Japan, India, Canada and USA. While primarily working as a solo performer, she is also an associate artist of the San Francisco-based performance collective Secos & Mojados. She is a National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures (NALAC) Fellow, and a member of The Magdalena Project: International Network of Women in Contemporary Theatre. Significant works include: Frida, NK603: Action for Performer and e-Maiz, Requiems: Altares Efímeros, Apuntes sobre la Frontera and a series of with the collective La Pocha Nostra. www.violetaluna.com

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PRACTICES – WEEKEND 2

Chani Bockwinkel > SAPPHO and SWEAT

Saturday – Sunday
January 18-19, 2020
12:30pm- 2:30pm

A Queer Feminist Dance Class
Kate Bush*Somatics*Aerobics
Open to All levels/Genders

A place for us to get sweaty, learn some 80’s sci fi dance moves, give attention to our pelvis and the magik that is our anatomy.  Read a little sapphic poetry, honor some deep femme idols, and dance WITH each other.

Chani Bockwinkel  is a filmmaker and performer. She makes interdisciplinary-collaborative-queer-feminist imagery for the stage, gallery, and internet. She is currently working as co-director on her first feature film, Those Who Wait.  The project is a poetic re-telling of a 19th century doomsday movement. She has taught Sappho and Sweat on the West Coast, East Coast, Texas, Canada and Berlin. Bockwinkel is a founding member of SALTA, a dance collective.

dana e. fitchett > Signature Line

Saturday – SundayJanuary 18-19, 2020
3:00pm- 5:30pm

Signature Line”is a workshop I created to consider the relationship between improvised bodily movement (dancing, if you will) and improvised drawing (doodling), conceiving of the drawn line as a simple continuation of the natural movement that lives in a dancer’s body, and vice versa: understanding improvised bodily movement as an extension of line drawn on paper. “draw write move” is a next iteration of this idea, adding written text into the equation.

 On both days, the workshop will begin with a groovy warm-up to get into bodies and connected to music. On day one, participants will learn a short phrase that was constructed by following the path of a line doodle as a movement map. As the focal activity of day one, each participant generates their own, similarly derived phrase by first translating a segment of their improvised movement into a drawn line doodle, and then following the line of that doodle to create a movement phrase. On day two, after warm-up, participants will learn a phrase generated to text. They’ll then turn their attention to the written word, taking time to generate a free write, perhaps with some prompts offered. Participants will then extract some text from their free write and create a phrase to that text. Different iterations of these exercises may ensue, if time allows.

 The loftiest goal of the workshop is to move its participants even just slightly to a less colonized point on the grand spectrum of colonization. Marcus Garvey said, “Liberate the minds of men and ultimately you will liberate the bodies of men.” I concur with Garvey’s statement and also believe the liberation of mind and body are all tangled up in—and reliant on—one another’s progress. So, in that vein, I focus in this workshop on the inversion of Garvey’s imperative, and hope that re/connecting movers to their organic, self-directed line, path, and voice can also serve to help liberate psyches from the burden of narrow ideas of what expression “should” look like.

dana e. fitchett (she/her/they/them) has worked in schools and in arts-, education- and social justice-focused organizations, with roles ranging from direct classroom work, dance education, and family organizing to event management, arts administration, and marketing and communications. A multidisciplinary artist currently pursuing a self-directed Masters of Fine Art in Interdisciplinary Art from Goddard College, dana writes, makes visual art, teaches movement classes, choreographs, and directs Movement for Liberation, a project-based dance collective. dana seeks and finds endless lessons in literature, human engagement, and nature, and splits most of her time between the Bay Area, New York, and Boston. All of her pursuits are unified by her explicit concern for moving our individual and collective realities closer to liberation.

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PRACTICES – WEEK 3

ALTERNATIVA > GUT Motives

Monday – Friday
January 20-24, 2020
10:00am- 12:00pm

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Sara Shelton Mann >Embodiment

Monday – Friday
January 20-24, 2020
1:15pm- 12:00pm

EMBODIMENT
5 days/5 topics/5 ways of bringing your essence into the creative magic of movement and writing rigor, play, tears and joy – a birthright – landing on our feet – landing.

Sara Shelton Mann has been a choreographer, performer, and teacher since 1967.  She was a protégé of Alwin Nikolais and Murray Louis in New York City before moving to Canada where she met Andrew Harwood and fell in love with contact improvisation. In 1979 she moved to San Francisco and founded Mixed Bag Productions, for which she has continuously served as artistic director. One of its early manifestations was the company Contraband, launched as a performance group and research ground combining the principles of contact, systems of the body and spiritual practice into a unified system of research.  Among her awards are a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, 6 Isadora Duncan Awards, Djerassi Artist in Residence Awards, Headlands Center for the Arts Residency 2016, Lifetime Achievement Bay Guardian Award, 10 Women Who Made a Difference, Bay Guardian “Goldie” Award, Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists award (2016) and special achievement award “erasing time”: celebrating 30 years a radical dance legend, ( Sara Shelton Mann with David Szlasa and Norman Rutherford) Her Movement Alchemy training is an ongoing teaching project and is influenced by certifications and studies in the metaphysical and healing traditions. Sara’s performance work is a platform for collaboration and research in consciousness. www.sarasheltonmann.org

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Tara Brandel > I know it in my bones. Deep dancing for Queer women and non-binary people.

Monday – Friday
January 20-24, 2020
1:15pm- 12:00pm

I know it in my bones. Deep dancing for Queer women and non-binary people.
Taking all of what we know from Contact Improv, and from our queer and/or non-binary selves. We dance. Fierce, soft and tender. Listening from our bones. We dance. Big, deep, and tender. What comes out of stillness? What lies in our marrow? How do our bodies come together? And what lies beneath?

Tara Brandel is a queer Contacter and Contemporary dancer and choreographer from Ireland. She trained in Contact Improv with Steve Paxton when she was 15, and Contact has been her core passion for 35+ years. Contact informs her queerness. Her queerness informs her Contact. She runs an Integrated Dance company Croí Glan Integrated Dance www.croiglan.com and has taught Contact at WCIIF, SFADI, ORJC in Toronto, Ponderosa, and Tanzfabrik, as well as in Melbourne, Cairo and Barcelona. She loves to do Contact in deserts, and her latest craze is mixing Contact with pole dancing. Tara holds a Masters in Interdisciplinary Performance from UCDavis, where she was awarded the Della Davidson Award for her new show Circus in 2019, the Mondavi Fellowship, and the Women’s Research Center Fellowship. Circus has toured to San Francisco International Arts Festival, Seattle International Dance Festival, Cork Midsummer Festival and Dublin Fringe Festival and will be CSUEBF in February 2020. www.tarabrandel.com

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PRACTICES – WEEKEND 1

Sherwood Chen > An Osseous Agency

Saturday – Sunday
January 11-12, 2020
12:30pm- 5:30pm

An Osseous Agency
We open with rhythmic, reckless group warm ups across the floor to court destabilization. We shift to partnered, group and solo scores to revel in our respective and respected moving bodies, as both witness and witnessed. Through structured improvisations and études, we will examine slow collapses of skeletal structures as a generative source of information, cast our bones in pleasure, threnodies and tribute, and generously offer each other our enigmatic bodies as rich, (mis)interpretable texts to then dance from. Bring a notebook, a blindfold and those sage bones of yours.

Sherwood Chen has worked as a performer with artists including Grisha Coleman, Yuko Kaseki, Amara Tabor-Smith, Anna Halprin, Min Tanaka, Xavier Le Roy, inkBoat/Ko Murobushi Christine Bonansea, Jess Curtis and Sara Shelton Mann. He leads workshops for performers in studio and in natural and urban landscapes worldwide.For over twenty years, he has served as a cultural worker in public, nonprofit and philanthropic sectors focusing on community arts programming, arts education, arts grantmaking, and as an artist advocate, with a focus on supporting tradition-based, Native Californian and immigrant artists.  www.sherwoodchen.com

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PRACTICES – WEEK 2

ALTERNATIVA > GUT Motives

Monday-Friday
January 13-17, 2020
10:00am- 12:00pm

GUT Motives is an alternative dance class and ongoing research by ALTERNATIVA investigating corporeality from internal impulse to external expression. Exploring states and acts of motion through a hybrid of traditional, contemporary and alternative forms in order to utilize embodiment and motion as means of perception, intuition and action. Deepening awareness and understanding of the body by working with energy, touch, somatic improvisation, technical modalities and three-dimensional choreography. The class is an intimate, animated arena for physical and creative exploration, deeply informed by live, original music, and encouraging sensate virtuosity, kinetic efficiency, interactive intelligence and performance-level dancing.

ALTERNATIVA, directed by dancer Kathleen Hermesdorf with musician Albert Mathias, is an apparatus for deeply integrated contemporary dance and music via collaboration, creation, improvisation, performance, production, curation and education. Active in San Francisco since 1998, the organization supports the creative work of the directors, known for radical dance classes, performance projects and musical endeavors delving into the corporeality and ineffability of human conditions, behaviors and other curiosities. Activities, including an annual FRESH Festival, ongoing classes and workshops in the Bay Area, residencies at universities, festivals and studios worldwide engage an extensive population of artists, audiences and participants. ALTERNATIVA is fiscally sponsored by Dancers’ Group and has received support from the Zellerbach Family Foundation, the William + Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Fleishhacker Foundation, the Kenneth Rainin Foundation, Dancers’ Group’s Matching Grant and CA$H Grant, CHIME/MJDC, the San Francisco Arts Commission, The Suitcase Fund and individual donations. www.la-alternativa.us | www.freshfestival.org

Kathleen Hermesdorf is an international dance artist, educator and producer based in San Francisco. She directs ALTERNATIVA, with musician Albert Mathias. Hermesdorf has been dancing in the Bay Area since 1991 and teaches, performs, improvises, creates and curates around the world. Her work has been presented in the Bay Area, New York, Seattle, Berlin, Amsterdam, and Dakar, amongst other locations, in commission for universities, companies and independent dancers, and in collaboration with art partners worldwide. She was a member of Bebe Miller Company, Contraband/Sara Shelton Mann and Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, and co-director of Hermesdorf & Wells Dance Company with Scott Wells and Collusion with Stephanie Maher. She is the co-director, with Maher, of PORCH summer school at Ponderosa in Stolzenhagen, Germany, and of WILD [West Cork Contemporary Dance Festival] with Tara Brandel, in Ballydehob, Ireland. Hermesdorf brings over 20 years of experience from the field, studio and stage to her work and holds a BFA and an MFA in Dance Performance + Pedagogy.

Albert Mathias is a multi-disciplinary musician based in San Francisco since 1991. He creates and performs composition and sound design for dance, theater, film, video and audio mediums, and is the music director of ALTERNATIVA, with director/dancer Kathleen Hermesdorf. He was a member of Bebe Miller Company and Contraband/Sara Shelton Mann, and has created original sound scores for myriad dance companies. In 2000, he was nominated for an IZZIE Award with ALTERNATIVA and received a BESSIE Award in 2006 with Bebe Miller Company. Mathias has produced 15 records of original music and collaborated in numerous bands, most notably LiveHuman, an internationally acclaimed trio with DJ Quest and bassist Andrew Kushin. Mathias attended California Institute of the Arts, training in tabla, voice and accompaniment, and has had the honor of private study with Pandit Swapan Chauduri, Sri Ravi Bellare and Tony Williams. His eclectic sounds can be found on I-Tunes, Bandcamp and CD Baby.  Relocated to Mazatlán, Mexico in October 2019, Mathias now works with Delfos Danza Contemporanéa and their school, EPDM, as well as continuing with ALTERNATIVA.

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Jesse Zaritt > Drawing Lab

Monday-Friday
January 13-17, 2020
1:15pm-3:15pm 

Drawing Lab will engage drawing as a visual and physical practice linked to dreaming, drafting, and materializing futures. Elements of drawing such as line, tone, texture, edge, fluidity, atmosphere, and spatial planning will be collectively explored and discussed. The act of drawing will create navigable terrains of study that will invite us to critically imagine what is possible, what we observe, and how we intervene within and beyond the present moment. This lab studies how drawing moves and how movement draws.

Jesse Zaritt is a Brooklyn-based dance artist. He is an Assistant Professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA, having previously been the inaugural 2014–2016 Research Fellow in the University’s School of Dance. He has also taught at Bard College, Hollins University, Pomona College and for ten summers at the American Dance Festival. Zaritt has performed his solo work in Taiwan, Uruguay, Russia, Korea, Germany, New York, Japan, Mexico, Israel and throughout the United States. Jesse worked collaboratively with Jumatatu Poe from 2012-2015; their duet work was presented by Gibney Dance Center (NYC), AUX Performance Space at Vox Populi (PA), Fringe Arts (PA), Triple Canopy (NYC), Dixon Place (NYC) and New York Live Arts (through the Studio Series Program). A duet created with Katie Swords premiered at the Museum of Art and Design (NYC) in October 2015. Jesse was commissioned by the American Dance Festival to create a duet alongside Mark Haim which premiered as part of the 2015 ADF performance season. He has performed with the Shen Wei Dance Arts Company (NYC, 2001–2006), the Inbal Pinto Dance Company (Tel Aviv, 2008), and in the work of Netta Yerushalmy (NYC, 2009–2016) and Faye Driscoll (NYC, 2010–2015); he works as an artistic adviser for her current projects. His solo Binding was the recipient of three 2010 New York Innovative Theater Awards—Outstanding Choreography, Outstanding Solo Performance, and Outstanding Performance Art Production. Zaritt currently works in creative dialogue with Sara Shelton Mann.

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Ángel Arámbula > Piso Articular (Articulate Floorwork)

Monday-Friday
January 13-17, 2020
3:45pm-5:45pm

Piso Articular (Articulate Floorwork) is a contemporary dance training technique in which the biomechanics of floorwork are applied to find more effective spatial routes within the dancing body. Within this training technique, several themes are considered through its progressive work such as: Anchors and Leverage, Articulation and Weight Distribution, Body Efficiency, Relation of the Frontal, Axial and Sagittal planes, Ramps of Ascent and Descent, the Kinetic Perception of the Three-dimensional Body, Inhabitation of Personal Space and Group Consciousness. Applying the aforementioned themes, students expand their corporal movement vocabulary as well as increase their individual and collective awareness with the space and other dancing bodies.

Ángel Arámbula (Director, Choreographer, Dance Facilitator) is originally from Tijuana, Baja California. He began his classical dance studies within the Baja California Dance Company A.C.. From 1997 to 2000 he was part of the “Subterranean Art Project” directed by Gregorio Coral. He was distinguished as the best dancer in the XIX International Festival of Contemporary Dance of San Luis Potosí in 1999. In 2000 he entered the Professional School of Dance of Mazatlán (EPDM), directed by the company Delfos Danza Contemporánea where he studied his professional studies as a dancer and choreographer. He has been granted a FONCA scholarship in the 2004 edition in the category of interpreter, by the FOECA of Baja California in his 1999 broadcast in the category of Individual Artistic Development in Contemporary Dance and in the 2002 broadcast for continuing studies, as well as for the Professional School of Dance of Mazatlán from 2001 to 2003. Ángel obtained honorable mention as the Best Male Performer within the First Choreography Competition in Urban Spaces Monterrey, NL (2002) and prize as the best male performer in the regional contest of contemporary choreography in Hermosillo, Sonora (2016).

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VIEW ALL FRESH EVENTS (PERFORMANCES + PRACTICES) AT THE ANNEX

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE FULL FRESH FESTIVAL HERE.

PRACTICES – WEEK 1

ALTERNATIVA > GUT Motives

Monday-Friday
January 6-10, 2020
10:00am- 12:00pm

GUT Motives is an alternative dance class and ongoing research by ALTERNATIVA investigating corporeality from internal impulse to external expression. Exploring states and acts of motion through a hybrid of traditional, contemporary and alternative forms in order to utilize embodiment and motion as means of perception, intuition and action. Deepening awareness and understanding of the body by working with energy, touch, somatic improvisation, technical modalities and three-dimensional choreography. The class is an intimate, animated arena for physical and creative exploration, deeply informed by live, original music, and encouraging sensate virtuosity, kinetic efficiency, interactive intelligence and performance-level dancing.

ALTERNATIVA, directed by dancer Kathleen Hermesdorf with musician Albert Mathias, is an apparatus for deeply integrated contemporary dance and music via collaboration, creation, improvisation, performance, production, curation and education. Active in San Francisco since 1998, the organization supports the creative work of the directors, known for radical dance classes, performance projects and musical endeavors delving into the corporeality and ineffability of human conditions, behaviors and other curiosities. Activities, including an annual FRESH Festival, ongoing classes and workshops in the Bay Area, residencies at universities, festivals and studios worldwide engage an extensive population of artists, audiences and participants. ALTERNATIVA is fiscally sponsored by Dancers’ Group and has received support from the Zellerbach Family Foundation, the William + Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Fleishhacker Foundation, the Kenneth Rainin Foundation, Dancers’ Group’s Matching Grant and CA$H Grant, CHIME/MJDC, the San Francisco Arts Commission, The Suitcase Fund and individual donations. www.la-alternativa.us | www.freshfestival.org

Kathleen Hermesdorf is an international dance artist, educator and producer based in San Francisco. She directs ALTERNATIVA, with musician Albert Mathias. Hermesdorf has been dancing in the Bay Area since 1991 and teaches, performs, improvises, creates and curates around the world. Her work has been presented in the Bay Area, New York, Seattle, Berlin, Amsterdam, and Dakar, amongst other locations, in commission for universities, companies and independent dancers, and in collaboration with art partners worldwide. She was a member of Bebe Miller Company, Contraband/Sara Shelton Mann and Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, and co-director of Hermesdorf & Wells Dance Company with Scott Wells and Collusion with Stephanie Maher. She is the co-director, with Maher, of PORCH summer school at Ponderosa in Stolzenhagen, Germany, and of WILD [West Cork Contemporary Dance Festival] with Tara Brandel, in Ballydehob, Ireland. Hermesdorf brings over 20 years of experience from the field, studio and stage to her work and holds a BFA and an MFA in Dance Performance + Pedagogy.

Albert Mathias is a multi-disciplinary musician based in San Francisco since 1991. He creates and performs composition and sound design for dance, theater, film, video and audio mediums, and is the music director of ALTERNATIVA, with director/dancer Kathleen Hermesdorf. He was a member of Bebe Miller Company and Contraband/Sara Shelton Mann, and has created original sound scores for myriad dance companies. In 2000, he was nominated for an IZZIE Award with ALTERNATIVA and received a BESSIE Award in 2006 with Bebe Miller Company. Mathias has produced 15 records of original music and collaborated in numerous bands, most notably LiveHuman, an internationally acclaimed trio with DJ Quest and bassist Andrew Kushin. Mathias attended California Institute of the Arts, training in tabla, voice and accompaniment, and has had the honor of private study with Pandit Swapan Chauduri, Sri Ravi Bellare and Tony Williams. His eclectic sounds can be found on I-Tunes, Bandcamp and CD Baby.  Relocated to Mazatlán, Mexico in October 2019, Mathias now works with Delfos Danza Contemporanéa and their school, EPDM, as well as continuing with ALTERNATIVA.

REGISTER TODAY AT  FRESHFESTIVAL.ORG/PRACTICES

Abby Crain > Discomfort Camp

Monday-Friday
January 6-10, 2020
1:15pm-3:15pm 

Discomfort Camp
What can be learned, digested and transformed when we trade euphoria for attentive curiosity about what doesn’t feel right? Inspired by Sara Ahmed’s thinking on the generative nature of discomfort, as a way to “abide differently”, we tap into the wealth of our resources as sensate  and perceptive beings and work to unleash the genius and furor of our inner “feminist killjoy”.   Alongside this process we keep asking ourselves – How is pleasure also a part of this project? We will work singly and  together through movement for sure, and possibly writing, listening, drawing, seeing, feeling, speaking, chanting, singing, and “hard play.”

Abby Crain makes things that should probably be called dance because they work with the body, movement, time and space,  but as she is not interested in virtousity or choreography as much as she is interested in fucking with what is expected from the body, time, space, and reality, she calls it body based performance. Her teaching practice stems from 25 years of obsessive research and experimentation with the body and its consciousnesses and possibilities, in which she is equal parts committed to expanding the range, power and dynamism of our moving bodies and a belief that doing so can be a pleasure based practice of care and attention that cultivates resiliency and connection. Her work sources from her committed studies of Open Source forms with Stephanie Skura, as well as extensive study, practice and performance with both Sara Shelton Mann and Miguel Gutierrez. Abby is a student of Biodynamic Cranio Sacral Therapy, and is currently pursuing her MFA through University of the Arts in Philly, with research centering around the “Problem of Emptiness” in body based practices as viewed through a feminist, anti-racist and pro-earth lens.

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Keith Hennessy > Dancing Magic Together

Monday-Friday
January 6-10, 2020
3:45pm-5:45pm

Dancing Magic Together
A five-class series exploring the poetics, politics, and potentials of creating a shared world by dancing together. Working mostly in duets but also solo, trio, group, we enter a laboratory of making and unmaking. We will dance more than talk supported by ritual technologies of divination, ancestors, elements, care, and prayer. We’ll consider the symbolic and metaphoric aspects of dancing together as well as the real intimacy of what is happening right here and now. Engaging decolonial and queer-feminist practices of consent and collaboration this will be a futurist laboratory that knows that another world is possible and it will be improvised.

Magic involves poetic and embodied action in a ritualized context to influence both consciousness and material realities. The pretend influences the real. Working with dancing, somatics, tarot, and spell crafting we will create a laboratory of activist magic. We’ll include indigenous land acknowledgement as a necessary act of healing, education, and respect. How can bodies and imaginations be decolonized and healed? How can dancing respond to anxiety and trauma? What are the potentials and pitfalls of wicca on colonized land? How do we develop tools for non verbal and improvised negotiations of consent and collaboration? All this while deepening the desire to move; to feel and learn and express through dancing.

The class will draw on Keith’s ongoing work including dancing objects, fake healing, negotiating power, while prioritizing intuitive and embodied responses to political crises.

Keith Hennessy, MFA, PhD, is a dancer, writer, choreographer, activist, and ritualist. Raised in Canada, living in San Francisco since 1982, he tours internationally. Prioritizing collaboration, often across lines of difference, Keith’s collaborators since 2016 include Snowflake Towers (Yoeme, Mayan), Peaches, Meg Stuart, Scott Wells, Jassem Hindi, J Jha, Annie Danger, Gerald Casel, the punk band Hemorage, artist/administrator Alley Wilde, and the BIPOC collaboratives Blank Map and Circle X. Awards include Guggenheim, USArtist, Bessie, Sui Generis, and a few Izzies. Hennessy directs CircoZero, was a member of Sara Shelton Mann’s Contraband, 1985-1994, and is a co-founder of CounterPulse (formerly 848 Community Space). Keith teaches internationally at universities, festivals, and independent studios, annually at Impulstanz, Ponderosa, & FRESH.

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