figure it out (a temporary commune)
figure it out (a temporary commune)
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weird inkling
An improvised performance experiment guided by Keith Hennessy in collaboration with a stellar team of artists:
✣ B Dean ✣ Clarissa Rivera Dyas
✣ Emily Leap ✣ Kevin CK Lo
✣ Miriam Wolodarski ✣ quinn dior
✣ Snowflake Calvert
Tickets: free to $30 are HERE
ABOUT weird inkling
The performance explores Fred Moten’s invitation to find the “weird inkling or transformation that might begin to occur in which we realize that what we’ve been trying to figure out how to get to is how we are when we get together to figure it out”.
The destabilizing, destructive, and disappointing politics of the worlds around us inform the work through tender political somatics and conversation. We feel into the impacts of political violence - near and far - on our personal and social bodies and imaginations. We move together towards the political healing potential of dancing and collaborative creativity. Our spontaneous choreographies emerge from our relationships, supported by practices that expand our capacity for empathy, solidarity, and fun.
Produced by Alley Wilde and Keith Hennessy as part of figure it out (a temporary commune) in Space 124 at Project Artaud
PERFORMANCE DATES AND TIMES
Fri Nov 21 @ 7:30PM
Sat Nov 22 @ 3:00PM [mask compulsory ]
Sat Nov 22 @ 7:30PM
Sat Nov 29 @ 7:30PM
Sun Nov 30 @ 3:00PM [followed by Closing The Portal]All shows limited to 45 people
The Sun 11/30 performance will be followed by a gratitude ceremony to “close the portal” and then a communal ripping up of the cardboard floor. All are welcome.
Tickets: free to $30 are HERE
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Opening Space
a contact improvisation workshop where we will dance with who is here and who is not (here)
the time we share with one another is precious. some encounters last a moment, and some last many years. all who have touched us have changed us. the smallest transfers of energy can be most profound and significant. in this workshop, we are invited to bring our awareness to some of this residue, to dance with someone who has touched us in the past, but whose full presence isn’t in the room at this moment. how does this affect our dances, and the dances we share with the people who are in the room with us right now?
FREE ✣ NO RSVP JUST COME ✣ Questions? Email Maya
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below is most of what has happened in the space <3
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Come to hang out, play around, drink a toast, and ritualize our gratitude, intentions, and kinship
FREE :: No RSVP needed
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~ Lime returns, it's a new time ~
New Work By Leyya Mona TawilFREE-$30 :: Tickets here
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Tentacular improvisation & imagination
FREE :: More info ®ister here
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nothing, matter is about the vastness of nothing, the smallness of life and the absence of death. Hopefully, for a moment, it will make your soul stand still (don't worry it has songs and jokes).
$15-$55 NOTAFLOF :: tickets HERE
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NIGHTWALK*
Through attention, body-based, and imaginative prompts for moving, participants are invited into rigorouss, deep, multidirectional presence and action. By refusing to sit still, get comfortable, or do what is expected, this work builds skill, responsiveness, dynamic range in dancing. We will dance a lot, watch, and also likely write, chat, draw. Attending both workshops is strongly encouraged.Tickets: free to $30 are HERE
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good boy - a work in progress doom play for boys
By Larry Arrington Performed by gizeh muñiz & Amy Wasielewski, featuring Keith HennessyLucifer before the fall
By Brontez PurnellTickets: FREE - $30 are here
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Inside Knowledge: A Cervix Viewing Workshop by a professional pelvic exam educator
You’ll be guided through how to perform a pelvic exam, as well as use a speculum and view a cervix. For all genders! To facilitate empowerment and bodily autonomy for everyone who has a cervix or has friends and loves who do!
Please RSVP to: rachael.m.dichter@gmail.com to register or for any questions. Donations accepted -
How Not to Be Afraid: "Your suffering is your bridge"
“Your suffering is your bridge.” - James Baldwin
Joel’s work continues an ongoing dialogue with his chosen spiritual ancestor, James Baldwin, offering a space to connect through shared suffering as a bridge toward collective belonging. The evening will be held through sound and movement. Guests are invited to lie down, allow themselves to feel fully, and join in a shared experience of shaking and trembling together. Joel's composition will be accompanied with dancing by with gizeh muñiz, Saharla Vetsch, and Keith Hennessy
Tickets: free - $30 are HERE
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Joel St. Julien (he/him) is a Haitian-American composer, sound and video artist based in San Francisco. Joel has written music for documentaries, short / feature films, podcasts, and dance. He is a firm believer in experimentation/fusion with acoustic and electronic elements in sound oscillating through escapism and the mysticism of the present tense: music both being art and spiritual practice.
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NIGHTWALK*
Through attention, body-based, and imaginative prompts for moving, participants are invited into rigorouss, deep, multidirectional presence and action. By refusing to sit still, get comfortable, or do what is expected, this work builds skill, responsiveness, dynamic range in dancing. We will dance a lot, watch, and also likely write, chat, draw. Attending both workshops is strongly encouraged.Workshop 5:30pm-7:30pm & Open Studio 8pm-9pm
Tickets: free to $30 are HERE
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N[ETHER]ING
Raw and experimental sound and movement based summoning/ritual performance portal to the nether realms and beyond. Using conduits of transformation- earth material, light, found and discarded objects, sound, voice, vapor.
N[ETHER]ING explores how our flesh bodies and the boundless elements we converge with create communion with the realms we cannot always see, but deeply feel. We will honor our dead, and eternal cycles with attendant grief, suffering, release, collapse, and regeneration.
Tickets: free to $30 are HERE
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An evening of two experimental performances
Second Nature by Kevin CK Lo
This dance is constructed of - starlight: grazing room edges, text: contouring predrawn lines, bookends: sonic coruscations preplayed & replayed, questions: how to unravel the market unconscious?, how do the theoreticians become sensuous?solo no one asked for by ainsley e. tharp
This is a project on researching performance, under rehearsed and incredibly confronting, practice, practice, practice navigating terrain.Tickets: free to $30 are HERE
Due to unforeseen circumstances Megan Lowe will not be performing
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Inspired by various traditions and meditations including Kundalini Meditation, Qi Gong, and contemporary trauma therapies, we will shake together for 60 minutes. We will find pleasure in the sustained gesture of endurance, resetting solo and collective nervous systems with full body vibration. A simple practice with vast possibility and power.
Open to all and any.
Donation based $0-15 at the door
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A PERFORMANCE HALF-MARATHON ✣ 13.12 MILES OF PERFORMANCE
THE NO MONEY ARTISTS:
HOSTED BY:
✣ alley wilde & ainsley tharpPERFORMANCES BY:
✣ alli o'brien & jes eng
✣ annalise carrillo constantz
✣ annie danger
✣ gizeh muñiz & samuel melecio-zambrano
✣ hadassah levi
✣ nicolita
✣ pearl marie
✣ quinn dior
✣ vera yinTickets: NO MONEY RSVP HERE
arts funding is being gutted
everything is falling apart
no money, yes art
we can make shit happen
fuck capitalism, death to empire
radical beauty and absurdity
13.12 miles of performance
there will be mayonnaise
they are attacking funding for art
because art has power
let’s be powerful together
it’s a variety show
it’s a performance half-marathon
it’s a night of DIY madness and messTickets: NO MONEY RSVP HERE
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Sunday Night Raw
[RING ANNOUNCER VOICEOVER]
Sunday Night Raw returns to the Figure It Out arena for one night only as JAY BLAYZE faces off against ANGELUS in their first-ever singles match to crown the new Circo Zero Federation Grand Prix Champion!!!
This informal showing presents physical research to date by Johnny Huy Nguyễn and Gabriele Christian into the intersections of dance performance and professional wrestling over a whopping FIVE rehearsals. What does it mean for a performance to be REAL vs FAKE? When does REALITY seep into FANTASY and vice versa?
The showing will be followed by an informal feedback session / fan meet and greet. Bring your signs, wear your favorite wrestling shirt, and be ready to cheer and boo!
Tickets: free to $30 are HERE
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Cristina and Melissa invite you to bring your gently worn bag of clothes, swap bebop, then leave with new pieces that you love from people you love, or just met! There will be a repair / project corner (byo sewing tools) — a styling consult station with cristina (tips appreciated but not required) — and self-directed swapping. In the last 30min we will end with a makeshift runway/catwalk, where you can show off your favorite new look.
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Talk Talk: An evening of new performance texts, works in process, with readings by
Cornelius O
Monique Jenkinson
Maurya Kerr
Larry Arrington
Jesse Hewit
Tickets: free to $15 are HERE
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let’s get together: an on and off the ground movement workshop
How do we work together to adapt to a dynamic environment?
Let’s get together and figure it out through playful scores that cultivate fierce softness and collective strength.
All levels welcome, come as you are, move at your own pace. Bring clothes you can move in, layers, water, and snacks.
Stay after the workshop for Black Library!
RSVP: FREE to $10 are HERE
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Come share some time and space gathering in the spirit of connection and liberation by sharing texts from some of your favorite black authors.
This is a time to vibe, read, discover, or discuss, and engage in the practice of study that Fred Moten speaks about.
Let’s get together to figure it out, gathering not just to learn but to be in relationship, exploring joy struggle, and imagination, together. We can deepen our questions, nurture collective power and find some beauty in this mess.
Some books will be provided, feel free to bring some texts of your own, maybe we can develop a syllabus to inspire us as we co-create this bridge to new futures.
Warm bevys and light snacks will be available ♥
4:30PM-7:30PM
FREE donations accepted, RSVP HERE -
NOTE: This is happening in a different venue at Project Artaud, details below
The Vault of Dah Rah Doon or Why do things happen the way they do?
Join Bay Area based experimental theater company Klanghaus for a reading of their new play The Vault of Dah Rah Doon or Why do things happen the way they do? Commissioned by the San Francisco Playhouse as part of their New Works Program, The Vault of Dah Rah Doon is a kaleidoscopic tapestry of interwoven narratives ranging from the mundane, fantastical and absurd curated, for your entertainment, by the enigmatic wizard Dah Rah Doon. Part Twilight Zone and part Canterbury Tales this new work is a meditation on the titular question "Why do things happen the way they do?" How do we find purpose in a world where meaning is increasingly meaningless?
With a cast of 24 characters Klanghaus is looking to the wider community of theater enthusiasts to join in giving voice to this new script! The piece is currently in its first draft and Klanghaus is hoping to get feedback and perspective from participants that will help shape the direction of the play's development.
Klanghaus is an experimental theater company that has been hosting events around the Bay Area since 2016. Our most recent works include How We Spend Our Days which received high praise from the San Francisco Chronicle and Prose and Confluence a queer cowboy musical which went on a sold out mini tour of the Bay Area including a performance at the San Francisco Playhouse. For more information about Klanghaus check out our website here: http://klanghaus.art
The reading will be hosted at the historic Project Artaud in San Francisco's Mission Neighborhood between 530pm and 830pm. Drinks and food will be provided! To RSVP please email Klanghaus artistic director Teddy Hulsker at teddyhulsker@gmail.com
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Remembering to Play
A psychic environment where Anna and Nik perform an ambient and experimental music set, and folks are invited to improvise sound and movement with them
You can bring instruments to play or come and dance or come and just watch what transpires
Anna and Nik will perform for you, share instruments with you, and invite you into a collective process
FREE RSVP HERE
figure it out (a temporary commune) is a community performing artist residency.
figure it out (a temporary commune) is six weeks of 24/7 access to a one of a kind warehouse/gallery/studio made freely available to a diverse community of experimental artists who need space to improvise, experiment, fail, and thrive.
figure it out (a temporary commune) is experimental performance research generating dance and aerial workshops, public conversations, queered gatherings, and performances.
figure it out (a temporary commune) is togetherness-in-difference, collaborating in an intergenerational, multiracial, cross-class, and inter-disciplinary process.
figure it out (a temporary commune) includes culminating experimental performances guided by Keith Hennessy, created in collaboration during the residency.
WANT TO USE THE SPACE? HAVE EVENT IDEAS?
As part of this project, we are making the space free to use for folks in our community.
Want to rehearse or put on a show or teach something or ____________??
Check out the calendar (view on desktop not mobile) by clicking HERE
Then write us a brief summary of your ideas and dates to info [at] circozero [dot] org
CONTEXT
In the past few weeks we have been in conversations about dancers in both Ukraine and Palestine who can no longer prioritize dancing, who could not make a public invitation to dance while so many of their people are suffering, mourning, and struggling to survive. This isn’t the time for dancing, some say.
Simultaneously, there are artists from both nations, including friends and colleagues, who are absolutely prioritizing dancing. They are responding to genocide, brutality, and tyranny by making music and art, gathering in studios, streets, internets, and theaters, using dance to support trauma-informed healing, activism, political organizing, and radical kinship.
figure it out lives in the borderlands of this contradiction. When the stench of brutality and fascism is all around, our ancestors remind us that culture can be resistance… especially if rooted in love, struggle, beauty, pleasure, and a deep connection to the invisible worlds.
If this offering can be helpful, restorative, inspiring, fun, or affirming of you and your concerns, please come by, to engage or escape, to struggle and to heal.
ABOUT SPACE 124
Space 124 is part of Project Artaud, a historic artist live-work cooperative created in the 70’s in a former machine shop of the American Can Company.
A few tech specs:
❈ 1,368 square feet of raw industrial space (38’ x 36’)
❈ Basic sound and lights
❈ Column free open floor plan with a 27’ ceiling
Additionally, Keith is designing the space to be a playful installation with 3 primary features:
❈ Carpeted cozy area inside a large tent for 10-15 people
❈ DIY flooring collage made of cardboard and padding
❈ Massive aerial sculpture that can support 5-10 people made in collaboration with sculptor/rigger and original Artaud resident Benjy Young
Click here for more photos and info about Space 124
FUNDING
figure it out (a temporary commune) is supported by The San Francisco Arts Commission, The Kenneth Rainin Foundation, and The Zellerbach Family Foundation.