Youth Speaks

Thu-Sat, December 3–5 · ybca Forum
701 Mission Street @ 3rd, San Francisco // 8pm // ybca.org

Youth Speaks’ Living Word Project and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Present

A Revolutionary Three-Day Festival Celebrating
West Coast Dance, Theater and Music

Curated by Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Left Coast Leaning positions the west coast, long celebrated as the progressive edge of the country, as the emerging center of a changing world.

Each evening features a different line-up of urban-based movement, storytelling and music, showcasing performances and collaborations by some of the west coast’s most influential artists, including Amara Tabor-Smith of Urban Bush Women and inkBoat’s Sherwood Chen performing together as Headmistress, Amy Seiwert of Smuin Ballet, Seattle’s Zoe Scofield and Juniper Shuey, and musicians ranging from Berkeley’s Ambrose Akinmusire to Portland’s Holcombe Waller.

DEC 3
ODC Dance // Zoe/Juniper // Amy Seiwert / im’ij-re // Headmistress f/ Amara Tabor Smith and Sherwood Chen

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DEC 4
Rennie Harris PureMovement // The Embodiment Project f/ Nicole Klaymoon // Steve Connell and Sekou da Misfit // Lauren Whitehead

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DEC 5
Holcombe Waller // Denizen Kane, Erica Chong Shuch and Sean San José / Ambrose Akinmusire f/ Chinaka Hodge

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Left Coast Leaning is made possible through the generous support of the James Irvine Foundation, The Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation, The Columbia Foundation, & the San Franscisco Bay Gaurdian.

$35 Left Coast Leaning Festival Pass!
Get all three performance dates for one low price!

$10 tickets for ages 24 & under*
*Call or stop by YBCA Box Office for details. Sorry, but 24 & under discounted tickets may not be purchased online. ID required.

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PRESS RELEASE

Youth Speaks and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts present

Left Coast Leaning Festival

A celebration of West Coast Dance, Theater, & Music

Dec. 3-5 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Forum

Work by:

Rennie Harris PureMovement, Amy Seiwert, Lauren Whitehead, ODC/Dance,

Denizen Kane & Sean San José, Holcombe Waller, Nicole Klaymoon, Zoe|Juniper,

Amara Tabor Smith & Sherwood Chen, Steve Connell & Sekou tha Misfit,

Chinaka Hodge & Ambrose Akinmusire

Curated by Marc Bamuthi Joseph

SAN FRANCISCO, CA—November 10, 2009—Youth Speaks’ Living Word Project and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts are pleased to present a three-day festival celebrating West Coast dance, theater and music. Curated by Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Left Coast Leaning positions the west coast, long celebrated as the progressive edge of the country, as the emerging center of a changing world.

Each evening features a different line-up of urban-based movement, storytelling and music, showcasing performances and collaborations by some of the west coast’s most influential artists, including Amara Tabor-Smith of Urban Bush Women and inkBoat’s Sherwood Chen, Amy Seiwert of Smuin Ballet, vocalist and playwright Lauren Whitehead, and musicians ranging from Berkeley’s Ambrose Akinmusire to Portland’s Holcombe Waller.

December 3 : >>Purchase Tickets

Four contemporary dance companies open the festival on December 3, including ODC/Dance, Zoe|Juniper, im’ij-re, and Headmistress.

ODC/Dance, San Francisco’s internationally acclaimed contemporary dance company, performs Unintended Consequences: A Meditation, a work by ODC Artistic Director & Founder Brenda Way. Set to music by Laurie Anderson, Unintended Consequences explores the emotional and political costs of complacency within an egalitarian community. Launched in 1971, ODC/Dance moved to San Francisco in 1976, and in 1979 was the first modern dance company in America to build its own home facility. In January 2010 next year ODC/Dance will travel to Southeast Asia to perform as an ambassador of the United States in a brand new program of the U.S. State Department entitled Dance Motion USA.

Seattle-based Zoe|Juniper is a relatively new collaboration of two artists, choreographer Zoe Scofield and visual artist Juniper Shuey. Zoe|Juniper perform an excerpt of a piece entitled the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t. The duo began their collaboration in 2005 with a performance at On the Boards’ Northwest New Works Festival, and have gone on to collaborate with Dave Matthews for his “Eh Hee” video, and publish a book of their ongoing photographic collaboration entitled White Teeth. Their latest works have taken them abroad to Budapest, Hungary and New Zealand.

Also formed in 2005 is the San Francisco-based im’ij-re, who perform a new work entitled Static. im’ij-re is a contemporary ballet company directed by Amy Seiwert, who is also currently Choreographer-in-Residence for Smuin Ballet. im’ij-re’s artists share the belief that through collaboration and experimentation, vibrant and courageous ideas can be expressed.

The evening’s program also includes a new work entitled Up to Know Good by Headmistress, which represents yet another of the festival’s unique collaborations. Headmistress is a newly formed entity between San Francisco Bay Area-based choreographers and dancers Amara Tabor-Smith (of Urban Bush Women) and Sherwood Chen (of Maijuku). The company began as an impromptu groove on the dance floor at 2 am and has evolved into a mutual inquiry into various kinds of connection—ancestral, national, transcultural.

DECEMBER 4 : >>Purchase Tickets

Founded in 1992, Rennie Harris PureMovement (RHPM) made it a goal to represent the essence and spirit of hip-hop, rather than the commercially exploited stereotypes most often presented by the media. Its founder and artistic director, Rennie Harris is the recipient of numerous awards and has been compared to twentieth-century dance legends Alvin Ailey and Bob Fosse. His group of dancers and their infectious brand of movement have toured around the globe. Although based in Philadelphia, Lorenzo “Rennie” Harris has in recent years made California his second home, and we are the richer for it. At 45, Rennie Harris is atop the hip hop heap, and its leading ambassador. His company performs a work-in-progress entitled 100nakedlocks.

Newly formed performance group, The Embodiment Project perform a work entitled I’m Coming Back to Me. The group, directed by Nicole Klaymoon, interweaves a variety of forms including street dance, song, theater, and spoken word. Similarly, its choreography is a fusion of house, popping, waaking, and modern dance. For Klaymoon, such movement can be used to reveal personal narratives and to push hip hop into a more universal performance context.

Acclaimed actors/poets/playwrights, Steve Connell and Sekou tha Misfit, have been featured on ABC World News, Good Morning America, HBO’s Def Poetry, MTV’s World AIDS Festival, and BET’s Lyric Café, to name only a few. They perform an excerpt from their “explosively funny” play entitled, The Word Begins, which recently received three Helen Hayes Nominations for Best Acting, Best Writing, and Best Play.

Lauren Whitehead, a vocalist, a poet, and a budding playwright who has performed at venues across the country, explores the blues and blues singers in her latest work, Written in Blues. Whiteheard reently performed at the Sundance Film Festival and The Kennedy Center in Washington D.C and appeared on NPR’s Talk of the Nation, and was featured in the HBO documentary, “Russell Simmons Presents: Brave New Voices”.

December 5 : >>Purchase Tickets

The festival concludes on December 5 with a program of spoken word and musical performances, including artists Holcombe Waller; Denizen Kane and Sean San José; and Ambrose Akinmusire and Chinaka Hodge.

Holcombe Waller is a Portland-based singer-songwriter who melds personal introspection with political commentary and allegory. Most recently, Waller collaborated with Joe Goode Performance Group to create the critically-acclaiemd Small Experiments in Song and Dance. Waller performs a new work entitled Into the Dark Unknown: The Hope Chest, a vocal performance in which movement, video, costume, and character join to create a unique style of multimedia, interdisciplinary story-telling.

Poet and musician Dennis Kim (aka Denizen Kane) and actor and director Sean San José come together to perform excerpts from Tree City Legends, a collection of poems and songs written by Kim. One of the founders of I Was Born With Two Tongues (1998-2003), an Asian American spoken word quartet and Typical Cats, a Chicago-based hip hop collective, Kim’s poetry has been widely published; it’s also been featured on three seasons of Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry Jam. San José is a co-founder of the theatre company Campo Santo, the award-winning resident theater company of San Francisco’s Intersection for the Arts.

The festival concludes with another innovative collaboration between spoken word artist and playwright Chinaka Hodge and jazz musician and composer Ambrose Akinmusire. Hodge’s first full length stage play,Mirrors in Every Corner, was recently granted The Rockefeller Foundation’s prestigious MAP Award. Akinmusire, was born and raised in Oakland and was one of Berkeley High’s “All Star Players”. Before he was eighteen, Ambrose had already performed with such famed musicians as saxophonists Joe Henderson, Joshua Redman, Steve Coleman, and drummer Billy Higgins. He recently won two of the most prestigious jazz competitions in the world, the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition and the Carmine Caruso International Jazz Trumpet Solo Competition.

The Living Word Project (LWP) is the resident theater company of Youth Speaks, Inc., a premiere youth poetry, spoken word, and creative writing program. The Living Word Project is committed to producing literary performance in the verse of our time. Aesthetically urban, LWP marries personal narratives with interdisciplinary collaboration. Though its methodology includes dance, music, and film, the company’s emphasis is spoken storytelling through verse, which often comments on important social issues and movements of the present day. “LWP connects Shakespeare’s quill with Kool Herc’s turntables, Martha Graham’s cupped hand and Nelson Mandela’s clenched fist: it offers a new voice for a new politic.” Repertory works include Cause, Word Becomes Flesh, Scourge, Mirrors in Every Corner, Written in Blues, In Spite of Everything, War Peace and the break/s. For further information, please visit www.livingwordproject.org.

MARC BAMUTHI JOSEPH (Lead Curator) is one of America’s vital voices in performance, arts education, and artistic curation. In the Fall of 2007, Bamuthi graced the cover of Smithsonian Magazine after being named one of America’s Top Young Innovators in the Arts and Sciences. He is the artistic director of the 7-part HBO documentary “Russell Simmons presents Brave New Voices” and an inaugural recipient of the United States Artists Rockefeller Fellowship, which annually recognizes 50 of the country’s “greatest living artists.” After appearing on Broadway as a young actor, Joseph has developed several theatrical works in verse that have toured across the U.S., Europe, and Africa. These include Word Becomes Flesh, Scourge, and the break/s, which co-premiered at the Humana Festival of New American Plays and the Walker Arts Center in the Spring of 2008. Mr. Joseph’s next project, red black and green: a blues dramatizes the eco-equity movement for so-called “green collar jobs” in black neighborhoods. A gifted and nationally acclaimed educator and essayist, he has lectured at more than 200 colleges and universities, served as a commentator on National Public Radio, and has carried adjunct professorships at Stanford University, Mills College, and the University of Wisconsin. Bamuthi’s proudest work has been with Youth Speaks where he mentors 13-19 year old writers and curates the Living Word Festival for Literary Arts. He is also the lead curator of Life is Living, a national series of one-day festivals designed to activate underused parks and affirm peaceful urban life through hip hop arts and focused environmental action.

CALENDAR EDITORS, PLEASE NOTE:

Left Coast Leaning Festival

Where: Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Forum (701 Mission Street at 3rd St., San Francisco)

What and When:

Thursday, Dec. 3, 8PM

ODC Dance (contemporary dance company directed by Brenda Way)

Zoe|Juniper (contemporary dance company directed by choreographer Zoe Scofield and visual artist Juniper Shuey)

im’ij-re (contemporary ballet company directed by Amy Seiwert)

Headmistress (contemporary dance company directed by Amara Tabor-Smith and Sherwood Chen)

Friday, Dec. 4, 8PM

Rennie Harris PureMovement (hip hop dance company directed by Rennie Harris)

The Embodiment Project (hip hop performance group featuring Nicole Klaymoon)

Steve Connell and Sekou da Misfit (collaboration of two spoken word artists)

Lauren Whitehead (one-woman song and spoken word act)

Saturday, Dec. 5, 8PM

Holcombe Waller (contemporary song-based performance art)

Denizen Kane & Sean San José (a collaboration of spoken word and hip hop song)

Ambrose Akinmusire & Chinaka Hodge (play by Hodge, jazz score by Akinmusire)

Price: $20 (regular admission); $15 (YBCA members, students, teachers, seniors); $10 (ages 24 and under/student rush); $35 (three-day pass). Enjoy same-day gallery admission with all YBCA presented performances.

Tickets: 415.978.2787, www.ybca.org