Introduced by Billy Miller
Bob Mizer (1922 - 1992) was an American photographer, publisher and filmmaker who was known for pushing societal boundaries in his work. He would go on to build a veritable empire from his photographs and films with the Athletic Model Guild (AMG) studio,producing thousands of titles. Tonight, curator and writer Billy Miller (Straight to Hell) presents and contextualizes this survey of clips from Mizer's groundbreaking films, compiled in conjunction with Dennis Bell of the Bob Mizer Foundation. More details »

By John Cassavetes
Ben Gazzara brilliantly portrays gentlemen’s club owner Cosmo Vitelli, a man dedicated to composure and self-possession. When he runs afoul of a group of gangsters, Cosmo is forced to commit a horrible crime in a last-ditch effort to save his beloved club and his way of life. Suspenseful and idiosyncratic, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie is a riveting examination of desperation and masculine identity. (1976, 135 min, 35mm) More details »

The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald's magnificent portrait of the Jazz Age in all its idealism, hopes, excesses, and decadence, comes to the stage in the opera by Pulitzer Prize winning composer John Harbison. Ensemble Parallèle, under the direction of Nicole Paiement, presents the World Premiere of the new chamber version by San Francisco composer Jacques Desjardins.

The cast includes Marco Panuccio in the title role, Adler Fellow Susannah Biller, Dan Snyder, Julienne Walker, Jason Detwiler, Erin Neff, and Bojan Knezevic. Stage Director Brian Staufenbiel brings his concept to life with the help of Scenic and Lighting Designer Matthew Antaky, Video Artist Austin Forbord, Costumer Christine Crook, and Wig and Make-up Artist Jeanna Parham.

Presented by Bradford Nordeen
This afternoon, we investigate the flipside of masculinity, with a program of short experimental film and video that explores and explodes normative roles of femininity and gender. With work that spans five decades, these artists queer female subject space via drag tactics, narrative juxtaposition and overt performativity, with styles ranging from masquerade to mythic, performance document to exposé video zine. More details »

By Michael Thomas
Director in person
One of the highlights of our summer “Smut Capital of America” series returns, this time with the director in person presenting his own uncut, pristine Kodachrome print. It’s a gritty tale of a bisexual hustler who’ll go to bed with any man or woman who offers him enough money and sexual kicks. Using both sexploitation and art-film aesthetics, Meat Rack is an essential and compelling artifact of pre-hardcore adult cinema. (1968, 70 min, 16mm) More details »

YBCA welcomes Argentine writer/director Mariano Pensotti in his first American tour with his highly acclaimed El Pasado pasado es un animal grotesco (The Past is a Grotesque Animal), a funny yet moving portrait of a generation that follows the lives of four twentysomething four characters through a decade of economic and personal turmoil in which their dreams collapse and the world around them changes in unexpected ways. More details »

10th Anniversary Season — Winter Program and Gala
Company C Contemporary Ballet’s 10th Anniversary Season Winter Program bursts with versatility, wit and romance led by Peter Anastos, Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo founder and frequent collaborator with Mikhail Baryshnikov, whose Footage will receive its Company premiere. Alexandre Proia’s World to Come is meditatively lush and visionary and David Grenke’s Vespers is a physically demanding, deeply emotional and beautiful duet by this former Paul Taylor dancer set to music by Tom Waits. Charles Anderson’s powerfully athletic Akimbo has its roots in neo-classicism and its apotheosis in contemporary style showing the full range and prowess of his decade-old company.

Join us as we celebrate the opening of Mark Bradford and Audience as Subject, Part 2. The evening’s entertainment will include contemporary Butoh performance artist Deborah Butler (of Kitsune Butoh) in a fierce and highly charged performance piece called "Ground-tone." And we’ll be spinning late into the night with none other than the Bay Area's beloved DJ Sake-Onederful!

By Joonas Berghall & Mika Hotakainen
In the warmth of the sauna, naked Finnish men cleanse themselves both physically and mentally. We meet men of all walks of life in many different saunas, and hear their touching stories about love, death, birth and friendship. Steam of Life reveals the men's naked souls in an exceptionally personal and poetic way. We’re pleased to present the full and uncut version of this remarkable documentary. (2010, 84 min, digital) More details »

Presented by Albert Steg
Before VHS players and then the internet rendered hardcore pornography ubiquitous and banal, American stag films, often produced and exhibited illegally and viewed almost exclusively by men, held considerable power to shock, entertain, arouse and educate. Tonight's program, a series of short subjects from the 1920s through the 1960s, will show that they still retain this power. At times drolly amusing, at others appallingly misogynistic, the films are always 100% American and can be usefully viewed as transgressive cinematic monologues suppressed by the moral standards of their day. More details »

Batsheva has become an enduring favorite of San Francisco Performances audiences. Artistic Director Ohad Naharin’s Max runs the gamut of movement from intimate, controlled and minimal to expansive, and from solo to hypnotic full-company counterpoint. Less theatrical than many of his other works, Max expounds and celebrates the potential of the human body and the possibilities of choreography in a powerful tour de force of formalism and technical mastery.

By Zachary Levy
One of the most poignant American documentaries in years, Strongman tells the intimate story of Stanley "Stanless Steel" Pleskun, who can lift dump trucks and bend pennies with his bare hands, but who struggles to transcend his chaotic New Jersey home life and the toll of his advancing age. The film strips back the layers of muscle to reveal something universally human and quietly dignified about the vulnerabilities in all our lives. (2009, 113 min, digital) More details »

strong>By David Fine
Director in person
Basketball is much more than a game in this high-energy documentary about an Iraqi women’s team. For the young players, most of whom had never been allowed to play any sport, it is a blissful release from the realities of a war-torn nation. They come from all ethnicities and sects—Arab, Kurd, Christian, Sunni, Shiite—but the joy they discover in playing and the deep love they come to feel for the young American man who coaches them reveals an Iraq we do not see on the news. (2011, 82 min, digital) More details »

By Katie Galloway and Kelly Duane de la Vega
When two young friends visit an Austin bookstore to hear a talk on upcoming protests at the 2008 Republican National Convention, they are approached by a charismatic local activist ten years their senior, who quickly becomes their mentor. Six months later, they cross a line that radically changes their lives. The result: eight Molotov cocktails, multiple domestic terrorism charges, and a high-stakes entrapment defense. A dramatic story of idealism, crime, and betrayal, Better This World goes to the heart of the “War on Terror” and its impact on civil liberties and political dissent in the United States after 9/11. (2011, 93 min, digital) More details »

Jaap Blonk in person
Dutch artist Jaap Blonk is a self-taught composer, performer and poet renowned for his powerful stage presence and exuberant approach to improvisation. Recently, a renewed interest in mathematics has led the artist to explore the possibilities of algorhythmic composition in the creation of works which fuse music, visual animation and poetry. Tonight, Blonk presents a very rare performance/projection program featuring live presentations of original graphic scores, live tracks to silent films, an interpretation of Man Ray’s composition Lautgedicht (1924), and examples of Blonk’s solo videos and “interactive animations.” More details »

YBCA celebrates Eiko & Koma’s long history with Bay Area audiences, its venues, its community and its artists with a two-week residency that includes an exhibition/installation documenting their 40-year collaboration and two performance programs -- Fragile, a living performance installation in collaboration with Kronos Quartet and Regeneration, an evening of three iconic performance works. More details »

By Juan José Lozano and Hollman Morris
Impunity documents a highly controversial trial against Colombian paramilitary leaders accused of killing thousands of civilians. When the political and economic interests in the paramilitary war are uncovered, however, the process comes to an abrupt halt, leaving the victims’ families wondering whether they will ever know the truth surrounding the deaths of their loved ones, and whether they will be able to fight the perpetrators’ impunity. (2010, 85 min, digital) More details »

ODC/Dance Downtown 2012

“as always with ODC... anticipate superlative, witty modern dance par excellence.”
– SF Chronicle's Top 10 of 2011

The artistic triumvirate of choreographers Brenda Way, KT Nelson and Kimi Okada continues their tour de force in ODC’s 41st annual home season. Way presents her latest meditation on the woman’s world and its strictures in her premiere of Breathing Underwater, with live music by celebrated avant cellist, Zoe Keating, and the Magik*Magik Orchestra. Nelson has paired up with bike artist Max Chen to premiere Transit, a full-company work featuring three custom built bicycles that rides through the bustling pulse of a day in the city. ODC’s five male dancers shine in Nelson’s first-ever all male work Cut-Out Guy, with high intensity movement matched by the experimental sounds of acclaimed electronic artist Ben Frost. Kimi Okada’s 2010 premiere, I look vacantly at the Pacific...though regret, enjoys an encore as it explores the humorous and often awkward attempts at cross-cultural understanding. More details...

ODC/Dance will hold a special Opening Night Gala and Post-Party on Thursday, March 15, 2012.

www.odcdance.org

Photo: RJ Muna

By Ali Samadi Ahadi
The Green Wave brings us into the world of ordinary Iranian citizens who risked their lives during the Green Revolution of 2009 in the hopes of a better future. Interweaving online posts, video footage caught by those present, animated sequences, and extensive interviews, the film is an artistic portrait of modern political rebellion, an exposé of government-sanctioned violence, and a vision of hope that continued resistance may galvanize a new future not just for Iran but for the region as a whole. (2010, 80 min, digital) More details »

YBCA celebrates Eiko & Koma’s long history with Bay Area audiences, its venues, its community and its artists with a two-week residency that includes an exhibition/installation documenting their 40-year collaboration and two performance programs -- Fragile, a living performance installation in collaboration with Kronos Quartet and Regeneration, an evening of three iconic performance works. More details »

By Léa Pool
Breast cancer has become the poster child of cause-related marketing campaigns. Countless people walk, run and shop for the cure. Each year, millions of dollars are raised in the name of breast cancer, but where does this money go and what does it actually achieve? Outraged and incendiary, Pink Ribbons, Inc. shows how the devastating reality of breast cancer has become obfuscated by a shiny, pink story of success. (2011, 98 min, digital) More details »

“A visually delicious beast that never comes short of dazzling the senses” (The Huffington Post), Robert Moses’ Kin presents its 17th Annual Home Season, March 30 – April 1. The program will feature: the world premiere of Helen, a trio inspired by the words and music of Carl Hancock Rux, the poetry by E. Ethelbert Miller and Homer’s Iliad; excerpts from the forthcoming Scrubbing the Dog, investigating the residual effects of "scrubbed" or desensitized iconography and beliefs; Biography, inspired by the life and work of author James Baldwin; and the award-winning The Soft Sweet Smell of Firm Warm Things — not seen in its entirety since 2003 — and Speaking Ill of the Dead, Moses' 2007 meditation on war. Don’t miss Robert Moses' Kin whose last season the San Francisco Chronicle hailed as "masterful" and "an enchanted spell."

www.RobertMosesKin.org

Photo: RJ Muna

TWO PROGRAMS
April 12-15Triangle of the Squinches, is set to a commissioned score by legendary musician Mickey Hart and features an innovative kinetic set by cutting-edge architect Christopher Haas. Alonzo King explores the inner and outer space of the body: how do we strive to touch something infinite with our material forms? What is the resonance between the bodies we inhabit and the forms we create?

April 18-22
Alonzo King’s Scheherazade is a re-envisioning of the ancient collection of Persian, Sanskrit, and Arabic stories of 1,001 Nights. The exquisite dancers of LINES Ballet present a vision of the transformative potential these stories possess: the way that we are offered a chance to listen to a voice that can change our lives, the power of art to illuminate all the chambers of our hearts. The new score by tabla master Zakir Hussain re-interprets the original music by Rimsky-Korsakov, incorporating traditional Persian as well as Western instruments. Commissioned by the Monaco Dance Forum to inaugurate the Centenary of the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo, Alonzo King LINES Ballet’s Scheherazade honors Diaghilev’s spirit of cutting-edge artistic collaboration, immersing audiences in a luminescent and richly textured world.

For more information, please visit our website.

YBCA welcomes internationally renowned choreographer David Zambrano, a monumental figure in the international dance community for more than a quarter century, with his newest work, Soul Project, a series of virtuosic solos set to live recordings of classic soul tunes by such artists as Aretha Franklin, Ike and Tina Turner and Gladys Knight and The Pips. This performance is part of a debut U.S. tour of Soul Project produced by MAPP International Productions. More details »

Women's Voices features works written specifically for Kronos Quartet – including the world premiere of a new piece written and performed by composer and musician Vân-Ánh Vanessa Võ, co-commissioned by YBCA and the Kronos Performing Arts Association, as well as three Bay Area premieres: Laurie Anderson’s Flow, Nicole Lizée’s Death to Kosmische, and Derek Charke’s Tundra Songs featuring Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq. More details »

Inspired by physicist Brian Greene’s best-selling book, The Elegant Universe, “Punk Ballerina” (Vanity Fair) Karole Armitage has created a daring, high-speed work of elegance and force. Her response to Greene’s take on string theory is a sonic and pictorial interplay between video and kinetic imagery and live and electronic sounds exploring geometry, patterns in space and structures of rhythm.

Karole Armitage’s reputation as “punk ballerina” rose from her edgy interpretations of classical dance. Her company of dancers brings incredible energy and focus to the stage in dynamic choreography.