FRESH Exchanges: Experimental Structures ft. Chani Bockwinkel & Keisha Turner

In collaboration with FRESH Festival 2017, the Red Poppy Art House is pleased to present FRESH Exchanges, free and by-donation events made to cultivate, cross-pollinate, invigorate, create access, and generate outreach within and outwith the dance, music, and performance communities. These interactive exchanges include Experimental Structures on Tuesdays, January 3, 10, 17. Hosted by Abby Crain and José Navarrete, Experimental Structures invite artists working on the edge of their form to speak about their work, share excerpts of current projects, and lead group discussions.

On January 3rd, artist Chani Bockwinkel presents Justin Bieber Ted Talk, while Keisha Turner presents We.Here.Now, an intermittent performance/ritual project that asserts the inherent value of black life and black liberation; this iteration addresses the dehumanization of poverty through a black American lens. All ritualized performances that take place via We.Here.Now rely on the richness of Afro-Diasporan cultural practices to acknowledge, heal from, and begin to dismantle the various manifestations of generational, racialized violence.
 
ABOUT THE ARTISTS:
Chani Bockwinkel is a performer and filmmaker. She makes interdisciplinary-collaborative-feminist imagery for the stage, gallery, and internet. She is also a founding member of SALTA collective.

Keisha Turner is an Oakland-based performer and educator with roots in Chicago and Brooklyn. She is a creative change-maker with growing ties to the many resistance movements taking place in the Bay Area. In her artistic practice, she values the ability of African-American/African diasporic traditions of dance and improvisation to intersect with contemporary performance art to tell stories that probe issues of politics, culture, and identity. Keisha is also a certified yoga instructor, and is committed to offering body-positive, life-affirming classes that create space for participants to prioritize self-care and self-awareness as an entry point to engaging with their communities.

Abby Crain is an Oakland-based artist who makes dances and other structures for performance. She also works in the field as a teacher, performer, writer, and curator. Her curatorial projects include the NO THANK YOU SHOW, which asked artists to represent or stage work that has been rejected by granting organizations, theaters, collaborators, or the artist herself; the NON MAJOR SHOW, which asked artists to show work not in their primary medium; as well as being on the curatorial panel of FRESH Festival.

José Navarrete is a native of Mexico City where he was first exposed to theater and dance, choreographing and performing in parks, hospitals, and children’s parties as a clown and dancer. He studied dance at the National Institute of Fine Arts in Mexico and has a BA in Anthropology from UC Berkeley and MFA in Dance from Mills College. Currently, he leads the Guerilla Performance Group and curates and produces the Live Arts in Resistance (LAIR) initiative at Eastside Arts Alliance, which provides residencies and performing opportunities for artists of color in East Oakland. José has been participating in FRESH since 2015 and acting as a curator for 2017 + 2018.
 
ABOUT FRESH FESTIVAL:
FRESH Festival 2017, the 8th annual Festival of Experimental Dance + Performance in San Francisco, celebrates and showcases the abundance of embodied art, action, innovation, and inclusion in the Bay Area from January 2-22, with three immersive weeks with intensive practices, cutting-edge performances, and interactive exchanges. Produced by ALTERNATIVA, FRESH 2017 is curated by Kathleen Hermesdorf, Abby Crain, and José Navarrete, and hosted by Joe Goode Annex, Red Poppy Art House, F8 Nightclub in San Francisco, and CTRL+SHFT in Oakland.

To view the full schedule of FRESH Exchanges at the Red Poppy Art House, click here.

 
Time: Doors 7:00PM / Event 7:30PM
Admission: Free; by donation