The Festival opens with Departure and Arrival a breathtaking multi-disciplinary world-premiere commission featuring Joanna Haigood’s Zaccho Dance Theater. Haigood – renowned for her elaborate site-specific works – will lead her company in a performance rigged from the ceiling of SFO’s new International Departures Terminal.

Dance En Creations Program I
Thur & Sat, 7:00pm, Fri 9:30pm
Dimensions Dance Theater
with the Anthony Brown Orchestra (USA)
Cross Currents
Dance Mission Theater
$25 General Admission
Shared bill with Nelisiwe Xaba

Dimensions Dance Theater will perform the world premiere of Cross Currents, a multimedia portrait in music, movement and words that is a reflection of the migration of African Americans to the Bay Area. This collaborative work explores the interpersonal and historical experiences as well as the legacy of African Americans who migrated to the San Francisco Bay Area during the mid-20th century.

Dance Nelisiwe Xaba brings two works to San Francisco. They Look at Me and that's all They Think refers to the story of Sara Baartman, known in France as the `Hottentot Venus'. Sara Baartman has become a symbol of the oppression of the African woman by colonization, and the zoo-like way of looking at Africans.

Plasticization is a solo work, which examines how society has become increasingly plastic and materialistic; intimacy happens through barriers, and we have lost our sense of touch.

Dance En Creations Program II
Thur & Sat 9:30pm, Fri 7:00pm, Sun 6:00pm
Robert Moses’ Kin (USA)
Dance Mission Theater
$25 General Admission
Shared bill with Mhayise Productions and Compagnie Li-Sangha

Robert Moses' Kin's untitled new work fits in with Robert Moses' unique choreography which the San Francisco Chronicle described as " an edgy but eloquent style that roils from jive to jete in an instant, a brilliant facility for carving space, and a confrontational way off addressing the absurdities of race in America without ever simplifying or sermonizing" (Howard, Rachel. 2007, February 10. San Francisco Chronicle, p. E1 ).

Compagnie Li-Sangha - The Congolese choreographer, Orchy Nzaba presents a piece titled Mona-Mambu, a Congo expression describing the ability to see and approach the realities of life with clear-sightedness. These realities tell us that the Congo people have always known how to re-transcribe their daily life through proverbial scenes and original body movements.

Dance En Creations Program II
Thur & Sat 9:30pm, Fri 7:00pm, Sun 6:00pm
Mhayise Productions (South Africa)
Umthombi
Dance Mission Theater
$25 General Admission
Shared bill with Compagnie Li-Sangha and Robert Moses’ Kin

Mhayise Productions will perform Umthombi (which means male adolescent) by Musa Hlatshwayo. The piece methodically shows the symmetry and dissymmetry between two characters at different phases of their lives. The relationship between the two is one of transmission and initiation. The initiation deals with mastering knowledge of the body and the path to wisdom.