Daily May 19-30
Jewels in the Square

Union Square
FREE

Presented by MJM Management and SFIAF

Come to Union Square for free site specific shows and outdoor sneak previews of performances by various local and international artists performing as part of SFIAF. The performances include participants in SFIAF's MASH Program. This year's MASH artists are Aura Fischbeck Dance, Dance/Theater Shannon, FACT/SF, Ishika Seth & Dancers, Iu-Hui Chua, Kelly Bowker & Dancers and Nguyen Dance Company.

For a full calendar of SFIAF Jewels in the Square Performances go here

For more information on individual MASH artists go here

To apply to be in MASH 2011 go here

MASH Artist Kelly Bowker
Vertebra by Vertebra
Union Square
FREE

Presented by MJM Management and SFIAF

Vertebra by Vertebra began as a duet based on stress and frustration and has developed into a piece exploring how that frustration effects us and how we deal with it. The dance begins with dancers exploring an environment which they create with the props they bring with them onto the stage. Their relationships to the props as well as to one another develops and changes throughout the piece. Vertebra by Vertebra was created with and performed by Laura Blakely, Gretchen Garnett, Jaime Rangeley and Leah Samson.

MASH Artists Iu-Hui Chua & Niamh Condron
Frontier Line
Union Square
FREE

Presented by MJM Management and SFIAF

Frontier Line is a piece created by Iu-Hui Chua and Niamh Condron inspired by issues that the artists faced in creating an international collaboration that was challenged by the US Department of Homeland Security. From this the choreographers, Chua and Condron, with a star cast of international dancers from Europe, Africa, Latin America, North America and Asia, have created a work based on borders and boundaries. What do they let in and what do keep out? Their exploration questions the acceptable limits of what is personally, nationally and internationally porous and what artists must do in response in attempting to cross lines.

MASH Artist FACT/SF
What She Taught Me
Union Square
FREE

Presented by MJM Management and SFIAF

What She Taught Me is a malleable dance-theatre installation which premiered at Electric Works in San Francisco as part of the opening reception for Brandon Norris' photography exhibition, A Sobering Effect. With this work FACT/SF comments on gender, androgeny, performance, beauty, and expectation. The title is a reference to approaches, ideas, and gimmicks Artistic Director Charles Slender learned while working with Tatiana Baganova.

MASH Artist Aura Fischbeck
Go West
Union Square
FREE

Presented by MJM Management and SFIAF

Go West (2008), is an epic for seven dancers. Inspired by the Gold Rush Era's notion of California as the new promised-land of the western frontier, and set to an evocative spaghetti western film soundtrack, the piece evokes the fantasies, discoveries, and disappointments associated with the exploration of the American West, both as a historical and a contemporary phenomenon. Throughout the piece the dancers become travelers, landscapes, animals, and instruments of navigation*. Go West will be performed by Rachael Dichter, Tara Fagan, Aura Fischbeck, Gretchen Garnett, Leah Samson, Leigh Riley and Brianna Taylor.

*Originally this piece incorporated a projected video of California landscapes, but due to the outdoor nature of the MASH portion of the festival, we would be performing the piece without the video portion.

MASH Artist Danny Nguyen
Dancing on New Land
Union Square
FREE

Presented by MJM Management and SFIAF

Dancing on New Land reflects a range of multicultural elements uniquely grounded in a Vietnamese American sensibility: balancing the emotional tensions of longing for Danny Nguyen's homeland (Vietnam), while simultaneously embracing a diverse cultural experience in a newly adopted homeland (U.S.A). Dancing on New Land affirms a new confidence and pride in Danny Nguyen's multicultural roots -something that he now wants to share back in the United States. This is what Vietnamese dancers eagerly ask him to teach them, and to perform. This is something they can also feel and relate to as Vietnamese, or global citizens of any nationality, in our modern, changing society.

MASH Artist Shannon Preto
It Never Gets Old
Union Square
FREE

Presented by MJM Management and SFIAF

It Never Gets Old explores the topic of appropriate and inappropriate touch in each movement form. In Contact Improvisation (CI) and polka dance, the act of touch is used to direct and support your partner. Touch communicates direction and intention through subtle differences in its quality. In It Never Gets Old, Shannon Preto and her dancers explore how different relationships provide context to intentions of touch. How do people touch in a manner that is comforting and supportive? What happens when a touch become inappropriate? Deconstructing and reconfiguring the power structures of touch in these partner dance forms help to show anew how individuals interact and influence each other.

MASH Artist Ishika Seth
Planes of being
Union Square
FREE

Presented by MJM Management and SFIAF

Planes of being is a new work created by Ishika Seth in collaboration with composer Angela Don. It is an exploration of the energy sources within the body, inspired by the concept of yoga chakras. It delves into the expression that one gives to the energy and how it affects other people as well as the environment at large. Through interactions, the dancers transcend individual limits to create large spirals of movement.

Lost & Found is a fun, quirky duet by Ishika Seth, in collaboration with composer Dushyant Vishwanathan. It shows the tenderness as well as the compromising tension that are part of every relationship.