March 31, 2025
For immediate release

Contact:
Andrew Wood: 415-399-9554 (o) 415-305-1102 (c) [email protected]
Lucho Ramirez: 415-425-0445 [email protected]
Amil Al-Bakari: [email protected]

Dance, Cirque & Physical Theatre at the
2025 SF International Arts Festival

- All Shows Listed by Date & Time Below

Calendar Editors Please Note
Who: Multiple Artists
What: San Francisco International Arts Festival
Where: Multiple Venues in the Mission District
Dates: April 30 - May 11, 2025.
Tickets: FREE - $30. Five Show Passes: $100
Box Office and Information: https://www.sfiaf.org or 415-399-9554

Photos Available on Request

March 31, San Francisco: The 2025 San Francisco International Arts Festival (SFIAF) will feature a a strong and diverse line up of dance, cirque and physical theatre performances with artists traveling from Canada, Estonia and Japan as well as 12 Bay Area based companies presenting work.

The convention defying Japanese company, Suichu-megane∞ led by Artistic Director, Ayane Nakagawa makes its US debut at Dance Mission Theater as a co-presentation with the US / Japan Cultural Trade Network.

On a five-city national tour and making their Bay Area debuts is Montreal circus duo, Agathe & Adrien with N.Ormes.

From Estonia, Anneli Kanninen muses on the relocation process for migrants in Home(ing).

One of the opening night concerts on Wednesday April 30 will feature Eric Kupers of Dandelion Dance Theater presenting Lost & Found at El Rio with his self-styled hybrid group, The Wandering Ensemble. The immersive performance piece is part of the Festival's initiative to stage performing arts in non-traditional venues as a way to connect to a broader population in the Mission District.

Another company working in a non-traditional venue is PULP, led by Artistic Director, Jenna Valez presenting their work in a yoga studio. It promises to be the first production to sell out and add performances at this year's Festival.

Other strong contemporary work will be presented by Helen Wicks Works with Radio Vision, an ode to music composition teacher Nadia Boulanger. The piece will be a shared bill with Alive & Well Productions (Artistic Director, Annie Kahane), who present The Four Seasons of Hamadan a duet that interweaves traditions to express intercultural harmony. 

Most of the traditional dance line-up is -- anything but! All artists presenting traditional forms explore contemporary themes or bring innovative approaches to their work.

Samudra Dance Creations explores women's voices and work in literature in a shared bill with Sarada Kala Nilayam who present Bharatanatyam in a treatise reflecting on the menstrual cycle.

The other classical Indian dance double bill also focuses on issues of women's freedom as in Unbound by Abhinaya Dance Company, while InsyncKathak presents an ode to Mother Nature with Prakriti.

Melissa Cruz Flamenco is another company exploring non-traditional venues, presenting their work at Abanico Coffee Roasters.

Finally, one of the closing concerts on the evening of Sunday May 11 sees Carola Zertuche of Theatre Flamenco of San Francisco in collaboration with contemporay dance, Nol Simonse in Triptico.

DANCE, CIRQUE & PHYSICAL THEATRE

The Wandering Ensemble (USA)
Lost & Found (2025, World Premiere)
Wed Apr 30 & Thu May 8, 8:00pm
70 mins w/out intermission.
Tix: Pay what you can. Suggest: $20. No one turned away...
Wed April 30 El Rio, 3158 Mission St.
Thu May 8 Monkeybrains, 933 Treat Ave
Lost & Found explores the many losses of the last five years as well as emerging futures arising out of the wreckage of old systems, institutions, beliefs, and habits. Inclusive dance, music, theatre, ritual, storytelling, and spectacle weave an immersive performance ceremony guiding participants and witnesses towards vibrant aliveness.

Helen Wicks Works (USA)
Radio Vision (2025, World Premiere)
Fri May 2, 8:00pm; Sun May 4, 3:30pm
20 mins. Shared Bill With Alive & Well Productions.
Total Duration: 50 mins
Theatre of Yugen's NOH Space, 2840 Mariposa St.
Radio Vision, a solo choreographed and performed by Helen Wicks, is an ode to music composition teacher Nadia Boulanger and the origins of broadcast television 100 years ago. Radio Vision synthesizes Wicks’ conversation with legendary composer Quincy Jones and research on her great-grandfather, Universal’s Music Supervisor Joe Gershenson.

Alive & Well Productions (USA)
The Four Seasons of Hamadan (2025, San Francisco Premiere)
Fri May 2, 8:00pm, Sun May 4, 3:30pm
23 minutes. Shared bill with Helen Wicks Works
Total Duration: 50 mins
Theatre of Yugen's NOH Space, 2840 Mariposa St.
The Four Seasons of Hamadan is a duet for violinist and dancer that interweaves Persian and Jewish music and dance traditions to express intercultural harmony. This project blends folkloric forms from the artists’ respective heritages and reimagines that material through a contemporary lens.

Sweta Ravisankar (USA)
Imagining Pain: The Menster Saga (2024, Bay Area Premiere)Sat May 3, 2:30pm, Sun May 4, 7:00pm
25 mins. Shared Bill with Samudra Dance Creations.
Total duration 65 mins
Tix: $20 - $28 Gen Adm.
Theatre of Yugen’s NOH Space, 2840 Mariposa St.
In this piece, a woman's lifelong suffering, beginning in her teens, is depicted as she confronts disbelief and self-doubt amidst undiagnosed pain, embodied by the menstrual monster. Through Bharatanatyam and yoga-inspired movements, this dance drama illuminates the unseen struggles of women.

Samudra Dance Creations
Fearless Women - A Celebration of Women's Literature (work-in-progress)
Sat May 3, 2:30pm, Sun May 4, 7:00pm
35 mins. Shared Bill with Sweta Ravisankar.
Total duration 65 mins
Tix: $20 - $28 Gen Adm.
Theatre of Yugen’s NOH Space, 2840 Mariposa St.
Innumerable women poets and writers of South Asian origin remain relatively unknown. In this dance work, soloist Jyotsna Vaideeswaran explores the stories of India’s early women writers and their works. Words that interrogate injustice, with searing questions of gender and faith, raising their voices.

Melissa Cruz Flamenco (USA)
Tablao Flamenco
Sat May 3, 7:30pm
60 minutes with intermission. Tix: $20 - $28 Gen Adm.
Abanico Coffee Roasters, 2121 Mission St
The vibrance and allure of flamenco come alive in this tribute to the flamenco “tablao,” an improvised collaboration allowing for the expression of the full spectrum of human emotion. Deep cante jondo juxtaposed with light-hearted cante chico, the pulse of palmas and the stirring poly-rhythms of heel work weave and unravel to create tension and release so emblematic of flamenco.

Conspiracy of Venus (USA)
Sun May 4, 2:00pm
60 minutes w/out intermission. Tix: $20 - $28 Gen Adm.
Community Music Center, 544 Capp St.
Conspiracy of Venus performs music of Leonard Cohen, PJ Harvey, and more, with dance and choreography by Bethany Mitchell, and choral arrangements by Joyce Todd McBride, director.

Agathe and Adrien (Canada)
N.Ormes (2023, West Coast Premiere)
Thu May 8, 8:30pm; Sat May 10, 8:00pm
60 mins w/out intermission. Tix: $20-$28 Gen Adm.
Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St.
N.Ormes is a circus show where the duo Agathe and Adrien push the limits and expectations of their own bodies and gender norms. Provocative, dysfunctional and tender, the piece brings the viewer to question their own assumptions about understanding equity.

PULP (USA)
Pulp and it's completely different but also still pulp (2025, World Premiere)
Fri May 9, 7:30pm; Sat May 10, 7:00pm; Sun May 11, 2:30pm
60 min w/out intermission Tix: $20-$28 Gen Adm.
Folk Yoga Studio, 3315 20th St
Pulp and it's completely different but also still pulp is a dance show full of personality, attitude, vulnerability and juicy oranges. PULP uses dance and theater to ask questions, have conversations and hopefully make you laugh about our relationships with ourselves, the world and its outrageous constructs. PULP shares their perspectives on what consumes most of their 30-something-year-old lives: autonomy, identity, injustice, pleasure, communication, betrayal and love.

Suichu-megane∞ (Japan)
my choice, my body (2021) and Anchor (2023) (U.S. Premieres)
Fri May 9, 8:30pm; Sat May 10, 4:00pm
50 mins with intermission Tix: $20-$28 Gen Adm.
Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St.
Suichu 'Megane∞, led by Ayane Nakagawa, explores “freedom” through powerful movement and visual vocabulary influenced by Nihon Buyo (Japanese classical dance) and contemporary dance theaters . Their signature works “my choice, my body” and “Anchor” confront societal norms, celebrating autonomy, destiny, and the struggles tied to gender and sexuality with an unflinching, evocative edge.

Sha Sha Higby Dance in Sculptural Costume (USA)
Sha Sha Higby with Keith Evans “Feathered Fox” (2025, World Premiere)
Sat May 10, 2:00pm; Sun May 11, 1:30pm
60 mins w/out intermission. Tix: $20-$28 Gen Adm.
Theatre of Yugen's NOH Space, 2840 Mariposa St.
Using mobiles, micro-puppetry, and magic spears, the metaphoric masks and costume dances through the symbolic plight of our skies, forests, and our own demise. Fish fly up out of the dead sea catching flying souls. Keith Evans with his fascination devices will alchemically deify Sha Sha Higby’s handmade artifacts with moving light.

Anneli Kanninen (Estonia/Finland)
HOMEing (Work-in-Progress)
Date(s) & Time(s): Sat May 10, 2:30pm, Sun May 11, 6:00pm30 mins. Shared bill with Algiin. Total duration 70 mins
Tix: $20-$28 Gen Adm.
The Marsh Studio, 1062 Valencia St
HOMEing is a personal exploration through the lenses of different languages and contemporary dance of what it means to grow roots in a new place. Arriving in a new country, culture and a language, how does one start building home, while remembering what has been left behind?

Abhinaya Dance Company of San Jose (USA)
Unbound (2017)
Sun May 11, 2:00pm
Duration: 40 mins. Shared Bill with InSyncKathak
Total duration 95 mins
Tix: $20-$28 Gen Adm.
Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St.
Rasika Kumar’s solo Bharatanatyam production takes you on an intimate journey, revealing how we, as women navigating our lives, endure a thousand subtle cuts that diminish us, forcing us to shrink and occupy less space in the world. What if we expanded to live a bold and unapologetic life?

InSyncKathak Dancers (USA)
Prakriti (2020)
Sun May 11, 2:00pm
45 mins. Shared bill with Abhinaya
Total duration 95 mins
Tix: $20-$28 Gen Adm.
Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St.
Prakriti is an ode to Mother Nature. Creation, coexistence, change, and resilience are threads woven into the beautiful tapestry of life. Drawing upon myriad personal experiences like wildfires, earthquakes, and droughts in California, this relentless human spirit and its tryst with Mother Nature is presented through Indian classical Kathak dance.

Theatre Flamenco of San Francisco
Sun May 11, 7:00pm
50 mins with intermission Tix: $20-$28 Gen Adm.
Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St
Tríptico is a captivating flamenco performance that blends the passion and tradition of flamenco with the innovative spirit of contemporary dance. Artistic Director and flamenco dancer Carola Zertuche leads this dynamic collaboration, where three dancers—Zertuche, contemporary artist Nol Simonse, and flamenco dancer Nevarez Encinias—explore the intersections of movement, gender, and expression.

Calendar Editors Please Note
Who: Multiple Artists
What: San Francisco International Arts Festival
Where: Multiple Venues in the Mission District
Dates: April 30 - May 11, 2025.
Tickets: FREE - $30. Five Show Passes: $100
Box Office and Information: https://www.sfiaf.org or 415-399-9554

Photos Available on Request