7th Annual Yerba Buena Night
6th Annual Yerba Buena Night
- The 6th Annual Yerba Buena Night is SATURDAY OCTOBER 15, 2016 from 6-10PM.
- FREE and FUN for the whole family.
- Footloose presents You're Cookin Good during the outdoor festival at 8:15 and 9:15 pm on Yerba Buena Lane by the Contemporary Jewish Museum.
Some have called it the most eclectic evening of free music, dance, art, video and live performance in San Francisco and anyone who has attended it will agree. The 6th annual Yerba Buena Night is a free outdoor festival on Saturday Oct. 15th from 6 pm to 10 pm in the heart of Yerba Buena, San Francisco’s most exciting neighborhood. Packed with more than 40 performances on five stages in Jessie Square, Yerba Buena Lane, Yerba Buena Center of the Arts and Annie Street Plaza, Yerba Buena Night is known for its great vibe, endless surprises and fun crowds. The nonprofit Yerba Buena Community Benefit District presents the event.
Footloose returns for its fourth year with a brand new show, You're Cooking Good, a fast-paced, slapstick comedy with a celebrity chef and his inept sidekick cooking up an outdoor food demonstration. Eye-popping juggling and clowning cause chaos in the kitchen. Humor and play will be used to inspire support for local farm to table choices...in this case farm to street. This parody leaves plenty of room for unexpected shenanigans for audiences to enjoy and interact with.
Creative team: Mary Alice Fry, Paco Romane, Maria Chenut, John Lennon Harrison and Keinan Woodson. Special thanks to James Damiani, Patrick Simms, Kristen Rulifson, Raven Nielsen, Ron Campbell, Steven Koehler, Bruce Yelaska and Colin Hussey.
5th Annual Yerba Buena Night
Saturday, October 10, 2015
More information: www.facebook.com/Yerba-Buena-Night-228657957180488/timeline/
Skinetic Zone
FRI / SAT / SUN NOV 14 / 15 / 16
Kunst-Stoff Arts, One Grove Street, SF 94102
Presented by Footloose / Theatecture / Central Market NOW
SciArt in America magazine article by Joe Ferguson 12/15/2014
READ FULL ARTICLE at sciartinamerica.com
Bridging Art And Technology In "Skinetic Zone" By Footloose
Innovation is key to art's production methods through time. During the 19th Century, a group of young artists embraced new pigments; along with an innovative way to transport paint--the collapsible metal tube--artists left the studio to create Impressionism. By the mid-20th Century, the art world embraced photography and film. As we continue artistic innovation into the 21st Century, it is now time for critics and collectors to accept digital art.
Perhaps the problem lies in the fact that digital art at its core is not a visual medium. Underlying all those images is code—a complex language created from an arrangement of words and numbers that seems chaotic and meaningless to those outside of the technology industry. In a 2012 Artforum article, art historian Claire Bishop stated, “While many artists use digital technology, how many really confront the question of what it means to think, see, and filter affect through the digital? How many thematize this, or reflect deeply on how we experience, and are altered by, the digitization of our existence?”
November 14th through the 16th at Kunst-Stoff Arts in San Francisco, the dance and theater troupe Footloose addressed the issue of how we bridge the digital and natural in their new piece Skinetic Zone. Skinetic Zone was a walk-around performance installation, in which audience members and performers interacted with living sculptures and digital art. The piece was inspired by graphic novels and told the story of a society enraptured by its technology, but out of touch with the world in which it resided. Performers wore Myo gesture-tracking armbands that controlled a 3D projection mapping installation--the lead character wore two Myo armbands that provided him with a magical power to control his surrounding space. There was no recorded video--all of the projections were done in real time. In the end, other beings spoke up in defense of the natural world.
The piece took place over half an hour with lots of changes in themes, costumes, and choreography. The installation consumed the entire performance area with the 3D projection linking the space and movements as a visual narrative. The audience was encouraged to “get in there,” and when we didn’t go to them, the performers came to us.
Footloose incorporated dance, performance, narrative, recognizable imagery, spectacle, and interactivity to present a digital presence that was not overwhelming, and was reactive to human intervention. The story was not the familiar one of technology out of control, but rather one of over-ambitious creators exceeding the limits of the natural world, and a society caught up--and lost--in its own creation. As a story pertinent to our times, it was relatable, and perhaps to some, one that could be embraced.
Creative Team:
- Footloose Artistic Director/Producer: Mary Alice Fry
- Sculpture and costume realization / construction: Maria Chenut
- Real time digital art design and installation: Daniel Anderson
- Story, script, soundtrack: Chris Jones, Mary Alice Fry
- LED lighting design, installation and operation: Caroline Margaux
- Performers: Daniel Anderson, Natalia Carballo, Maria Chenut,
- Cyrena Giordano, Cherie Hill and Karin Moriarty
- Video Editor: Chris Jones
Footloose Presents, Theatecture and Central Market NOW are supporting neighborhood art in partnership with the SF Mayor's Office of Economic and Workforce Development, North of Market Tenderloin Community Benefit District, California Arts Council and Kenneth Rainin Foundation. Footloose is funded by Grants for the Arts/SF Hotel Tax Fund.
Footloose presents
Yerba Buena Night
An Amazing Night Under the Stars: The 4th Annual Yerba Buena Night is October 11th! by visityerbabuena on September 30, 2014 in "Some have called it the most eclectic evening of free music, dance, art, video and live performance in San Francisco and anyone who has attended it will agree. The 4th annual Yerba Buena Night is a free outdoor festival on Saturday Oct. 11th from 6 pm to 10 pm in the heart of Yerba Buena, San Francisco’s most exciting neighborhood.
Packed with more than 40 performances on five stages in Jessie Square, Yerba Buena Lane, Yerba Buena Center of the Arts and Annie Street Plaza, Yerba Buena Night is known for its great vibe, endless surprises and fun crowds. It’s why more than 9,000 people flocked there in 2013. The nonprofit Yerba Buena Community Benefit District presents the event.
"Yerba Buena Night is getting bigger and better every year with exciting new performers," said Kim Mercado, YBCBD’s events manager. "The caliber of the talent this year is incredible."
Footloose and Theatecture return this year with new kinetic sculpture brought to life and moved by people in the Skinetic Zone. The mobile pieces with sensory lighting, textiles and objects will set the stage for roving performances on Yerba Buena Lane between 7:30 and 9:30 pm.
Creative team: Natalia Carballo, Maria Chenut, Mary Alice Fry, Cherie Hill, Caroline Margaux, Karin Moriarty, Morgan True
Free Outdoor Interactive Art and Computer Video Installation
Footloose and Theatecture present Honeycomb Zone
Saturday October 12, 6-10 pm FREE as part of
Yerba Buena Night, San Francisco, CA
Be part of the instantaneous creation of a whole world in the Honeycomb Zone where two dynamic and innovative urban environmental art projects mash up. Interact, play and build in giant toy sculptures with prefabricated, lightweight cardboard sets. Make computer video art in the Time Bubble and see it projected on the outdoor walls of the Contemporary Jewish Museum in Yerba Buena Lane.
This outdoor site specific, interactive installation is called Theatecture, a name combining theater and architecture with the mission "to offer people a customized experience of the urban landscape." The project contains creative elements anyone could relate to if they so choose. The outdoor public space and architecture is utilized as an experience of place we all share as a freedom and right to occupy. It attracts humans like the bees to gather and connect in the airy open space.
Thanks to Grants for the Arts/SF Hotel Tax Fund, Yerba Buena Community Benefit District and all the sponsors of Yerba Buena Night October 12, 2013
HONEYCOMB ZONE and MAD NOISE
at A.C.T.'s The Costume Shop
November 1, 6:00 to 9:30 pm presented by Footloose and Theatecture and Central Market NOW!
FREE from 6:00-7:15 pm at 1117 Market on the sidewalk and in the lobby live music by MAD NOISE and interactive excursion into Theatecture's HONEYCOMB ZONE where you can be part of the instantaneous creation of a whole world in the Honeycomb Zone. Play and build with interlocking giant toy sculptures made with prefabricated, lightweight cardboard hexagons. Directed/written/choreographed by Mary Alice Fry; Sculpture/set design by Cindi Valverde
Stay for dance performances and live music in the theater from 7:30 to 9:30 for a donation of $5-10 with:
Carolé Acuña and Brandon Kazen-Maddox will perform selections from Honeycomb Zone with live music by guitarist Robert Zhimantas.
The Wayfinders Performance Group,international ensemble of dance and theatre artists who have studied extensively with Anna Halprin bring excerpts from their new show "Homing Devices" which draws on the Tamalpa Life/Art practice with movement, drawing, writing, vocalizing and speaking. Director Joy Cosculluela performs with Anna Halprin's dance company and teaches movement-based expressive arts at Tamalpa Institute.
"Local buskers turn their hustle into performance art…"
MAD NOISE, a six-piece ensemble that bridges pop and jazz were twice named Best Band in the Bay in SF Bay Guardian's Reader's Poll for 2011 and 2012. Their first LP "From Busk till Dawn" is in the works and they will play selections from their large catalog of originals and standards. You can catch them every Saturday at the Ferry Building Farmer's Market in San Francisco and at various venues in the Bay Area. Khalil Sullivan (songwriter, guitars, lead vocalist), Anthony "Mogli" Maureal (drums/percussion), Aaron "Pharoah" Strong (harmonica), Chris Weir (upright bass), Marica Petrey (cello) and Brendan Lui (trumpet).
More Information:
- www.youtube.com/MADNOISEmusic
- www.facebook.com/MADNOISE
- www.eastbayexpress.com/ebx/they-make-mad-noise/Content?oid=2043959
Be in the Honeycomb Zone on United Nations PLAZA
San Francisco, California, September 26, 2012: An article in today's SF Weekly by Lily Janiak says a lot about what the newly formed company Theatecture is all about:
"Footloose Artistic Director Mary Alice Fry has done the conventional theater thing before, where you "sit there and wait for people to come in and be polite." But she "just gets really tired of it!" Her new show, Honeycomb Zone, which she's presenting with Theatecture as part of the 24 Days of Central Market Arts Festival, is geared toward audiences who feel the same way.
The free show, staged in UN Plaza, is meant to attract everyone around: Twitterers, City Hall employees, the food truck crowd, the homeless, public transit users. Its initial draw, according to Fry, is the hexagonal honeycomb-like set pieces, designed by Cindi Valverde, which audiences use to build hives.
"Every time," says Fry, "it's completely different, the way people shape them. There's something about the way they fit together and surprise you and play with your imagination." While the giant, collective K'NEX-like building is going on, performers from martial arts, acrobatics, modern jazz, and flamenco "tell the story of two brothers who are seeking shelter," says Fry, all to live, original music composed by Bob Marsh and the Free Reed Vibrating Society. According to Fry, we live in an era when "people are taking it outdoors." Theater, she believes, should follow suit, especially if it's not a protest but "a celebration."
--By Lily Janiak
Mary Alice Fry uses the current bee colony collapse crisis as a jumping off point for the story of two homeless, teenage brothers searching for safe refuge after being separated from their family. They are unofficially welcomed to life on the streets of San Francisco by The Magician played by dancer/actress Carolé Acuña. In a round of poetic and kinetic dance theater motifs, The Magician trains the boys in self-defense and safety. Brandon Kazen-Maddox and James Arthur use their professional theater, circus, acrobatic and hip hop skills to portray in a highly dynamic fashion their transformation from fear to compassion. The Free Reed Vibrating Society adds musical support and acts as a Greek chorus.
The centerpiece of the show is the building of the mobile, cardboard sets which are taken apart, re-formed and repositioned to form hives. Cindi Valverde's sculptures of the family along with the prefabricated, interlocking hexagonal pieces are eye catching, clean and simple. The performance flows in and around the honeycomb modules including ones that will be interconnected some up to 6'x10' in scale!
Theatecture is a name combining theater and architecture with the mission "to offer people a customized experience of the urban landscape." The project contains creative elements anyone could relate to if they so choose. They may choose not to engage and that is part of the experience as well. The outdoor public space and architecture is utilized as an experience of place we all share as a freedom and right to occupy. It attracts humans like the bees to gather and connect in the airy open space. It sends a message that we care about the daily life of the local residents and reflects the multiplicity of diverse milieus.
Bring Your Own Dog
Saturday, June 18, 2011 Mint Plaza on Fifth Street between Mission/Market, San Francisco
Family & Dog Friendly
FREE Noon to 3:00 pm with live show from 12:15 to 1:15 pm
more information +
Come and find out "How to Make the Perfect Dog" on Mint Plaza, Saturday, June 18 from noon to 3 pm. This free, family and dog friendly event will be entertaining whether you bring a dog or not. There will be live performances, contests, games and socializing with dogs and their people. Enter and win prizes in the dog & people Look-A-Like contest with prizes donated by PETCO. Bring your best friend and play games with other dogs and get free gifts.
The live show features an all-star cast bringing theater, music, dance and comedy to the urban stage hosted by celebrity drag queen Heklina! Showtime is from 12:15 to 1:15 pm. Performers in this original musical play are Pearl Marill, Mary Alice Fry, Norman Gee, Nathaniel Justiniano, Brian Quakenbush, Ross Travis plus Master of Hounds Francis Metcalf and his trained dogs.
A visitor from space will be here to learn what makes the perfect dog so his world can survive. If you’ve always suspected your dog has special powers, then come and help save a neighboring planet. The Alien From Another Planet needs to program his robotic dog crew so they can bring joy to his homeland. Join in the fun and laughter as the droid dogs are transformed by trial and error into loving pets with assistance from real dogs.
Presented by Footloose in association with Central Market Community Benefit District and Friends of Mint Plaza to bring safe and friendly events using artistic values as stimulus for improving interactions the people in the diverse Central Market neighborhood have with each other and their environments. Our community partners who will be on Mint Plaza that day are Pets Are Wonderful Support (PAWS) offering outreach, Northern California Family Dog Rescue bringing adoption services and Friends of the Family Canine Circus School demonstrating how to find your dog's hidden talents, build your training skills and rule the universe.