SF Transform Fest blends art, activism
The showcase of music, dance and theater aims to challenge perceptions
We are constantly bombarded by hashtags in our pursuit of a better world — #EverydaySexism, #BlackLivesMatter, #MeToo, #lgbtq, #QuitFacebook. As we’re searching for solutions to deeply embedded problems, the arts can offer both insight and inspiration.
Following its inaugural season last fall, the Transform Festival has returned to Yerba Buena Center for the Arts through May 20. It attempts to answer this banner question — where is our public imagination? By forging links with artists whose work is driven by current issues, curator Marc Bamuthi Joseph hopes to address such issues as racial and sexual discrimination, technology, economic and political inequality and environmental degradation. If that sounds intense, it is. But remember the arts can renew us spiritually and offer glimmers of hope for the future.
Transform opens with “Poor People’s TV Room,” a work being performed at 7:30 tonight weaving together movement, song, text and visual imagery. Creators Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born use two chapters in Nigerian history — the Women’s War of 1929, an uprising against British colonialism, and the Boko Haram kidnappings — as a starting point to show the strength and resilience of the country’s women.
“The inspiration started for me,” says Okpokwasili, “not with the missing schoolgirls, but with the hashtag phenomenon. I was excited that the entire world had an awareness of these missing girls and then put pressure on the Nigerian government to do something about it, and then a former vice president of the African World Bank, who happens to be a woman, was speaking to a group of mothers to rally them, to get them up in arms. We need to disrupt the idea we have of African women being victims of malicious and corrupt governments, international corporations or colonialism. Actually they have legacies of advocating for themselves, of collective action.”
And the message stretches further than that.
“We know that protest is about performance, it’s about bodies showing up and making their voices visible and present,”
adds Okpokwasili. “This piece is working at the intersection of dance and theater. In the choreographic spaces, there are questions of what do we leave on each other, what do we need from each other, what do we hold onto, what do we repeat, what do we transmit.”
In a world where black women in music tend to be mostly gospel, blues, jazz and hip-hop performers, Jessica Care Moore created the concert showcase Black Women Rock! in 2004. It is a tribute to the legendary Betty Davis — a funk/soul singer from the 1960s and ’70s who introduced her exhusband Miles Davis to Jimi Hendrix and
Sly Stone — and the performers who were influenced by her.
“Like Betty, these women were all before their time,” says Moore. “They don’t always get the awards, get radio time or become famous. They have cult followings all over the world. They tour internationally and pave a path for themselves. They are not background singers, they are out in front. It’s the baddest lineup you’ll ever see.”
The concert returns Saturday, featuring Nona Hendryx, Divinity Roxx, Steffanie Christi’an, Sh8peshifter (Zakiya Harris), Tamar-kali, JOI, Kimberly Nichole and Nik West. The 15-piece backing band is all women, as is 99 percent of the production team.
“We’re coming together to celebrate each other’s genius, and to put them in a proper historical perspective, who we are as American musicians and what we created,” says Moore. “Through the blues, we made rock ’n’ roll.”
On the festival roster is a retrospective of
Capacitor, a company whose combination of dance, acrobatics, sculpture and video often explores natural phenomena. Artistic director Jodi Lomask put together a greatest-hits show, “Left to Her Own Devices: 20 Years of Sculpture in Motion,” for this year’s fest.
Lomask often works with scientists to inform productions with themes such as the ocean, the forest canopy, self-pollinating flowers and neurology. She says she grapples with such challenges as “how to use the visual effects to enhance the live performance and not overpower it.” And she likes employing “sculptures and costumes as obstacles for the dancers to overcome. While finding solutions for moving in and around them, we’re exploring the idea of liberation.”
The festival also features performances by the famed turntablist DJ Spooky, the theater ensemble Campo Santo, the artist and director Lars Jan, and Prinz Dance Project.