2007-2008 - Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

URBAN BUSH WOMEN/COMPAGNIE
JANT-BI CREATIVE EXCHANGE
Beauty Of Little Things
Apr 3–5. 2008 // Novellus Theater at YBCA
This unique project is setting the performance world
abuzz for two acclaimed dance companies—one all-male
and one all-female—and two powerhouse choreographers.
Germaine Acogny, the “mother of contemporary
African dance,” joins forces with Brooklyn-based,
BESSIE Award–winning choreographer, Jawole Willa Jo
Zollar, of Urban Bush Women. Acogny’s all-male troupe,
Jant-Bi, performed at YBCA in 2005 to widespread
acclaim. Urban Bush Women has, since 1984, brought
the stories of disenfranchised people to light through
dance inspired by African-American traditions. This
groundbreaking collaboration brings artists from Africa
together with the children of the Diaspora on a work that
explores the crossroads between culture and ethnicity,
history and modernity.
ILKHOM THEATER
Ecstasy with the Pomegranate
May 15–17, 2008 // Forum
A visual street theater of metaphor and clownery, the
internationally acclaimed Ilkhom Theatre of Uzbekistan
began as a renegade theater under the strict Soviet
regime. Now citizens of an independent republic, their
work is no less subversive. Ecstacy with the Pomegranate
is inspired by the iconographic 1930s “Bacha Boys”
paintings by Alexandr “Mumin” Nikolayev. Bacha,
danced by young boys and men, was Turkistan’s only
traditional dance form. When the Soviets invaded they
obliterated all Islamic traditions, effectively erasing
Bacha. Under Stalin, Mumin memorialized the form in
sensual, spiritual paintings and Ecstasy reenacts these
extraordinary images, capturing a male eroticism once
embraced by a culture that now outlaws homosexuality.
Beautiful, funny, experimental, Ecstasy revives history to
illuminate contemporary issues of identity.
YBCA 07_08 ANNUAL REPORT / BIG IDEA 3: IDENTITY SHIFTS / PERFORMANCE / P. 24
Image: The way that we rhyme. Given over to want. Artist: Nau Bustamante. Photo: Marissa Hernandez