Liss Fain Dance's A SPACE DIVIDED Opens 4/12 at Z Space

Liss Fain Dance has announced the premiere of A SPACE DIVIDED, a shared immersive performance installation that joins Fain and her longtime set designer Matthew Antaky with guest choreographers Christian Burns and Amy Seiwert. In A Space Divided each choreographer responds to Antaky's immersive installation. A Space Divided opens Thursday, April 9 and runs through Sunday, April 12 at Z Space in San Francisco.

Antaky's installation design developed from his research into the human brain. The brain's property of lateralization - its division into left and right hemispheres, and the interplay between the two - inspired Antaky's floor plan. A semi-permeable barrier between the two areas simulates the corpus collossum of the brain. Using Liss Fain Dance company members, all three choreographers are charged with creating a distinct piece for this environment. The three works will segue one into the other to create an evening-length performance installation.

"What I'm excited to see is how Matthew [Antaky]'s idea gets interpreted in the different choreographies," says Fain. "For me the bicameral set design invites an exploration of the duality of human nature - the ways we move between our private and public selves, what we think and feel versus what we say and do."

A Space Divided marks Fain's first collaboration with Burns and Seiwert. While all three choreographers draw upon the vernacular of ballet in creating mostly non-narrative works, each artist represents a distinctive voice in the world of contemporary dance.

For her part, Fain has been rigorously mining the format of immersive installation for more than four years. Her recent work includes The Imperfect is Our Paradise (ODC Theater, 2014) and After the Light (Z Space, 2014), described as "intelligent" and "wondrous" (San Francisco Bay Guardian).

Burns, a founding faculty member of the San Francisco Conservatory of Dance as well as a current instructor at the LINES Ballet Training Program, was also co-founder and director of The Foundry (1998-2007), reaping numerous accolades and residencies during that period. Recognized as an improviser as well as a choreographer, Burns has been commissioned by many leading dance companies and educational institutions including Alonzo King LINES Ballet, Hope Mohr Dance, James Sewell Ballet, Stanford, University of San Francisco, Mt. Holyoke College, University of Michigan, Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music & Dance, Interlochen Center for the Arts and the San Francisco Conservatory of Dance.

Seiwert, whose work as a choreographer first began under the wing of the late Michael Smuin, has been commissioned by Ballet Austin, BalletMet, Smuin Ballet, Robert Moses KIN, as well as the repertory ballet companies of Washington DC, Atlanta, Oakland, Sacramento, Colorado, Louisville, Cincinnati, Oklahoma City, Dayton and Milwaukee, among others. Her work has earned exuberant praise: "[Seiwert] is quite possibly the Bay Area's most original dance thinker, taking what some consider a dead language and using it as a 21st century lingo to tell us something about who we are" (San Francisco Bay Guardian).

Additional collaborators on A Space Divided include Jamielyn Duggan, costume design; Dan Wool and Darren Johnson, sound design; and Frédéric Boulay, production manager.

Liss Fain company dancers performing in A Space Divided include Jeremiah Crank, Katharine Hawthorne, Megan Kurashige, Shannon Kurashige and Carson Stein.

Tickets are $30 in advance, $35 at the door and $20 for students and seniors. Tickets go on sale February 2 and may be purchased online at zspace.org, or by calling 1-800-838-3006.

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