Zaccho Dance Theatre to Showcase New Installation Based on W.E.B. DuBois, 11/1-3

Choreographer, director and Bay Area performance innovator Joanna Haigood will explore issues of race and identity in the world premiere of her new performance installation, Between me and the other world, Friday through Sunday, November 1 through 3 from 1 to 5 pm at Zaccho Studio, 1777 Yosemite Avenue, Studio 330, in San Francisco. A dynamic exploration of scholar and civil rights leader W.E.B. DuBois' concept of "double consciousness", the performance installation has been created in collaboration with composer Anthony Brown, media artist David Szlasa, scenic designer Sean Riley and performing artists Jetta Martin, Raissa Simpson, Rashidi Omari and Matthew Wickett, who together have created an immersive environment that evokes the identity duality experienced by many people of color. For more information, visitwww.zaccho.org.

In the performance installation audiences are welcome to move around the space and view the performance from different vantage points. The performances will loop approximately every 30-minutes with performing artists alternating. David Szlasa's media design re-contextualizes Dubois' ideas with contemporary imagery sourced from current news and the live performance. DR. Brown's music draws from Dubois' novel The Souls of Black Folks and Dubois' references to African American's deep roots in spirituals, and ittraverses the sonic terrain from Spirituals to jazz to 21st century postmodern soundscapes. Sean Riley's set design is a series of moveable scrimmed panels that change the shape of the performing area and provide a dynamic surface for the projected imagery.

Beginning in 1995, Joanna Haigood began research for Zaccho's lauded performance project, Invisible Wings. The piece was inspired by the history of Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival in Becket, MA, and its role in the Underground Railroad. She spent three years studying slave history and culture, which eventually became the basis for much for her work on race and African American history for the next 17 years.

During this research period, Haigood found her early inspiration for Between me and the other world. She visited the W.E.B. DuBois Archives at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, reading some of DuBois' most important essays on race and education in America.

A scholar, an educator, and a civil rights leader, W.E.B. DuBois was born in 1868 and died in 1963. He influenced his time in ways that are still being felt. His seminal book and social science treatise, The Souls of Black Folk (1903) built much of the foundation on which the mid-20th century civil rights movement would rise. This prescient work outlined the plight of blacks in America and eloquently challenged much of the day's conventional wisdom.

Here DuBois introduced the idea of double consciousness: "... the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world, -- a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness, -- an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder."

This is a truly compelling concept, and no less relevant to today's black community. Between me and the Other World will create a poetic lens through which to examine these provocative ideas.

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