AfroSolo Announces Black Voices Performance Series OUR STORIES, OUR LIVES Lineup

AfroSolo Arts Festival 23 presents the Black Voices Performance Series: "Our Stories, Our Lives" on October 19-22 at African American Art and Culture Complex, 762 Fulton Street, San Francisco, CA.

To purchase tickets, click here. The ticket breakdown is as follows:

• Thursday, October 19, 8 pm, price: pay what you can, no one tuned away.
• Friday, October 20, 8, pm, price: $25
• Saturday, October 21, 6:30 pm, Festival Gala Reception and Performance price: $50, includes Reception (food, beverages and Reserved Seats for the 8 pm performance)
• Saturday, October 21, 8 pm Performance Only, price: $25
• Sunday, October 22, 3 pm, price $25

Our Black Voices Performance Series is a seminal part of the AfroSolo Arts Festival. It is where solo artists perform works giving voice to our unique experience. Our performs include: Anjali Austin, dancer; Delina P. Brooks, dancer, actor and writer; Thomas Robert Simpson, award winning solo performance artist, producer, writer and community activist and Dávia Spain, dancer, writer and filmmaker Our theme is RESILIENCE! (noun-the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.). Throughout our history, resilience has been a constant companion. All of the works in our Black Voices Series has that ingredient in common. We invite you to come take a journey with us that will inspire you, uplift you and reinforce your RESILIENCE! to obstacles in your path.

NOTE: You will see all of the artist perform on each performance date, except Spain will not perform on Thursday!

ANJALI AUSTIN

Anjali Austin will perform an excerpt from Live Oak. She is a dance professor at Florida State University who inherited over 30 quilts from her maternal grandmother, Mrs. Gussie Beatrice Arnold Hill. Austin holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard College. During her graduate studies she began researching the history of the quilts; some of which may have been made by slaves. It is out of this work that Austin was moved to create Live Oak. What has resulted is an exquisite work based on these quilts, their meaning and place in history, as well as a tribute to her ancestors.

Austin is a distinguished interdisciplinary artist whose career includes thirteen years of performing with the critically acclaimed Dance Theatre of Harlem. As a movement artist, she has performed classical, neo-classical, and contemporary works by prominent choreographers, and choreographs nationally and internationally. Ballets she has performed include Billy the Kid, Swan Lake (Act II), Serenade, Flower Festival, Dougla, Concerto Barocco, Prince Igor, Paquita, and Frankie and Johnny - in which she held a vocal role.

Austin also serves on the Board of CORPS de Ballet International, teaches ballet, Gyrotonic and Gyrokinesis at the School of Dance at Florida State University, and conducts lectures on the history and legacy of Black classical ballet dancers. For more info visit http://dance.fsu.edu/anjali-austin/

DELINA P. BROOKS

Dancer, actor, producer and writer, Delina P. Brooks performs Seeds of Peace. It explores how a young man's death breathes new life into a mother, a community, and a society shattered by gun violence. It is based on the true story of "Mother Mattie" Scott, founder of San Francisco's Healing For Our Family and Our Nation, a nationally renowned violence prevention and education awareness program. This is an inspiring and uplifting story of how one person can impact the lives of many.

Brooks is a three time Izzie Award Nominee, Izzie Award Winner for An Open Love Letter to Black Fathers (Writer, Director, Lead Artist), Winner of PUSH Festival "Audience Choice" Award for In The Meantime (Writer, Co-Director), published in Journal of Pan African Studies and InDance Magazine. Brooks has studied and performed in Guinea, West Africa, Western Europe and the Southern Philippines. Additional info can be found at http://www.delinadream.com/press.html

Executive Director, Healing For Our Families & Our Nation, Mattie Scott, is a mother and activist in violence prevention, intervention and educational awareness. She has been on a nation-wide mission to address the root causes of senseless gun violence for the past 21 years. Her faith has carried her through one of the worst nightmares of her life, the tragic shooting death of her youngest son, George C. Scott. On July 17, 1996, George was killed while attending a graduation party in the Western Addition Neighborhood of San Francisco. Scott is compassionate, committed and dedicated to violence prevention. As executive director of Healing For Our Families And Our Nation, Scott works with all law enforcement agencies, government officials, clergy, educators, CBO's and many others in the campaign in violence prevention.

THOMAS Robert Simpson

Thomas Robert Simpson will perform, Courage Under Fire a personal story about a father transcendence from the insanity jim crow's to committing an act of bravery that proved to be revolutionary. The story mirror's the journey of many Black men as they strive to achieve and obtain all of their constitution rights.

Simpson, actor, director, producer, and writer, is the Founder and Artistic Director of AfroSolo Arts Festival. For the past twenty-three years he has produced the award winning and critically acclaimed Festival in San Francisco, presenting over one-hundred solo artists. He has also produced jazz concerts, organized community health fairs, hosted forums and conducted numerous workshops.

In 2014 he created the Project Empowerment: The Audacity to Succeed-Young Black Men and Boy Soaring Into the Future, the mission being to support this population successfully transcend youth to adulthood. He is also in the process of editing an anthology of letters from mature Black men to young Black men and boys, and creating a toolkit designed to assist young people survive encounters with the police.

Dávia Spain

Dávia Spain is a local trans performing artist originally from the Bay Area. An Ode To My Younger Self is a lyrical work exploring her childhood using the mediums film, dance, music, and spoken word. In the work she creates a world that she wishes had been the world that she grew up in. In the work she get to live freely as she is. It is ultimately a work about liberation, self acceptance and hope of what Spain's future will become.

Special Partnerships

In The Meantime
The Kendra Kimbrough Dance Ensemble
Laney College: 900 Fallon Street
Oakland, CA 94607
For more info visit:Click here

This special is good for AfroSolo's Black Voices Performance Series, October 22nd, 3 pm performance and (KKDE's) In The Meantime performance at 4 pm Sunday, October 29th. Admission to both shows is only $20. For tickets visit: Click here
In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month The Kendra Kimbrough Dance Ensemble (KKDE) brings back audience favorite In The Meantime (2012). A dance theater piece about how a family devastated by cancer manages to cope. Co-directed by Kendra Barnes (Choreographer) & Delina Patrice Brooks (Writer).
Guest Artists:
Choreographer/Vocalist Dandha da Hora and
Percussionist Julio Remelexo

This Bitter Earth
New Conservatory Theatre Center
25 Van Ness Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94108
For tickets visit: Click here
Use the code: Bitter20 - For a 20% Discount
Playing now through Oct. 22nd.

A protest brings Jesse, a black man, together with his white lover, Neil, a Black Lives Matter activist. But now, as Neil immerses himself in the struggle, Jesse must confront his own political apathy or risk his rights and their love. This gripping new play asks what is the real cost of standing on the sidelines?

By Harrison David Rivers

Funding and support for the AfroSolo Theatre Company is made possible in part through the support of The African American Art and Culture Complex, African American Theatre Alliance for Independence (AATAIN), California Arts Council, Congregation Emanu-EL, Citizen Film, Friends of AfroSolo, HCA & Company, Horizons Foundation, San Francisco Arts Commission, San Francisco Grants for the Arts, Simpson Brothers Cleaning Services, Society for Community Work, Yerba Buena Gardens Festival, Zellerbach Family Foundation and others.

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