Arletta Anderson & Adam Smith Premiere GOOD STRONG HANDS At CounterPulse

Arletta Anderson & Adam Smith announce the world premiere of their newest dance/theatre machination, Good Strong Hands, to be presented at the inaugural CounterPulse Festival in conjunction with SFMOMA's Open Space's winter season Limited Edition.

Anderson and Smith collaborate with Eric Garcia and Melissa Lewis to embark on a multidisciplinary study on presence and absence; the ephemeral and material; cats lost in the woods. Good Strong Hands is inspired by the philosophy of Derrida and the science behind how the brain fills in gaps of information. The work blends personal narrative, humor, and abstraction to question and celebrate the experience of absence.

A follow-up to their work, weather // body (2017), Anderson and Smith continue to explore grey space between theatre and dance. Treating the audience as active participants in the work (directly or indirectly), they frequently create performance that both celebrates and critiques theatrical structures and mores. In Good Strong Hands, this examination of theatrical tradition continues alongside a questioning of the ebb and flow of the physical and emotional space left behind as life's ephemera leave us. Can something be replaced, or is the space simply filled with something else?

About Arletta Anderson & Adam Smith
Arletta Anderson and Adam Smith are a dance artist and a theater artist, respectively. Locally, Arletta has danced with GERALDCASELDANCE, Christy Funsch, Simpson/Stulberg Collaborations. Adam is most known for his work with the San Francisco Neo-Futurists and his critically acclaimed docu-theatre experiment, Theatre Show. Anderson and Smith have shown their work through CounterPulse's Artist Residency Program, ODC Pilot Program, James Graham Dance Theatre's Dance Lovers, Boulder Fringe Festival, and beyond. This spring, they will bring Theatre Show to Bowling Green State University (Ohio) and present work-in-progress material of a new untitled work at RAWDance's Concept Series.

Eric Garcia (collaborator/performer)
Eric Garcia is a choreographer, performer, filmmaker, teacher, and activist whose feet are deeply rooted in the Bay Area. He is the Co-Artistic Director of detour dance and the San Francisco Tiny Dance Film Festival. He proudly serves as Production Coordinator with Fresh Meat Productions, Sean Dorsey Dance, and the San Francisco Transgender Film Festival. Inspired by personal narrative and storytelling, Eric has collaboratively worked with groups of incarcerated men, senior adults, and self-identified non-dancers on various multi-media and site-specific projects. Eric also co-hosts DRAG SPECTACULAR SPECTACULAR, a sporadic drag cabaret. Eric has performed works by Katie Faulkner, Sean Dorsey, Amie Dowling, 13th Floor Dance Theater, Sharp & Fine, FACT/SF, The Anata Project, LEVYdance, Project Thrust, and many others. He was the Spring 2017 choreographer-in-residence at the San Francisco Conservatory of Dance and a 2016-17 Emerging Arts Professionals SF/BA Fellow. He is the recipient of the 2017 CHIME Award with Margaret Jenkins Dance Company.

Melissa Lewis (collaborator/performer)
Melissa Lewis moved from east to west in 2010 to study Performing Arts & Social Justice - Dance, at the University of San Francisco. Her own interdisciplinary work has been shown at SOMArts, ODC, Z Space, Tenderloin Museum, the sardine, Book & Job Gallery, and other local/international venues. Melissa is a company member of detour dance. She practices experimental film photography, visits her 105-year-old Chinese grandmother regularly, and makes coffee slash arts administrative moves to support dancing professionally. She has a short dance film 'pretty clean' to premiere sometime before 2018 end. the sardine is her most recent project, a 9x12' tiny dance studio. lemelissa.com.

Friday, March 16 2018, 7pm
Sunday, March 18 2018, 2pm
at CounterPulse, 80 Turk Street, SF, CA
Tickets ($10-$25): http://counterpulse.org/good-strong-hands

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