Detour dance to Debut Site-Specific FUGUE in San Francisco's Mission District

Detour dance, an Izzie Award-nominated live performance and film company, has announced the dates for the world premiere of FUGUE: December 1 - 10, 2017.

A site-specific dance theater event, Fugue traverses the streets of San Francisco's Mission District collecting stories of queers, people of color and longtime residents of the city en route to a fabled "new city."

Conceived and directed by Kat Cole and Eric Garcia, with a cast of 13 performers, Fugue takes place at 8 p.m. on Friday, December 1 and 8, and twice daily on Saturdays and Sundays, December 2 - 3 and 9 - 10, at 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. Tickets are $15 - $30, but no one will be turned away for lack of funds. For reservations visit eventbrite.com/e/fugue-tickets-36724400671.

"Fugue is based on two years of research, involving interviews among residents of the Mission," said Garcia. "Kat and I invited three playwrights - Lourdes Figueroa, Baruch Porras-Hernandez and Brian Thorstenson - to take the lead in developing the script, and together with a cast consisting of queer people of color and their allies, longtime residents who have faced eviction, and new transplants, too, we've devised an experience that explores ideas of transience, nostalgia and utopia."

"With Fugue, we've been interested to reaffirm a sense of belonging to this city across time," added Cole, "to situate our experiences and hardships within a larger history as a way to understand them better. Our choice of the title 'Fugue' responds to the word's sense of amnesia - in this case, cultural amnesia - that seems to mark so much of the contemporary landscape of San Francisco."

Transcripts of the community interviews collected in the making of Fugue, together with the performance script and video documentation will be submitted for archiving to San Francisco's GLBT Historical Society. "We are proud that the research for Fugue helps to fill a gap in the story of queer residents of color in the city," said Garcia.

Fugue begins at Holy Innocents' Episcopal Church at 455 Fair Oaks Street, where the audience is divided into small groups of no more than three, each with its own performer and guide. From there each tour travels a different route along the Calle 24 (the 24th Street corridor) and the adjacent area - with stops at small businesses, alleys, murals, parks and other points of personal interest to each tour guide - before landing at Studio 210 at 3435 Cesar Chavez Street. A 30-minute, sit-down performance in the round concludes the performance.

Cole and Garcia received assistance in directing from El Beh and Wiley Naman Strasser. Fugue's cast includes Arletta Anderson, Liane Burns, Caleb Cabrera, Jana Griffin, Maro Guevara, Melissa Lewis, Kevin Lopez, Scott Marlowe, Angela Mazziotta, Carolina Morales, Erin Mei-Ling Stuart, Karla Quintero and Sienna Williams. Additional collaborators include set designer Daniel Garcia, lighting designer Delayne Medoff, composer Brent Arnold, sound designer Teddy Hulsker and costume consultant Christine Crook.

Funding for FUGUE comes from the Queer Cultural Center, San Francisco Arts Commission, Horizons Foundation, Dancers' Group and the Kenneth Rainin Foundation. Community Partners include the GLBT Historical Society, Fresh Meat Productions, Mission Arts Performance Project and Still Here SF.

Detour dance was founded in 2009 by Kat Cole and Eric Garcia, two outspoken queer artists of color, while still students at the University of San Francisco. The ensemble-based company devises new works that place equal emphasis on multidisciplinary collaborations and social justice. Since 2013 detour dance has presented the Tiny Dance Film Festival, celebrating short dance films from across the globe. The company's live and filmed works have been presented across the globe from New York to Cuba, Turkey, Mexico, Finland and Brazil. Detour dance is the recipient of a 2017 CHIME Award from Margaret Jenkins Dance Company. The company was also nominated for a 2017 Isadora Duncan Dance Award (an "Izzie") for Outstanding Achievement in Choreography. For more information visit detourdance.com.

Pictured: Jana Griffin, Sienna Williams and Scott Marlowe. Photo by Melissa Lewis.

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