National Queer Arts Festival Press Releases
Overview of National Queer Arts Festival 2003

EVENT DETAILS
An open-gendered, house party buffet of genderplay & performing arts in celebration of our queer communities. Events include Cabaretstitute, workshops on kinging and self-defense, an alternative fashion show, Mixed Fruit Word Jam, bands, dj's and the Drag King Junior Contest. Prizes and Give-a-ways galore!

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When: Thursday - Saturday, June 5th - 7th 8:00pm

What: Torn Paper Tears Easy & Oui de Deux
A Shared Evening of Dance, Trapeze, Theater and Mixed Media Performance Art by Dominique Zeltzman & Beth Lisick and Tara Jepsen

Where: SomArts Theater, 934 Brannan Street @ 8th Street

Tickets: $12 advance; $15 at the door

More Info: Qcc Info & Box (415) 3340-Qcc

EVENT DETAILS
Torn Paper Tears Easy is mixed genre show by Dominique Zeltzman, combining dance, narrative, video, aerial trapeze, sewing and installation, to humorously address suicide, isolation and fantasy. Oui de Deux - the world of artistic duos becomes disturbing and new with a series of three duets. Adult contemporary singers, movement specialists and comediennes are on the menu for deux, interspersed with the sincere and beautiful musical stylings of Katy Davidson. Beth Lisick and Tara Jepsen share a comic take on the earnest teaming of artists, bringing to the stage two of their most popular duos - Carole Murphy and Mitzi Fitzsimmons, comediennes at the blunt forefront of Estrogen Comedy, and Sharol and Barol Claussen, movement specialists ousted from an angry dance community. The opening duo is a never-seen-before surprise, sure to please those with sensitive ears.

Artist Biographies:

Dominique Zeltzman is a queer genre-blending solo performer, choreographer, dancer, teacher, and aerialist. Her work has shown in the Bay Area, Vermont, New York, Rhode Island and Baltimore since 1991. Venues include The Bay Area Dance Series, Footwork Dancers' Group, Dance Mission, New Langton Gallery, The Lab, Headlands Center for the Arts, ODC Theater, The Flynn Theater and Movement Research at The Judson Church (among others). She collaborates extensively in duo with Kathleen Hermesdorf and Selene Colburn. Her work seeks to expand the dance audience by introducing mixed disciplines, multi media, and stories that capture the imagination and appeal to common experience.

Tara Jepsen and Beth Lisick have been collaborating since the Pabst went down at the Michigan Womyn_s Music Festival in 1999. Their first two-woman show Fumbling Toward Rock: The Miriam and Helen Story premiered at Venue 9 in San Francisco to great enthusiasm and was awarded a Pick of the Week in the SF Bay Guardian. They took the show to the original Ladyfest in Olympia, Washington the following August and performed to a sold out house at the Midnight Sun. Four months later the show was made into a twenty minute short movie by the same name, produced by Steakhaus Productions (By Hook or By Crook), which debuted in the Frameline Film Festival. Since then Beth and Tara have been hatching a small army of female artist duos and trotting them out at Ladyfest San Francisco, Homo-a-Gogo, Spanganga and more. Beth and Tara are currently at work on a feature-length screenplay titled Rusty Citation.

Katy Davidson has been writing and performing music for seven years. She recently toured Japan with her band, and toured part of the U.S. with Mirah and Mates of State, performing solo. Her third record, tentatively titled Keep the Vibe Alive Again, will be released this September on Magic Marker Records.

When: Friday & Saturday, June 6th & 7th 8:00pm

What: Liquid Fire Productions presents WET
A Sultry Evening of Erotic Expressions by Queer Women of Color

Where:The SF LGBT Community Center/Ceremonial Room, 1800 Market @ Octavia Street

Tickets: $10-$20

More Info: Qcc Info & Box (415) 3340-Qcc

EVENT DETAILS
WET: A cabaret-style performance event featuring queer women of color, performing sexy, steamy, in-your-face spoken word, poetry, music, dance and song pieces that will taunt and tease you, make you WET, and leave you thirsty and begging for more, more, more! Don’t miss these women - they will take you on a fun-filled, wild and seductive ride to ecstasy and beyond! Presented by Liquid Fire Productions, created and directed by Veronica C. Comb.

Artist Biography

Veronica C. Combs, an accomplished producer, director, facilitator/teacher with an extensive background in the performing arts, has been producing groundbreaking lesbian performance programming in the Bay Area for the last eight years. She is the founder and director of Liquid Fire Productions, an organization dedicated to the authentic representation of lesbians of color on stage and in film. She is the mastermind behind The Liquid Fire Project, a project in which lesbians of color, through a 5-month workshop and rehearsal process, develop multidisciplinary performances from their life stories that reclaim and celebrate race and erotic power. Through Liquid Fire Productions, she also produces the annual event, WET, an erotic cabaret style event for queer women of color. During her tenure as Artistic Director of Luna Sea Women’s Performance Project in San Francisco from 1995 to 1998, Veronica produced and directed several festivals and performances including Women of Color Month (September 1996 & 1997), featuring Juke Joint, Sistahs Singin’ and the first incarnations of The Liquid Fire Project; and Disputed Territory (June 1996 - 1998), featuring performances that addressed issues considered taboo in the queer community. She produced and co-directed the 1996 production of Skin: the Black and White of It (African American and White lesbians explore racism) with Rhodessa Jones and Adele Prandini. Veronica has received several grants and awards including the California Arts Council Artist-In-Residence, San Francisco Arts Commission, Astraea Lesbian Action Foundation, Horizons Foundation, and The Women’s Foundation

When: Friday & Saturday, June 6th & 7th 8:00pm

What: The Size of Her Rage
Queer Latina and Mixed-Race Artists Respond to Domestic Violence

Where:The SF LGBT Community Center/Rainbow Room, 1800 Market @ Octavia Street

Tickets: $7-$12 sliding scale

More Info: Qcc Info & Box (415) 3340-Qcc

EVENT DETAILS
The Size of Her Rage is a creative approach to building community and continuing the necessary discussion on the prevalence of domestic violence in same-gender female couples. The five artists bring diverse ideas of race, socio/economics, butch/femme, and other identity politics to the performance. A Q & A session with the artists will immediately follow. This production was developed through a Latina Lesbian Domestic Violence prevention workshop, sponsored by Proyecto ContraSIDA Por Vida, and funded by LLEGO's violence prevention program called ¡BASTA! (enough). Co-sponsored by Proyecto, QueLACo (Queer Latino/a Artists Coalition), Qcc, United States of Asian America Festival (APICC), and the (a)eromestiza project.

Artist Biographies

Gigi Otálvaro-Hormillosa is an interdisciplinary performance artist, percussionist, video artist, cultural activist, writer and curator of Filipino and Colombian descent. Originally from Miami, she has worked with non-profit arts organizations and HIV prevention service agencies and has collaborated with a wide range of Bay Area performing artists and curators such as Pearl Ubungen, Guillermo Gomez-Peña, Elia Arce, Afia Walking Tree and Carolina Ponce de Leon. Her work in performance and video has been presented nationally and internationally including the Phillipines, Montreal and Lima. As Artistic Director and founder of Aero-mestiza, she has created and produced major pieces that have been staged at Galeria de la Raza, the Mission Cultural Center, Bindlestiff Theater, the LGBT Community Center and SomArts. The Size of Her Rage, another original work exploring mixed-race domestic violence issues among lesbians, will premiere at the Sixth Annual National Queer Arts Festival in June 2003. Her writing has been published by Social Justice Journal, shellac, artistmanifesto.com, Antithesis Journal: Sex 2000 and an anthology entitled Postcolonial and Queer Theories: Intersections and Essays. Awards include grants from the Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art (2000-2001), the San Francisco Art Commission Cultural Equity Grants Program, the Zellerbach Family Fund and the Potrero Nuevo Fund Prize.

Karla E. Rosales is a native San Franciscan of Nicaraguan descent, queer femme, researcher, cultural worker, archivist, and youth advocate. Her groundbreaking thesis entitled, Papi’s, Dykes, Daddies: A Study of Self-Identified Chicana and Latina Butches documents gender identification of Latina dykes in the San Francisco Bay Area. As a member of La Colectiva: LGBT Latina and Latino Historical Collective, Karla is helping to archive local queer history. Otherwise known as Sticky Girl, for almost a decade Karla has presented her creative work in various venues including in local and national queer and Latino community events, publications, conferences and receptions. Her poetry has been published in two anthologies and she co-produced The Papa Project: Cartographies of Fatherhood for Luna Sea, Women’s Performance Project highlighting performance pieces by Chicana/Latina and African-American lesbian artists. Her most current performance was a collaborative piece addressing intimate violence among Latina lesbians entitled, The Size of her Rage.

Veronica Majano is a Mission-born, San Francisco filmmaker whose work has screened at the Guggenheim Museum, Film Arts Festival, Picture Talking Festival, and Women in the Director’s Chair Festival. In 1999, she received a grant from the Film Arts Foundation. Currently, she is an Artist in Residence of the Mexican Museum working with middle school students teaching them video making skills. She also serves on the Board of Proyecto ContraSIDA Por Vida, a queer Latino/a HIV service agency.

Bertha Amador is a Mexican-Chinese Lesbian who was born in Mexico and raised in Los Angeles. She completed a Bachelor of Science in International Business at San Francisco State University. Having completed her degree, she moved to Boston, Massachusetts in the fall of 1994. She was active in promoting lesbian visibility and community through her work with LUNA "Lesbianas Unidas Nunca Aparte," a community based Latina Lesbian non-profit organization in Boston. Returning to San Francisco during the summer of 1996, Bertha became an active "core" member of Ellas en Acción, a non-profit organization dedicated to the political, educational and cultural advancement of Latina lesbians and bisexual women. During recent years, she has written and performed for various Queer Latino venues including projects at the Mission Cultural Center, Galería de la Raza, LunaSea Women’s Performance Project, QueLACO and (more recently) for Proyecto ContraSida Por Vida on National LLEGO’s BASTA Project.

Cathy Arellano is a San Francisco-born, Mission District-raised writer whose poetry, fiction, and nonfiction have appeared in books, literary journals, magazines, and grassroots publications, including Tongues Magazine, shellac magazine, Fourteen Hills, Cipactli, ALLGO Pasa, Curve Magazine, and Chicana Lesbians: The Girls Our Mothers Warned Us About. From interviews she conducted, she edited and wrote portraits of women for the publication I Will Survive: Women Living with HIV. She presented her work at many venues, including Galería de la Raza, Intersection for the Arts, the Mission Cultural Center; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the Queer Cultural Center, Jon Sims Center for the Arts, the Women's Building, and El Río Bar in San Francisco.. She is in her fifth year of facilitating creative writing workshops for young people.

When: Friday & Saturday, June 6th & 7th 8:30pm

What: Dyke Nights & Gaze at 848
Performance and Visual Art Exhibition Featuring Queer Women

Where: 848 Community Space, 848 Divisadero St. @ McAllister

Tickets: $12-15 sliding scale, no one turned away for lack of funds

More Info: 848 Info & Box (415) 922-2385 or 848@848.com or http://www.848.com/dykenights

EVENT DETAILS
As part of 848's "More Out than In" series and in celebration of Pride month, 848 presents an evening of dance, spoken word, and music by queer women, curated by Tara Brandel and Jessica Robinson. Performers include Meliza Bañales, Tara Brandel, Jade-blue Eclipse, victoria mcnichol kelly, Toni Pope, Copper Wimmin (Friday) and Kristi Martel (Saturday). Followed by a dance party with all-female trip-hop trio Kayatrip.

GAZE

Gaze is an art exhibition by queer women running from June 6th-30th, as part of 848's "More Out than In" series. Four artists celebrate queer women's perspective - Su Evers (photography), Desiree Lymbertos (photography), Catherine Rinaldo (ceramics), and Atiba Thomas (assemblage). Also featuring Dyke Nights, an evening of performances (see Multi-disciplinary Art & Performance).

Artist Biographies

Meliza Bañales is a spoken-word artist and the author of and I've been fighting ever since and Girl with the Glass Throat She has been published in numerous anthologies and magazines including Transfer, Las Girlfriends, and Revolutionary Voices, the latter of which was nominated for a Lambda Book Award in 2001. She's been called "the girl with the sense of humor of a jackknife." The first Latina ever to win a Bay Area Grand Slam Championship, she's been on three national poetry slam teams and has also competed as an individual at the nationals. She is the winner of the Burning Bush Press People Before Profits Poetry Prize 2002. She is an MFA candidate in Creative Writing and a lecturer at San Francisco State University. Originally from Los Angeles, she now lives in Oakland, California.

Tara Brandel is a modern dancer and choreographer who has been making queer work since 1990. Described by Dance Theatre Journal as having a "raw emotional intensity", Brandel's new show Love Dances celebrates love in the face of war and fear. She will be performing an extract as part of Dyke Nights at 848 Community Space.

Jade-blue Eclipse, born in Nagasaki, Japan, learned her survival and performance skills in San Francisco’s seedy strip joints, hip night clubs and alternative performance venues. Instead of engaging in violence and drug use she studies Chinese acrobatics at the SF Circus Center with Mr. Lu Yi, a master trainer from the Nanjing Acrobatic Troupe. Specializing in hand balancing and contortion allows Jade to focus her masochistic tendencies into fierce and uncompromising performance.

victoria mcnichol kelly is a poet, singer, visual and performing artist. she was recently seen in The Transit Rider at Dance Mission Theater, and performing her own work at Temescal Arts Center in Oakland. She occasionally leaves poems on answering machines, and is currently trying to fund the production of her one-person show everything's relative & it all tastes like chicken.

Su Evers has been photographing in the Bay Area for eleven years now, Photographing all things. She was part of the queer arts festival in 2001 at build space, and studies photography at City College in S. F.

Desiree Lymbertos a Lesbian Iranian photographer brings her appreciation of beauty, women, and nature into her work by exploring the intimacy necessary to connect with her subjects in order to capture what is real and natural in the moment.
Catherine Rinaldo is a local clay artist, she finds clay to be a most malleable and forgiving medium that encourages a direct expression of the artist's subconscious and unconscious rumblings. Her most recent works are inspired by night dreams and explores our seemingly inseparable relationship with suffering.

When: Sunday, June 8th 7:00pm

What: Taking It to the Street
Sketches, Poems and Monologues with the brOTHERs

Where: SomArts Theater, 934 Brannan Street @ 8th Street

Tickets: $7-$12 sliding scale

More Info: Qcc Info & Box (415) 3340-Qcc

EVENT DETAILS
brOTHERs is a year old theatrical performance and spoken word collective of artists of color from a variety of cultures, races, classes and creeds, who fall somewhere on the spectrum from masculine female to transman. With a mission of Opening The Heart and Erasing Restrictive Stereotypes surrounding gender identity, race and sexuality, their work challenges the many misconceptions about who they are as women born/male identified people of color, living in a binary, often hostile and heterosexist world. They collaborate on different issues specific to their lives to give voice to the unimagined and unconventional. brOTHERs is a recipient of a Qcc Creating Queer Community grant.

Artist Biographies

La Tricia Ransom is a 38 year-old butch dyke who is her mother’s only daughter and sometimes the son she never had. She is a performance virgin, and without the love and support of her partner Tamra Winchester or the encouragement of her brOTHERs, would still be sitting in the audience saying, "I wish I had the nerve to do that."

Yoseñio V. Lewis is a dark skinned Latino female to male transsexual who has been an activist since 1973. Maintaining his commitment towards social justice, he has directed his passion and energies to securing rights for a variety of "marginalized" groups. A health educator, speaker, writer, trainer, organizational management consultant, facilitator and spiritual hugger; Yoseñio is on the board of directors for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) and was also appointed to the initial San Francisco Transgender Civil Rights Implementation Task Force. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Tenderloin AIDS Resource Center, a founding member of All Our Families Coalition and immediate past Chair of the National Transgender Advocacy Coalition (NTAC). Yoseñio also does spoken word performance with QueLACo, the Queer Latino Artists Coalition. Yoseñio has been a subject of several documentaries, including Christopher Lee’s Trapping of Transhood and the television channel A&E’s Transgender Revolution.

E. is a strong butch expressing his/her self on many levels of the artistic spectrum. S/he writes, composes and creates to challenge, expand and open our understanding of ourselves and others. S/he invites you into his/her world so as you can be empowered to walk in your own.

Angelo is a 42 year old other, from the streets of St. Louis, MO who appreciates all aspects of being. Angelo says "I observe life as it flashes before me, ever changing me… it feels good to share what goes on inside of me. My quest in life is to go deeper each time that I breathe. Writing is the way that I touch God and God touches me back. Three of my most favorite things are life, love and lust. Life because it is through the inhale and exhale of living that I reach for something better, Love because it is with the reaching inside myself that I find something better, and lust because it is in the breath of another in sync with mine that I explore the possibilities of what better must look like from the inside."

Prado Gomez is a proud Mestizo Chicano/Apache/Hopi son of San Francisco. He was introduced to the magic of theater in high school. Since then he has spent 7 years writing/acting/directing with DramaDIVAS and a few years backstage at a few Bay Area theaters. You can see his face (and other parts of him) in the recently released short Unhung Heroes and hear his voice as a member of the Transcendence Gospel Choir.

Johnnie Pratt is an old enough to know better African-American female-bodied transgender performance artist who grew-up all over the continental U.S. and the Far East as a Third Culture Kid (better translated as military brat). His desire to belong and perform prompted him to actualize a vision and create the transgender people of color performance collective called brOTHERs (better known as "Other Brothers"). brOTHERs provides an avenue to live out his exhibitionism while reaching out to Trans folks of color with truth, much love, and respect with regard to the struggles of our daily lives. His life quest is to create a safe space for folks to actualize who they really are on all levels of their being with as much playfulness as possible. As far as living the reality of his gender identity, it takes its form in faggot sensibilities with woman loving tendencies.

When: Friday & Saturday, June 13th & 14th 8pm

What: Intercourse: A Sex and Gender Recipe for Revolution
Performances Reflecting Intersex, Transgender, Transsexual, and Genderqueer Experiences.

Where: The SF LGBT Community Center/Ceremonial Room, 1800 Market @ Octavia Street

Tickets: $5-$50 sliding scale, no one turned away for lack of funds

More Info: Qcc Info & Box (415) 3340-Qcc

EVENT DETAILS
Featuring Leslie Feinberg on Friday night, Kate Bornstein on Saturday night! Thea Hillman presents Intercourse - two nights of performances about sex and gender from those whose very existence questions and challenges societal norms. With spoken word, hip hop, song, burlesque, and an occasional violin, Intercourse will raise awareness about our worlds and our issues, as well as build bridges within the queer community. Following the sold-out Intercourse 2001, the evenings promise to once again be landmark events that truly celebrate our communities. Both nights will be wheelchair accessible and Saturday’s performance will be ASL interpreted.

Artist Biographies

Thea Hillman is a local writer, performer and intersex activist. She is the author of the critically acclaimed Depending on the Light and a local poetry slam champion with an MFA in English/Creative Writing. Thea has performed her work at festivals, bookstores, and reading series across the country. She has produced many performance events including Rated XXY: An Evening of Erotica and Education benefiting ISNA; ForWord Girls the first inclusive all-girl spoken word festival; and the sold-out Intercourse: A Sex and Gender Spoken Word Recipe for Revolution for the National Queer Arts Festival. She is on the Mills College Board of Trustees and Board Chair of the Intersex Society of North America.

Leslie Feinberg's novel, Stone Butch Blues, published on March 1,1993 by Firebrand Books, has received a wildly popular response in the United States and has been translated into Chinese, German and Dutch. The novel won the prestigious American Library Association Award for Gay and Lesbian Literature and a LAMBDA Literary Award in 1994. Feinberg's non-fiction work, Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to RuPaul, is the first analysis of the historical roots of transgender oppression. Transgender Warriors won the 1996 Firecracker Alternative Book Award for Non-Fiction. Feinberg is also the author of Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue, published by Beacon in 1998, and was listed in the Village Voice 25 Best Books supplement. Feinberg is well-known in the U.S. and many other parts of the world as an activist who works to help forge a strong bond between the lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans communities. Feinberg has worked for more than 25 years in defense of the sovereignty, self-determination and treaty rights of Native nations and for freedom of political prisoners in the U.S. Ze is an internationalist and has been part of the anti-Pentagon movement since the U.S. war against Vietnam. Since October 1993, she has appeared on the Joan Rivers show and scores of other television and radio programs. Feinberg has been interviewed and reviewed by virtually every lesbian/gay, transgender and feminist publication in the United States as well as publications in Argentina, Japan, Germany, Australia and England.

Kate Bornstein is an author and performance artist whose published works include the books Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us; My Gender Workbook; and the cyber-romance-action novel, Nearly Roadkill with co-author Caitlin Sullivan. Hir plays and performance pieces include Hidden: A Gender, The Opposite Sex Is Neither, Virtually Yours, Cut'n'Paste, and y2kate: gender virus 2000. Kate's newest play, Strangers in Paradox, opened in San Francisco at Theatre Rhinoceros in March of 2003. Too Tall Blondes in: LOVE, written and performed with Barbara Carrellas, premiered in Boston in 2001. Kate is hard at work on a fictionalized autobiography: Hard Candy: The Tragic Lives and Comical Deaths of Candy Bromowitz. Additionally, Kate is gathering material for a new children's book, Hello Cruel World, providing viable alternatives to teen suicide.

When: Friday-Sunday, June 20th-22nd 8:00pm

What: Fresh Meat 2003
A Trans and Queer Cabaret Extravaganza

Where: ODC Theater, 3153 17th Street @ Shotwell

Tickets: $12 in advance; $15 at the door

More Info: ODC Theater Info & Box (415) 863-9834

EVENT DETAILS
The runaway hit of the 2002 National Queer Arts Festival returns with another outstanding cabaret multidisciplinary and multimedia extravaganza! Fresh Meat 2003 brings together the Bay Area’s hottest transgendered and queer performers, offering audiences a smorgasbord of homo hip hop, cutting-edge modern dance, all-girl breakdance, steamy tango, femme/butch spoken word, tranny glam rock, and the world’s first transgender gospel choir. Critics have called Fresh Meat "the next generation of cultural innovators" (Critical Dance), and "history in the making" (Bay Area Reporter). Co-presented by Fresh Meat Productions and ODC Theater. Fresh Meat 2003 and Shawna Virago are recipients of Qcc's Creating Queer Community grant.

Artist Biographies

Fresh Meat Productions is gathering local attention as a leader in the creation, development, and presentation of transgender and queer performance. Critics have called Fresh Meat "the next generation of cultural innovators," Critical Dance and "history in the making," by the Bay Area Reporter. Fresh Meat artists include: Marcus Rene Van, Veronica Combs, Sean Dorsey, Shawna Virago, Jose Navarrete and Debby Kajayama, Angelo Hannah, STEAMROLLER Dance, JenRO, and the Transcendence Gospel Choir.

Sean Dorsey, Fresh Meat's Artistic Director, is a genderqueer choreographer, dancer, community organizer, activist, arts administrator, and event producer. Dorsey's groundbreaking work is carving new space for queer and transgendered bodies/stories in modern dance. Dorsey has presented original choreography at ODC Theater, Dance Mission, the Lesbian and Gay Dance Festival, the National Queer Arts Festival, Jon Sims Center, the LGBT Community Center, and at LadyFest and TransArt events. Sean is also a member of Lizz Roman and Dancers , and is Program Coordinator for ODC's Sunday Salon Series, a program supporting new choreographers. Sean Dorsey and Fresh Meat Productions are a Commissioned Artist of the 2003 National Queer Arts Festival. Veronica Combs, director and mastermind behind Liquid Fire, has been producing groundbreaking lesbian of color performance in the Bay Area for eight years. Combs graces Fresh Meat 2003 with her signature blend of fierce, fine, ferocious performance.

Tina D'Elia is a queer Latina performance poet, actor, playwright and singer and one of SF’s stage-femme icons. Think sultry power femme chanteuse meets powerhouse spoken word.

Angelo Hannah is a 42 year old Other, writer, performer, and founding member of brOthers. Hannah's elegant and powerful writing challenges hard hearts and rigid binaries.

Michelle Ito is a Japanese-American lesbian rebel, singer, actor, writer, storyteller, card player and comedian who opens minds and transforms hearts throughout the Bay and across the nation.

Jose Navarrete and Debby Kajiyama blew the roof off ODC Theater at Fresh Meat 2002 with their electrically-charged tango duets…they return this year sharper and steamier than ever.

Jaycub Perez is a Pacific Islander Tranny-Boi hip hop artist, folk-punk musician and poet known for his edgy lyrics and reflections on gender, race, and religion.

Marcus Rene Van is a local hip-hop legend who uses hip-the-word (hip-hop, theater and spoken word) to communicate sharp observations on race, class, and other elephants in the room.

JenRO is a fiercely-talented young female rapper who is breaking the silence of queers in hip hop.

Shawna Virago and The Deadly Nightshade Family are rock ‘n roll provocateurs who deftly tackle issues like police abuse, transphobia, and the myth of democracy with ingenuity, precision, wit and true-to-rock glamour. Shawna Virago is a Commissioned Artist of the 2003 NQAF.

The Sisterz of the Underground is a collective of female hip hop expressionists and breakdancers -- making history and carving space for women in hip hop, right here in the Bay.

STEAMROLLER Dance Company creates physically explosive work that responds to the collision of race, gender, and sexuality. Athletic, irreverent, and precise, STEAMROLLER is an audience favorite and a leader in Bay Area queer performance.

The Transcendence Gospel Choir, the world’s first transgender gospel choir, radiates an infectious joy that inevitably brings audiences to their feet.

When: Friday & Saturday, June 20th& 21st 8:00pm

What: Mediums Collide/Artists Combined
A Mind Rocking Night of Multi-media Performance with Sini Anderson, Elise Baldwin and Veda Hille

Where:SomArts Theater, 934 Brannan Street @ 8th Street

Tickets: $8-$15

More Info: Qcc Info & Box (415) 3340-Qcc

EVENT DETAILS
Performance poet Sini Anderson and sound genius Elise Baldwin perform rocking new works of multimedia performance! YO! YO! US! includes live slides by Point Blank and live video by Killer Banshee Studios. Special Canadian guest artist Veda Hille will be performing the U.S. premier of her award winning piano composition, Field Study. Accompanied by the video created by BC filmmaker, Shawn Chappelle, Field Study has toured extensively in Canada, Germany, & the U.K. A Sister Spit Production.

Artist Biographies

Veda Hille started playing piano when she was 6 and by 1994 she released her first cd, and has released an album roughly every 18 months since then. She released her 7th album, Field Study, in April of 2001. Veda plays piano and tenor guitar, and dabbles in banjo, accordion, and pro-tools. She is currently collaborating with sonic artist Christof Migone on an experimental record called Escape Songs and has recently begun writing and directing short films and puppet shows. In May of 2002 she celebrated 10 years as a full time performing artist with two concerts at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre with her Skilled and Devoted Band. These concerts were taped for a live cd, slated for release at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival in July, where she also premiered a new 40 minute piece commissioned by the festival for their 25th anniversary. Future projects include a revamped multi-media performance of the Emily Carr piece, a composer's residency in the Yukon, a live score for a silent film, and of course, touring.

Sini Anderson is a Performance Poet, Producer, and Director living in San Francisco. Since 1994 Anderson has been the Co-founder and Artistic Director of Sister Spit and Sister Spits Ramblin Road Show. She has performed nationally and internationally for the last decade, in such venues as New York's PS. 122, Seattle’s Bumbershoot Art Festival, Lollapollza’s music Festival, The Michigan Women's Music Festival, Vancouver BC’s Rock for Choice, and on San Francisco Pride’s Main Stage. In 2000 the San Francisco Arts Commission awarded Sini an individual artist grant for her multi-media spoken word show; she has been a featured artist in the National Queer Arts Festival for the past four years. Other organizations supporting her work include: The Horizons Foundation, Theatre Bay Area’s Cash Program, Grants for the Arts SF, and the California Arts Council, Grants for the Arts San Francisco, Open Meadows, The Women’s Foundation, and the Astraea foundation. Sini is the Chief Curator and The Co-Artistic Director for the National Queer Arts Festival, and a Producer of Nectar, the women’s stage at San Francisco’s Pride. She is the Co-Chair of the board of directors for the Harvey Milk Institute, and is on the board of directors for the Queer Cultural Center in SF. Sini Anderson is in the process of forming a new non-profit, queer performance, and literary organization to be announced late spring of 2003! You can find her work in the award- winning anthology The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry and on any of the four Sister Spit CDs; she is releasing her second solo CD in the Summer of 2003 on Mr. Lady Records. Her new work is all based in Multi-Media form. Projected video, still Slides, and live sound scores. She collaborates with artists Silas Howard, Point Blank, and Killer Banshee Studios.

Elise Baldwin resides in San Francisco, and is currently pursuing her MFA in Electronic Music from Mills College. When not indulging her fascination with pyrokenesis or reading compulsively in the bathtub, E. can be found cooking up aurally hazardous byproducts in her studio. She has frittered away much of the past decade as a sound designer and recording engineer, composing for theater, film, live performance and installation. She is madly working with performance poet Sini Anderson on a new show to be premiered at the National Queer Arts Festival untitled YO! Yo! US!' her other work with Anderson includes performances from Homo a GoGo, Women Against War, and Displacement. Anderson and Bladwin are releasing a new CD on Mr. Lady Records fall of 2003.

When: Friday-Saturday, June 20th-21st 8:00pm
Sunday, June 22nd 1:00pm

What: 3rd Annual B/GLAM Arts Festival
Black Gay Letters and Arts Movement Celebration of Word, Art and Performances

Where: The SF LGBT Community Center, Ceremonial Room, 1800 Market @ Octavia Street

Tickets: $7-$12 sliding scale

More Info: Qcc Info & Box (415) 3340-Qcc

EVENT DETAILS

Join curators and co-founders Marvin K. White and Cedric Brown for the 3rd Annual B/GLAM Arts Festival. Telling both forgotten and new stories of Black Gay Men, this two-day celebration of word and performance features some of the most dynamic working artists in the Bay Area. As always, B/GLAM broadens the brush stroke, sings the new song, and dances the familiar and the new dance, all at the intersections of blackness, affection, family, community and love.

Artist Biographies

Marvin K. White is a working poet, playwright, performer, visual artist, cultural events planner, workshop coordinator and facilitator. He has designed and conducted numerous creative writing workshops for communities of color and the LGBT community and has read and performed his original work at many Bay Area venues. In the early nineties, as a member of the critically acclaimed Pomo Afro Homos, he toured the United States and Great Britain. Marvin has also appeared as a dramatic soloist in many Bay Area performance arts festivals. His collection of poetry Last Rights was nominated for a 2000 Lambda Literary Award. His play For Colored Boys Who’ve Considered S-Curls When the Hotcomb Was Enuf enjoyed a successful spring 2001 run at Theater Rhinoceros. Marvin has taught creative writing to youth through the San Francisco based WritersCorps program and coordinated African American programs at the Stop AIDS Project.

Cedric Brown is a musician and performer with past experience in gospel choirs, a cappella vocal groups and musical theater productions. Cedric was the vocalist and arranger for the soul band Cleo Blue, and was frontman for the 1150 Trio jazz ensemble. Cedric has performed several times in the Afro Solo Festival, at the SF LGBT Pride and in Cultural Odyssey’s Underground Jazz Cabaret. His 2001 performance in Marvin White’s poetry play For Colored Boys… received glowing reviews in the SF Chronicle, the Bay Guardian, and the SF Examiner. He has also performed at the Brava Theater, ODC Theater, La Pena Cultural Center, Freight and Salvage, SomArts, the Elbo Room and Café du Nord. Cedric’s written work has appeared in the Bay Guardian, Arise magazine, and The Road Before Us, an anthology of African American writings.

When: Friday-Saturday, June 20th & 21st 6:00pm Reception; 7:00pm Performance

What: QueLACo's Hank Tavera Performance Festival

Where: The SF LGBT Community Center/Rainbow Room, 1800 Market @ Octavia Street

Tickets: $7-$12 sliding scale

More Info: Qcc Info & Box (415) 3340-Qcc

EVENT DETAILS
A mixture of performance events with song, fashion, music, ethnic and folk dance. Featuring Emael, the world premiere of "Requiem To Gwen Araujo", Carlos Manuel, and visiting artist, Tiana Ramirez. Co-produced by QueLACo (Queer Latino/a Artists Coalition) and Qcc.

Tiana Ramirez began performing the tradition of her cultural beginning in the year 2000. Since then she has been performing at local events in the Denver CO area. Prior to that, she has performed in Mexico City with the famous Ballet Folklorico de Mexico de Amalia Hernandez, the Hispanic Mexican Ballet in San Diego, and various groups in Denver, also doing a guest appearance in Atlanta and Pittsburgh. Her talent has made her well known in Denver and hopes to progress throughout the nation, educating others on the beautiful art of Mexican folklore.

e-mael (Nacido en El Monte) is a San Francisco based cultural strategist. He has had solo performances at Southern Exposure, San Francisco Art Institute and Mills College. He has presented work in several spaces in San Francisco including Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the luggage store gallery, and The Lab, as well as in other various cultural epicenters in California and beyond, such as Headlands Center for the Arts (Sausalito), Kerchoff Gallery (Los Angeles), and Exit Art (New York). He presently works as the executive director of Performance Art Direct and will be featured in the forthcoming coming March issue of The Drama Review.

Christopher A. Flores maintains a diverse background in the musical, theatrical and visual arts as a composer, sound & lighting designer, audio engineer & technician. Past musical commissions include scores for productions at the Los Angeles Theatre Center, musical direction for Maria Irene Fornes’ Sarita at Dramatic New Arts and technical Support for The Getty Center, Mark Taper Forum, East West Players, Rachel Rosenthal Company, Diavolo Dance Theatre, Ramaa Bharadvaj, and Los Folkloristas. He is Technical Director for AguaLuna Dance Company, Ballet Folklorico del Pacifico, and The Luckman Jazz Orchestra under the direction of composer/flautist James Newton. Mr. Flores has created Light Designs for Oguri’s Stream and In Between The Heartbeat with visual / performance artist Hirokazu Kosaka and composer Yuval Ron. In 2000, Mr. Flores received an Outstanding Achievement nomination for a Lester Horton Award for his Lighting Design of Hae Kyung Lee’s Ancient Mariners. He is currently on staff at The Norton Simon Museum, and the Stage Manager for the Luckman Fine Arts Complex. Mr. Flores most recent musical compositions include: The Songs of Xochipilli (1999-2000), Ending September (2001), Muses and Other Inspirations (2002), The Passion of Mark (2002), and The Transfigured Body (2002-2003) written in collaboration with choreographer / poet / spiritualist Adrian Ravarour.

Adrian Ravarour, PhD is the lyricist, who has collaborated with Composer Christopher A. Flores on four works. He is the author of 9 books of poetry, two books on EFD dance, and a manual on the Aesthetics of Dance Videography. He is listed in Cassell’s Encyclopedia of Queer Myth, Symbol and Spirit as a writer, and as the creator of the EFD Philosophy and System of Arts. His system incorporates the Arts (Dance, Writing, Painting, & Videography) as spiritual signifiers. His studies with ministers and work as a Staff Member at the Intersection Center for Religion and the Arts (where Art was expressed as a Sacrament), laid the philosophical groundwork for Consciousness & Art studies with Dr. Jose Arguelles. As a director of video and television, his flowing camerawork was instrumental in his recording such dance luminaries & major companies as Bill T. Jones, Mark Morris, Paul Taylor, Royal Swedish Ballet, Miami City Ballet, Susan Marshall, Lyon Opera Ballet. Mr. Ravarour is the president of the Ruth St.Denis Foundation; and, a board member of The Lester Horton Dance Theatre Foundation. He earned two MAs in Theatre Arts, Dance and Video; and, a PhD in Creative Arts/Dance.