Choreographer Jess Curtis collaborated with performance artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña, composer Matthias Herrmann, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) to create the performance-installation, Dances for Non/Fictional Bodies. Also collaborating was a troupe of interdisciplinary performers with and without disabilities. The performance-installations were performed in YBCA’s lobby, gardens, and surrounding area.
Physically and conceptually, the work deconstructed movement vocabulary and ideals of beauty based in socially imagined perfections of form that rarely exist in actual bodies. The artists worked closely with YBCA’s Community Engagement Department and California State University EastBay’s Dance for All Bodies and Abilities Program, as well as Gómez-Peña’s La Pocha Nostra, AXIS Dance Company, and the Mayor’s Office of Disability.
After 15 years of making dance in the Bay Area as an independent choreographer, Jess Curtis founded Gravity in 2000 as a research and development vehicle for live performance. Since then, Curtis and Gravity have performed at home and in more than 50 cities in 14 countries.
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts presents contemporary art from the Bay Area and around the world that reflects the profound issues and ideas of our time, expands the boundaries of artistic practice, and celebrates the diversity of human experience and expression.