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SFIAF 2011 – The World’s Stage Comes to San Francisco

Arts >

The San Francisco International Arts Festival brings together dance, music, opera, performance art and theatre from all over the globe to the Bay Area for three weeks in May and June. We’re proud to ticket this amazing festival featuring the finest in global performance with artists coming all the way from Spain, Israel, Poland, Iraq, the Netherlands and across the United States to perform in front of eager Bay Area audiences in a variety of venues.

The festival begins on Wednesday, May 18, 2011 and here’s a list of some of the acts to look out for. Just click on the hyperlinks to go to the ticket page.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJsu3pCVkVc]

Omar Sosa & John Santos with the Omar Sosa Quintet Wednesday, May 18, 2011 The 2011 San Francisco International Arts Festival gets under way with a world class collaborative music concert by Afro-Cuban jazz great Omar Sosa and the Bay Area’s own master of Latin Jazz, John Santos supported by Sosa’s multi-talented international ensemble of players. The concert marks three years since Sosa and Santos last played at SFIAF when, at a sun-soaked Yerba Buena Gardens in what was their first shared in concert in ten years, they thrilled an audience of nearly 4,000 people.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IC4PWxZOeoI]

Teatr Zar Performing “The Gospels of Childhood Triptych” between May 19 and May 25, 2011 SFIAF is proud to present the northern California debut of Teatr Zar, the resident company at the Grotowski Institute in Wroclaw, Poland. The Gospels of Childhood Tripych is the culmination of artistic director, Jaroslaw Fret and the company’s more than 10 years of investigative research and development into ancient sacred songs. It is a seminal work that also builds on the nearly half a century of teaching and exploration conducted by Jerzy Grotowski. The company emulates Grotowski’s ethos of ensemble work and develops its productions through a long process of creating its own theatrical language. A language that, like Grotowski’s in the last years of his life, utilizes Eastern Orthodox music as a source for the creation of a performance that seeks to recreate the very roots of theatre itself.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9lXqOREN38]

Erling Wold’s Fabrications presents “Queer” – Starts Friday, May 20, 2011 It has been ten years since the first production of Erling Wold’s Queer, and twenty-five since the publication of the novel, William Burroughs’ seminal autobiography of his time in Mexico City. The new edition of which mentions Wold’s “superb operatic adaptation,” in the forward by Oliver Harris. “Queer” stars Joe Wicht (aka Trauma Flintstone) recreating the landmark, narcotics fueled role of Burroughs’ pseudonym William Lee. The story takes place in the late forties, after Burroughs has escaped to Mexico to avoid an “unpromising court date for heroin and marijuana possession.” The city was tremendously corrupt, cheap to live in and tolerant of Burroughs’ indiscretions, namely his heroin addiction and his homosexual desires.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkdcUOppB5k]

Iraqi Bodies & Nina Haft and Company Iraqi Bodies will make their US debut at this year’s Festival with “Crying of My Mother,” a metaphor for the religious conflict in Iraq. Three men living in the same house start, with time, to disagree and resist each other. Greed, malignance, violence and killing become their only language. The company’s artistic director, Muhanad Rasheed is fast becoming a dance phenomenon in the Netherlands, where the artists currently reside. Also on this shared bill is “T:HERE,” an innovative new collaboration between Nina Haft & Company and Bay Area Palestinian dance artists and musicians. “T:HERE” integrates elements of contemporary and Middle Eastern folkloric dance forms in a provocative performance about what it means to occupy place. “T:HERE” grows out of Nina Haft & Company’s recent travels in the Middle East.