Upcoming Events
IF I GIVE YOU MY SORROWS and THE ONLY DOOR I CAN OPEN
Performance and Visual Arts Exhibit
Presented by Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
January 31 – February 2, 2025
Friday and Saturday at 8PM
Sunday at 2PM
YBCA Galleries and Forum Building
701 Mission St
San Francisco, CA 94103
Ticket Link Coming Soon!
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts is presenting Flyaway Productions and Empowerment Avenue as we bring performance and visual art back to the public. These two events will run simultaneously in the Forum and in the Galley Space at YBCA. The works feature the voice, experience and wisdom of incarcerated women.
IF I GIVE YOU MY SORROWS features the artistry and activism of Betty McKay, Lisa Strawn, Tomiekia Johnson, Pamela Z, Carla Kihlstedt, Kayla Harwood, Megan Lowe, Sonsherée Giles, MaryStarr Hope, nalalya shoaf, Jhia Jackson, Jamielynn Duggan, Dave Freitag, Sean Riley, Matt Antaky, and Jo Kreiter.
Listing of Galley hours and events for the ONLY DOOR I CAN OPEN coming soon!
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Jo Kreiter Teaching at the Tuesday Jam
January 7 + 14, 2025
Tuesdays, 6-7:30PM for the Class | Jam at 7:30PM
Finnish Hall
1970 Chestnut St, Berkeley, CA
See More Info About Tuesday Jam
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Bodies of Empowerment Masterclass
LOVING THE AIR
March 21, 2025
Friday, 6:30PM-8:30PM
ZACCHO Studio
1777 Yosemite Ave, San Francisco, CA
Free
Registration Link Coming Soon!
This is an all levels apparatus-based, off the ground dance class offered as part of the Bodies of Empowerment Series, facilitated by Kristin Darrow and Company. If you are a dancer who has been wanted to try dancing off the ground, this is a great way to get an introduction. No previous experience required.
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Bay Area Dance Week – Save the Date
LOVING THE AIR
Bay Area Dance Week is April 25- May 4, 2025.
Stay Tuned for Details and exact time/date of Flyaway’s Class.
ZACCHO Studio
1777 Yosemite Ave, San Francisco, CA
Free
Flyaway and ZACCHO will team up once again to offer a free aerial master class, LOVING THE AIR, for all levels.
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DOWN ON THE CORNER
Created in partnership with the TurkXTaylor Initiative, Composer Melanie DeMore, visual artist Leila Weefur, and Flyaway’s Artistic Team
September – October 2025
Exact Date/Times Coming Soon
Turk and Taylor Streets in the Tenderloin, SF
San Francisco, CA 94102
Ticket Link Coming Soon!
In the heart of the Tenderloin, at the intersection of Turk and Taylor, is a building with a long history. 111 Taylor was where the 1966 Compton’s Cafeteria Riot broke out in which trans women fought against violent police harassment in the Tenderloin (three years before the Stonewall riots!). Today, the building is owned and operated by GEO Group—a company that profits from private prisons.
DOWN ON THE CORNER will surround this landmark building with dance, music, projections, and a vision of forward-thinking liberation as part of a strategic movement to transform the building from a carceral stronghold into a community space that honors the Transgender Cultural District’s history of resistance and resilience.
Recently Past Events
Flyaway Performance in The D.I.R.T. Festival
13 invocations for World Peace
November 4, 2024
Monday at 7PM
Dance Mission Theater
3316 24th St, San Francisco, CA 94110
Flyaway is thrilled to be a part of this political activist arts festival: 13 invocations for World Peace. We will be performing an excerpt from Ode to Jane—featuring Laura Elaine Ellis, Jhia Jackson, and Ai Yin Adelski and Music by Xoa Asa—in an evening program that includes Sarah Bush Dance Project and Dance Brigade. The full festival runs October 24 – November 5, 2024.
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ODE TO JANE
Free Performances
October 4-12, 2024
Friday, Oct. 4 at 7:30PM
Saturday, Oct. 5 at 7:30PM and 8:30PM
Thursday, Oct. 10 at 7:30PM
Friday, Oct. 11 at 7:30PM and 8:30PM
Saturday, Oct. 12 at 7:30PM and 8:30PM
The Cadillac Hotel (above the Tenderloin Museum)
398 Eddy Street, San Francisco
PUBLIC ENGAGEMENTS at the Tenderloin Museum. All Welcome.
Friday, Oct. 4, post show: artist reception and celebration
Thursday, Oct. 10, post-show: panel discussion with housing activist Nina “Peaches” Foster; Natasha Dennerstein, former lead housing navigator at St. James Infirmary; and Dr. Nicole Barnett, Chief Operating Officer, Planned Parenthood Northern California
Friday, Oct. 11 at 6 PM: the Tenderloin Museum will host a Tenderloin history walking tour with a feminist lens on the neighborhood.
Sign up for Walking Tour Here!
This is a Free Event open to all; no tickets or reservations required.
In the pre-Roe v. Wade era, activists in Chicago, calling themselves ‘Jane,’ built an underground network for women with unwanted pregnancies and provided illegal abortions to an estimated 11,000 women. Flyaway Productions’ new site work, ODE TO JANE, appreciates this history of resistance and brings a contemporary lens to what resistance looks like in the San Francisco Bay Area’s Tenderloin, right now. We will incorporate oral histories, suspended rocking chairs, and aerial dance on fire escapes and walls. We will evoke an expanded idea of what resistance is amidst racial reckoning, the addiction crisis, the city’s housing catastrophe, threats to women’s bodies, and the complex intersection of these realities.
- Directed by: Jo Kreiter
- Performance by: Laura Elaine Ellis, Sonsherée Giles, MaryStarr Hope, Jhia Jackson, Megan Lowe, Ai Yin Adelski, and Saharla Vetsch
- Music by: Xoa Asa
- Lighting by: Jack Beuttler
- Set Design by: Sean Riley
- Rigging Design by: Dave Freitag
- Costumes by: Jaimelyn Duggan
The commission and production of this premiere is made possible in part by the Gerbode Foundation Special Award in the Arts program, as well as support from the CA Arts Council, Zellerbach Foundation, Fleishhacker Foundation, SF Grants for the Arts, New Music USA, and the Walter and Elise Haas Fund.
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Jane Can You?
August 17-18, 2024
Saturday and Sunday, at 3PM
SF Aerial Arts Festival
Fort Mason Center, San Francisco
Flyaway has been commission to create a site-specific dance for the biennial San Francisco Aerial Arts Festival. This new work—featuring Laura Elaine Ellis, Jhia Jackson, and Ai Yin Adelski and Music by Xoa Asa—will fold into ODE TO JANE, premiering in the Fall of 2024.
Flyaway will be in residence with open rehearsals at Fort Mason Monday-Friday, 4:30-8PM, June 17-28, 2024.
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GIRLFLY in the Tenderloin
July 24-25, 2024
Wednesday and Thursday, 7PM
CounterPulse
80 Turk St, San Francisco
Come see the city’s youth in action, with original dances led by Flyaway Artists and created by the city’s esteemed youth of our 2024 program.
Supported by DCYF, Walter and Elise Haas Fund, the Bill Graham Foundation, and the CA Arts Council
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Which Way Do You Face When You Mourn for the Dead?
May 11, 2024
Saturday, 1PM
Ferry Building Plaza
San Francsico, CA
An intervention and performance by Flyaway Productions, with Mega Mouth Rebels for Peace & Justice in Palestine.
This is a Free Event open to all; no tickets or reservations required.
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Convergence Festival
May 3-5, 2024
6th Annual Vancouver Contact Improvisation Festival, Canada
See More Info About Convergence
A three day extravaganza of contact improv with over 31 classes and nine jams held at Simon Fraser University School for the Contemporary Arts. Flyaway’s Jo Kreiter is teaching at thespin.
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Bay Area Dance Week Class:
LOVING THE AIR
April 26, 2024
Friday, 5-7PM
ZACCHO Studio
1777 Yosemite Ave, San Francisco, CA
Free
Register for Bay Area Dance Week Class Here
Flyaway Productions and ZACCHO studio are teaming up to offer a free, off the ground, apparatus-based dance class called LOVING THE AIR. Students will be introduced to dancing on low-flying steel objects. This is an all levels adult class for students age 13 and UP. We cant wait to FLY with you. We will swing, fly and spin.
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Flyaway’s Next Workshop:
LOVING THE AIR
April 20 and 21, 2024
Saturday and Sunday, 4-6PM
ZACCHO Studio
1777 Yosemite Ave, San Francisco, CA
$85
Flyaway is offering another apparatus-based dance weekend workshop. This is an all levels workshop for students who want to cultivate strength, trust, listening, inversions, and partnering with a flying object. We will dance on steel hoops, umbrellas, and poles, focusing on techniques, sequences, and your own exploration.
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Jo Kreiter Teaching at the Tuesday Jam:
LOVING THE FLOOR
March 5 + 12, 2024
Tuesdays, 6-7:30PM for the Class | Jam at 7:30PM
Finnish Hall
1970 Chestnut St, Berkeley, CA
See More Info About Tuesday Jam
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The Only Door I Can Open: Women Exposing Prison through Art and Poetry
MoAD Digital Exhibition
September 27, 2023 – March 3, 2024
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Kathleen Hermesdorf FRESH Legacy Exchange
February 12, 2024
Monday, 7-8:30PM
CounterPulse
80 Turk St, San Francisco, CA
See More Info About FRESH Exchanges
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Jo Kreiter Teaching at the New Years CI Jam:
LOVING THE FLOOR
December 29, 2023 – January 1, 2024
Jo Teaches on December 30th, 4-6 PM
Finnish Hall
1970 Chestnut St, Berkeley, CA
More Info About New Year’s CI Jam Here
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Jo Kreiter Teaching Tuesday Jam Classes:
Form and Sensation in Contract Improvisation
November 7 and 14, 2023
Tuesdays, 6PM-7:30PM
Finnish Hall
1970 Chestnut St, Berkeley, CA
More Info About Tuesday Jam Here
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Flyaway’s Next Workshop:
Apparatus Based Dance
November 11-12, 2023
Saturday and Sunday, 1PM-3PM
ZACCHO Studio
1777 Yosemite Ave, San Francisco, CA
$80
In this All Levels Workshop, we will dance on suspended steel objects—finding Joy, Risk, and Invention.
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TABOO
Art + Dance + Performance + Text Teachings
November 11, 2023
Saturday, 5PM (Performance)
10AM-7PM (Exhibition)
ICA SF
901 Minnesota St, San Francisco, CA 94107
Jo is a 2023 artist fellow at LABA BAY AREA, a laboratory for Jewish culture and one of five LABA hubs around the world. We spent the first half of this year immersed in ancient Jewish texts, studying stories, philosophy, poetry, and hallucinations on the subject of TABOO. Then Jo and nine other fellows created new work fertilized by this study, which will be shown in an upcoming gallery show and performance series (dance, film, teachings, storytelling, etc.) at ICA SF.
Flyaway is performing an excerpt from IF I GIVE YOU MY SORROWS.
Collectively, the work looks at TABOO from all sides, the profane, the sacred, the unjust, and—most of all—the ways in which TABOOs are containers for the contradictions within us all.
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IF I GIVE YOU MY SORROWS
Performance and Visual Arts Exhibit
October 6-15, 2023
Friday, October 6 at 7:30 p.m. (Panel discussion to follow)
Saturday, October 7 at 7:30 p.m. and 9 p.m.
Sunday, October 8 at 7:30 p.m. (Panel discussion to follow)
Wednesday, October 11 at 7:30 p.m.
Thursday, October 12 at 7:30 p.m.
Friday, October 13 at 7:30 p.m. (Panel discussion to follow)
Saturday, October 14 at 7:30 p.m. and 9 p.m.
Sunday, October 15 at 7:30 p.m.
SPACE 124
401 Alabama Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
If I Give You My Sorrows starts with a bed. People often hear the phrase “women in bed.” It’s a phrase that can conjure lurid sex, objectification, misogyny. In this historic moment repressing women’s choice and women’s bodies at the national level, we want to reframe women’s beds as a place where our complexity and depth live. Where our bodies rest, transform, grieve, and repair. What secrets do we leave in our beds? What wounds do we bury there? How do our beds hold what is messy, tragic, grueling? Research is rooted in the experience of three women, including trans women, currently and formerly incarcerated.
Featured activists include Betty McKay, Lisa Strawn and Tomiekia Johnson.
The project features original music composed by Carla Kihlstedt, Kalyn Harewood and Pamela Z, and performance by Laura Elaine Ellis, Sonsherée Giles, MaryStarr Hope, Jhia Jackson, Razelle Swimmer, Natalya Shoaf and Megan Lowe.
Audiences are invited to view The Only Door I Can Open: Women Exposing Prison Through Art and Poetry, following each performance, which continues Flyaway’s artist-as-activist work of prison systems change, in partnership with Empowerment Avenue and Museum of African Diaspora. This exhibit is offered by Empowerment Avenue and co- curated by Tomiekia Johnson and Chantell Jeannette Black, who are serving time at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla. Works by six artists and three poets are featured in the collection and will be on view in person adjacent to Space 124 as well as on MoAD’s website as a digital exhibition.
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Special One Day Workshop!
September 16th, 2023
Saturday, 5PM-7:30PM
Space 124
401 Alabama Street, San Francisco, CA 94110
$50
WORKSHOP IS SOLD OUT
This is a rare opportunity to dance on Flyaway’s new suspended apparatus, currently in development for IF I GIVE YOU MY SORROWS. We are accepting 8 students only, for an intimate, in depth exploration of three hanging steel beds, designed for aerial dance. Previous aerial dance experience will be helpful.
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GIRLFLY 2023 Performances
July 28th, 2023
Friday at 5PM and 6:30PM
(the same show repeats twice)
Space 124
401 Alabama Street, San Francisco, CA 94110
Looking at systems of belonging and identity, 20 young artists respond to the question, “What do you carry to lands you now live, from lands you have come from?” This question recognizes land stolen from native people; the experience of immigrant and first generation youth; and the hope for safe space now and in the future. The event also showcased youth visual art curated by Adrian Arias and youth writing curated by Kim Shuck. Jo Kreiter and Megan Lowe guide the way for both the performance works.
No Pre-Registration Required
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BOOM ARTS presents APPARATUS OF REPAIR
June 9-11, 2023
Friday-Sunday, 8:30PM
(performances may be moved to June 12 or 13, in the event of inclement weather)
NW 4th Ave and Everett Street
Portland, Oregon
Reserved seating is available starting at $25 per seat, or $5 per seat for Oregon Trail Card Holders.
Pay-what-you-can standing room/bring your own chair space will be available on site.
Performances will be held on the corner of NW 4th Ave and Everett Street in Portland.
Click Here for More Info and to Reserve Seats!
APPARATUS OF REPAIR is the culmination of The Decarceration Trilogy, an ambitious series of site-specific aerial dance and public art events addressing the devastating effects of mass incarceration in the United States. Apparatus of Repair transforms the intimate healing process of restorative justice into a public performance, danced in the air and on the vertical surfaces of buildings.
With a cast of five female dancers, Apparatus of Repair engages ideas of restorative justice as an alternative to the prison system. The work is grounded in the lived experiences of survivors of violent assault as well as the perpetrators of that violence. Many of the participating artists consented to bring their own deeply personal experiences to the project as survivors.
“Restorative justice is a fast-growing social movement offering peaceful solutions to harm,” said Flyaway Artistic Director Jo Kreiter. “To quote activist Aishah Shahidah Simmons, it is ‘love with accountability.’ Restorative justice causes less damage and holds more hope than our current legal system.”
Over the last two years, Flyaway has worked in coalition with Community Works based in Oakland, California. The organization has been a leader in the field of restorative justice, serving to advance policies and practices that promote diversion away from prisons as well as successful reentry for those who serve time. Led by restorative justice practitioner Kevin Martin, Community Works connected Flyaway with incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people as part of the research for the piece.
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#330: Informal, Improvised Showing
April 29, 2023
Saturday, 4PM-5PM
ZACCHO Studio
1777 Ave # 330 SF CA
A Free Bay Area Dance Week Event
Register Here
Celine Alwyn Parker, Jo Kreiter and Mihyun Lee offer a free open rehearsal called #330. An informal experiment. Improvised dance collaboration in and out of contact. Seasoned dancers. Mothers. Shared artistic leadership. The tension between forms unfolding, and what to limit. Intertwining the private, interpersonal, political and the space in between.
A great way to spend an afternoon.
Chocolates to follow.
ZACCHO is located at 1777 Yosemite Ave #330. Use the street address when using your navigation App to get there. There is easy free parking.
Email jo@flyawayproductions your access needs so we can best support your attendance
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Flight School Apparatus Based Workshop
February 25-26th, 2023
Saturday and Sunday, 4:30-6:30PM
ZACCHO Studio
1777 Yosemite Ave, San Francisco
$85
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Last Dance at Wood Street Commons
Eviction Defense Party and Performance
January 21, 2023
Saturday, 4PM
Wood Street Commons
1707 Wood Street, Oakland
Free
Join Flyaway at Wood Street Commons on Saturday, January 21 at 4PM to honor the long battle that Wood Street Commons has gone through to remain a community. The 300-person camp — a village unto its own — is at the leading edge of a self-determination movement gaining steam within unhoused communities on the West Coast. Though the outside world does not see them this way, encampments are vibrant communities based around an ethos of interdependence. Directed by Jo Kreiter, dancers Clarissa Dyas, Laura Elaine Ellis, and Sonshere Giles will bring improvised and choreographed messaging, danced in support of the residents. Wear shoes appropriate for muddy rain puddles. At the event, members of the camp will speak about their Homeless Helping the Homeless program.