Press Room
FLYAWAY PRODUCTIONS ANNOUNCES
THE WORLD PREMIERE OF
DOWN ON THE CORNER
OCTOBER 3 – 11, 2025
Presented near the site of the 1966 Compton’s Cafeteria Riot in partnership with the TurkxTaylor Initiative, singer and songwriter Melanie DeMore, multimedia artist Leila Weefur and Flyaway’s artistic team.
Download High Resolution Photos Here
(Photo Credit: RJ Muna)
Flyaway Productions is proud to announce the world premiere of DOWN ON THE CORNER presented near the site of the 1966 Compton’s Cafeteria Riot. Directed by Flyaway Artistic Director Jo Kreiter in partnership with the TurkxTaylor Initiative (TxT), Down on the Corner features a cast of nine queer, transgender and female performers, commissioned music by singer and songwriter Melanie DeMore, and a film by Leila Weefur.
A total of ten 35-minute shows are scheduled over the course of the run: October 3, 4, 9, 10 and 11 at 7:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. each night. Audiences are invited to gather on the southeast corner of Turk and Taylor. All shows are free with no reservation required.
Down on the Corner is a new public art project that honors the history of the transgender uprising that took place at 111 Taylor Street – one of the first documented protests of police violence against queer people anywhere in the United States – while also serving to reimagine what the building could be today. Since 2004, 111 Taylor has been operated as a for-profit reentry service facility – a halfway house – by GEO Group, a private prison corporation with a long record of labor abuse, human rights violations and immigrant detention.
TxT is an ad hoc collective of activists, artists, architects, historians and others who have come together to liberate the building at 111 Taylor Street and to envision an alternative future for the site, one that honors its legacy of trans and queer resistance. Through cultural production and storytelling, TxT is building a broad-based coalition to remove GEO Group from ownership and transition the property into collective stewardship.
“Down on the Corner demands that American resources be repurposed toward sustainable community investment and away from prisons, caging, detention and profit-driven ‘re-entry processes’ that serve recidivism more than they serve people coming out of prisons,” said Kreiter.
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A Gravity-Defying Dance for Girls Everywhere
“We need to start believing women, believing that our experiences have value,” says Kreiter. “Belittled, pushed aside and assaulted, all these things that every women goes through, we’ve had enough of that.”
A Dancer’s Daring Breakthrough
“With her company, Flyaway Productions, she pushes the boundaries of aerial dance by performing in untraditional venues and addressing social justice issues. Her risk-taking performances take place over alleyways and on rooftops, building walls and fire escapes. Jo’s hope is that by communicating a political statement through the spectacle and innovation of aerial dance, she will inspire people to create change.”
Jo Kreiter’s Reflections on the 20th Anniversary of Flyaway
“Being asked to reflect on 20 years of dance making is daunting. So I have decided to write in the second person. Adrienne Rich, one of my favorite poets and a crucial 20th century political thinker, wrote some of her strongest poems in this narrative voice. I choose to honor her influence on me in this way, with the additional preface that I am truly a Bay Area artist, self- taught and supported by the amazing choreographers who live here, and who have generously allowed me to learn from them.” – Jo Kreiter
Read SPEAK: A Slim Corner of the World here
Performance Previews/Reviews/Articles
Press About Ode to Jane – October 2024
Beyond Chron Review
East Bay Times Preview
See Annotate Program for Ode to Jane Here
Download High Resolution Photos Here (Photo Credit: Brechin Flournoy)
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Press About If I Give You My Sorrows – October 2023
Your Call/KALW
SF Chronicle
SF Examiner
Jen Norris Blog Review
A Peoples Review: More Than A Bed
See Annotated Program for If I Give You My Sorrows Here
Download High Resolution Photos Here (Photo Credit: RJ Muna)
What Audiences Said
“Both the exhibit and performance were powerful and empowering. They hit me in my solar plexus.”
“I wish more people could see this piece and others like it. I like the various calls to action that are provided as it gives the opportunity to do more than just watch.”
“Last night I was honored to accompany my friend Lisa Strawn to the premier of Flyaway Productions’ IF I GIVE YOU MY SORROWS, a dramatic apparatus-based dance depicting the effects of long term incarceration on women. Lisa was interviewed and her story as a trans woman who spent over two decades in San Quentin was one of three featured in this spectacular show. While on the inside Lisa was a trailblazing activist, writer and change-maker fighting to improve conditions for trans women in the prison. Today she continues to inspire me with her vision, sense of humor, and activism.” (Roma Roma)
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Apparatus of Repair – September 2022
See Annotated Program for Apparatus of Repair Here
Download High Resolution Photos Here (Photo Credit: RJ Muna)
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Press about Sorry. Please. No. – February 2022
Bhumi Patel
The Brooklyn Rail
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Press about Meet Us Quickly with Your Mercy – October 2021
Artnet News
Book on Amazon
The Guardian
KQED Forum
San Francisco Chronicle
The Jewish News of Northern California
KQED
See Annotated Program for Meet Us Quickly Here
Download High Resolution Photos Here (Photo Credit: RJ Muna)
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Press about GIRLFLY 2021 – July 2021
SF Department of Children, Youth & Their Families
San Francisco Bay View National Black Newspaper
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Flyaway is honored that our dance film THE WAIT ROOM has been officially selected by the following film festivals:
ADF’s Movies by Movers
Bodyscope Dance Film Festival
Dance Camera West
Greensboro Dance Film Festival
i.P.A.S. Film Festival
LA Dance Film Festival
Phoenix Dance Film Festival
Rogue Dancer Journal
ScreenDance Festival
Thessaloniki Cinedance International
Verve Dance Film Festival
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Press about THE WAIT ROOM – April 2019
New York Times
SF Chonicle
Elizabeth Costello
KALW
Dancers’ Group
SF Chronicle/Bay Area Dance Week
44 Hills
Grant Makers in the Arts
Next City
Download High Resolution Photos Here (Photo Credit: RJ Muna)
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Press about TENDER (n.): a person who takes charge – June 2018
NBC Bay Area
KALW
SF Chronicle
Download High Resolution Photos Here (Photo Credit: RJ Muna)
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Press about The Right To Be Believed – May 2017
SFArts
ExploreDance
Download High Resolution Photos Here (Photo Credit: RJ Muna)
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Press about Grace and Delia are Gone – September 2016
SFGate
SFist
Danceviewtimes
Bayarea.com
KALW “Your Call”
KALW “Open Air”
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Press about Needles to Thread: Dancing Along These Lines – September 2015
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Press about Multiple Mary and Invisible Jane – September 2014
In Dance
SF Examiner
The Huffington Post
SF Chronicle Video Lab
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Press about Give a Woman a Lift – November 2013
CultureVulture
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Press about Niagara Falling – September 2012
SF Chronicle
SF Bay Guardian
In Dance
Dance Stages
SF Arts Monthly
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Press about WALL BALL/Throw Yourself In – May 2012
SF Chronicle/SF Gate
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Press about Singing Praises – September 2010
NBC News
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Press about The Ballad of Polly Ann – July 2009
CultureVulture
SF GATE
SF Weekly
KQED Radio
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Press about Truth Tellers – July 2008
SF Weekly
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Press about the Fire Arts Festival– January 2007
Get A Tec
Rita Felciano
Features
Congratulations to Jo Kreiter, Artistic Director of Flyaway, for receiving recognition on Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’
2018 YBCA 100 List!
Flyaway is proud to announce that Artistic Director Jo Kreiter is the first choreographer named as a
Robert Rauschenberg Foundation 2017 Artist as Activist Fellow.
As part of a two-year grant, Jo’s work, along with the other fellows’ work, will encourage people to move beyond awareness and take action on the injustices that mass incarceration causes generations of immigrants and people of color in the United States.
Flyaway is proud to be featured multiple times on:
Life as a Modern Dancer
by Jill Randall
February 2016 – September 2016
Here are two of our favorites:
Read Artist Profile Feature
Read The Ghost of Something Article
Flyaway is featured in an important book called:
SITE DANCE: Choreographers and the Lure of Alternative Spaces
By Melanie Kloetzel and Carolyn Pavlik
March 2011
It’s a great book and the first of its kind!!!
Order a copy at HERE
“Uplift Quotient: Flyaway Builds a Bridge”
In Dance Magazine
by Selby Wynn Schwartz
July 2009
Read Article
Women and Labor on Your Call Radio
KALW FM
Host: Rose Aguilar
Guests: Jo Kreiter, Molly Martin and Harvey Schwartz
July 2009
Read Article
“Live Billboard Project’s free public performances questions women’s contradictory preoccupation with an aversion to beauty and draw 700-person crowds.”
Bitch Magazine’s “the bitch list”
by Emily Goligoski
Summer 2008
Read Article
Interview with Jo Kreiter on
Spark Television
January 2004
Read Article
Selected Quotes
“An outspoken feminist with social concerns that particularly impact women, Kreiter is a dance theater maker whose choreography gives us images of physically strong and fearless women whether their stories talk about poverty, discrimination or abuse. In the end you believe that they will survive.”
-RITA FELCIANO, DANCEVIEWTIMES
“The site-specific magic of this piece manifests with daring suspension stunts in starkly designed sets with the sight of ships floating through the San Francisco Bay in the site’s background…there are so many gasp-inducing moments and astonishingly risky moves performed on rafters, fire escapes and large-scale, built-in, site-specific props that you can’t help but lost in amazement.”
-JOE KUKURA, SFIST
“…a beautifully realized, emotionally rich, and thought-stirring set of movements developing the theme of women and industrial labor…”
-ROB AVILA, SF BAY GUARDIAN
“Kreiter has built a remarkable work, and she, as well as the women who inspired the piece, deserve our applause and admiration.”
-JOANNA HARRIS, CULTURE VULTURE
“…intimidatingly creative…”
-SF CHRONICLE
“…a wonder of equilibrium…”
-THE NEW YORK TIMES
“Kreiter…has created an evening-length work in which substance trumps considerable spectacle.”
-RACHEL HOWARD, SF EXAMINER
“She (Kreiter) places the gifts of gymnastics and the props of circus arts, such as trapeze, poles and ropes, inside the aesthetic boundaries of the concert stage and liberates often stodgy modern dance by freeing movers from the floor.”
“…she has created a means to fuse the freedom of athleticism with the poetry of fine art.”
-ANN MURPHY, OAKLAND TRIBUNE
“Kreiter’s artful direction pushes the physical feats far beyond spectacle.”
-JENNIFER COPAKEN, DANCE INSIDER ONLINE
“In TEST, Jo Kreiter used an anchored steel pole, which she climbed and dangles from in an impressive display of strength and agility.”
-CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
“Kreiter’s feats of athletic dance are a philosophical assertion. On one level, with their emphasis on upper body strength and embrace of physical risk, they’re a feminist statement, celebrating the potential of the female body… But on another level her choreography affirms the simple sensuousness and communicative power of the human body.”
-EAST BAY MONTHLY
“…hundreds of spectators watched in fascination as the performers descended into the alley and for a time transformed one of the city’s most despair ridden stretches of asphalt into a celebration of spirit…”
-NORTH MISSION NEWS[/fusion_text]