Apparatus of Repair

Reimagining Public Safety. I love this phrase. It speaks to the vision that’s at the root of the 21st century prison abolition movement.  Tonight’s performance is aspirational. It is steeped in invention and asks you to reach toward a vision of accountability that is not entrenched in caging people. This may be a hard performance to watch. There are references to gun violence, generational trauma, and sexual assault that may be triggering. But it also offers hope, despite the harsh realities of mass incarceration and the rising levels of violence and division we are all now living with. 

In the past 3 years, I’ve studied and participated in several restorative justice circles. Some have dealt with directly related survivors and perpetrators. Some have been vicarious and community driven. The dancers, composer, and I have been in dialogue with formerly incarcerated community members in the Bay Area, and with people currently incarcerated in Sing Sing Prison, New York. As an artistic ensemble, we bring vastly different experiences to the circle. Some of us are survivors of violent crime. Some of us have incarcerated loved ones. What has been true for us through the making of  Apparatus of Repair is that we’ve brought our deepest selves to the process. We have cried, relived pain, grown, learned, and grasped for something better than what the criminal legal systems currently offer us.

– Jo Kreiter

The Performance Unfolds in Six Sections

1. Cleanse
2. Abolition Feminism
3. Incarcerated Voices
4. Cleanse II
5. Harm vs Harm
6. How Do We Repair

About Flyaway Productions

Flyaway Productions democratizes public space. We makes dances in unlikely places, activating the sides of buildings above bleak city streets. Our site-specific dances impact neighborhoods because they unfold at the very place where conflict lives. For us, a building is a witness. It holds the complexity of a neighborhood’s history in its “hands,” I-beams, or concrete walls. Flyaway’s tools include coalition building, an intersectional feminist lens, and a body-based push against the constraints of gravity.  Founded by Jo Kreiter in 1996, we support the integration of experimental forms with political content; the support of women and gender expansive artists, where our voices remain an underserved element of public culture; and the use of spectacle/flight/suspended apparatus to expand choreographic language. Recent coalition partners include the Museum of African Diaspora, Prison Renaissance, Essie Justice Group, Local 2, Bend the Arc Jewish Action, and UC Hastings College of the Law.

We’ve been supported by NEFA’s National Dance Project, the National Endowment for the Arts, Center for Cultural Innovation, New Music USA, The Gerbode Foundation, MAP, the Creative Work Fund, the Kenneth Rainin Foundation, CA Arts Council, Grants for the Arts, and the SF Arts Commission. The SF Bay Guardian describes Flyaway as makers of “art at the heart of the democratic ideal.” 

From 2017-2023, Flyaway is creating The Decarceration Trilogy: Dismantling the Prison Industrial Complex One Dance at a Time.The Decarceration Trilogy is part of a national wave of ongoing political action to expose the devastating effects of prison on American citizens. The Trilogy is rooted in collaboration with community organizations and people directly impacted by incarceration. The project is a deeply personal and challenges Artistic Director Jo to expose her own vulnerability, as she is a woman with a formerly incarcerated loved one.

About Community Works

Community Works‘ mission is to engage youth and adults in programs that interrupt and heal the far-reaching impacts of incarceration and violence by empowering individuals, families, and communities. The agency’s long-term goal is to radically reduce the number of individuals entering and re-entering the juvenile and criminal justice systems, and to lessen those systems’ impacts on affected communities, particularly low-income communities of color. Community Works uses its insights on lasting change to keep people out of prison, advocate for a more humane justice system, and support healthy communities for all of us. “WE BELIEVE: When the community responds to those in crisis and despair, what has been broken can be healed. When we honor the dignity and worth of each person, those who have been silenced can reclaim their voice. When competence is given a chance to grow, lives can be transformed. We call this translational justice.”

Biographies

Jo Kreiter (Artistic Director – she/her) is a nationally recognized choreographer and site artist with a background in political science. She makes large scale public art via apparatus-based dance. Jo has spent 26 years building coalitions with women marginalized by race, class, gender, and workplace inequities. Through dance, she engages physical innovation and the political conflicts we live within. Jo’s work springs from the traditions of aerial and site-specific performance that are deeply rooted in the San Francisco Bay Area. She’s part of a lineage learned from aerial dance innovator Joanna Haigood, with whom she danced 1989-2002, and with whom she continues to teach for; as well as Terry Sendgraff, and Master Lui Yee. To this lineage, Jo brings new ways to ride space, using a defiance of gravity to claim public space as a proving ground for women. Recent awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship; a Rauschenberg Artist as Activist Fellowship; the New England Foundation for the Arts National Dance Project Creation Grant; the California Arts Council’s Creative California’s Communities Award; a Creative Work Fund Grant; the Rainin Foundation Open Spaces Award; and a YBCA 100 award.

MaryStarr Hope (Dancer – she/her) is a contemporary dance artist, movement improviser, and aerial dancer. She came to dance from childhood musical theater, trained at CalArts and the National Conservatory of Dance & Music in Paris, and danced professionally in Boston, Los Angeles, Paris, Chicago, and New York, before finding her forever home in San Francisco and it’s vibrant arts community. This is her 10th season performing with Flyaway Productions. In 2017 she was honored with an Isadora Duncan Dance Award, Duet Performance of the Year, for her role in the ‘The Two Sisters’ from Grace and Delia Are Gone at Fort Mason. In addition to her performance work, MaryStarr is a movement teacher and works with youth theater groups, singers, and soloists as a performance coach, choreographer, and staging director. 

Jhia Louise Jackson (Dancer – she/they) is a movement-based scholar artist who regularly engages in interdisciplinary projects. She has worked with artists such as 13th Floor Dance Theater, Alexandra Pirici, Joya Powell/Movement of the People Dance Company, RAWdance, Cally Spooner, Kim Epifano/Epiphany Dance Theater, dNaga Dance, and Octavia Rose Projects. As the founder of j.habitus and a current doctoral student in Sociology at UCSF, they create visceral explorations and presentations of topics drawn from their scholastic and community-based work. ~ www.JhiaJackson.com

Megan Lowe (Dancer – she/her) is a dancer, choreographer, performer, singer-songwriter, filmmaker, teacher, and administrator of Chinese and Irish descent, making dance art in the SF Bay Area, situated on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone land. With an affinity for dynamic places and partners, her creations through Megan Lowe Dances tackle unusual physical situations and invent compelling solutions, opening up the imagination to what is possible. Her most recent choreographic works have been seen at de Young Museum, David Ireland House, ODC, Legion of Honor Museum, Joe Goode Annex, and in the United States of Asian America Festival. In addition to performing with Flyaway since 2015, Megan has also performed with Lenora Lee Dance, Dance Brigade, Scott Wells & Dancers, Lizz Roman & Dancers, Epiphany Productions, and more. She teaches for organizations, schools, universities, and dance festivals, and is a teaching artist for Joe Goode Performance Group, Bandaloop, Flyaway, and her alma mater Theater, Dance, & Performance Studies at UC Berkeley, where she currently works as the Program Associate. ~ www.MeganLoweDances.com

Alayna Stroud Duarte (Dancer – she/her) is a dancer, aerialist, and choreographer. She received her training at Interlochen Arts Academy, University of Michigan, Mills College, and North Carolina School of the Arts. She has performed and taught with Terry Sendgraff’s Motivity, alban elved/Karola Luttringhause, Bandaloop, Jo Kretiter’s Flyaway Productions, and was an original cast member of Cirque du Soleil’s IRIS. She was a co- founder of Bow & Sparrow and Cirque Noir SF, a creative director at Supperclub LA and SF, and has her own performance and production company, Syn Circus. She has been privileged to work with Flyaway in several productions over the last 15 years.

Maddy “MADlines” Clifford  (Composer – she/her) is a writer, master of ceremony (rapper), digital creator, and activist from Seattle. She has spent over a decade planting roots in Oakland; she’s taught free poetry workshops to hundreds of Bay Area youth and has written for publications such as 48 Hills and KQED. Musically, MADlines has had the honor of collaborating with the late great Zumbi of Zion I. She was also featured on the Grammy nominated album, “The Love” by Alphabet Rockers, and produced a single called “God Talk feat. Xiomara.” This is her second collaboration with Flyaway Productions.

Sean Riley (Set Designer – he/him) combines suspension, kinetic movement, and narrative sculpture with performance. Through scenic design, rigging design, and mechanical design, often in concert with each other, he creates unique environments for time-based art. Riley has created installations in collaboration with a wide spectrum of artists in different genres around the world. Known for bold and often surprising use of space and suspension, and for large-scale movement, Riley’s installations commonly reflect his lifelong obsessions with gravity, architecture, and Newtonian physics. Recent clients include MOMA, the Asian Art Museum, SF City Hall, Cirque Du Soleil, and Joe Goode Performance Group. For 5 years, he was featured on the National Geographic Channel for the World’s Toughest Fixes. He has received several Izzie Awards, including a 2016 award for Special Achievement.

Jamielyn Duggan (Costumer – she/they) is a multidisciplinary native San Franciscan artist rooted in contemporary performance and visual design. As creative director of Eimaj Design since 04’ they emphasis “fashion that moves” through custom concept, design, and production. This encompass avant-garde to casual garments made to be seen, costume for live performance and film, image styling, wardrobe, and content creation. Collaborations with diverse clients include: SFDFF, ODC, LEVY dance, LINES/BFA, AXIS, SF Dance Works, Liss Fain Dance, Bandaloop, Oakland Ballet, MFDP/SF, and choreographers: Hope Mohr, Joe Landini, Gregory Dawson, Amy Seiwert, Sidra Bell, and Alexander Ekman. She is a tenured dancer with SF Opera, performer and co-founder of Collective Attention, resident artist at SHACK15, and grateful to expand her artistic practices thru inspired action. ~ www.JamielynDuggan.com

Jack Beuttler (Lighting Designer – he/him) is an Oakland based designer and producer. His work has appeared with ODC, Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, LEVYdance, and Dance Theatre SF, and he received a 2019 Isadora Duncan Dance Award for Outstanding Achievement in Visual Design for Flyaway’s The Wait Room. He’s the Director of Production for ODC and Production Manager for the Sun Valley Music Festival in Idaho. Most recently Jack produced the feature opera film Goodbye, Mr Chips. ~ www.JackB.info

David Freitag (Rigging Designer – he/him) is an aerial rigging designer who has spent the past 20 years designing mechanical rigging systems for site specific dance, circus productions, and permanent theatrical installations on walls and in theaters across the Bay Area and internationally. Dave has rigged with Flyaway Productions since 2010, designed for Capacitor Dance Company, Circo de la Luna NYC, and toured internationally with Cirque Mechanics and Printz Dance Project. Dave’s recent design projects include Zaccho Dance Theatre’s Love, A State of Grace (2022), and the 7Fingers Dear San Francisco (2021). Dave is a journeyman member of IATSE Local 16, and always “stands under his work.”

Matt Leonard (Production Manager – he/him) has spent the past 25 years at the intersections of event production and social/environmental justice activism. He toured with politically outspoken bands as a sound engineer and tour manager, worked with international organizations such as Greenpeace and 350.org, and is now the Director of the Oil and Gas Action Network. In his spare time he tries to pet every dog, find the best vegan comfort food, and cheer on the Oakland Roots soccer club.

Jesse Barbour (Head Rigger – he/him) has been helping artists fly for the last two decades. His experience ranges from international circus tours to underground performance art, with a firm root in more conventional entertainment rigging. In his free time, he is an avid motorcycle traveler, ice climbing enthusiast, and photographer.

Liesbet Bickett (Rigger – she/her) brings her climbing experience and her MS in Restorative Practices into her rigging work. It’s her goal, as a rigger, to consider the safety of the dancers using a whole self perspective. This means, not only ensuring the physical rigging system is safe, but also checking in with and caring for the dancers state of wellness and safety on the ground and while loading onto the dance wall.

Maude Wilson (Stage Manager – she/her) curates experiences and holds space that inspires people to express as their uniquely creative selves. This is what makes Maude come alive. She is a world traveler, a lifetime learner and a spiritual seeker. From the time she was 10 years old, she’s been bringing people together around a common idea or need. That’s what happens when you are the youngest of nine children—outgoing and social. Maude launched Ascend Events 12 years ago, with a vision of bringing people together in safe spaces that allow them the freedom to experience joy through music, community, and self discovery. She has either produced or tour/stage managed for the Aerial Arts Festival, Destiny Arts Annual Showcase, Bandaloop, Maker Faire, CubaCaribe, Oakland Interfaith Gospel Conference, Brazilian Day Festival, and the International Body Music Festival, among others. Maude is continuing to journey her way to liberation, self love, and creative expression through arts, culture, and spirituality.

Kevin Martin (Restorative Justice Practitioner – he/him) serves as Community Development Specialist and Circle Keeper with Community Works. His work helps reduce citizen’s contact with the criminal legal system, and supports alternative justice programs using restorative and transformational justice models. Kevin serves as a bridge builder, initiating collaborative environments between the organization’s numerous teams. He also holds weekly Restorative Justice circles with recently incarcerated individuals. In his reentry circles, he co-creates spaces of healing and exploration with community members that fosters honest examination of behavioral impacts on family and community, recognizing the interconnectedness of everyone.  Kevin holds a graduate degree in Intercultural Relations from the University of the Pacific and a Criminal Justice degree from California State University, Sacramento.

Partnerships, Funders, and Supporters

Apparatus of Repair is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, New England Foundation for the Arts/National Dance Project, SF Art Commission, SF Grants for the Arts, Zellerbach Family Fund, The Hewlett Foundation, New Music USA, The Early Fund, Bethany Arts Community, Hudson Link, and generous individual donors.