fault lines
2023
site-specific performance, Fort Funston, San Francisco, CA
68:00 minutes
sonic composers: Sholeh Asgary + Rachel Austin
artistic director: Bhumi Patel
movement: Tessa Nebrida, Emma Tome, Hannah Meleokaiao Ayasse, Elizabeth Sugawara, Bhumi Patel
costume: Iris Yirei Hu/Blue CHiLD
On May 19 - 20, pateldanceworks presented fault lines, a site specific performance at Fort Funston in San Francisco, California. fault lines is a multidisciplinary collaboration with queer and Asian performance artists, experimental composers, and a visual artist. In this unprecedented moment, we witness the ongoing pandemics entrench inequality and erode the already brittle infrastructure we stand upon. As seismologist Nicholas van der Elst explains “seen from above, [faults] appear as broad zones of deformation, with many faults braided together.” The tectonic forces of xenophobia, orientalism, homophobia and transphobia collide with climate catastrophe - leaving us dancing on unstable ground. Fort Funston is uniquely positioned upon a bluff that is made up of sedimentary rocks that formed along the San Andreas fault line over the last two million years.
Artistic Director, Bhumi B Patel states “this work brings closer together the human and non-human in our explorations of finding home in order to face our lineages and imagine pasts and futures that have been erased.”
fault lines is a performance that generates a ritual portal relying upon the natural landscape of Fort Funston and its relationship to the San Andreas fault line: the land itself will be a doorway across generations and geography, a metaphorical opening of the earth returning us home. We ask the questions: What does it mean to make home and migrate, as the earth burns and the ground beneath our feet continues to orient and re-orient? How do we find and create stability for one another, and for the planet, during rapid change, irreversible loss?
This production is supported by The Alameda Arts Commission, The California Arts Council, Dance/USA, The Rainin Foundation, The Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation, the United States of Asian America Festival, and Shawl-Anderson Dance Center.
image credit: Lydia Daniller