NUMBER ZERO

SMITH/WYMORE DISAPPEARING ACTS PRESENTS

Number Zero (a space opera) version 2.0

 

Created and Directed by Sheldon B. Smith and Lisa Wymore

March 19, 20, 21, 2015

Thursday - Saturday, 8:00pm Tickets: $15 - $20

“Smith/Wymore Disappearing Acts’ zany Number Zero (a space opera) is truly a piece for our times.” Rita Felciano, San Francisco, Bay Guardian

Joe Goode Annex

1310 Mission St., San Francisco 

SAN FRANCISCO, CA, March 2015 – Smith/Wymore Disappearing Acts is proud to announce the return of Number Zero (a space opera) version 2.0, a highly physical, semi-improvised, evening-length dance theater performance about a small band of humans who live in a future world controlled by a sentient computer leader. Created by Sheldon B. Smith, Lisa Wymore and Ian Heisters, in collaboration with James Graham, and Pei-Ling Kao, Number Zero is an incredibly unique experience. The show is both a game and an experiment in real-time computer augmented performance that plays with the familiar sci-fi tropes of humans ruled by the machines that they themselves brought to life. The latest version will be completely revamped and re-imagined. Number Zero (a space opera) v2.0 runs March 19-21, 2015 at the Joe Goode Annex, San Francisco.

Smith and Wymore have shared a collaborative partnership for more than a decade. Recognized for their witty choreography and visual design, the award winning husband and wife team has performed for audiences throughout the U.S. and Europe.

In Number Zero, Smith/Wymore Disappearing Acts enter the realm of science fiction. In the not-so-distant future, a group of six humans band together for companionship and survival on a foreign world where individual memories, dreams and identities are “outsourced” to cloud servers. The work is largely improvised in response to computationally derived instructions and scores sent to the performers live during the show. Each performance is unique as the set of instructions within the computational scores is programmed to provide new stimulus and puzzles with each rendition of the performance.

Performers Deanna Bangs, James Graham, Ian Heisters, Pei-Ling Kao, Janine Trinidad, and Cuauhtémoc Mitote join Smith and Wymore on stage. An additional “role” is performed by the computer operating system, whose protocols were conceived and developed jointly by Smith and Heisters. In the spirit of Merce Cunningham’s chance operations Number Zero prevents the performers from memorizing any given sequence of movements in advance. This creates surprising, funny, poignant, and utterly unpredictable choices to happen on the stage.

“We’ve created a set of circumstances in Number Zero in which the performers are asked, in a certain sense, to ‘survive’ the moment-by-moment unpredictability of a work that is continuously shaped by what appears to be an intelligent and authoritarian power,” says Smith.

“Number Zero is a piece about the future,” adds Wymore, “but it’s also about where we are now in our relationship with technology and the choices we have about how we want to evolve with it.”

Tickets: $15 Students  $20 General Admission

Brown Paper Tickets: http://numberzero.brownpapertickets.com/

ABOUT SMITH/WYMORE DISAPPEARING ACTS

Smith/Wymore Disappearing Acts is a dance-theater company founded in 2001 by co-artistic directors Sheldon B. Smith and Lisa Wymore. Their work places the inherent beauty of the body in motion, both choreographed and improvised, in a deeply conceptual and human-centered environment that is supported and enhanced by technology. Smith and Wymore’s research has taken them from studio to stage by way of virtual and real locations on city street corners, desert landscapes, kitchens, canyons and science labs in search of timeless stories of passion, fear, longing, violence, humor and joy. From these investigations Disappearing Acts creates abstract narratives built on a foundation of physical experimentation, improvisation, text, song and digital image. The result is a new aesthetic that is at once oddly familiar and beautifully odd. Their work has won numerous awards including Best Interdisciplinary Performance and Best Use of Technology at Chicago’s PAC/Edge Festival 2004. They were nominated for Sexiest show at the 2005 Dublin Fringe Festival and were nominated for two 2006 Isadora Duncan awards for Best Choreography and Best Design. In 2006 their work was seen in San Francisco, Minneapolis, Zurich as well as several small towns in County Donegal, Ireland. In 2007, their son Will was born.

WHAT:

Smith/Wymore Disappearing Acts presents Number Zero (a space opera), a highly physical, semi-improvised, evening-length performance about a small band of humans trying to survive a near-future world controlled by a sentient computer leader.

WHEN:

March 19, 20, 21 2015

Thursday - Friday, 8pm

WHERE:

Joe Goode Annex

1310 Mission St., San Francisco, CA 94110

TICKETS:

http://numberzero.brownpapertickets.com/

$15 Students  $20 General Admission

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

http://www.smithwymore.org/

The Struggle, The Magic, The Miracle

The Struggle is real.
But so is the struggle mentality.
It is a limitation on your ability to be anything you want.
It is a limitation on everything you could be.
It is a fear driven anger, resentment, and grievance.
It negates Love.
It negates Magic.

Instead of thinking in terms of the struggle, instead focus on the miracles of life. Focus on the impossible, and make it manifest in the present. Believe it will manifest in the present.

Continue to work in a good way.

Believe in Magic.
Magic is real, and miracles are real.

This is the impossible dance that we do everyday--a defiance, an impossibility made possible in the working, in the doing, via an attempt, of the impossible.

This is love.

Love is real.

Beautiful Man

As I sit in Berkeley, and I see cute Asian boys walk by, I think, wow, those boys are hot and cute. I wish I could kiss them, hold them, play with them, get to know them, date them.... I don't think of them as exotic. They are just handsome men; handsome men who are not white men. Handsome men who do not seek to oppress me. Their eyes and skin speak to an ancestor of mine--similar we are, the closest approximation of biology to my own flesh-- gone thanks to genocide. And, I see cute Latino boys walk by too, and I think the same thing.... We are kin, and I love you instantly... I do not seek to attack you, beautiful man. I hope we can be partners together in the liberation of ourselves, and negate the oppression through this, our ancestral love.

teaching

I have to teach my students of color how to be resilient. No, more I have to support the resilience inside them. They endure so much oppression, I am not about to perpetuate it in school. They must learn tools to move beyond their struggles -- however small or strange-- to overcome life's challenges, to create for them the futures they can dream to dream, that their hearts admire.

But when I think of my queer students, resilience is not enough. There needs to be more, perhaps Disidentification and beyond. They need to learn to resist hatred and distraction, but also create out of it, create out of them, something new, something different, something fierce.

no limits

If you always put limit on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. - Bruce Lee

the fight of endless banter

Those who benefit from inequality will fight to maintain this system, will fight to keep their advantage.

Those who suffer from inequality, don't always fight, as they are often discouraged, oppressed, confused, and carry symptoms of prolonged historical trauma.

Those who suffer from inequality must fight for freedom, justice, and collaboration. Those who maintain a privilege from inequality must be generous, and compassionate-- they must see freedom, justice, and collaboration as important.

him, with that dark hair

He walked through space like an ice breaker glides through glaciers. Currents all around him, yet his focus went undisturbed from me. With the quickness, he bestowed upon my forehead and cheek a double-nose-kiss. I was safe. I am in love.

a wish

I wish to return to my

‪#‎contemplation‬ of your ‪#‎problematic‬ ‪#‎realities‬ & ‪#‎utopian‬ ‪#‎illusions‬ of‪#‎artifice‬

planning the ‪#‎choreographic‬ materialization of my exploration of your ideas for understanding through ‪#‎disidentification‬

but for now, its about

the ‪#‎education‬ of children in order to form sentient beings, able to cope with future issues and endeavors of their lives, by overcoming said issue with the logical and physical knowledge of communication and production of results.

dancing whenever possible
teaching whenever possible
working whenever possible
performing whenever possible
writing whenever possible

You must believe in the artist, yourself

People like art, not the artist. The artist, however, must love the artist--he must believe in the artist. Art is a means of survival for the artist. He must believe in art, he must believe that it will bring him blessings.

to create a fund

My ex told me he is creating a fund for his law school to create fellowships for students at his school to engage in ethical tax practices. He says he is doing this, on top of working full time, going to law school part time, looking for a new job, and supporting his family a sea away, because he believes in his university, and he believes in creating passionate and ethical tax people.

That got me to thinking....
Here is someone working so hard to support/create a program, a donation based program, because he believes in it. He thinks it is important, and so he gets to work.

This is the fire I have, and need to sustain, in order to be an artist....
The artist must be passionate about himself and his own work, and know it is important, and worth supporting. Only then, will others contribute to the cause, joining the importance, the necessity, set forth by the founders....

And so I continue..... continue to create mitote......

kawaii ponders

And I think to myself, is Desun effeminate? No... He's kawaii...

Is that then a sort of disidentification that my boo deploys in order to survive in this crazy world?

Is his kawaii a disidentification with western "cute", a play with performance of the cutesy Asian Girl/white bimbo? Does he recreate for himself something outside of effemininity, outside of cute, within his culture, a recapitulation of kawaii as we become ‪#‎KawaiiBrosOfColor‬

Always an interesting ponder.....

The Illusion of Success

I feel like a failure.

There is no success or fail, only make.

I wish I was successful.

There is no success or fail, only make.

So the success I want does not exist?

There is only make-- only creation.

Then success and failure are illusions.

The success you seek is an illusion. You therefore want an illusion. And you feel like an illusion. But you are not those things, you are a self creative individual. Yes.

-TGS

Room For Rent

ROOM IN WEST OAKLAND FOR RENT!!!

2 Bedroom Basement unit about 2 blocks from West Oakland BART
900/month (utilities included) Washer & Dryer in the unit. All hardwood floors. Room is roughly 10x12 ft. Roommate is a professional artist/dancer/actor in SF.
Room is available as of next week. 
900 deposit. The month of March is prorated.

Private Message me and I will connect you to the Homie/Roomie who is renting the room.

xoxo