I love being transgender. It’s an important part of the story of why I choreograph. Although I loved dance from a very young age, I grew up never seeing a single person like me in dance. So how could I imagine a future for myself there? The enormous barriers I had to overcome weren’t internal: […]

For the past 3 years, choreographer Stephen Petronio has been reviving groundbreaking works of postmodern dance through his BLOODLINES project. This season, although his company will be performing a work by Merce Cunningham, his own choreography moves in a more luxurious direction. We stepped into the studio with Petronio and his dancers where they were […]

Elvira Lind’s documentary Bobbi Jene took the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival by surprise last spring, sweeping the awards for Best Documentary, Best Editing and Best Cinematography. For those of us who have watched Batsheva and Bobbi Jene Smith’s career, the film’s success is not unexpected. It is a validation of what we already know: Bobbi […]

Abdiel Jacobsen is a jack of all trades. A member of the Martha Graham Dance Company since 2011, Jacobsen dances principal Graham roles and performs in works by Nacho Duato, Robert Wilson, Sonya Tayeh and Luca Veggetti, to name a few. But when he’s not dancing with MGDC, he’s teaching or competing in Latin ballroom. […]

Chief of program and pedagogy at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Q: How has your role evolved since joining YBCA five years ago? “I bring a social practice ethic to performance. You could call me the architect of a program that connects communities to the work that we present.” Q: The Bay Area […]