Even if you can’t travel to Edinburgh or Spoleto for those renowned arts festivals, San Francisco can offer a taste of international culture at its own artistic showcase.
The annual San Francisco International Arts Festival has been offering a dizzying array of performances for nearly two decades. From Oct. 20-24 the festival is offering three days of online content and a weekend of live shows at Fort Mason. Despite the broad spectrum of audience tastes, everyone is sure to find a number artists that inspire them.
In 2020, when the pandemic canceled most live performances across the world, the SFIAF was forced to shrink its usual three-week run, but still managed to produce two days with 15 performing ensembles in three outdoor venues while following strict COVID protocols.
Now that theaters and concert halls are reopening everywhere, SFIAF is back with a bigger line-up than last season. Its dance offerings include styles spanning East Indian Kathak and Bharatanatyam through modern and contemporary, and on to hip-hop and Brazilian Capoeira.
The music contingent is even wider — New Orleans big band, Filipino guitar, Argentine tango, Latin American, jazz, Dixieland, Balkan, Indonesian gamelan with guitar, international folk music and classical chamber music and opera.
Theater and performance art categories offer a Russian play in English translation, Balinese wayang (shadow puppets), a solo performance exploring race and color, and an moveable sculptural plea to protect wildlife.
Because international travel restrictions prevented the Russia-based Pop-Up Theater from coming, its director, Semion Aleksandrovskiy had to find another way to present his U.S. debut production of “Y.Y.aD.F.H. R.M.C.M.A.al.oH”. These cryptic English letters are a translation of what Tolstoy had scrawled in chalk on a card table for Sophia Bers, his wife who was 16 years his junior. The initial letters stand for “Your youth and the need for happiness remind me cruelly of my old age and the impossibility of happiness.”
As with so many aspects of life these days, the problem was solved via Zoom. Using the Bay Area’s own Shotgun Players company actors, Megan Trout and Caleb Cabrera, rehearsals were conducted online to re-create this site-specific play which will be performed in the Great Meadow at Fort Mason.
Festival artistic director Andrew Wood also commissioned composer and singer Michelle Jacques to create a body of work titled “Daughters of the Delta,” about the significant yet often forgotten women composers and band leaders from Louisiana. Their contemporary accounts trace the phenomenon of the Great Migration of southern blacks to the North and West, in several waves from 1910 to 1970. The influence of the music, art and writing of these migrants is still being felt today. Though the final “Daughters” will not premiere until 2022, Jacques will present excerpts with her group CHELLE & Friends on Oct. 24.
Wood said outdoor events will be moved indoors in the event of rain.
As the future unfolds, with all the potential complications surrounding the ability of the SFIAF to bring in international artists, we Bay Area residents are fortunate to have a wealth of artistic talent that live here and can provide insight into many other world cultures.
SF INTERNATIONAL ARTS FESTIVAL
When: Oct. 20-24
Where: Young Performers Theatre (indoor) and outdoor stages at Fort Mason, Bay and Laguna Streets, San Francisco; outdoor events will be moved indoors in the event of rain; some performances offered online
Tickets: Individual performances $12-$49; festival passes range from 2 to 8 events, $36-$135; www.sfiaf.org
Source: www.mercurynews.com