The Other Side: one night in reverie

Choreographer: Sara Shelton Mann
Performer: Abby Crain
Vocal sound track composer: Frederic Blinbiao
Production: Mixed Bag Productions

We are entering the yellow zone
Drought in the west and tornadoes riding in
Flooded boats down the southern streets
Debris falling from the clouds like snowflakes
The impact like hailstones on the border
The sound of a gun and the smell of death at your door.

May I touch your breath
May I kiss your bones–

There is a party outside and fireworks inside,
The kind that keeps you awake for centuries
Light a candle and let’s dance, p.s.

Will you buy me a perch in mount sinai?
Take away all our suffering,
And love me forever and ever.

From romance of the novel to a hyperpop invocation for tears, Abby Crain and Sara Shelton Mann share movement palimpsests inspired by their twenty-year working relationship. This long-form choreographic process is not repeatable. Archived character studies, movement scores, and narrative songs create the process and the poem. Walk with us into the heart, sink your hands into the loess, and enter the reverie.

Sara Shelton Mann has been a choreographer, performer, and teacher since 1967. She was a protégé of Alwin Nikolais and Murray Louis in New York City before moving to Canada where she met Andrew Harwood and fell in love with Contact Improvisation. In 1979 she moved to San Francisco to work with Mangrove, now Mixed Bag Productions, for which she serves as artistic director. One of its early manifestations was the company Contraband, launched as a performance group and research ground combining the principles of contact, systems of the body and spiritual practice into a unified system of research. Among her awards are a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, 7 Isadora Duncan Awards, including a special achievement award for “erasing time: celebrating 30 years a radical dance legend” (Sara Shelton Mann with David Szlasa and Norman Rutherford), Lifetime Achievement Bay Guardian Award, 10 Women Who Made a Difference, Bay Guardian "Goldie" Award... Her Movement Alchemy training is an ongoing teaching project and is influenced by certifications and studies in the metaphysical and healing traditions. Sara’s performance work is a platform for collaboration and research in consciousness.