The Zaccho Dance Theatre Performance Archive is the culmination of over 40 years of performance and creative work by renowned choreographer Joanna Haigood.
Joanna Haigood relocated to San Francisco from New York in 1979 and co-founded Zaccho Dance Theatre in 1980 with Lynda Reiman. Zaccho Dance Theatre creates and presents performance work that investigates dance as it relates to the concept of place. As Artistic Director, Joanna Haigood's creative work focuses on making dances that use natural, architectural, and cultural environments as points of departure for movement exploration and narrative. Her stages have included grain terminals, a clock tower, the pope’s palace, military forts, and a mile of urban neighborhood streets in the South Bronx. Her innovative work involves in-depth research into the history and character of sites, often involving local communities in the creative process, and typically integrates aerial flight and suspension as ways of expanding performers' spatial and dynamic range.
Haigood’s work has been commissioned by leading arts presenters both nationally and internationally. Among them are the National Black Arts Festival, Festival d'Avignon and Festival d'Arles in France, the San Francisco Exploratorium, Capp Street Project, Dancing in the Streets, the Walker Art Center, Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, the San Francisco Art Commission, DancersGroup, Kaatsbaan International Dance Center, Montalvo Arts Center, and the McColl Center for Visual Art. Her choreography has also been commissioned by Alonzo King's Lines Contemporary Ballet, Robert Moses' Kin, and Axis Dance Company and is in the repertory of the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago. She has had the privilege to mentor many extraordinary young artists internationally at the National École des Arts du Cirque in France, the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance in England, Spelman College, the Institute for Diversity in the Arts at Stanford University, the San Francisco Circus Center, and at Zaccho Studio.
Joanna Haigood has been honored with the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Cal/Alpert Award in Dance, the US Artist Fellowship, a New York Bessie Award, the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, and the California Arts Council’s Legacy Artist Fellowship.
We would like to thank the following for their contributions in helping to create the Zaccho Dance Theatre Performance Archive:
LisaRuth Elliott
Charlie Formenty
André Berlemont
Kim Euell
Lisa Burger
Rebecca Robinson-Leviton
Lydia Clinton
Lizzy Spicuzza
Lincoln Cushing
Helen Wicks
Fiske Video Productions
Gravity Access Services
Backstage Library Works
The Zaccho Dance Theatre Performance Archive was made possible with generous support from the San Francisco Arts Commission’s Artistic Legacy Grant, National Arts & Disability Center, The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, and Bloomberg Philanthropies as well as Zaccho Dance Theatre’s community of individual donors.