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JOANNA HAIGOOD - DANCERS IN THE AIR

Since 1980, San Francisco based choreographer Joanna Haigood and her company, Zaccho, have combined elements of film, theatre and installation art with an acrobatic style of dance that literally goes over the heads of its audience. In 1995, for instance, Zaccho dancers performed Haigood's NOON, leaping and bouncing on tether lines across the massive clock face of San Francisco's Ferry Building.

Most of Haigood's choreography explores the features of a particular place: a trail in the woods, an old canning factory, historical building sites. Her latest and perhaps most ambitious work, Picture... focuses on three inner-city neighborhoods - San Francisco's Bayview/Hunters Point, Brooklyn's Red Hook, and Minneapolis' Powderhorn. Haigood and her collaborators (including local teens) have collected stories, photographs, and video footage of the neighborhoods. But the result is a lot more exciting than most up-with-community art projects: During the performance, 100-foot collages of the collected images are projected on buildings while suspended dancers leap and float 12 stories in the air.

Joseph Hart - Utne Reader
Other featured artists include Tom Waits, DJ Spooky, Dave Douglas, Julie Taymor & Matthew Barney