Joanna Haigood, Thaisa Frank, Ellen Sebastian Chang, & Keith Hennessy March 13, 2010

On Saturday, March 13, CIIS welcomes four accomplished local artists-Ellen Sebastian Chang, Thaisa Frank, Joanna Haigood, and Keith Hennessy-for a timely panel discussion on creating and sustaining a life as a working artist. Panelists will reflect on their own trajectories, discuss opportunities, and answer questions from audience members. This presentation is a part of Saturday Night @ CIIS, a free guest artist series sponsored by the department of Writing, Consciousness & Creative Inquiry, and will be facilitated by choreographer and CIIS faculty member, Anne Bluethenthal.

Ellen Sebastian Chang is a director, writer and a creative consultant. Ms. Sebastian Chang was a cofounder and artistic director of Life on the Water, an internationally known presenting/producing organization at San Francisco's Fort Mason Center from 1986 through 1995.

Thaisa Frank's short stories have received two PEN awards, and her two most recent collections Sleeping in Velvet (1998) and A Brief History of Camouflage (1992) have been on the Bestseller List of the San Francisco Chronicle.

Joanna Haigood co-founded ZACCHO Dance Theatre. Her creative work focuses on making dances that use natural, architectural and cultural environments as a point of departure. Her work has been commissioned by Dancing in the Streets, Walker Arts Center, and she has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the James M. Irvine Foundation.

Keith Hennessy is an award-winning performer, choreographer, teacher and organizer. Hennessy directs CIRCO ZERO, a contemporary circus, in intimate spectacles for stage and street. Hennessy is a co-founder of 848 Community Space/CounterPULSE in San Francisco. Recent awards include Alpert/MacDowell Fellowship in Dance (2005) and SF Bay Guardian's Best of the Bay for Circo Zero.

Official Website: http://www.ciis.edu/Academics/Departments/Department_of_WCC.html