UNLOCK, PUSH's 2013 Home Season June 7, 2013

June 7-9, 8pm-10pm

Push Dance Company combines episodic dance, new music, dramatic set design and physical story-telling with the world premiere of choreographer/director Raissa Simpson's UNLOCK in 3 performances June 7-9, 2013 at Zaccho SF performance space in San Francisco. Simpson will use author Zora Neale Hurston's iconic 1937 novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, as a jumping off point to interweave her own experiences as an African-American and Filipina-American woman to investigate skin-color bias and mixed ancestry among African Americans. Simpson, who was featured in the February 2013 Black Choreographers' Festival in San Francisco, will collaborate with set designer Benito Steen and composer and cellist UNWOMAN to create a new, multi-tiered dance work that embodies influences of the human spirit.

One of the most successful black women writers of the twentieth century, Zora Neale Hurston transports readers of Their Eyes Were Watching God to a world where her characters live by a code of survival. Simpson's UNLOCK will bring these stories of self-discovery and love to the physical world while adding a 21st century twist from another strong African-American woman.

Push Dance Company (Push) under the direction of Raissa Simpson, melds music and media, deftly weaving inter-generational and inter-community voices to create a potent force that advances the idiom of dance. Articulating details that run through the whole body, Push builds vibrant cross-cultural works to gain a deeper understanding of the challenges attributed to mixed heritage by using non-traditional dance forms. Edgy, sleek, and sexy, each moment generates a fresh perspective from intermingling diverse dancers in raw situations- aptly described as emotional and kinetic. Showcasing rarely seen, discussed or presented topics in public settings, Push provides an opportunity to examine issues that surround and affect us all.

Official Website: http://www.pushdance.org