San Francisco’s Annual June Arts Festival Offers Hope and Healing in Times of War
The National Queer Arts Festival (NQAF) is a month-long festival of groundbreaking music, dance, visual art, spoken word, theater, film, and video with over 50 events and hundreds of performers in multiple venues throughout the city of San Francisco. The majority of events are held at the LGBT Community Center (1800 Market Street @ Octavia) and SomArts (934 Brannan Street @ 8th Street). For a complete list of this year's artists, events, venues, dates, times, and ticket information, call 415-864-4124 or visit www.queerculturalcenter.org
This year's theme is "Hope and Healing in Times of War" and features local, national, and international artists and performers whose work builds bridges, creates networks of political resistance, creates systems of support for the ill or disabled, opens new horizons of possibilities for building community, and offers remedies for injustice. Highlights of NQAF 2006 include:
June 3: QBall Performance and Visual Arts Gala and Dance Party
June 8-10: Mexico's La Cebra Danza Gay dance company
June 10: The Transformers perform Rally the Troupes, with Oratrix spoken word from Seattle
June 11: Vicki Randle "Lullabies for Insomniacs" CD release party
June 13: Alison Bechdel with Pamela Peniston reading from a new graphic memoir of childhood
June 15-18: performance by Brand New High-Way, East Coast acrobats
June 16-17: Fresh Meat, a cabaret of trans-glam rock, gospel, hip-hop, aerial dance, and more
June 16-19: Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens perform Exposed, a love story (loveartlab.org)
June 17: Dragkinging 101 Class with the Transformers
Other can't miss events include a performance by Madama Butterfly Opera star Patricia Racette, the Pick Up the Mic homo hip hop Dance Party with Frameline, five cocktail lit readings with Michelle Tea, the annual Dyke March, and the closing show, Rock Out w/o Your Cock Out.
NQAF is a multiracial community-building organization founded in 1997 with a grant from the Cultural Affairs Task Force, whose mission is to foster the artistic, economic and cultural development of the San Francisco Lesbian, Gay, Bi-racial and Trans-gendered community. The executive director of NQAF 2006 is Pamela Peniston, a twenty-year resident of San Francisco and former producer for Good Morning America, whose current duties also include overseeing the Creative Queer Community commissioning program which awards grants to artists and is supported in part by the San Francisco Foundation and the Walter & Elise Haas Fund.
Beyond the mission of NQAF is the purpose, and Pam Peniston explains, "For me, it's about connecting audiences with the art created by their own communities, inspiring the next generation of artists, presenting quality work at an affordable price so that all audiences can experience it, and reaching out to non-queer communities and institutions and helping them to acknowledge and celebrate queer artists. It's all about art, however you may define it, wherever you may find it."