San Francisco’s arts scene is thriving in venues both large and small. Case in point: Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory, a petite space located smack-dab between SOMA and the Mission, will present Jesse Hewit’s “Total Facts Known” over the next two weekends. MCVF seeks to nurture the development of queer performers, educators, and activists by providing them with artist-in-residence programs and arts programming.
Think of “Total Facts Known” as a night of cerebral art for the everyday San Franciscan. Over the past few years, Hewit has presented work across the city including CounterPULSE, The Garage, and The LAB. Don’t expect post-modern dance or perfectly pointed toes and big leaps; Hewit isn’t here to make pretty pictures. Instead, he takes bold visuals, everyday gestures, and life-inspired theater, and molds them into a contemporary tale inspired by Anne Carson’s “Autobiography in Red.” Carson’s story, described by “The New York Times” as a “hybrid work of poetry and prose,” retells the Greek myth of Geryon, a winged red monster killed by Hercules. Hewit breathes flesh and blood into Carson’s story while investigating the connections between knowledge and ability.
Think of “Total Facts Known” as a night of cerebral art for the everyday San Franciscan. “As worlds slide in and out of focus, an ensemble of six recite lists of things they cannot do, give directives of things that they can, and manipulate objects and themselves, in order to convey acts of determination, to display real physical limits, and to give testimonies of the humble and tender condition of doing what we can with what we have… While coasting through narratives of systemic oppression, unrequited love, and the bleakness of destiny, the boiled down movement vocabulary and pedestrian text exercises of ‘Total Facts Known’ occasionally reveal a bright and creeping peace and light earned by endurance, sweetness, and necessary self-interest. In this work, every body is a simple site of the political, full of strain, knowledge, experience, caution, and pulse.”
Hewit’s work has been included in the National Queer Arts Festival, Bay Area National Dance Week, and will be in the 2010 event “Too Much!,” curated by Dwayne Calizo, Julie Phelps, and Keith Hennessey. Jesse also works with CounterPULSE and Dancers’ Group to curate, produce, and facilitate “2nd Sundays,” a monthly choreographers workshop and critical discussion. He is currently a DIY Artist-in-Residence at Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory.
