Yerba Buena Gardens ChoreoFest highlights the strength, diversity and vibrancy of the Bay Area contemporary dance scene through a two-weekend mini festival of site-specific work. Curated by RAWdance’s Artistic Directors, the fifth annual YBG ChoreoFest features an array of distinguished local dance companies of extraordinary performances throughout the Gardens’ lawns and architecture.

ASL interpretation will be provided for this event. This program moves across multiple locations and seating is very limited. Personal stools or portable chairs are welcome.

Day Two Artists:

SAMMAY or Sammay Dizon (she/they) is a Filipinx American choreographer, interdisciplinary artist and cultural producer of Bikol, Kapampangan and Ilokano descent who bridges the traditional and contemporary in centering embodied storytelling as a vehicle for collective healing and liberation. Through multimedia dance theatre, she invokes rituals for remembering and decolonizing – creating to honor the tapestry of indigenous epistemologies embedded in our urban landscapes. Her practice is rooted in the fundamental knowing that dance is the medium that connects the earth and ancestral realm – the passageway to transmute intergenerational trauma across cultural lines and geographical borders. Dizon is the founder of SAMMAY Productions and Urban x Indigenous.

Push Dance Company, founded in 2005 by Artistic Director Raissa Simpson. PUSH has presented countless interdisciplinary works vivifying the personal, untold stories of individuals from unique and overlooked communities. After 8 years of dancing with PUSH, Ashley Gayle makes her inaugural debut as Associate Artistic Director and choreographer with Choreofest 2022.

hien hunyh was born in Da Nang, Vietnam. Through the love, courage and resiliency of his parents’ refugee across the ocean, hien dedicates his artistic and living practices to share, move and dance in honor of their story alongside the oceanic journeys of ancestors. His movement practices stem from the spirit of improvisation.  www.hien-huynh.com

RAWdance is a contemporary dance company under the artistic direction of Ryan T. Smith, Wendy Rein and Katerina Wong. Founded in San Francisco in 2004 by Smith and Rein, the company grew to include Wong as a third Artistic Director in 2019, while also expanding to two locations — New York’s Hudson Valley as well as its home base in San Francisco. RAWdance’s work for this weekend’s program is choreographed by Katerina Wong. rawdance.org