Bay City News
"This is a small way back for us to international performances," says Andrew Wood, founder-director of the San Francisco International Arts Festival. He's referring to the lineup for this year's festival, which runs May 1-12 in various locations and includes three productions from outside the United States.
With its ambitious umbrella title, the festival, founded in 2002, has had its ups and downs over the years, not counting the restrictions of the pandemic. Wrangling a production of this size takes time, money and, if it's to be truly international, willingness on the part of various governments to provide visas and money to the performers. International politics can be a factor.
Venues, too, are a consideration. After about a decade based in Fort Mason, last year the festival returned to its original and more centralized neighborhood, the vibrant Mission District, where 50 individual artists and ensembles, for a total of 100 concerts, performances and presentations (including a dozen premieres) will appear in about a dozen venues, from the Mission Cultural Center to Red Poppy Art House and more.
"There's an incredible multiracial spectrum of artists operating here," says Wood, of the neighborhood, "and people we can create strong partnerships with."
This year's program comprises six categories: music (the largest category); dance and theater; and three smaller categories: performance art, spoken word and walking tours.
Two among the three representing international arts this year are "Warm Up" by Mykalle Bielinski from Montreal and playwright-actor Pat Kinevane's "King."
Canadian Bielinski is a multidisciplinary artist, composer, sound designer, producer and singer whom Wood, who travels July through January to scout new participants, saw at a Canadian booking conference a year ago November.
In "Warm Up," as he describes it, she asks the question, "How do we fundamentally change what we're doing?"
San Francisco performances on May 2-4 mark Bielinski's U.S. debut, though she has performed in Canada and Europe.
The piece examines our relationship with nature "through the lens of overconsumption by rethinking the act of making art."
"My vision was to have a more respectful view on nature," says a soft-spoken Bielinski, on Zoom, in French-accented English. "I wanted to make a show that was self-sufficient, that could respect nature without consuming it." Hence "Warm Up," in which she generates energy throughout the performance by pedaling a battery-charged bicycle, filling the battery by, in fact, pedaling.
"It's a metaphor of how we think: We depend on fossil fuels, on energy resources," she continues. To create the piece, she studied climate geology: "The metaphor of the bike is about our society," she explains. "We overproduce--that's the logic that hits a wall in the show: I produce electricity, but I use too much and have to produce more and more and become tired..."
Although the show's text is precise, she also improvises, integrating the audience into the action.
She was also inspired by indigenous spirituality, and aside from its political, activist components, "Warm Up" is soft, meditative, includes music and songs. "It's ...convivial," she explains. She pauses to look up the word. "Yes, very convivial... You get the emotion that is behind all the facts and thinking and fears to feel something together, to dream together about how we can be this post-capitalist society, be with each other in a more human way."
"Warm Up" is at 7:30 p.m. May 2-4 in Studio 210, 3435 Cesar Chavez Blvd.
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