SHIFT >>> Physical Theater

The Shape of Poison (2007)

premiere:	ODC Theater; San Francisco, California
concept + direction:	Manuelito Biag
collaboration + performance:	Tanya Bello, Kelly Del Rosario, Amy Foley, Damara Ganley, Tessa Nebrida, Noel Plemmons, Erin Mei-Ling Stuart, Ami Student & Ashley Taylor
music:	Jess Rowland
costumes:	Sara Kozlowski
lighting design & visual decor:	Pablo Santiago
text:	Naomi Lazard

The Shape of Poison was created in residency at ODC Theater. The project is informed by diverse source materials, primarily Tibetan Buddhist teachings regarding ignorance, passion and anger. The Shape of Poison is a meditation on our promise and aptitude to escape the suffering caused by our own attachment, minds and bodies.
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			Making Invisible (2005)
			premiere:	Cowell Theater; San Francisco, California
			concept + direction:	Manuelito Biag
			collaboration + performance:	Manuelito Biag, Damara Ganley, Tessa Nebrida
			music:	Jess Rowland
			costumes:	Heidi Schweiker
			Making Invisible is a complex and multi-layered meditation on the nature of impermanence, and its impact on our vulnerable relationships with spirituality, environment and people.

Giving Strength to this Fragile Tongue (2003)

premiere:	Dance Mission Theater; San Francisco, California
concept + direction:	Manuelito Biag
collaboration + performance:	Aimee Lam, Lorevic Rivera
music:	Jess Rowland

Inspired by the writings of radical labor organizer Carlos Bulosan, Giving Strength to This Fragile Tongue, draws upon the power and influence of unspoken words and explores the parts in us that have been denied, lost, hidden or forgotten.

			When We Believe Again (2003)
			premiere:	Dance Mission Theater; San Francisco, California
			concept + direction:	Manuelito Biag
			collaboration + performance:	Company Mécanique (Patric Cashman, Phil Halbert, Jenna Marshall, Alisa Michelle, Anne-Lise Ruesswig, Michelle Winchell)
			music:	Jess Rowland
			prop design:	Phil Halbert
			When We Believe Again is Company Mecanique's first collaboration with Artistic Director Manuelito Biag. Based on a series of love letters received or written by the performers, the project embarks on an exploration of looking back to fragments of lives and loves. The choreography draws from these letters, as well as the personal and half-forgotten narratives full of melancholy and bittersweet yearning. The project is a poignant portrait of how letters become a container of image and memory, and an occasion for speculation, fiction, interpretation and storytelling.

			Near Whisper (2002)
			premiere:	Spartan Complex Theater; San Jose, California
			choreography + performance:	Manuelito Biag
			music:	Jess Rowland
			Near Whisper is a solo project, drawing on the life and writings of Filipino poet Carlos Bulosan (America Is In the Heart). The piece combines music, movement and uses autobiographical text as source material in mapping out the despair and years of racist hardship the itinerant laborer endured following the harvest trail in the rural West. Near Whisper is a project that borders between performance, essay and homage to how Bulosan gave a voice to those who were strangled of their own.

			Travelogue (2002)
			premiere:	Spartan Complex Theater; San Jose, California
			concept + direction:	Manuelito Biag
			collaboration + performance:	Pia Allabastro, Aimee Lam, Alisa Michele, Brian Null, Anne-Lise Ruesswig
			music:	Jess Rowland
			text:	Pia Allabastro
			Inspired by true and various nomadic stories from the performers, Travelogue utilizes the concept of travel as a personal undertaking--an investigative journey into our own psyche. Whether it is waiting for a train on a snowy day in Paris, an overheard conversation in a cafe, or tales from a distant land, these narratives make up the foundation of Travelogue. It is a movement performance that is part documentary and part storytelling, where the movement digs out the intersections of ideas, facts, evidence, memories and images.

			Now That You're Here/As Though You Were Absent (2002)
			premiere:	Spartan Complex Theater; San Jose, California (commissioned work for San Jose State University)
			concept + direction:	Manuelito Biag
			collaboration + performance:	Emily Stark, Kym Roark, Keri Peterson, Jaime Cremeans, Christina Roddick, Sara Cuddie, Sheeree Dela Pena, Sarah Cashmore
			music:	Bruce Stark, Tricky, The Cranberries
			text:	Pablo Neruda
			sound design:	Jess Rowland
			The configuration of duets, trios, quartets throughout this dance accentuates the nature of relationships, of entrusting one another to not let go, to hold the embrace, to not walk away. The dancers meet and leave, show their vulnerability, carry each other and see themselves needed and needing. What is left is the intense and intimate connections existing far beneath the surface, between the individual person and their movements with other people.

			Noise (2002)
			premiere:	ODC Theater; San Francisco, California
			concept + direction:	Manuelito Biag
			collaboration + performance:	Pia Allabastro, Genevieve Lee, Brian Null, Manfred Schaechtle
			music:	Michael Galasso, Ray Noble, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Umebayashi Shigeru
			sound design:	Jess Rowland
			Inspired by the lush and hauntingly beautiful cinema of Wong Kar-Wai (Chunking Express, Happy Together, In the Mood for Love), SHIFT>>> creates an alluring dance drama rich with feeling and mood. Drawing upon the bittersweet and romantic motifs often found in Kar-Wai’s work, Noise is a masterful mixture of substance and versatility. Pushing beyond the conventions of modern dance, the piece journeys through the memories of a broken heart, and presents an episodic, portrayal of loneliness, infidelity and loss, through the provocative use of movement, soundtrack, original writing and honest imagery.

Start Adrift (2002)

premiere:	Various sites; Los Angeles, San Francisco Bay Area
collaboration + performance:	Oscar Trujillo, Manuelito Biag, Manfred Schaechtle

A work-in-progress initiated and organized by Eric Kupers of Dandelion Dancetheater (www.dandeliondancetheater.org), in collaboration with Oscar Trujillo, and Manuelito Biag and Manfred Schaechtle of SHIFT>>>. Part 1 was performed throughout the Bay Area and Los Angeles in the Summer of 2001 and was a series of intimate duets, some highly sensual between men in suits. Part 2 delves into the nature of dating in the gay male world; touching on personal ads, talk-show type stereotypes about gay and bisexual men, fears of vulnerability and isolation, and dance that boldly crosses the line between partnering and explicit intimate contact (with a cameo by Mazdak Mazarei). The piece originated in an Airspace residency at the Jon Sims Center for the Arts in San Francisco.

Quiet Nights (2001)

premiere:	The Marsh; San Francisco, California
concept + direction:	Manuelito Biag
collaboration + performance:	Pia Allabastro, Manuelito Biag, Genevieve Lee, Brian Null, Manfred Schaechtle
music:	Arvo Part

Time robs us of memories. As we age, our recollections slip away from us and become out of focus and obscured. We can recall only a few details--absences and hints. In our mind, we evoke a world that appears faint and shadowy like the shine of a distant star. We're left puzzling together the pieces of a story, joining up the dots. In QUIET NIGHTS (2001), SHIFT>>> explores the nature of the performers' collective memories of watching the night sky, and finds parallels with our endless need to belong and be loved.

3AM Half Stories and Ghosts (2001)

premiere:	San Jose Spartan Complex; San Jose, California
concept + performance:	Manuelito Biag
music:	Bruce Stark

3AM Half Stories and Ghosts (2001) is the most minimal work to date. Capturing mortal moments found on a collection of photographs obtained from an antique store, the piece is a haunting solo about death and emptiness. The dancer repeats the few yet detailed counts of movement in slow motion, meditating each change of weight and breath. Lingering feelings of fragility and tenderness, of continuing under the certainty of loss remain.

The Cardboard Series (2001)

premiere:	Dancers' Group Studio Theater; San Francisco, CA
concept + performance:	Manuelito Biag

On August 15, 2001, from dusk until midnight, a "circus of resistance" took to the streets in the Mission District of San Francisco, to protest the closure of Dancers' Group Studio Theater. Designed as a quiet yet poignant means of protest, The Cardboard Series was an installation performance to make sense of a jumbled, magical and fragmented night of loss, crisis and personal reflection. A performer in a suit and animal mask mingles with the crowds, embodying a catalog of cardboard sign characters created organically on the spot. The act of arranging, rearranging and presenting information, be they spatial, visual or textual became the central methodology of the performance that allowed narratives and meanings to emerge. The Cardboard Series, later that year, was documented by Adrienne Nishina in the sleepy suburban landscapes of Long Beach, California.

Mapping (2000)

premiere:	24th Street Theater;Sacramento, California
concept + direction:	Manuelito Biag
collaboration + performance:	Manuelito Biag, Sam Mitchell
music:	Etta James, Chet Baker, Craig Armstrong
sound design:	David Barron

Mapping (2000) is a duet set to the longing vocals of heartfelt ballads. Inspired by the desperation found in sex chat lines and "lonely hearts" adverts, "Mapping" documents the trials, the push-pull dynamics and pressures of being together in a society where relationships are often set up to fail.

Repeat Forever (2000)

premiere:	24th Street Theater; Sacramento, California
concept & direction:	Manuelito Biag
collaboration + performance:	Manuelito Biag, Beth Calarco, Adrienne Haufler, Genevieve Lee, Brian Null, Manfred Schaechtle
music:	John Altman, Samuel Barber
voiceovers:	The Company
sound design:	David Barron

Repeat Forever (2000) is about the journeys undertaken and the discoveries and relations made along the way. It is about the narrative and imprint of memories. Using chairs and suitcases as main anchors, the dance is based on exits and entrances, which reflects the fleeting yet powerful hold the past has on us.

Blind(Sighted) Intentions (1999)

premiere:	848 Community Space;San Francisco, California
concept +direction:	Manuelito Biag
collaboration + performance:	The Company
perfomers:	Manuelito Biag, Beth Calarco, Adrienne Haufler, Genevieve Lee, Brian Null, Cynthia Yang
music:	Maurice Ravel

Blind(Sighted) Intentions (1999) depicts how in the course of attraction, there perpetually exists an uneven balance, where one is alone with their bitterness, feeling cheated and denied. The choreography slowly resonates between three couples, self absorbed in the process, as if carried by wind.

Falling Through the Ice: Part 1 (1998)

premiere:	Temescal Arts Center; Oakland, California
concept + performance:	Manuelito Biag
music:	Danny Kaye

Falling Through the Ice: Part 1 (1998) is an intimate solo of ordinary movements stripped down to essential components. Set to a children's song, the dancer moves according to the reality of gravity, changes in weight, and the leverage and energy of movement--using them instead of resisting. The aim of the dance is to integrate a dancers surroundings with the dancer's body, to dislodge the truth from muscle and bone - where the material and the mental act as one, in the moment of presence and perception. What is left are memorable images of vulnerability and humanity.

Taking, Leaving, Taking (1998)

premiere:	Temescal Arts Center; Oakland, California
concept + direction:	Manuelito Biag
collaboration + performance:	Rebecca Bryant, Beth Calarco, Genevieve Lee
music:	Massive Attack

Taking, Leaving, Taking (1998) see-saws between extremes of movement--accumulation and distillation, between prolongation and accent. The depiction of love is seen in the dance's timing, phrasing, the movement of perpetual grabbing, running and falling. The dance acts as methodology to present and define what we take from others.

			Inertia (1998)
			premiere:	Sushi Performance Gallery; San Diego, California
			concept + direction:	Manuelito Biag
			collaboration + performance:	Manuelito Biag, Rebecca Bryant, Beth Calarco, Brian Null
			music:	Erik Satie, Alpha, Charles Trenet, Oscar Peterson
			sound design:	James Jhun
			A stage full of hopeless dancing marathon moves. A cynical MC clothed in half-light, a ruffled shirt and a cardboard sign, mumbling lullabies in whispered tones to his broken heart. Inertia (1998) is a disconnected place--a place where the lights are flickering, the cigarette smoke building and the booze diminishing. The audience pay witness to an incoherent dance contest somewhere at sometime. It happens in a strange ballroom at some drunken middle of the night hour, while songs about love and infidelity play in the background. Within these images is the heart of INERTIA--a kind of late night basement portrait of a world where all contestants are losers, where the dancing remains flawed and where applause is imaginary.