Fresh Meat, 2014

June 19-21, 2014
The FRESH MEAT FESTIVAL -13th annual festival of transgender & queer performance

Fresh Meat Productions
Z Space, 8pm (ASL interpretation – June 20)
$15-25 sliding scale

Full Festival info: www.freshmeatproductions.org

Gender-bending ballroom, a gay vogue-off, transgender hip-hop, gravity-defying trapeze, thundering taiko, and queer Bomba? You get all this and more at the 13th annual FRESH MEAT FESTIVAL of transgender and queer performance, the nation’s most highly-acclaimed LGBT performance festival. Advance tickets highly recommended!

And this year, the FRESH MEAT FESTIVAL literally provides the stage for Lana and Andy Wachowski’s new Netflix series, Sense8! 
The famed Matrix directors are filming a scene for their new Netflix series Sense8 at this year’s FRESH MEAT FESTIVAL! Festival artists and attendees will get to be a part of television history as out transwoman Lana Wachowski pairs up without transman Festival director Sean Dorsey to bring San Francisco’s transgender and queer talent and community to the screen.

PERFORMANCES BY:
Vogue superstar Jocquese Whitfield; Hip-hop trailblazer Katastrophe; 

Soul-stirring songs by Star Amerasu

; Gravity-defying trapeze by Cohdi Harrell; 

Powerhouse taiko ensemble Maikaze Daiko

; Seductress singer-songwriter Shawna Virago

; All-female Bomba trailblazers Las Bomberas de la Bahia

; Same-sex ballroom champions Ernesto Palma and Robbie Tristen; 
“San Francisco’s Best Dance Company” (SF Weekly) Sean Dorsey Dance 


AND MORE!

*plus*

after-parties in the lobby with HYPERLINK “http://www.freshmeatproductions.org/fresh-meat-festival-2013#fancyboxID-Rowdy”DJ Miz Rowdy, Fresh Meat photo-booth, drinks & dancing!

Learn more about our artists: Jocquese Whitfield, Katastrophe, Star Amerasu, Cohdi Harrell, Maikaze Daiko with special guests Rachel Ebora and Kristy Oshiro, Shawna Virago, Las Bomberas de la Bahia, Sean Dorsey Dance,  Ernesto Palma and Robbie Tristan and MORE! All artists perform every night.

Please go to the FRESH MEAT PRODUCTIONS website for full calendar
Website: www.freshmeatproductions.org/calendar

Outrageously popular and finger-licking-good: the FRESH MEAT FESTIVAL is the nation’s premiere transgender and queer performance festival. Award-winning LGBT lineup includes Sean Dorsey Dance, Star Amerasu, Cohdi Harrell, Shawna Virago, Las Bomberas de la Bahia and many more! All shows are followed by FRESH MEAT’s famous gala receptions with DJs, photobooth, drinks and dancing!

For more information about the Fresh Meat see: Fresh Meat Festival

PERFORMERS

Rocco Katastrophe is a Brooklyn-based rapper, singer and producer. He’s a seasoned vet on the mic and got his start competing in poetry slams in 1997. Combining his love of music and language, he started rapping and making beats in 2002. He uses his poetic grasp of language to weave dense tales of lives lived outside the mainstreams of education, class, and culture. He was crowned Producer of the Year by Out Music Awards for his debut album Let’s Fuck, Then Talk About My Problems. Kayiatos has since released a two more albums. He has toured the US and Europe several times and continues to travel to support his releases. He is a feature in the documentary films Poetic License and Pick up the Mic. His music has helped soundtrack The Showtime Network’s The L Word, as well as several short films. Rocco Katastrophe also co-created the first magazine for and about transmen, Original Plumbing, with photographer Amos Mac. www.roccokatastrophe.com

Jocquese Whitfield (aka: JoQ) is a dancer/choreographer born and raised in San Francisco celebrated for his vogue performance and teaching. A shape-shifter, Jocquese challenges assumptions of sexual identity in dance as he plays with gesture both “masculine” and “feminine”. Starting his career steeped in the improvisation of freestyle hip-hop and vogue, Jocquese has added modern, classical, and Diasporic dance traditions over recent years. Jocquese’s current movement vocabulary revisits the bold, rebellious statements of the 1980’s as expressed through fashion, nightlife, and a love of the abstract. He has been a member of City Shock San Francisco, F.B.C. (Funk Beyond Control), and UFO Movement, J. Jun Productions and M.O.M. (Mind Over Matter). Jocquese teaches Vogue at Dance Mission Theater and ODC Dance Commons.  www.facebook.com/sirjoq

Cohdi Harrell (New Mexico) is an acrobatic performer and trapeze artist whose unique style of acrobatics has brought him international attention and into a myriad of projects and collaborations. He is currently involved in an ongoing project, Red Room; a queer cabaret in Zagreb, Croatia; and has worked with the Santa Fe Opera. www.ricochet.name

 

 

 

 

Las Bomberas de la Bahia was founded in November 2007, under the direction of Denise Solis and Sarazeta Ragazzi, and is one of only a handful of all-women’s Bomba ensembles in the world. The group is composed of Bay Area artists, educators, and activists dedicated to expanding the tradition of this living cultural form while continuing the legacy of resistance that was born in the sugarcane plantations of Puerto Rico by enslaved persons. Las Bomberas de la Bahia perform nationally for educational institutions, cultural centers, and cultural festivals. www.facebook.com/bomberadelabahia

 

Shawna Virago is a San Francisco-based transgender musician celebrated for her striking lyric-based songs. Her album Objectified has been featured in Curve magazine, NPR and on left-of-the-dial radio. Shewired magazine listed her as one of the nation’s “Top 25 Hot Femmes.”  Virago’s music video Transsexual Dominatrix has screened at more than 30 film festivals throughout North America and Europe, was awarded Best Music Video at CineKink New York, and was an Official Selection of the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. Virago’s writing appears in Gender Outlaws: Next Generation, Trans/Love: Radical Sex, Love & Relationships: Beyond the Gender Binary and Take Me There. Virago is also the Artistic Director of the San Francisco Transgender Film Festival. www.shawnavirago.com

 

Sean Dorsey Dance – Sean Dorsey is an award-winning choreographer and dancer, and the founder and Artistic Director of Fresh Meat Productions. Recognized as the U.S.’ first acclaimed transgender modern dance choreographer, Dorsey has won audiences and accolades from San Francisco to New York with his powerful dance-theater. Dorsey recently became the nation’s first transgender artist to be awarded a National Endowment for the Arts grant.

Dorsey was named “San Francisco’s Best Dance Company” (SF Weekly) and was named one of the nation’s “Top 25 to Watch” by Dance Magazine. He has been awarded two Isadora Duncan Dance Awards and the Goldie Award for Performance. Dorsey has been awarded commissions by the National Dance Project, National Performance Network, Creative Work Fund, Gerbode & Hewlett Foundations, San Francisco Arts Commission, Queer Cultural Center, and theaters in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington DC, Atlanta, Florida and Maine.

Dorsey has collaborated with artists including Lana and Andy Wachowski (Directors, The Matrix, Cloud Atlas) and Antony and the Johnsons. Dorsey is currently touring his show The Secret History Of Love to 20 cities across the US.    At the 2014 Fresh Meat Festival, Sean Dorsey Dance will perform a highly-anticipated section of their new show: The Missing Generation investigates the contemporary impact of the loss of much of an entire generation of transgender and gay people to AIDS in the 1908s. The work is based on oral history interviews with longtime survivors of the early AIDS crisis, and is being created in community residencies across the US. www.seandorseydance.com

 

Maikaze Daiko: Founded in 2007 by Bruce “Mui” Ghent, Maikaze Daiko (Dancing Wind) is dedicated to serving California communities in the performance, development and education of taiko (Japanese drumming) through performances, workshops, residencies, and classes. Maikaze Daiko presents work that is both rooted in cultural traditions and modernly expressive with a unique contemporary American voice. An accomplished student of martial arts, choreography, and modern dance, Sensei Bruce “Mui” Ghent studied taiko under Grandmaster Seiichi Tanaka. As a principal member of the San Francisco Taiko Dojo, he has toured and performed internationally. Maikaze Daiko’s performances will feature two special guest artists: nationally-acclaimed taiko artists Rachel Ebora and Kristy Oshiro. http://maikazedaiko.org

Star Amerasu is a San Francisco-based singer, composer and performer. She has toured nationally with her own work and with The Fully Functional Cabaret, and has performed in regional theatres and festivals around America including the National Queer Arts Festival and Queer Rebels. She is the producer of 14 Black Poppies youth performance showcase.  https://soundcloud.com/staramerasu



Ernesto Palma and Robbie Tristan (New York) are internationally-award-winning Same-Sex Ballroom Champions. Palma is a NYC-based professional competitive dancer, instructor, and choreographer. He has danced for Marc Anthony and Disney star Daniel Patric Ellis, appeared on the Today Show several times and on top shows such as the Tyra and the Robert Verdi show.  As a competitive dancer, Palma won the 2010 National Latin Same Sex Ballroom Championship and in Rising Star Rhythm Ballroom Championship. Tristan has won both the International and World same-sex ballroom championship.  www.ErnestoPalma.com   www.RobbieTristan.com