Meet the musicians, designers and directors of Sarah Bush Dance Project’s upcoming Spirit & Bones, Oct 26-28, San Francisco.
The Band:
Kofy Brown, an Oakland, CA musician, singer and songwriter has been a pioneering force in the Bay Area’s hip-hop soul scene since the early 90’s. Leading her band on tour paving the way for other indie artist to trek forth, the KBB have spread the gospel of Brown’s unique style of soul, rock, funk and more all over North America, Canada and Europe. Kofy Brown has thrived by following her own creative path. She and her band the KBB have developed a reputation for putting on an outstanding live show. Her music is a soulful combination of funk, rock, blues and hip-hop topped off with a singing and rap style she calls word song.
The music of Katie Cash harkens to a time when rock n roll inspired revolution. In the manner of legends, she handles her guitar with an unparalleled command, embodying the music with every fiber or her being — hair flung as staccato punctuations to the heart she wears on her sleeve. She owns her vocal delivery, swinging you between high & low in an array of lustful richness and provocative rhythms. Perhaps most known for her well-loved band and brainchild Dolorata, she currently shares lead vocal and guitar duties in Oakland based bands Year of the Fist, & Skip the Needle, gliding between punk rock and rock n soul with graceful authenticity her fans have come to love.
Labeled “a future legend” by one reviewer and a “guitar goddess” by another, Shelley Doty is considered one the best independent performers in the business. Watching her perform is awe-inspiring due to her masterful guitar licks, soulful voice and charismatic stage presence. As a songwriter, she creates articulate songs for today by sprinkling them with respect for the music of her youth (rock, R&B, jazz, funk). Shelley sings with passion and plays with an authentic raw energy that cuts through the air with jubilant imagination and freshness. In addition to fronting her band, the Shelley Doty X-tet, Shelley also often performs solo acoustic. When Shelley plays electric guitar she rips into it like no other woman ever has – she has a swagger and confidence to play lead guitar that is as rare as it is electrifying. But she also has the subtly and tenderness to cause an audience to shiver at the elegance of her voice and insightful lyrics.
From the time San Francisco native Vicki Randle was nine years old, teaching herself to play Beatles songs on a battered Silvertone acoustic guitar, she’s been in love with music – singing, songwriting, playing guitar and percussion. Her jazz pianist father gave her an appetite for improvisation, and artists like Joni Mitchell, Ella Fitzgerald, and Led Zeppelin gave her an appreciation of musical diversity. She has toured with George Benson, Laura Nyro, and Kenny Loggins, recorded with Aretha Franklin, and spent 18 years as the first woman in the band on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. She is currently touring with the legendary Mavis Staples.
Julie Wolf is a music producer, composer, multi-instrumentalist, sound designer, music director and teacher. She has appeared on stages around the world and on numerous critically acclaimed recordings. She has collaborated with Carly Simon, Indigo Girls, Ani DiFranco, Maceo Parker, Toshi Reagon, Bruce Cockburn, Eliza Gilyson, Allison Miller, Wayne Horvitz and Sia, among many others. Julie has music directed with Berkeley Repertory Theatre, California Shakespeare Theater, Actors Theatre of Louisville, La Jolla Playhouse and most recently she was honored with a 2015 L.A. Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Musical Direction for her work in the Cetner Theatre Group/Kirk Douglas Theatre production of Girlfriend, a musical written by Todd Almond, directed by Les Waters, featuring the music of Matthew Sweet. Her original music for the 2009 documentary Sweet Crude was nominated for Best Original Score at the Maverick Movie Awards and received special mention in Variety.
The Designers:
Patty-Ann Farrell has been designing lighting for dance, drama and special events in San Francisco Bay Area, New York, Washington D.C., Tokyo, and Hawaii, and up and down the West coast for forty years. She has received four Isadora Duncan Dance Awards, a Super Star award from The Ethnic Dance Festival and a Bay Area Critic’s Circle award for lighting designs. Patty-Ann Farrell’s work has taken her into artistic collaborations with many wonderful artists over the years, a deep joy that she hopes will continue on and on.
Krystal Harfert is a freelance costume designer based in Oakland, California. Her recent designs include Bungee Dyad VI presented during the San Francisco Aerial Festival at The Cowell Theater, choreography by Sonya Smith. Luciole presented by Lucid Chandelier. PROWL premiered at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts during ChoreFest, choreography by Blind Tiger Society. In 2008 she received a Bachelors in Dance Education and Business Arts Management from Columbia College in Chicago, Illinois. In addition to her costume design, she is also a choreographer, performer, photographer, educator and administrator. Krystal currently tours with BANDALOOP as the Company Manager.
Katarzyna Krzykawska-Apolinarski is a sculptor with exhibits in galleries and outdoor spaces in several countries. She is an author of site-specific art installations in parks and at art festivals (Land Art Festival, Poland; Geumgang Nature Art Biennale, South Korea; Laboratorio de Artistas Norte 124, Mexico). Katarzyna is involved in exploring landscapes and its sociocultural context and is attracted to the various expressions of duality in landscapes. In her artwork she likes to reveal the contradictions of two opposite spaces: the upper, idealistic and utopian and the lower one, common, everyday and mundane. Katarzyna Krzykawska-Apolinarski has a PhD and a post doctorate degrees from Academies of Fine Arts in Cracow and Gdansk in Poland. She has been teaching art at universities in Poland, Slovakia, Italy and Mexico. She works as an Associated Professor at Landscape Art Department at the Warsaw University of Life Sciences. Last year she moved to the Bay Area.
Christiane Michaela Vincent is a conceptual sculptor and installation artist born and educated in Germany and presently living in the Bay Area. Her works are reflections on nature and environment with a focus on climate change: the warming of the oceans, the importance of photo synthesis. Other projects have been on the human condition: the various notions of “hope” and most recent an installation on the meaning of love. Her work has been shown in galleries in California, Sun Valley Idaho, New York, the Bay Area, the Museum of Visual Arts in Santa Rosa. Her work is in collections in Europe, Australia and the United States. She has had a lifelong passion for music and dance and has a keen interest in stage design for contemporary dance.
The Directors:
Assistant Director, Rose Huey is a free-lance dancer and choreographer based in Oakland, CA. Rose grew up dancing at Destiny Arts Center and later graduated summa cum laude with a BA in History and American Studies from Macalester College in Saint Paul, MN. Rose has danced with Ananya Dance Theatre in Minneapolis, MN, and locally with Mix’d Ingrdnts, BANDALOOP, AKDP, Kim Ip, Chris Black, Joslynn Mathis-Reed, Bianca Cabrera/Blind Tiger Society, and others, touring both nationally and internationally. She currently dances for Hope Mohr Dance. Spirit and Bones is Rose’s second production as the Assistant Director of Sarah Bush Dance Project. Additionally, Rose is a co-founder of ragbag, a creative collective started in 2016. She also teaches grounded and vertical dance throughout the Bay Area.
Artistic Director & Choreographer, Sarah Bush creates her inimitable style of movement by combining her training in ballet, modern, hip hop, jazz, Afro-Caribbean, and contact improvisation. She has performed in the Bay Area since 1997, and since 2007 she has been the Artistic Director of Sarah Bush Dance Project (SBDP). Her work has received awards from Curve Magazine and BayAreaDanceWatch. Sarah is a member of Dance Brigade, has choreographed for Mona Khan Company, Oakland’s AXIS Dance Company, Destiny Arts Center and The Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep and been a guest performer with Bill T. Jones. Sarah is currently the Berkeley Art Center’s 2018 Dancer In Residence. She regularly is a guest artist in schools and offers private lessons and group classes throughout the Bay Area.
Spirit & Bones
World Premiere
October 26-28, 2018
One Weekend Only!
San Francisco
Sarah Bush Dance Project 