Unleashing Bay Area Performance Arts

Experienced artists in the Bay Area community prove that performance arts isn’t just a pretty little thing onstage. How does the behind-the-scenes creativity, determination, and passion for the art form bring the artists and community together in a cherishable way?

“Stellar modern technology in the Bay Area helps immerse the whole community in the arts. Advanced mechanisms give a special spark to dance, an art form that goes back to the beginning of human civilization.” 

“Performance challenges the artist to think in innovative ways, but it also creates a challenge for the listener to understand the process of storytelling within the artform, bringing the community together,” states Thomas Yee, a cooperative violinist, teacher, and collaborator of the Bay Area arts community. 

He started devoting his time to musical performance at an early age. To Yee, performance is an infinitely creative and open world with numerous layers behind the scenes. It allows him to tell stories and deliver significant messages to the audience. Performing helps him relate and provide a sympathetic connection to the community as a musical performer of the Bay Area.

Each Bay Area artist has his or her own special and erratic story, as well as a specific style. The artform challenges the performer to use their vision and creativity as an artist to bring the dance, music, or verse to life in their personal way. 

The San Francisco War Memorial Opera House's performances tell a story through the heightening of the voice, and through various melodies combined by different instruments in orchestras.

Take Bonanza, for example, a group of artists who create an extraordinary fashion show out of the rubbish from the streets of San Francisco. Each artist creates a different piece of clothing for the runway show depending on their background, mindset, and style. One model says, “There is something about Bonanza’s electric energy that makes the models and audience feel like one big community. It's truly incredible.” 

The audience is, once again, brought to the challenge of interpreting the artform in their own perspective. Wide diversities of opinions let numerous artists perform similar acts in different ways using their own unique style.

If each artist has to individually have a spark, how is each style of performance art gifted its own flare as an artform too? In Richard Schechner’s book Performance Arts Studies, he emphasizes how each type of performance delivers a different message and tone. 

Duniya Dance & Drum Company cultivates respect for traditional forms through community building and creativity in the art form of cultural dance and drumming.

Schechner points out that being tossed around a mosh pit at a rock concert is much different from applauding the story of Gisselle at New York’s American Ballet Theatre. “Dance emphasizes movement, theatre emphasizes narration and impersonation, sports emphasizes competition and ritual emphasizes participation and communication with transcendent forces or beings,” remarks Schehner.

With each artist owning a special style, determination and passion also pushes forward the quality of how artists perform. Milissa Carey notes that “Creating art isn’t a typical type of career. It has to be something that artists do because they so strongly love it and are drawn to it.” She is an instructor and a performer that contributes to the arts of music at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. No matter what type of performance art is being explored, it takes a strong desire of passion, devotion, hard work, professionalism, and a positive mental mindset to be able to push through all obstacles that may get in the way. 

She constantly reminds her students of a quote from the great German author Goethe, “Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.” All the tough training and self mentoring eventually results in putting on a performance that will carry through the generations of arts to come.

While variety, determination, and passion may lead to a superior artist, it’s often the audience who gets the final say. “Performance arts allows an audience to interpret what they have seen, heard and felt in their own perspective as human beings,” recalls Samantha Bell, a former ballerina with the Oakland Ballet Company and State Street Ballet in Santa Barbara. 

Since the Bay Area is so culturally and ethnically diverse, the variety and level of arts goes above and beyond many other places in the world, allowing audiences to elevate their standards every year. Every artist that is a part of the Bay Area arts community contributes to the divergent performances. Art is fully subjective and open to wide interpretations. So when a group of similar artists doesn't have variety to differentiate them, it will most likely result in a flatlined performance culture. However, when different artists collaborate with others, the world will see ecstatic performances with a living heartbeat. A versatile performance gives the audience an enthusiastic spirit and makes the entire community feel connected to the arts as a whole. 

Founded in 1987, AXIS Dance Company is now one of the nation's most celebrated ensembles of disabled artists. They provide educational information on disability as well as share personal dance histories.

The AXIS dance company, a contemporary performance group located in Oakland, is the epitome of a performance arts community. They provide a comfortable environment for artists with disabilities and bring them together into the Bay Area arts community.

Their overall mission is to perform high-quality contemporary dance through the collaboration of dancers with or without a physical disability. Their organization is mostly controlled by the disabled and works at an international level. Artists that are part of the company most commonly work on awareness raising, networking, and cooperation.

The Custom Made Theatre Co. is another production organization that is fully committed to performing plays that awaken the social conscience and focuses on the strength of ensembles of the Bay Area. While creating an intimate and unforgettable theatre experience, their main mission is to support all artists from the many diverse backgrounds that make the San Francisco Bay Area theater scene the unique and beautiful place that it is.

There is no end to the variety of arts groups in the Bay Area. Duniya Dance is a company significantly devoted to ethnic cultural performance. “Our mission is to cultivate respect for traditional forms, foster cultural exchange, effect social justice and engage in community building. Duniya performs and teaches traditional and innovative performance pieces from Guinea, West Africa and Punjab, India.” Duniya means “world” in a wide variety of languages. Their performances intersect the worlds of  colonization, globalization, immigration, art, dance, music and love. 

What else sets the Bay Area performance scene apart? Stellar modern technology in the Bay Area also helps immerse the whole community in the arts. Advanced mechanisms give a special spark to dance, an art form that goes back to the beginning of human civilization. 

For instance, Zaccho Dance uses the technology of the Bay Area to their advantage through aerial and arts festivals. They travel around the globe performing aerial dance, an art form featuring connections to circus and vertical movements on a 90-degree tilted platform. The artistic director of Zaccho Dance, Joanna Haigood, explains the highly specialized technology behind the grids of aerial dance. Before a festival, the performers go through many workshops testing the equipment and practicing acts to ensure safety. The company also provides special workshops for their audience to participate in flight on low bungees to include the community and build basic skills in the art form of aerial dancing.

The Zaccho Dance Theatre offers 3 Artist in Residence programs for established aerial dancers, mid-career artists, and black Hip Hop dancers in the Bay. Zaccho is all about performing as a community!

Not only do the technological inventions of the Bay Area help performance arts, but many younger children are provided with opportunities to learn and perform art through the portal of tech. Many retired artists come back to their art form and enjoy mentoring the next generation of students in innovative performance ideas.  “There’s a beautiful way to marry the technology to performance,” recalled Bell.

Although artists mostly shine through uniqueness, they all share one thing in common. An unbreakable relationship with their art form. Every artist has to love what they are doing down to their core. Only if they feel this meaningful connection will artists be able to deliver a heartfelt message. “There is something about performance that fully immerses us in the community where other styles of art don’t have the same capacity to do so,” adds Bell.

Thomas Yee, Milissa Carey, and Samantha Bell are all perfectionists in different styles of Bay Area performing arts. However, they are drawn into the art of storytelling. They enjoy evolving their stories by connecting to a versatile audience. Performance art helps a community envision a world full of their own traits. It brings joy and creativity to all minds and most importantly brings the whole community together.

Works Cited

“AXIS Dance Company.” Independent Living, https://www.independentliving.org/donet/177_axis_dance_company.html.

“Duniya Drum and Dance Company. The Bay Area’s only South Asian and West African drum company.” Duniya Dance, https://www.duniyadance.com/.

Schechner, Richard. Performance Studies. Seagull Books, 2002.

“Welcome to the Custom Made Theatre Co.” Custom Made Theatre Co., https://www.custommade.org/.

Whalen, Kelly. “How Artists Transformed San Francisco's Trash into an Audacious Runway Show.” KQED, KQED Website, 13 August 2019.