The Improvising Citizen
exploring the symbiosis of our creative work and our public life

A workshop in dance, improvisation and performance exploring the polarities of inner/outer, private/public, life/art as our primary sources of instigation and inspiration.
Grounding ourselves in the disciplined study and joyful practice of improvised dance and performance, we’ll explore the symbiosis of our creative work and our public life. Deepening and expanding our dance practices – contact improvisation, physical theater, improvised dance - will be the home base for round-trip travel into questions of politics, culture, spirituality, family, and society. Sound, vocal language and text, sourced from the wild body, will be included in our experiments. Performance will serve as a ritualized time and place for simultaneous research and discourse.
How does the external influence the internal, and vice versa? How do our familial, social, and global experiences influence our dancing body? How do our practices of improvised dance, movement, meditation and performance influence our perceptions and actions outside the studio?
We dive into the pool of our dancing body, dropping into sensation and imagination, resurfacing with gestures and momentum, touch and flight. What is the role of the dance in your life? What is the role of the dancer in social life? Is the world dancing? Is Vienna an improvised performance?
I intend this workshop to be a living laboratory, motivated by the experiences and desires of each and all who are present.



Keith Hennessy
Keith Hennessy is a Canadian-born performer, director and organizer living in San Francisco since 1982. Creating performances for theaters and streets, Keith’s work is marked by queerly evocative images, untamed physicality, and sharp political texts. He directs CIRCO ZERO, a diverse crew of circus and music artists working the fusion of spectacle, ritual, and action. Hennessy’s most recent choreography includes “SDF USA”, a performance poem about homeless despair, “Mercy”, an experimental circus with circus artists, dancers, and performers and “Chosen”, a solo performance by Hennessy which explores questions of fate, land, and identity through dance, rant/prayer and aerial action.

Keith has won numerous American awards and commissions for his collaborative work as a choreographer, performer, and organizer, besides international commissions from Les Subsistances (Lyon), Les Laboratoires (Aubervilliers) and La Villette (Paris). His work is discussed in the books “How To Make Dances in an Epidemic” (David Gere, U of Wisconson, 2004) and “Gay Ideas” (Richard Mohr, Beacon, 1992).

Keith’s solo work has been produced throughout the U.S., in Canada, Israel, New Zealand, France and Australia, including several gay and lesbian performance festivals. From 1998 to 2002 he performed with CAHIN-CAHA, cirque bâtard, a French/American, mongrel circus based in France. Keith was a member of the extreme performance collective CORE and a founding member of CONTRABAND, an award winning, internationally acclaimed dance/performance company directed by Sara Shelton Mann. From 1991 to 2003 Keith co-directed 848 Community Space, a thriving urban performance gallery. He has been teaching unique hybrids of performance, improvisation, circus, and public ritual for 20 years and has been on faculty at JFK University, University of San Francisco, Goddard College, and the New College of California. Keith is a member of Alternate ROOTS, a visionary service organization for community-based artists, and serves radical cultural agendas as a consultant, director, teacher, curator, and agitator. In 2003 Keith was intentionally arrested twice as part of the largest global mobilization for peace in world history.