For the next few days, we are excited to share several previews leading up to opening night for BIG SALT with The Anata Project. Performances run May 30 and 31 and June 1, 7, and 8 at the Joe Goode Annex in San Francisco (401 Alabama Street). 

Purchase your tickets here, and also check out the video preview on Vimeo.

Emily Hansel. Photo by Summer Wilson.

Today we hear from Artistic Director Claudia Hubiak.

Questions and Questioning

Questions I am asking myself these days about the project, the process, and making art in the Bay Area: I was lucky enough during the past year to work with Margaret Jenkins through the CHIME mentorship program. This was incredible in regards to my process. I can just keep making endlessly, so I start to wonder…When to stop? This is by far the longest I have worked on a piece. I wonder how long is too long? When do we start becoming our own worst editing enemy? 

I wonder how my experience as a woman making art while raising kids matters? How can my story – told in an abstract piece of art – how can it allow women to feel seen and know their experience is valued?

I wonder how the current lack of diversity in my present cast affects the climate in the Bay today? How can I grow as an artistic director by addressing these questions in rehearsals and opening up room for discussion? 

5 words or phrases to describe BIG SALT:

Blood, sweat and tears. Volatility. Tenderness. Control. Mundane. 

On Transformation

Idea to exhibition….

About how a piece, a project……and the dancers….shape and change you, your ideas, your process….

My work is always shaped by the dancers. I am not interested in creating work that is placed on a body, but rather something that comes from reaction. The dancers are given a lot of space and time to react to ideas, prompts and scored ideas to infuse the work with personal and honest experience. In this way the work does not start under control. This makes it exciting and fresh. Over time I am able to find some control through crafting and honing the work. The final product ideally will hold all of these elements, both detail and abandon. 

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