Keith Hennessy

Not to be confused with Keith Hennessey.
Keith Hennessy
Born1959 (age 64–65)
NationalityAmerican and Canadian
Known forDancer and choreographer
MovementContemporary dance and Performance art

Keith Hennessy (born 1959 in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada) is a[1] San Francisco-based dancer, choreographer, and performance artist regarded as a pioneer of queer and AIDS-themed performance.[2] He is known for non-linear performance collages that combine dance, speaking, singing, and physical and visual imagery, and for improvised performances that often undermine the performer-observer barrier.[3] Hennessy directs CIRCO ZERO, which has received commissions from Les Subsistances (Lyon) & Les Laboratoires (Paris), FUSED (France-US Exchange), as well as funds from the Zellerbach Family Fund, San Francisco Arts Commission, California Arts Council, Grants for the Arts, and The San Francisco Foundation.[4] Hennessy's performances are embedded in leftist and anarchist social movements; his career began in anti-nuclear juggling, acrobatics, and vaudevillian comedy. In 1982, he hitchhiked to California for a juggling convention, and stayed.[5] In his San Francisco living room he co-founded the grassroots performance space "848 Community Space," which later became CounterPULSE.[5][6][7] He was influenced by and has worked with Lucas Hoving, Gulko, Ishmael Houston-Jones and Patrick Scully, Terry Sendgraff, Karen Finley, Joseph Kramer, the collective CORE (Jess Curtis, Stanya Kahn, Jules Beckman, Stephanie Maher, Hennessy), and Contraband, a company directed by Sara Shelton Mann.[8] His work also developed from his participation in social and political activism inspired by Direct Action to Stop the War, Critical Resistance, ACT UP and Queer Nation. In San Francisco Hennessy's work has been presented at numerous venues including Dance Mission, Theater Artaud,[9] Mama Calizo's Voice Factory and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.[7]

Hennessy is also known for his ability to fuse performance art with community organizing and activism.[10] In one early San Francisco work, Religare, by Contraband, he danced in the dirt in the ruins of a Mission district single-room-occupancy building that was burned down by the owner/landlord. As critic Paul Parish explained, "[I]t was an exorcism and a funeral for the winos who died there, and a healing for the neighborhood, and is perhaps the single greatest dance experience I've ever had."[5]

  1. ^ Hennessy, Keith (2005), "Queerly Shifting Affinities", in Carlsson, Chris (ed.), The Political Edge, City Lights Books, pp. 143–149, ISBN 1-931404-05-4
  2. ^ Gere, David (2004), How to make dances in an epidemic: tracking choreography in the age of AIDS, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press
  3. ^ Jowitt, Deborah (8 April 2009), "Noémie Lafrance, Melanie Maar, and Keith Hennessy Inscribe the Body", Village Voice, retrieved 26 February 2010
  4. ^ "About", CircoZero.com, archived from the original on 23 March 2010, retrieved 26 February 2010
  5. ^ a b c Parish, Paul (10 December 2009), "Bringing the body electric", Bay Area Reporter, vol. 39, no. 50, p. 21
  6. ^ CounterPULSE.org, retrieved December 13, 2009
  7. ^ a b Keith Hennessy, archived from the original on April 2, 2009, retrieved December 13, 2009
  8. ^ http://www.sarasheltonmann.org/company.htm retrieved December 13, 2009 Archived March 10, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
  9. ^ "Keith Hennessy's Sol Niger at Theatre Artaud", Ballet.co.uk, 1 October 2007, archived from the original on 21 November 2007, retrieved 26 February 2010
  10. ^ Gómez-Peña, Guillermo; Peña, Elaine (2005), Ethno-techno: writings on performance, activism, and pedagogy, Routledge, ISBN 0-415-36247-4