From November 1st  2006

Artship Dance/Theater and Artship Music Ensemble
which work very closely together will be embraced under the name of

ARTSHIP Ensemble  -  San Francisco 
2008-2009 Season
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Burning of the Ancient Library of Alexandria

Time line:
2006 / 2007 Initiation of the Idea and Research
 Fall 2007 Preproduction and Scoping Rehearsals
January 2008 Beginning of incubating rehearsals towards
a full production
"In Africa, when an old man dies, it's a library burning."
BÂ, Amadou Hampâté (1901-91) delivered in 1960 at UNESCO.
(The original: En Afrique, quand un vieillard meurt, c’est une bibliothèque qui brûle.)

Drawings from the Tarantella rehearsals by Nathaniel Bolton

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Art in the Park- September 30, 2004
South Park, for San Francisco
Neighborhood Parks Council

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Same River Twice - July & September 2004. Six performances at ODC Theater in San Francisco, USA. Two performances at SKC Theater in Belgrade, Serbia-Montenegro

Same River Twice Tour to Belgrade. September 2004

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Our Ship, Artship - November 2003
Alice Arts Center, Oakland (re-named Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts)

Collaboration of Artship/Dance Theater
with Project Bandaloop

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Ship Remembers - June-July 2003
10 performances in a cargo hold converted into a theater and located aboard the vessel Artship, Oakland

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Geography of Memory - May 2002
Performances in front of the vessel Artship in Oakland, with Facing East Dance and Music and The Nina Haft Dance Companies

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Four Winds - May 2001
Port Fest, Jack London Square, Oakland

Over the last two decades Artship Dance/Theater has developed ways and skills to present new opportunities for breakthrough thinking and creative work---often through collective problem solving toward a performance, or some "barn-raising" like activity.

Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Artship Dance/Theater works together with diverse artists, arts and local agencies, foundations and individual donors, departments of local government, and other socially relevant organizations.

Community Commons

We intentionally advocate and demonstrate that art making and cultural activities are strong convening forces in creating and re-interpretating contemporary ways and reasons for public gathering.

Activities

To bring forth these intentions during next two years, we have selected a theme that offers immersion into the field of continuous human values and engages our company in creating a major performance work. We also use this theme actively to participate in community events and to curate several visual arts exhibitions. It is important for us to develop performance work that enhances and complements our "community building" mission.

Our theme for the 2005-2006 season focuses on the dance forms that came to America in the late 19th century with immigrants from southern Italy --- the dance of Tarantella. The performance we will present is called "Tarantella, Tarantula." The sources of this work are from ancient myths and the dance forms that rural folk used for self-healing and warding off anxieties.

Artship Ensemble gave three successful Bay Area performances during May 2007, at St. Mary’s College, Moraga, and in Marin County at The Dance Palace, Point Reyes Station, and at Commonweal in Bolinas in August.

Artship Ensemble was honored to be one of four U.S. companies invited to perform at the 6th Prague Fringe Festival, Prague, Czech Republic, and the Ensemble presented the Tarantella production for all eight nights of the Festival, May 27 to June 3, 2007. 

For our programs  for the 2008-2009 season we are producing: Burning of the Ancient Library of Alexandria, an original theater piece with an interpretive and visual art exhibition.

We have also adopted Mastery, as achievable potential, as the core value of Artship Foundation work.

The access, understanding, training, sharing of mastery for self- actualization, personal creativity, collaboration skills and appreciation of diverse cultural experiences, are the Foundation’s daily practice at the scale of individual experience and personal growth of Artship’s performance company.

One characteristic of complete performance mastery is the integration of virtuosity and emotional communication, recognizable as an inexplicable visceral response by the listeners. The piece is not just interpreted—it comes to life in front of their eyes and in their cognitive being.

Daniel J. Levitin, writes of mastery in his book, “This Is Your Brain On Music,” in the chapter titled, ‘What Makes a Musician?’:

…Ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a word-class expert—in anything. In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again. Ten thousand hours is roughly equivalent to three hours a day, or twenty hours a week, of practice over ten years. Of course, this doesn’t address why some people don’t seem to get anywhere when they practice, and why some people get more out of their practice sessions than others. But no one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.  [Emphasis Added] - Levitin, D. J. (2006).