Press Quotes

How To Die review by Rita Felciano

Sol niger's review from Rita Felciano for Dance View, (a quarterly journal)

"Persuasively integrating dance, acrobatics, and Dada-esque play into
vibrant postagitprop political theater, Sol niger (italic) measures the
scale of a raging global crisis within the fundamentally sane proportions of the human body."
Robert Avila, SF Bay Guardian

"Hennessy is that rare artist who succeeds in translating fierce social
concerns into artistically satisfying creations that enlighten and
entertain. This year's Sol niger is probably Hennessy's best work yet.
Looking at the devastation humankind has brought on itself, the work celebrates and laments the glory and frailty of being alive."
Rita Felciano, SF Bay Guardian

“a vibrant and theatrically daring new work…Circo Zero’s Sol niger is charming, funny, quirky, disturbing and frequently, to use an old-fashioned word, beautiful.”
culturevulture.net, Michael Wade Simpson

"Pow! Right in the kisser. Two visions of social discontent in contemporary society – straight-up and unflinching.”
Lyon Capitale

"Keith Hennessy's stage presence burns; he ignites any subject he tackles. Sacred, violent, and compassionate impulses shape our everyday lives; it is through a genius like Hennessy, though, that we can confront the state of the human contradiction."
Katia Noyes, SF Weekly

“Keith Hennessy is a gifted, thoughtful performer… unsparing in his scrutiny of an array of injustices.”
Rita Felciano, SF Bay Guardian

“Their effort, their courage, and their intimacy are shocking and moving. What pulls the piece together is the tension between the men’s fierce physicality and the inherent utopianism of Contact Improvisation. Although their close interactions - often crazily timed or delivered with needless force - may give an illusion of recklessness, possessiveness, and cruelty, they are built on skill, cooperation, and affection. They attest, in fact, to the survival, however tattered and compromised, of trust.”
Deborah Jowitt, Village Voice

“A ruggedly beautiful site-specific quartet for Hennessy, Curtis, Beckman, and a dented (driverless) car that relentlessly and slowly circled a parking lot… while the three men hurtled over and under the moving vehicle. Ice Car Cage lingers in memory for its texture of danger and pain .”
Janice Ross, Dance Magazine

“Wily absurdity… poetic folly… fiercely athletic movement on and around the ice and the car, these three dancing clowns, with only the sky as their tent, seem to be making a nouveau cirque of their own.”
Ann Murphy, The Oakland Tribune

“this radical, magnificent work, that is both avant-garde and popular.”
Jean-Michel Guy, Les arts de la piste (Paris)
“raWdoG is a staggering spectacle that forgets all artistic forms to create another that is tremendously free.”
Dernières Nouvelles (Mulhouse)

“raWdoG transgresses the daily banality that gnaws little by little at our humanness, to transport it beyond all, into a universe of beauty and disturbing reflection.”
Télérama (Paris)

“ Their individual performances become not “acts”, but metaphorical reenactments of their spiritual conditions, and this is where the show’s integrity and Hennessy’s inventiveness shine through.
It’s the relentless tension between this solemnity and the irrepressible joy of the circus itself that make Circo Zero such a stunning paradox: a spectacle with soul.”
Rachel Howard, SF Examiner

“ With evocative costumes, a haunting musical score rich in traditional airs, and playful staging, this is the Olympics for aesthetes, a counterculture Teatro Zinzanni without the overpriced chicken breast.”
Erin Blackwell, SF Frontiers

“This is modern circus, all right, but with a message, a queer sensibility and a haunting beauty.”
Kathleen Wilkinson, SF Gate

“Death-defying, death-defining, Circo Zero combines jaw-dropping stunts with ruminations on grief and mortality.”
Anita Amirrezvani, San Jose Mercury News

“ You will sit still on the edge of your seat and gasp as aerialists zoom and drop right above your head, and this gritty group asks you to forget everything you remember about Barnum and Bailey.”
Michael Wade Simpson, Bay Area Reporter

“ Keith Hennessy took his circus experience and distilled it into physical poetry. His Circo Zero was quite unlike anything else I saw onstage this year.”
Rita Felciano, SF Bay Guardian

“ The sweeping vocals of Loren Olds & Gabriel Todd sweep from the outback southern mountains to share the soul triumphs of everyday elegance of sharing a story, a song and your soul.”
SF Spectrum

“… a soul-stirring message of working-class struggle and the triumph of compassion in the face of unrelenting pressure from the forces of darkness. All of which is embodied in Circo Zero not only in the passionate performances, remarkable feats of fearlessness, and breath-taking physiques, but in the show’s glorious music, assembled on the CD, Circle: The Songs of Circo Zero, featuring the astonishing, haunting vocals of Gabriel Todd and Loren Olds. Their singing is out-of-body and otherworldly, penetrating to the heart.”
Mark Mardon, Bay Area Reporter