CIRCO ZERO
intimate spectacular circus
Directed by Keith Hennessy

Keith Hennessy, Artistic Director
Keith Hennessy is a Canadian-born, inter-disciplinary artist and organizer living in community in San Francisco. He has won choreography awards from all of the local award sponsors (Theater Critics Circle, The Izzies, Cable Car Award) as well as media-sponsored awards for performance and organizing (SF Bay Guardian, SF Focus). HennessyÕs solo work has been produced throughout the US, in Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, including several Gay and Lesbian Performance Festivals. Since 1998 he has performed with CAHIN-CAHA, cirque b‰tard, a French/American, mongrel circus based in France. Hennessy was a member of the extreme performance collective CORE and was a founding member and principle collaborator in CONTRABAND, an award winning, internationally acclaimed performance company. Keith co-directs counterPULSE (formerly 848), a thriving community art space. He is on faculty in the MFA Interdisciplinary program at Goddard College and taught performance and public art at New College of California from 1990-96. Hennessy 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.

Amanda Starr, Aerialist
Since age 12, Amanda Starr has been a member of the New Old Time Chautauqua, a traveling education and vaudeville troupe, which tours to fairs, theaters, hospitals, nursing homes, youth detention centers, and prisons. She has trained and performed with Earth Circus, Velocity Circus, Camp Winnarainbow, and in Havana with the Cubano International Circus. She studied with Pickle Family CircusÕ Gypsy Snyder, SF Circus SchoolÕs Master Lu Yi and Xia Hong, and her dance training includes ballet with Richard Gibson as well as studies in Salsa, Tango, and Modern Ballet. Amanda has performed aerial Rope and Tissue acts at the Skydancers Festival, Cirque B‰tardÕs Mongrel Circus Cabaret, Oregon Country Fair, Radical Performance Festival, and with the modern masters of new vaudeville, The Flying Karamozov Brothers and Avner the Eccentric. Amanda graduated as a Nurse Practitioner from Stanford Medical School.

Benn Mendoza, Aerialist
Benn MendozaÕs performances span the breadth of American popular culture from a one year stint as Tigger in Disneyland, to several Royal Caribbean tours singing and dancing medleyÕs of Broadway shows, to aerial acts in the raves and clubs of the future-tribal dance community. Benn trained extensively in gymnastics, dance, voice, acting and rhythmic gymnastics in LA before moving to San Francisco where he trains at the SF Circus School in the aerial arts of Rope, Tissue, and Hoop. Benn teaches at Head over Heels (Oakland). Otherwise he can be found promoting clubs, performing at raves, or dancing with Jade at Bondage A Go Go.

Gabriel Todd, Vocalist
Gabriel Todd, a voice and dance-based performing artist, has appeared on sidewalks, in studios, warehouses, clubs and theaters in the Bay Area. He conceived and directs Freaksoultribe, a project combining urban and post-modern dance vocabularies with edgy, soulful vocals amidst acoustic and electronic music. He has performed with Sara Mann/Contraband, Kim Epifano, Michelle Stortz, Samuel Topiary, Krista Denio, Jared Kaplan, and the legendary High Risk Group. As a resident artist of the Jon Sims Center (2000) Gabriel directed ÔConfessions of a Songbird StrangerÕ a full-evening musical dance performance. His work is inspired by underground dance cultures, process work, contemporary folk medicine, and the healing practices of indigenous and tribal communities usingsong, dance, ritual, and hands-on healing. He his grateful to his teachers Bill Doyle, Rita Sahai, and Raz Kennedy.

Jade-blue Eclipse, Handbalance, contortion
Jade-blue Eclipse, born in Nagasaki, Japan, learned her survival and performance skills in San FranciscoÕs seedy strip joints, hip night clubs and alternative performance venues. Instead of engaging in violence and drug use she studies Chinese acrobatics at the SF Circus Center with Mr. Lu Yi, a master trainer from the Nanjing Acrobatic Troupe. Specializing in hand balancing and contortion allows Jade to focus her masochistic tendencies into fierce and uncompromising performance.

Loren Arienne Olds, Vocalist
Loren Arienne OldsÕ spent her first 13 years catapulting through E. Coast gymnasiums and piping on the silver flute. Her later creative endeavors included an in-depth study of multifarious dance techniques and forms. She studied dance at the California Institute of the Arts, and went on to receive her B.A. in Interdisciplinary Arts from the Naropa Institute. Those she has performed and collaborated with include: Diavolo Dance/Theater (LA), Polly Motley and Molly Davies (NYC), K.J. Holmes, Cassie Therman, and Dylan Skybrook (SF). She lived for a year in Ghana, W. Africa, studying the rhythms and dances of the Ewe and Dagomba tribal peoples and performed as a musician with the Denver based Balinese/Javanese gamelan orchestra, Tunas Mekar. Currently she sings with DÕYara, an E. European womenÕs vocal ensemble, apprentices with Janet Adler in the form of Authentic Movement, and studies Geyda, a Bulgarian bagpipe. She extends heartfelt gratitude to her extraordinary teachers: Anita Rui, Janet Adler, Vasil Bebelekov, Irina Mikhailova, and Mba Abdulai Seidu.

Neal Stewart, Composer/DJ
Neal Byron Stewart is a classically trained musician whose love ov All That Is funky has taken him into hybridized realms of cross genre free form. Growing out in Miami, he was exposed to its eclectic night culture that shaped his ear to hear everything from house, world, hip hop and industrial music as equally danceable. Tantalized by the freedom and open-ended nature of computers and electronics, he began experimenting with sound and visuals at the SF Art Institute; where he graciously received his BFA. His immersion into thee SF underground dance scene began at the now-evicted C.C.C Warehouse, where he was known to DJ for 10-hour stints. NealÕs amorphous DJ sets can be heard each Friday at Laszlo, at Mission and 21st. Much respect and thanks to: my family, Simone, my teacher Sharon Grace, to my spiritual mentor Peggy McConnell, and to the Most High. Love and Light.

Susan Voyticky, Aerialist
Susan Voyticky is an artist of many facets. Always a physical performer, her love of expression through movement started at an early age. At Stanford University she studied modern and improvisational dance and theater while completing a degree in Science, Technology and Society. After mapping the human genome for a year, Susan went to Paris to study movement theater at the Ecole Jacques Lecoq. Her studies expanded to include classical dance, Capoeira, and aerial arts. Simultaneously she created the musical group Strate with Ayel Lambert Ramos, exploring improvisational movement and melodies in performance. To take her circus talents to a professional level, Susan undertook the two-year BA Theater Practice program at LondonÕs Circus Space. Here she performed several original solo and ensemble works, which toured to several festivals including the London Juggling Convention, the International Mime Festival and the CIRCA Festival in Auch,France Recently returned the Bay Area to work with Circo Zero, examples of Susan's work can be viewed at www.voyticky.com.

Tyler Downing, Acrobat
Tyler Downing was born and raised in Western Colorado, and moved to San Francisco in November of 2001, leaving behind a 16 year history of gymnastics competition, tumbling and trampoline exhibitions, and a multitude of performances in that area. He was driven to excel by the power of alternative education, and after high school joined Americorps to maintain that desire for knowledge from within. He would like to recognize and thank his beautiful daugher Elizabeth, who reminds him everyday that to keep the soul of a child is to keep your happiness eternally.

Elaine Buckholtz, Light Design
Elaine Buckholtz is a visual artist and musician. She worked with Contraband from 1989-96 as lighting designer and musician and has done lighting designs for numerous bay area performance artists over the past 15 years. She tours with Meredith Monk as lighting director for her solo concerts and is currently the annual lighting designer for The Telluride Film Festival. She has most recently begun making video installations as well as a mobile performance cart which will be used as a traveling venue by the new SF based record label, Out Of Round Records. Elaine has released two solo CD's, Horse In The Window, and Dark Rodeo and is the founder of the music group Night House. She also plays music with the group Corner Tour. All Out Of Round Records CD's are available at: www.outofroundrecords.com.

Andrea Warren, Stage Manager
Andrea Warren is relatively new to the theater world. It was only a short two years ago that she discovered a yearning for the stage. She has studied and practiced fire dance performance, Trapeze arts, as well as juggling and other forms of performance art. However after discovering a talent for bossing people around, not to mention terrible stage fright, she became a stage manager. She has worked with George Coates Performance Works, Earth Circus Productions, PrometheusÕ Revenge as well as other underground performances and various club work. Andrea lives in Berkeley with her husband and two children.

Jessica Robinson, Company Manager
Jessica Robinson is the administrator for 848 Community Space/counterPULSE. She has worked in administration, fundraising, development, community outreach and education for a number of artists and nonprofit organizations, including the Stanford University WomenÕs Center, Dance Through Time, Jess Curtis/Gravity Productions, Krista DeNio, Scott Wells & Dancers, the Tennessee Wildlife Center, and the Stanford University Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology. She holds a BachelorÕs in the Humanities with a focus on Art and Community from the New College of California.