January 28, 29 and 30 (NEW!) at 7:30 pm

Join us after as dance curators Lindsay Levesque and Michelle K. Lynch speak with Catherine about the ties between film and performance.

Tickets can be purchased in advance. Friday night is SOLD OUT, but you still have a chance to see this spectacular show on Saturday and Sunday!

Follow the process on the Meridian Dance Blog!

Meridian Dance has teamed up with internationally choreographer/director/video artist Catherine Galasso to present the world premiere of Memorandum of Understanding: Your Butt is Covered. This evening of site-specific dance was created in response to Meridian Gallery’s critically-acclaimed exhibition, Speak, Memory, which features the work of three Bay Area artists who explore the ability of art to contain or construct personal and collective memory.

Humorous and provocative, Memorandum of Understanding explores themes of accountability and protection in conversation with the art on exhibit at Meridian Gallery; from large-scale drawings of unsettling dream-state creatures, to abstract video narratives projected at distorting angles, to a melancholic video meditation on a bombed-out family home in Lebanon. In this performance, Galasso and four of her dancers inhabit all three floors of Meridian’s converted Victorian mansion, playing with audience proximity, use of constricted spaces and performer-controlled lighting to immerse the audience in a series of interactions based on physical sketches about defenselessness. Informed by Galasso’s training as a painter, musician and filmmaker, Memorandum of Understanding gracefully juxtaposes the formal with the vernacular through a multidisciplinary aesthetic accessible to dance enthusiasts and newcomers alike.

Catherine Galasso is currently the youngest artist-in-residence at ODC Theater and has also held residencies with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Her multidisciplinary work has been performed internationally and has received funding from the Bossak-Heilbron Foundation, the Zellerbach Family Foundation, Theatre Bay Area, and The San Francisco Foundation. Her most recent work, Bring On The Lumiere! is inspired by the Lumiere Brothers -- the French inventors of one of the first motion picture cameras. See samples of Catherine's work on her website.

Meridian Gallery is a twenty-year-old non-profit art center that hosts an exhibition program, a monthly new music series, a dance program and arts internship program for at-risk youth. The Meridian Dance program is curated by San Francisco-based choreographer/performers Lindsay Levesque and Michelle K. Lynch, who will host a question-and-answer session following the performance.

Tickets are $10-$20 (sliding scale), and can be purchased in advance.