Dawsondancesf And Richard Howell Announce World Premiere At YBCA

Dawsondancesf and Richard Howell have announced their newest collaboration will take place August 24-25 at the YBCA Theater in San Francisco. Borrowing from the title of Howell's just-released jazz album, Coming of Age-MANGAKU, the program will feature the world premiere of MANGAKU, a work for nine dancers with live musical accompaniment from Howell and guest artists. Rounding out the program is Floating in Mid Air, dawsondancesf and Howell's last collaboration, which received its premiere at San Francisco's Bayview Opera House earlier this year. Tickets, $25 - $65, will go on sale June 1 at dawsondancesf.org.
Under the direction of Gregory Dawson, a former dancer with Alonzo King LINES Ballet, dawsondancesf has partnered with Howell in a multi-year engagement. Mangaku is their fifth collaboration since 2013.

For his part, Howell is an internationally recognized jazz saxophonist and bandleader, and an award-winning music arranger and composer. He has played with some of the great legends of blues, jazz, soul and world music including Don Cherry, Toumani Diabeté, Charlie Haden, Billy Higgins, Etta James, Salif Keita, Chaka Khan, Taj Mahal, Carlos Santana, Christian Scott and Maurice White, among many others.

"For more than a decade, he's maintained higher visibility in Europe than here at home in the Bay Area," noted Andrew Gilbert in an article for KQED Arts. But with two recent albums, Burkina, which was released in 2016, and his new album Coming of Age, Howell means to show he's made a career leap of his own.

"This album, Coming of Age, is literally about me coming into my own as an artist," said Howell. "For most of my career, I've been working in the service of other musicians. Now with this album, more than any other before it, I wish to plant a flag for myself." Howell, who has spent time off and on performing in West Africa, found the name for his album in a word from the Fula language, mangaku, which means "coming of age."

A prolific choreographer, Dawson has made over 90 works since founding his self-named company in 2007. MANGAKU will be the 17th work for dawsondancesf. The rest include commissions for other companies - Boston Conservatory, Company C Contemporary Ballet, Menlowe Ballet, Robert Moses' Kin, Tacoma Metropolitan Ballet, University of Missouri-Kansas City and Wylliams/Henry Contemporary Dance Company - and compositions for the Alonzo King LINES Ballet Training Program where Dawson is an instructor. Past posts held by Dawson include Assistant Director of the California State Summer School of the Arts' Dance Department and Artistic Director of the Dawson Wallace Dance Project in Denver, Colorado (formerly David Taylor Dance).

Founded by Gregory Dawson in 2007, dawsondancesf is a contemporary ballet company based in San Francisco. In addition to frequent presentations in the Bay Area, the company has toured to Colorado and New York with invitations to perform at Baruch College, DanceFar, Santa Cruz World Arts Festival and TEDx. Among the 16 works the company has premiered to date are the "Izzie" Award-winning birds eye view, dent drop dead, Altered Larynx, punctus contra punctum and RITE 2017.

Richard Howell is an internationally recognized jazz saxophonist and bandleader, and an award-winning music arranger and composer. He has played with some of the great legends of blues, jazz, soul and world music including Etta James, Chaka Khan, Taj Mahal, Carlos Santana and Maurice White. A personal highlight of his 30-plus-year career was performing with Toumani Diabeté and Salif Keita in Mali, West Africa. The Monterey Jazz Festival, Montreux Jazz Festival, Lincoln Center, Hollywood Bowl, Royal Albert Hall and The Tonight Show are among the revered venues and events at which Howell has been invited to perform.

Over the past several years, Howell has devoted more of his time to composing and recording his own music. Drawing on his experience performing with groups as diverse as Etta James and the Roots Band and the Dutch-Surinamese band Fra Fra Sound, Howell describes his own compositions as "Bridge Music." His recordings include A Perfect Night in San Francisco, Outlyer, We Are All Connected and Burkina, which was named one of the best new jazz albums of 2016 (Bay Area News Group). Has latest album, Coming of Age-MANGAKU, has just been released. FACT SHEET WHAT: The world premiere of MANGAKU, with choreography by Gregory Dawson and original music by Richard Howell.

August 24- 25, 2018 Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m.. YBCA Theater Yerba Buena Center for the Arts 700 Howard Street San Francisco, CA 94103. TICKETS: $25 - $65 Tickets on sale June 1. To reserve, visit dawsondancesf.org. YBCA Theater box office phone: 415-978-2787.