Sha Sha Higby's FOLDED INTO A TEMPEST Plays NohSpace, Now thru 7/28

The NohSpace presents four nights of performance and workshop of Sha Sha Higby's world premiere of "Folded into a Tempest, her latest work.

The show explores a whimsical journey of life, death, and rebirth through ephemeral images that evoke the passage of time and day, or the shifting of the seasons. Using the manipulation of hand crafted materials, textures and exotic sculptural costume interwoven with puppetry, dance and intricate props, her work creates a journey in which movement and stillness meet. Shreds of memory lace into a drama of a thousand intricate pieces, slowly moving toward a sense of patience and timelessness.

The show plays tonight and Saturday, July 20, 21, 27, 28 at 8:00 pm on The NohSpace, 2840 Mariposa at Florida Streets in San Francisco. For tickets, the public may call Brown Paper Tickets at 800-838-3006 or visit www.shashahigby.com. For further info, call 415-868-2409. Also Sha Sha will give a workshop Saturday, July 21 at NohSpace from 11-2pm.

Higby uses sculpture as a body costume that can be integrated with theater and dance to create its own poetic plot in solo performance. Internationally renowned for her evocative and haunting performances, she is influenced by her studies in Asia, Noh Theater, Butoh and shadow puppets. It takes Higby two years to make and develop a new costume sculpture that slowly "grows into the performance" – at each of which she adds a new prop to play with to transform herself and the audience together into one.

Sha Sha Higby received a BS in art from Skidmore College and spent five years in Indonesia under a Fulbright Scholarship. She also studied for a year in Japan, and six months in India under an Indo-American Fellowship. She has received numerous awards and grants, including a NEA Fellowship in solo theater and grants from the Zellerbach Family Fund and from The Japan Foundation for collaborative artistic work.

She has performed internationally at the Festival Internazional delle Marionnnette; Divaldo Korzo in Slovakia; the Festival of Sydney in Australia; Singapore Festival of the Arts; Hong Kong Fringe Festival; Tokyo National College Of Art; the Tokyo Textile Institute: Puppet Theater Festival; and the Stara Zagora in Bulgaria. In addition; she has exhibited her work at the Portland Art Museum; Arizona State University; San Francisco Folk and Craft Art Museum in San Francisco; Honolulu Academy of Arts; University of Massachusetts at Amherst; Columbia College Inter-Arts Program in New York; San Francisco Asian Art Museum; The Glass Museum in Tacoma, Washington; and Baltimore College of Art.

For more information, visit Sha Sha Higby's website at www.shashahigby.com.

Photo credit: Albert Hollander