| Right Brain Performancelab
John Baumann and Jennifer Gwirtz co-founded Right Brain Performancelab in 1999 as a fusion of dance, physical theater and object manipulation. they have performed in numerous venues in San Francisco, including The Marsh and Dance Mission, often producing full-length shows in partnership with Spinning Yarns Dance Collective. their joint project in 2001, Terraffirma, won glowing reviews from Sima Belmar of the SF Bay Guardian. RBP and SYDC's first project together was Woven Tales & Branching Thoughts in May 2000. They performed in The Marsh's Monday Night Marsh series in 1999 and 2001, Exploring the space text/movement series and at the at Have You Seen Us at The Dance Gallery in Santa Cruz in November 1999.
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 The Performancelab in 2005 (clockwise left to right) Cari Bellinghausen, Jennifer Minore, Susan Donham, Apryl Renee, Lisa Claybaugh, John Baumann, Jennifer Gwirtz |
Jen and John presented their first full-length show, Not A Step, to audiences in Auckland, New Zealand in January 2001. Jen brought her conceptual vocal work, Electroencephalograph: Mental Notes to The Physics Room Trust in Christchurch as part of the group gallery exhibit, Neural Notations. Since then, they've worked with h e l p : human elemental laboratory of performance, a collective that has staged two benefits for huckleberry youth services in 2002 and 2003. RBP's 2005 season began in 2003 as a work-in-progress called Hegemony Cricket, and hit the stage with excellent reviews in June 2005 at CounterPULSE's new space at 9th and Mission in San Francisco. Their season 2006, Faith, Folly & Revelation, was a co-production with Spinning Yarns Dance Collective about faith, religion and, of course, politics. RBP was last seen when Jen performed a solo dance/maskwork piece during her eighth month of pregnancy at Bare Bones Butoh called The Residency Project: Being Lived In, which featured a series of video poems composed during a Resident Artist Workshop at Shotwell Studios during her sixth month of pregnancy. Jen and John are currently on hiatus while their daughter enjoys her toddlerhood and will be back soon! Jen and John also are co-artistic directors and facilitators for the San Francisco Field. for more information about The Field go to thefieldsf.org |
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Jennifer's work is informed by conceptual art and technology. She mixes the personal and the metaphorical with physical, vocal and verbal vocabularies to find the intersections between physical and mental systems. For example, a printed record of brain waves is encoded manually into music or movement, then sung or danced. By transforming an objective record into the more expressive media of sound, movement and text, the resulting work creates a visceral, temporal and unexpectedly poeticized understanding of what it means to be human. Her latest projects extends from a choreographic practice called "necessary movement," which uses systems of intention and physicality. Shows: Co-production, production and performance:
Other performance:
Locally, she has been seen in at Dance Mission, The Marsh, outdoor sites, The San Francisco Arts Commision Gallery, and other spaces. in 2002, she joined the advisory board of The Field San Francisco and has since facilitated many Field workshops. she has danced for Mary Armentrout Dance Theater, Megan Nicely And Dancers and Christy Funsch. She teaches Pilates at The Body Gallery in San Francisco. She also designs publicity materials for dance companies and events. Jen is mother to little Rain, who was born in August 2006. |
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John Baumann has been creating solo and collaborative theatrical pieces in San Francisco since 1994. His most recent work was a written play for Pirate Cat Radio called The Bunny In The Bottom of the Bowl. He has performed at Venue 9, Speakeasy Theatre Co., Climate Theater's Four Caste, the Monday Night Marsh, Cable Car Theatre's Off The Tracks, the SF Fringe Festival, and other bay area venues. Funanimal World, his evening of solo and collaborative theatre with terence keane and 1999 SF Bay Guardian Goldie winner Dan Carbone, was a run show at Venue 9 in November 1997. he collaborated with Eliza Perkins on their 1996 SF Fringe Festival play Lunar Madness, Lunar Legacy. Recent solo work includes Tik Tok (performed at Venue 9 June 1999) and Endzone (performed at Studio Valencia November 1998). John Baumann constructs solo performance pieces out of movement, speech and song, using themes of communication, alienation and longing. a recurring subject is the deep unease of men confronting power, desire and responsibility. As an actor, John Baumann has appeared in Dan Carbone's 1998 Best Of The Fringe play Up From The Ground/There Be Monsters at the Cable Car Theatre in September 1998, and at the EXIT Theater for its post-Fringe run in November 1998. Since 1994 he has been in many short run and one-time-only plays, skits and events for paying audiences in the Bay Area. John is also a facilitator and member of the board of advisors for the San Francisco Field, the local chapter of a national organization that provides support and critical feedback for emerging dance and theater artists. |
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