Z Space

Post:Ballet presents:

Lavender Country

November 17 & 18, 2017 at Z Space

Post:Ballet’s latest creative endeavor, Lavender Country, features live music by Patrick Haggerty (singer/songwriter of Lavender Country) and his exceptional ensemble of Bay Area musicians. Led by Post:Ballet’s Artistic Director Robert Dekkers and Resident Choreographer Vanessa Thiessen, this new work for six dancers is set to and inspired by the music of Lavender Country, a self-titled album released in 1973 which was country music’s first openly gay album. Post’s new work reflects on Haggerty’s radically defiant music as Dekkers and Thiessen use ballet's inherently traditional gender roles as a dramatic tension against queer characters and narratives. 

“...come out, my dears
To Lavender Country
You all come out and make yourselves to home
It don't matter here
Who you love or what you wear”

Haggerty’s music uses “Lavender Country” as a metaphorical landscape, a safe place where people can come to be their true selves. The work focuses on human stories, heightened by characters who love, search, and bleed in ways that are painfully visible specifically because of their unchosen differentness. Post and Haggerty hope that audience members, regardless of orientation, will connect with Lavender Country as vulnerable, sexual, and innately human beings. 

The dance performance will be followed by a live concert with Haggerty and the Lavender Country ensemble. Audience members are invited to participate in the event’s costume theme, Wild West! In support of our LGBTQ community, 5% of all tickets sales will be donated to the SF LGBTQ Community Center.

PersonNel

MUSIC: Lavender Country, featuring singer/songwriter Patrick Haggerty and his Bay Area-based band
DIRECTION: Robert Dekkers
CHOREOGRAPHY: Vanessa Thiessen in collaboration with the dance artists
COSTUME/SCENIC DESIGN: Christian Squires
LIGHTING DESIGN: Dave Robertson