Artistic Director and Choreograher
Anne Bluethenthal, M.F.A. is founder and Artistic Director of ABD Productions. Winner of the SF Bay Guardian’s Goldie Award for Dance (1996), she has been choreographing, performing, and teaching in the Bay Area since she arrived in 1982. Bluethenthal established her company in 1984, having performed and choreographed throughout the U.S. In addition to solo and ensemble repertory, she created and directed the full length dances Fish Can Sing (‘90), Connections (‘92), Excavations of the Spirit (‘94), and The Heart is a Live Thing (03). Anne has collaborated extensively with Bay Area theater, dance, and music artists. She co-founded the SF Lesbian and Gay Dance Festival and recently founded the Dancing the Mystery series. Anne has created a unique approach to training dancers which she has taught for over 20 years. She is on the faculties of the MFA Creative Inquiry Program and the MA Women’s Spirituality Programs at New College of CA as well as the Acting Program at Academy of Art University. Bluethenthal maintains a private practice in the Alexander Technique and has published essays and poetry on Dance, Alexander Technique and other subjects.

Composer
Ajayi Lumumba, infuses his jazz-rooted music with Western Classical and Urban styles and folkloric traditions of Africa and the Diaspora. Jackson is an accomplished jazz bassoonist, percussionist, and pianist and has performed and composed music throughout the U.S., Europe, Japan, Africa and the Caribbean. Jackson has performed and recorded artists such as Prince Lashaw, Adam Rudolph, John Santos, Omar Sosa, and many more. He has worked with a dance ensembles including Dimension Dance Ensemble, Ase Dance Collective, Imhotep, and Project Reconnect. Jackson directs his own Haitian folkloric company, Neg Diaspora, and is co-founder of Pitch Perfect, a Bay Area-based production house specializing in film score and commercial music.

Set Designer-Muralist
Nadine Gay is a French born professional painter, sculptor and ceramist. She has shown extensively in France and in the USA. She earned a BFA from Pratt Institute in NY. She has taught art to adults and children for the past 15 years in various community programs including Youth in Arts, Leap Imagination in Learning, Arts in mental Health (Napa State Hospital).She has created several public murals in collaboration with various schools St. Isabella and Napa State Hospital.

Poet
Judy Grahn, PhD is a longtime activist and artist, co-founder of Gay Women’s Liberation and a women’s press. Her poetry and other writing are considered foundational to a number of movements, and have spread internationally for 30 years. Book length poems The Queen of Wands and The Queen of Swords have both been produced as plays; Wands won an American Book Award in 1983. Her collected poetry, The Work of a Common Woman was named in Publisher’s Weekly as one of the 20 most influential women’s books of the 70’s & 80’s. People continue to put her work to music and perform it in venues from Tasmania to Wisconsin; and to teach it from the Amazon Forest and the mountains of Chile to the Maharaja’s College of South India and the universities of Austria.

Singer-Songwriters
Melanie DeMore is a singer-songwriter who has toured extensively, singing at festivals, universities and concert halls. In addition to her solo work, DeMore is a founding member of the Grammy-nominated vocal ensemble The Cultural Heritage Choir…featuring Linda Tillery. DeMore facilitates vocal workshops for professional and community-based choral groups and has taught her program called “Sound Awareness” in schools, prisons, and youth organizations in the US, Canada, Cuba and New Zealand. DeMore was a California Artist in Residence with the Oakland Youth Chorus for 10 years and has received an award from the Music Educators National Conference for her work with young singers and artists.

Mama CoAtl has worked the stage from San Francisco to Cusco, from Performance Art and Installation to Butoh, Ritual and Spoken Song, from Blues to Son, to Funk to Poetry As a multidisciplinary ARTivist she has curated ceremonies to heal the Amazonic River Mother of God, concerts for peace on places desecrated by femicide in Mexicos highways and has organized blessing days in cities and public plazas.            

Oasis For Girls (a project of the Tides Center) is a center located in SF that provides a safe space where girls and young women [ages 10 – 20] are inspired and empowered to become strong and creative leaders in their communities through Arts, Leadership Development and Life Skills programs.

ABD and OASIS for Girls are crafting a partnership around empowerment of girls and young women through workshops, mentorship with ABD artists, participation in the creative process, and performance opportunities.