For many, the steady drumbeat of political and social issues — abortion, homelessness, addiction, mass incarceration — needs to be countered with more positive news. The arts can offer temporary escape, but, more importantly, they can also deliver glimmers of hope through looking at our present condition in alternative ways. Jo Kreiter is one artist with a knack for seeing things in a unique fashion.
The choreographer and director of Flyaway Productions, an aerial dance company, is staging her latest aerial dance work — “Ode to Jane” — on the exterior of the Cadillac Hotel, in the heart of San Francisco’s Tenderloin district. The setting and staging of this site-specific work could be seen a reinforcing just how precarious our lives are. The “Jane” in the title isn’t a specific woman; it refers to the Jane Collective, aka Jane, an underground group of women who were also known as Abortion Counseling Service of Women’s Liberation.
They were trained to perform safe but illegal abortions from 1969 until Roe v. Wade became law in 1973. Kreiter has broadened the reference to include women who are part of other resistance movements.
With a background in political science and aerial dance performance, Kreiter has created a body of work over some 30 years that grapples with many of the most dire of social problems, including women in prison and the impact it has on their families. Her latest piece grew out of her work with Nina “Peaches” Foster. A former add.
