ABOUT
Jess Curtis/Gravity
2000-Present
Gravity was founded by the late choreographer-director Jess Curtis, whose distinctive body of work ranged from the underground extremes of San Francisco warehouse performances with such iconic companies as Contraband and CORE in the 1980s, to the exuberance of French circus tents with Compagnie Cahin-Caha and the formal refinement of European state theaters in Berlin, London, Glasgow, and other major cultural centers.
Curtis’ choreography was widely recognized for its excellence, originality, and inclusiveness. In 2011, he was honored with the Alpert Award for Choreography and the Homer Avila Award for innovation in physically inclusive dance. Additionally, Gravity has been recognized with six Isadora Duncan Dance Awards and a ‘Fringe First’ at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
These works consistently engaged with issues of embodied diversity including gender, sexuality and disability, making compelling cases for the value that different bodies contribute to society, and include: Fallen (2001); Under the Radar (2007); The Symmetry Project (2006-2010); The Generation Project: Jess Meets Angus (2010); Dances for Non/Fictional Bodies (2011); The Way You Look (at me) Tonight (2016), a duet created and performed by Curtis and self-identified disabled artist Claire Cunningham in collaboration with philosopher Alva Noë; Sight Unseen (2017); and (in)Visible (2019).
Jess Curtis/Gravity creates, produces, and tours original body-based art; educates young professionals, students, and members of the public with physically accessible workshops in cities throughout the US and Europe; nurtures emerging artists through artistic mentorship, professional guidance, and fiscal sponsorship; fosters international exchange through co-productions that mobilize our international network to bring international artists to San Francisco and help San Francisco artists present work abroad; and supports emerging choreographers through our Pop Up Performance Project, which commissions site-specific work for presentation on city streets.
Image Description: a black and white headshot of Jess, a man with a shock of white hair looking at the camera, smiling. Photo by Robbie Sweeny.
Jess Curtis
FOUNDER
Jess founded Jess Curtis/Gravity in 2000 and served as Executive/Artistic Director up until his untimely passing in March of 2024. This loss has sent ripples through the experimental art and dance communities he was part of in the Bay Area, Berlin, and beyond. To learn more about Jess’s life, work, and legacy, please click here.
Image Description: A photo of Gabriele - a black nonbinary person with short locs and a medium silver chain necklace - leans on one arm in a loose mesh tank, revealing part of a tattoo on their left ribcage, staring deeply at the camera behind a blurred mix of various offerings at the center of a rocky altar.
Gabriele Christian
INterim Executive Director
Interim C0- Artistic Director
Gabriele Christian (b. 1991) is an Oakland-based conceptual artist and descendent of stolen folk experimenting within somatic practices, language, performance composition, video production and community arts facilitation to locate and center BlaQ (Black and Queer) experience, vernaculars and aesthetics as wellsprings for radical futurity. They are a founding member of Bay Area performance collectives and land projects: RUPTURE; OYSTERKNIFE; and BlaQyard. Born in Harlem, after graduating with a BA in Theatre Studies, they have worked for ten years as a professional performance artist and director primarily in the San Francisco Bay Area, New York City, Berlin, Amsterdam, and beyond. They have been an artist in residence at CounterPulse and UC Santa Cruz (with OYSTERKNIFE), Watermill Center (with RUPTURE), This Will Take Time and have directed large scale collaborative works in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood and most recently Grace Cathedral. They were blissed and blessed to start their work with Jess Curtis/Gravity in 2017 and have been a frequent collaborator, curator, audio describer, and director with the company since then. JCG invested in and pushed their work into a new stratosphere; they owe the shape of their current career to Jess’ early advocacy and support and are ready to reshape for the next generation.
Image Description: A black and white photograph of a white woman with long dark hair wearing black heels, grey slacks and an oversized black off the shoulder shirt - caught in motion sitting on the floor, hand on knee looking over her shoulder as if she’s starting to say something.
Rachael Dichter
Interim Co-Artistic Director
Rachael Dichter is a San Francisco based dancer, performer, choreographer and curator. She makes work about closeness. About the shortest distance and shortening the distance between things - between people. She grew up on the ocean and in the mountains and forests of Northern California, performing as a ballerina and attending Mills College. She studied performance and classical techniques in New York and Bangalore India and danced with Fougere Dance in Brussels Belgium. She was a Danceweb Scholar, a resident artist at the Marin Headlands, Caldera OR, the Robert Rauschenberg Residency, and her work has shown locally and internationally. She had been lucky to collaborate with a number of fierce and talented folks, and for four years she co-curated the San Francisco based live arts festival THIS IS WHAT I WANT. Since 2014 she has performed and collaborated with Gravity, and worked closely with Jess Curtis in a variety of different roles including consulting, rehearsal directing and audio describing. As Jess Curtis/Gravity has been her artist home for so many years, she is both devastated in this moment and heartened by the outpouring of love and support, and passionate about continuing the beauty and legacy that Jess leaves behind.
Image Description: a headshot of Aiano from the shoulders up with layered black hair just below her shoulders, platinum blonde bangs, pear drop earrings, and facial piercings. She is wearing a top with black straps and gold necklaces.
Aiano Nakagawa
Director of operations & Communications
Aiano Nakagawa is a multidisciplinary artist, producer, and educator whose work explores the intersection of art, queer homemaking, and power analysis. Aiano is deeply curious about the role of art-making, curation, and design in the act of new world building. Their practice is rooted in the belief that we must practice liberatory ways of existing on a small scale in order to create radical change on a larger scale. She is a founder member of the Bay Area Queer art collective, Asian Babe Gang and is a facilitator at CompassPoint Non-Profit Services. Aiano joined Gravity in 2022 as a Production Manager and helped produce dark/lessons/rupture in San Francisco in 2022 and the rolling world premiere of “Into the Dark” in Berlin and San Francisco in 2023. Aiano joined Gravity as Director of Operations and Communications in January 2023. Aiano’s work envisions and embodies the possibilities of the new world that is being born through collective imagination, organizing, creative disruption, and a commitment to creating the futures we need to exist.
Image Description: A headshot of Michael, smiling with short gray hair wearing a dark red shirt, standing against a black and gold background.
Michael Whitson
Managing Direcor
Michael Whitson (he/him) is a disabled, mixed-race Native American musician and poet with a long San Francisco history of community arts engagement. He was a co-founder of 848/CounterPulse in 1990 and co-director from 1990-2007. He is a co-founder in 2009 of Yuba Libre, a 30 acre community-based land project integrating ecological stewardship with the generative process of bringing Bay Area artists and teachers to a "wild and scenic" protected section of the Yuba River. Michael has been the Managing Director/Gravity Access Services since October, 2022.
Image Description: Headshot of Tiffany, a white woman in her 30s with curly brown hair, freckles, green eyes and a broad smile delicately curls her hand next to her face. She wears a sleeveless top with an anchor pattern.
Tiffany Taylor
Blindness Accessibility and Audio Description Advisor
As a blind woman with a BA degree in Theatre, Tiffany uses her lived experience of disability and performance to challenge ablest practices in performance spaces. She advocates for increased access to performance events for blind audiences and authentic casting and employment for disabled workers in the performing arts.
As a Visual Access Consultant, Tiffany tests the usability and accessibility of websites for performance venues, ensuring they cater to the needs of blind and low-vision audiences. In her role as an audio description consultant and coauthor, Tiffany facilitates blind and low-vision audiences having access to quality professional audio description.
Tiffany has performed in San Francisco and Berlin with Gravity in In-Visible, and Into the Dark. As well as in Sight Unseen in San Francisco.
Additionally, Tiffany has served as part of the grants review process for the National Endowment for the Arts Musical Theatre Panel, leveraging her expertise to shape funding decisions that support a diverse array of artistic endeavors. She has participated in the flagship training program Access Acting Academy for blind and low-vision actors and the Axis Dance Choreography and Performance Lab. Currently, she sits on Gravity’s board of directors.
Allison Wyper
Website Consultant
Los Angeles-based performance artist Allison Wyper founded Rhizomatic Arts in 2014 to provide design services, professional coaching, and community to help creative people work independently, not alone. Rhizomatic Studio, the creative wing of Rhizomatic Arts, produces socially-engaged, collaboratively-oriented performances and workshops in public and private spaces.
Board of Directors
Dress Wedding (President)
Michelle Lynch Reynolds (Treasurer)
Tiffany Taylor (Secretary)
Gabriele Christian
Sophia Green
John Link, PhD.
Maia Scott