Flyaway Productions performs off-the-ground dances that expose the range and power of female physicality. We experiment with height, speed and gravity, dancing on steel objects that are both architectural and fabricated. We place dancers anywhere from two to one hundred feet off the ground. The height at which we perform is as important to us as the integration of content into an apparatus-based vocabulary. We offer performance as a medium for social commentary and choose projects that advance female empowerment in the public realm. At its core, our work explores the female body– its tumultuous expressions of strength and fragility.

We teach a signature style of apparatus-based dance. We offer ongoing classes to adults of all levels of experience and year round KIDFLY classes to youth in partnership with ODC School; we collaborate with social justice organizations in our Art & Advocacy Program, presenting a summer of dance-making and activism. Our training with youth offers some remedy for the ways in which women and girls remain an underserved element in public culture as a whole.

We advocate and provide the bridge between women in the arts and civic life. We present our biennial 10 Women Campaign, a celebration of ten individual women whose work in business, politics, activism and the arts mirrors Flyaway’s mission. The campaign is designed to encourage dance as a vehicle for community gathering and to bring visibility to the often overlooked female leadership achievements in the Bay Area’s contemporary dance community.

Where We Perform

On a three-story fire escape, a hanging umbrella, an oversized scale of justice, a circling merry-go-round, suspended containers of salt, a steel-framed bath, a chandelier on fire and a live billboard. We have also made dances for rooftops, an active construction site and the last remaining hand-operated crane on San Francisco’s waterfront. Our work is typically free to the public and engages a wide spectrum of the public who otherwise would never attend a professional dance performance.

GRANTS AWARDED

In 2009, the Foundation supported the September 2010 premiere of Singing Praises: Centennial Dances for the Women’s Building, a new sight-specific dance on the Women’s Building in the Mission District, celebrating the Building’s centennial and its role as a gathering space for women.