EVIDENCE OF IT ALL
EVIDENCE OF IT ALL
Choreographer Drew Jacoby (Nederlands Dans Theater, Royal Ballet of Flanders) directs her first short film for SFDanceworks. She commissioned Pulitzer-winning librettist Royce Vavrek to create a story and text based on the concept of the seven cardinal sins through the lens of a woman in solitude, pulsating through her memories. Drawing inspiration from iconic artists Maya Deren and Peter Lindbergh, Jacoby's graphic movement style and aesthetic give the dance film an eerie, absurd, and sometimes surreal sensuality. With narration by Golden Globe-winning and Oscar-nominated actress Rosamund Pike and sound design by the brilliant composer Mikael Karlsson (Alicia Keys and Lykke Li collaborator), dancer Meredith Webster takes the viewer on an intimate and riveting journey through her troubled mind, shedding light on the perpetual inner carnal struggle.
Drew Jacoby
Drew Jacoby was born in Boise, Idaho (USA) in 1984, where she received her early training. She spent summers on scholarship at intensive programs including School of American Ballet in New York. At 14, Drew left Boise to study at San Francisco Ballet and Pacific Northwest Ballet in Seattle. Her professional career began at age 17 with Alonzo King’s Lines Ballet in 2002. In 2005 she was invited to join Sylvie Guillem’s Japan tour, performing alongside dancers from The Royal Ballet and Paris Opera Ballet. Drew is the recipient of a 2005 Dance Fellowship and 2008 Special Projects Grant from the Princess Grace Foundation. She founded her own company with former Dutch National Ballet soloist Rubinald Pronk, which was based in New York City and toured to venues such as Jacob’s Pillow and Holland Dance Festival from 2007-2012. While in New York, she also danced with Christopher Wheeldon’s Morphoses, Complexions Contemporary Ballet, and Lar Lubovitch. In 2012 Drew was invited to join Nederlands Dans Theater, where she stayed for three years before joining Royal Ballet of Flanders as a principal dancer in 2015. In 2016 she collaborated on a dance film with choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and musical/visual artist Woodkid in Paris. She has performed works by choreographers including William Forsythe, Jiri Kylian, Maurice Bejart, George Balanchine, Jean Christophe Maillot, and Pina Bausch, and has had original works created on her by Christopher Wheeldon, Lightfoot Leon, Marco Goecke, Crystal Pite, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Alonzo King, Dwight Rhoden, Lar Lubovitch, Edouard Lock, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, and Mauro Bigonzeti. In 2018 she was nominated for a Benois de la Danse award for her performance in Pina Bausch’s Cafe Muller. She was featured as a dancer and choreographer in the official music video Cold, by the Editors and played the role of Loie Fuller in the 2020 feature film, Radioactive, directed by Marjane Satrapi. Her choreography has been performed at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow, Lucent Dans Theater in The Hague, the Royal Opera House in London, and the Joyce Theater in New York. Her work has been reviewed as daring, challenging, highly intelligent, tightly structured, and ‘one that really did shine a new light on contemporary culture and dance’s place in it.’
@drewjacoby // www.drewjacoby.com
Photography by Rahi Rezvani
Meredith Webster
Meredith Webster grew up in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. She worked with Sonia Dawkins Prism and Donald Byrd's Spectrum Dance Theatre in Seattle, and earned a B.S. in Environmental Science from the University of Washington before moving to San Francisco to work with Alonzo King LINES Ballet. She worked with Mr. King for 15 years, 6 of which were as Ballet Master. Meredith has also performed with Ledoh/Salt Farm and Maureen Whiting Company, collaborated with David Harvey to create the site-specific Ladysmith Draw, and co-created Empress Archer for The Cambrians of Chicago. She recently choreographed and starred in the short film Mirrors, written and directed by Mary Marxen.
Photography by Genesis Sorrick
Rosamund Pike
Rosamund Pike is an international stage and screen actress, who is best known for her work as Amy Dunne in David Fincher’s GONE GIRL, for which she received an Academy Award nomination. She also received a Golden Globe nomination for her performance as Marie Colvin in A PRIVATE WAR and most recently won an Emmy for the short form series STATE OF THE UNION wth Chris O’Dowd. Other notable roles have included Jane in Joe Wright’s PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, Rosalee Quaid in Scott Cooper’s HOSTILES, and most recently Marie Curie in Marjane’s Satrapi’s RADIOACTIVE. Rosamund is currently living in Prague working on an adaptation of Robert Jordan’s WHEEL OF TIME series for Amazon Studios.
Photography by Francois Berthier
Royce Vavrek
Royce Vavrek is a librettist who has “shaken up the timid, backward-looking business of American opera” (The New Yorker). He has been called “an exemplary creator of operatic prose” (The New York Times) and “one of the most celebrated and sought after librettists in the world” (CBC Radio). His opera Angel’s Bone, with composer Du Yun, was was awarded the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Music. His collaborations include operas with Missy Mazzoli (Breaking the Waves, Proving Up and Song from the Uproar), David T. Little (Dog Days and JFK), Ricky Ian Gordon (27 and The House Without a Christmas Tree) and Gregory Spears (O Columbia); concert works with Paola Prestini (The Hubble Cantata), Julian Wachner (Epistle Mass), Ellen Reid (Knoxville: Summer of 2015) and Matt Marks (Strip Mall, A Song for Wade (This is Not That Song)); and a musical with Joshua Schmidt (Midwestern Gothic). Recent and upcoming projects include an adaptation of Carlos Reygadas’ Silent Light with Paola Prestini and director Thaddeus Strassberger, developed at the Banff Centre for the Arts and Creativity; Crypto, a contemporary dance creation with choreographer Guillaume Côté and composer Mikael Karlsson for Canadian Stage; new operas with Julian Wachner (Broadview Christ) and Mary Kouyoumdjian (Adoration) for Beth Morrison Projects; a grand opera with composer David T. Little for The Met/LCT commissioning program; and two grand operas with Missy Mazzoli: an adaptation of an original story by Jordan Tannahill for Opera Philadelphia and the Norwegian National Opera entitled The Listeners, and an adaptation of George Saunders’s Booker Prize-winning novel Lincoln in the Bardo for The Metropolitan Opera. Royce is an alum of Concordia University (Montreal), NYU’s Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program and American Lyric Theater’s Composer Librettist Development Program.
Twitter/Instagram: @rvavrek \\ www.roycevavrek.com
Mikael Karlsson
Mikael Karlsson writes music ranging from orchestral music, modern ballets at major opera houses to chamber music, operas and orchestral music.
His music has been performed at Carnegie Hall, Paris Opera, Le Poisson Rouge, Vienna State Opera, Lincoln Center, MoMA, the Ecstatic Music Festival and the PROTOTYPE festival.
His pieces with celebrated choreographer Alexander Ekman have premiered at Royal Swedish Opera (Eskapist, 2019, Midsummer Night’s Dream, 2015), the Oslo Opera (A Swan Lake, 2014), the Semperoper (COW, 2016), and the Paris Opera Ballet (Play, 2017).
His many collaborators include ICE, ACME, Isabel Leonard, Mivos Quartet, Claire Chase, Callie Day, Anna von Hausswolff, Lykke Li, Mariam Wallentin, Alicia Keys, and Lydia Lunch.
Photography by Niklas Alexandersson