LAVENDER COUNTRY
Scott Marlowe in Lavender Country, photo by Natalia Perez
Following its celebrated premiere and subsequent nomination for "Best Dance Performance" in 2017 by SF Classical Voice, Post:Ballet's Lavender Country collaboration returns to the stage to kick off our Season:Ten programming. Highlighting singer/songwriter Patrick Haggerty and his Lavender Country band, with choreography by Vanessa Thiessen and direction by Robert Dekkers, this one-act program is a moving celebration of unconditional love and radical defiance.
Released in 1973, Patrick's band’s self-titled album ‘Lavender Country’ was a bold statement against the establishment and generated outrage as country music’s first openly gay record. Post:Ballet’s Lavender Country production reflects on Haggerty’s radically defiant message, pushing up against ballet’s inherently traditional gender roles and exclusivist roots to create a dramatic, poignant performance focused on queer relationships and human narratives.
“…come out, my dears
To Lavender Country
You all come out and make yourselves at home
It don’t matter here
Who you love or what you wear”
Haggerty’s music uses “Lavender Country” as a metaphorical landscape, a safe place where people can come to be their true selves. The work focuses on human stories, heightened by characters who love, search, and bleed in ways that are painfully visible specifically because of their unchosen differentness. Post: and Haggerty believe that audience members, regardless of orientation, will connect with Lavender Country as vulnerable, sexual, and innately human beings.
Post:Ballet in ‘Lavender Country’
Patrick Haggerty on StoryCorps
Where: Z Space. 450 Florida Street, San Francisco
When: Thursday-Saturday, April 25-27 @ 8-10pm
Audience members are invited to participate in our “Dress West to Impress” costume theme for this production!
Admission: $40-50
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MUSIC: Lavender Country, featuring singer/songwriter Patrick Haggerty and his Bay Area-based band
CONCEPT/DIRECTION: Robert Dekkers
CHOREOGRAPHY: Vanessa Thiessen in collaboration with the dance artists
COSTUME/SCENIC DESIGN: Christian Squires
LIGHTING DESIGN: Dave Robertson