FRESH
What is FRESH?
“A tender revolution seems necessary to become both more powerful and more permeable through transforming what is hard to handle, hard to swallow, hard to take, hard to manage, into softer materials.”
The bay area expression of Alternativa’s new mission was FRESH festival, an annual festival of experimental dance and music held in January of each year. In a 2018 interview for Stance on Dance, Kathleen shared that FRESH was born largely out of an impulse to spend more time in SF, and to create a bridge between her work internationally and her work at home. There was an explicit interest in bringing folks to SF, and in fostering an experimental community here through not just performance offerings, but gatherings of various kinds including classes, pop-up labs, potlucks, music events, and forums. The inaugural year of FRESH festival in 2010 was one week long and took place at Kunst-Stoff Arts. It was strategically placed in January, a relatively slow time of year for arts programming, a time when students she had taught elsewhere might be on break, and a time when Kathleen felt artists could use a creative boost. By 2020, FRESH had grown. It extended over three weeks of incredibly diverse programming, showcasing over 75 artists from the bay area and beyond - many of whom were repeat guests of FRESH.
Kathleen was always at the helm of the festival, but never worked alone. She gathered a team of co-curators, including local legends like José Navarette and Abby Crain, as well as Layton Lachman and Ernesto Sopprani (with whom she started the festival), in order to draw in a dynamic lineup of seasoned and emerging performers, teachers, and critical thinkers. There was no application process for the festival, rather the co-curators would bring together some of their own mentors and students, folks they were inspired by, folks who were new and struggling to get a foothold, as well as folks who were long-time friends and collaborators. Kathleen often came out of pocket to support the festival.
The festival created an immersive experience of creative exploration around a single theme, with each artist interpreting it according to their interests. The most recent themes included “Tender” (2020); “Reckoning” (2019); “Antidote” (2018); “Empathy/Disruption (2017), and “Future Gaze” (2016). The theme, and the work presented, was always closely linked with a spirit of social justice and activism, a charged responsiveness to what was going on in the world, be it the housing crisis, the election results, the ominous rise of white nationalism, or climate change. Eventually FRESH fest worked like a magnet - drawing folks to SF who would sometimes stay to embark on creative careers here. Thus, it began to bolster and sustain the experimental arts community, just as Kathleen had hoped.
Kathleen and FRESH
Through the Years
Check out memories of Kathleen Hermesdorf and FRESH compiled by Chani Bockwinkle, Yvonne M. Portra, and Robbie Sweeny. Click on a photo to access a folder with photos and/or videos from that time.
