Sushi Announces Season Schedule

Controversial, cutting-edge dance is nothing new to Sushi, San Diego’s leading purveyor of avant-garde dance and performance. And this season will be no different.

Holly Hughes, whose grant from the National Endowment for the Arts is threatened by the current dispute over obscenity, will perform her solo “World Without End” on Dec. 6-9 and Dec. 12-16. The monologue had its West Coast premiere in Sushi’s Neofest celebration two years ago.

Sushi’s season will open in September with two offerings: Omaha Magic Theater’s “Body Leaks” will kick off the series Sept. 13-15, followed by Ishmael Houston-Jones’ “The Undead,” a multimedia work about intimacy in the age of AIDS. “The Undead” will be presented Sept. 27, following Houston-Jones’ appearance at the Los Angeles Festival, and will be repeated Sept. 29-30.

Contraband, a San Francisco-based dance collective, will appear at Sushi Oct. 18-20, performing “Mira, Cycle 1,” a dance drama that focuses on crimes committed against women in the name of love.

The Sushi-sponsored series will also include two Los Angeles-based performance artists, Luis Elfaro and Curtis York, on a split bill Nov. 1-3.

Pat Graney and her Seattle-based modern dance troupe will make their San Diego debut Nov. 29 through Dec. 1. A return visit to San Diego from Joe Goode Performance Group is scheduled for March 8-9, when the kooky dance maker introduces his latest theater piece, “Remembering the Pool at the Best Western.”

The series will also feature one San Diego-based troupe, John Malashock & Company. The modern dance ensemble is on the books for a June concert, with two world premieres. But the time and place of the event has yet to be announced.

Neofest IX, Sushi’s annual Festival of the New Arts, will open April 4--three weeks earlier than usual--and run through May 11. No other information is available as yet on the schedule of interdisciplinary dance events.