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Photo by Rosalie O’Conner OUI DANSE Chrysta Bell CONTEMPORARY ARTS FESTIVAL Giomara Bazaldua San Antonio, Texas LuminariaSA.org Mas Rudas Buttercup and Chris Sauter Hyperbubble Siyon Jin Stephen O’Malley* Momo & Pompa ABOUT LUMINARIA Executive Director Board of Directors Luminaria is a two-night contemporary arts festival downtown Kathy Armstrong in San Antonio. Liz Tullis, President Production Manager Ansen Seale, Vice President Members of the Luminaria Artistic Committee, all local creators, have Ethel Shipton Susanne Cooper, Secretary selected works by dancers and choreographers, poets, filmmakers, Media Manager Paul Martin, Treasurer musicians, muralists, composers, actors, and some surprising Sarah Fisch Cari Hill collaborators. Over two nights, these innovative artists will premiere Phil Hardberger their original work while busting genres and pushing boundaries. Jane Lewis From Maverick Park to the San Antonio Museum of Art audiences will enter a city within a city of dazzling light projections, enlightening Artistic Advisory Committee City of San Antonio Co-ordination Team performances, and works of cutting-edge contemporary art. Luminaria is a unique San Antonio celebration, always family-friendly, always Marisela Barrera Felix Padron, Executive Director inspiring, and free to the public every year. Let’s bring arts to light! Paige Berry City of San Antonio Department for Culture and Riley Robinson Creative Development Neuzz Adam Rocha Tonya S. Baum Chris Smart City of San Antonio Center City Development, Anna Stothart Special Events Alyson Alonzo Photo by Lucie O’Malley* INTRODUCTION When you walk out into the nocturnal streets of San Antonio with Now in its eighth incarnation, building on an already noble tradition, this your eyes wide open, you must know this is nighttime like no other. Luminaria will be an iridescent celebration of this heritage of wonders that we illuminate out of the ageless South Texas night. Artists from every corner of the world, solo, or in daring, genre-busting collaborations, have brought their In the gathering twilight, dusky spirals of Mexican Freetail bats have pulsed out skyward from A’lante music, dance, sculpture, performance, spoken word and projections---amid the under a rumbling highway bridge, arcing widening spirals against an impossible backdrop of Flamenco shimmering myriad illuminations you see at every turn. towers of pink and yellow clouds. Nearby, giant luminous sun perches are suspended in mid- air, while choruses of grackles, resting on wires in long strings of perfectly spaced perches, Above all, this Luminaria will be a carnavál of discovery. shriek insistently for the full splendor of the oncoming noche. The art you see here, whether performed on stages, projected on screens or walls, or fleetingly Down below, among the earth-dwellers, streams of headlights are streaming up and down improvised ex nihilo & en passant in the streets, is the outpouring of inspirations as diverse as Broadway like feverish platoons of fireflies in search of cool glades nearby. América itself, manifested on San Antonio streets, parks and lots loaded with their own histories, all of it aimed at finding you, now wherever you may be, in your life, in your journey on these two nights San Antonio night is inked in the shadows of our city’s legendary past, a story incomparably rooted in the history of the world. in the great epics of the New World---first, as a creek-side settlement place of the First Peoples, then arrived the peregrinos mestizos from Mexico, and later, people from the United States, too---and “There’s a surprise around every corner,” says one of the artistic team, all awaiting your explorations ultimately peoples from all corners of the world. and wonderments, your abandon, your undaunted steps into the precincts of nocturnal San Antonio. The only measure will be what you are prepared to witness, what wonders you happen upon, the Day and night, San Antonio has long been a meeting place of all Earth folk. And our history has play of serendipity. always been a play of darkness and light. Because the night was made for art. Our epic evenings here have been illuminated in the flash of numberless shooting stars and tumbling bolides, sparking firecrackers, bottle rockets, and volleys of Roman candles, ascending Because our San Anto night was made for illumination. spears of fireworks exploding in umbrellas of shimmering silver and gold—as well as the periodic, perhaps inevitable, fusillades and cannon blasts that might be expected from a place that has by John Phillip Santos always been a conflicted crossroads of the world, a place where strangers first meet, and mingle--- Buttercup* and become someone new. We walk now as innocents, out into the streets of our ageless San Antonio night. Joel Laviolette and Rattletree Photo by Mark Walley* RAFA ESPARZA, VIRGINIA GRISE, & JOE JIMÉNEZ This is the story of a man who took a boy into his heart—like a mountain. Wrapped him in tongue work and saliva, in tooth strum and accordion, in stories like clouds and sadness like the kind grown by people who have done the most fucked-up shit only to find something nice, one day, something good, which means fear is a horse and the sound of wanting too much, wanting what you might not deserve is a fast- approaching stampede. This means sadness can be grown. It means sadness can be plucked out of the ground like a weed, or left to proliferate, to defeat, to stunt you with its unwantedness, its attack on the cultivated plants you want to swell with goodness and safety and life. But how do you pull your own sadness up out of the ground? And what if you break off only the stem, will it grow back? How do you yank up the tangle of roots? This is the story of a boy who loved trees, who grew up near the Gulf, running and running and listening to the wind in his face, on his back, in his blood—. This is the story of a boy who dug holes. from the Presence of Absence and Kites by Joe Jiménez Site-specific performance by Rafa Esparza, Virginia Grise, and Joe Jiménez. Inspired by Jiménez’s The Presence of Absence and Kites. LUMINARIA ARTISTS Part 1 The Aesthetic of Waste Artpace Teen Council San Antonio, Texas and Hanover, Germany San Antonio, Texas The Aesthetic of Waste is an experimental performance Chalk it Up is a yearly, family-friendly arts event by theater artists Abby Entsminger and Seth Larson produced by contemporary arts laboratory Artpace, with the assistance of Noah Voelker. Premiering in the in which artists create temporary chalk murals. The United States at Luminaria, FaceLookLive is designed Artpace Teen Council are high school students who to bring awareness to social media in an interactive, create a “San Antonio Memory Map,” an interactive, humorous way. glow-in-the-dark chalk art piece upon which audience tag their memories of certain places in the city. A’lante Flamenco Austin, Texas William Basinski A’lante Flamenco will be performing Quintaescencia, New York, New York a new work created for Luminaria. Quintaescencia William Basinski is an avant-garde composer whose is Spanish for “quintessence,” or the fifth essence or most famous work is “The Disintegration Loops,” element. The choreography invokes the four elements: an original composition created from the decaying Earth, Water, Air, and Fire, with the additions of a fifth loops of twenty years’ worth of his older works on essential element of spirit or “el duende.” tape. Originally from Houston, Basinski studied jazz saxophone and composition at North Texas State Stuart Allen University before embracing new-jack minimalism and San Antonio, Texas process-based abstract composition. He will perform Stuart Allen is a visual artist who creates photographs, Vivian and Ondine & The Deluge for Luminaria. sculptures and installations. Bubble, Allen’s Luminaria project, is a looped, slow-motion video documenting Chrysta Bell the brief life of a bubble. As a bubble is tossed Austin, Texas and turned by the wind, its shape and thickness Chrysta Bell, is a musician, performing and recording are constantly changing, creating ephemeral and artist who incorporates multimedia elements into unpredictable patterns of color. unique performances. She began singing early in life, and by 18 she had become lead vocalist for 8 ½ Alyson Alonzo Souvenirs, the popular Austin-based continental swing San Antonio, Texas act. During her time with the band, she was signed Alyson Alonzo is a soul, jazz, and R&B singer whose to RCA Victor and performed on Austin City Limits. powerful vocals ring true to the deep roots of the San Bell has an ongoing collaboration with filmmaker Antonio Soul scene. Upon receiving the Critic’s Pick at David Lynch, and their latest EP, titled Night Ride, the San Antonio Music Awards, the San Antonio Current will be released soon. Luminaria marks Bell’s first wrote, “ Alonzo has been one of the most mesmerizing live performance in her hometown in over ten years. vocalists and pure musical talents in town.” Art and lyrics for HIEROINE by Femina X Chrysta Bell* LUMINARIA ARTISTS Part 2 The Bolos Margarita Cabrera San Antonio, Texas El Paso, Texas This “booze blues” garage band boasts a punk attitude Margarita Cabrera is a Mexican-American artist and and a talented roster of rockers: Osita Anusi, Tanner activist who addresses issues related to border Daniel, Thomas Knierien, and Abel Lopez. Music blog relations, immigration, and labor. She creates Sobre Sound praises the Bolos’ ability to “carry a deep sculptures, using materials ranging from vinyl and bluesy range that harmonize and correlate superbly fabric to ceramic, and she works with community through hints of surf guitar chords, and the western organizations. For Luminaria, Cabrera creates a soul.” Of their Luminaria performance, the Bolos backpack sculpture and ankle bracelet equipped promise a “psychedelic audio visual canvas.” with a projecting device to take her art to the streets.

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