Since 1979, Mixed Bag Productions has supported the work of legendary San Francisco artist Sara Shelton Mann.
An elder and pioneer of Bay Area contemporary dance, Sara’s current performance and teaching work engages emerging artists as dancers, writers, musicians, and collaborators, mentoring a new generation of Bay Area performance makers and fostering intergenerational exchange. Throughout her 50-year career, Sara has explored ecological, social justice and metaphysical concerns to create deeply political and poetic performance, including serving as founder and artistic director of Contraband 1979-1996.
As an artist, Sara uses improvisation, finely tuned through years of rigorous practice, emphasizing essential physical and energetic techniques that go far beyond traditional choreography, in order to achieve a resonating technical transmission between dancers, opening pathways to seek out universal truths. Her work contains many forms of dance, somatics, writing, image work, space design and healing modalities. Circuit Network has provided grant writing and management consulting services to Sara and Mixed Bag Productions since 2012.
