Mission Statement
Dandelion Dancetheater is situated at the crossroads of dance, theater, community activism, healing, and new performance forms. Our work is built from a fascination with artistic experimentation, vulnerability, and risk-taking and a simultaneous commitment to the creation of high-quality, radically accessible art. We view the exploration of the endless possibilities of the human body as a potent means for personal and collective growth and share this exploration with diverse populations through performance, teaching, speaking,
video, and writing.
The company operates on the philosophy that how we make work and who is included in that process is a determining factor of the meaning of our art. The Dandelion ensemble is a diverse group of dancers, actors, musicians, and performance technicians, all collaborators in the creation process. Also diverse in terms of size, age, sexual orientation, ability/disability, and cultural background, these artists are involved in in-depth research in the ways their backgrounds and artistic forms intersect. Built collaboratively over intensive rehearsal periods, our works are both performative and an expression of community ritual. Performances dismantle the distinction between artist and ordinary person, inviting the audience to both see themselves reflected in and become a part of the experience.
Background
Dandelion Dancetheater was founded in 1996 by Kimiko Guthrie and Eric Kupers. The co-directors create interdependently: both directing individual and directing collaborations.
Dandelion holds an annual home season in San Francisco and performs in many 
collaborative events and festivals throughout the Bay Area. The company has performed at leading venues for experimental performance, including CELLspace, CounterPULSE, Noh Space, ODC Theater, and Project Artaud and has toured to Los Angeles, New York, Yosemite, Massachusetts, Hawaii, Scotland and India.
Dandelion has received numerous awards and grants, including a Dancemaker grant from Dance USA/Irvine Foundation, a Gerbode Foundation Choreography Commission, an award from the Japan Foundation New York, a Rockefeller MAP Fund grant, an award from the Grants for the Arts non-recurring events fund, and repeated funding from the Zellerbach Family Fund, the Theatre Bay Area CA$H Program, San Francisco Arts Commission, an anonymous foundation, and many individual supporters.