A cross-genre film that darts and gestures. Lizard is wild and Lizard is you.
Choreography Director: ArVeJon Jones; Film Director: Jonah Belsky; Editing Director: Ames Tierney; Director/Co-Producer: Sarah Rosenthal; Music Director/Co-Producer: Dave Rosenthal; Composer: Penina Biddle-Gottesman; Dancers: Johan Casal, Onara De Silva, ArVejon Jones, Marlayna Locklear; Cinematographer: Rowan Gould-Bayba; First Assistant Camera: Theodora (Dot) Foster; Percussion: Josh Setala. 6.5 minutes.
About the Team
Jonah Belsky is a Philadelphia-based photographer and award-winning filmmaker. A graduate from Oberlin College and originally from San Francisco, their multimedia video work includes narrative short films, music videos for artists around the globe, and experimental dance films. Their directing and cinematography skills have been recognized by over thirty festivals.
ArVejon Jones, a Bay Area-based dance artist and educator, is passionate about his research into Jazz and the intersections of Black and Queer contributions to past, present, and future movement phenomena. Originally from Los Angeles, he has performed with Copious Dance Theater, Robert Moses Kin, PUSH Dance, SOULSKIN Dance, ODC Dance/ SF, Concept o4, Sean Dorsey Dance, Prometheus Dance Theater, Jean Appolon Expressions, RAWDance SF, and Garrett + Moulton Productions, among others. He has toured nationally with ODC Dance SF and PUSH Dance, and has toured nationally and internationally with Sean Dorsey Dance. He has taught for multiple institutions including San Francisco State University, BodyVox, Boston Ballet, LINES Dance Center, and various private dance studios. He currently serves as Chair of Dance at Oakland School for the Arts. His specialties include Jazz, Contemporary Aesthetic, Modern, and other Afro-Diasporic movement languages.
Photo credit: Jonah Belsky
Dave Rosenthal began taking piano lessons at age four at his grandfather’s instigation. He participated in the Music Major program at Chicago’s Kenwood High School chaired by acclaimed composer and musician the Rev. Dr. Lena McLin. He received a BA and MA in mathematics from Brandeis and a B. Mus. in composition from the Rubin Academy of Music and Dance in Jerusalem, later continuing his piano studies with Boston-based teacher Keiko Kobayashi. Dave earned a PhD at MIT’s Media Lab; his dissertation was titled “Machine Rhythm: Computer Emulation of Human Rhythm Perception.” His compositional style draws on his experience growing up in Chicago’s diverse Hyde Park neighborhood, where his ear was trained both by the classical canon and by contemporary music including the Chicago Blues; soul artists such as Marvin Gaye, James Brown, and the Temptations; and rock icons such as The Doors, The Who, Jimi Hendrix, and Jethro Tull. He is CEO of Maestro Analytics, a B2B software startup.
Photo credit: Denise Newman
Sarah Rosenthal is the author of Estelle Meaning Star, Lizard, Manhattan, and two books in collaboration with Valerie Witte: One Thing Follows Another: Experiments in Dance, Art, and Life Through the Lens of Simone Forti and Yvonne Rainer and The Grass Is Greener When the Sun Is Yellow. She edited A Community Writing Itself: Conversations with Vanguard Writers of the Bay Area. The film We Agree on the Sun, a collaboration with Jonah Belsky, Ayana Yonesaka-Ruiz, and Ames Tierney, has received numerous accolades including Best Experimental Short, Berlin Independent Film Festival. She has received the Leo Litwak Fiction Award, a Creative Capacity Innovation Grant, a San Francisco Education Fund Grant, and residencies at This Will Take Time, Hambidge, New York Mills, Vermont Studio Center, Soul Mountain, and Ragdale, as well as a two-year term as Affiliate Artist at Headlands Center for the Arts. Learn more here.
Ames Tierney is a freelance animator, video editor, illustrator, and drag performer based in Brooklyn, NY. Ames makes works inspired by queer masculinity, intimacy, and theatricality. His work has been featured in the FX Network’s Official Fanart Gallery and the Student World Impact Film Festival, and by Jermaine Clement and Harvey Guillen.
Penina Biddle-Gottesman is a third year Technology in Music and Related Arts (TIMARA) major and musicology minor at Oberlin Conservatory. She studied the cello at The Crowden School of music in Berkeley, and started composing music in the eighth grade at the John Adams Young Composers program. Penina has worked as a sound designer for several films and theater productions, most notably composing music for multiple productions at Marin Theatre Company. As a performer she has opened for notable experimental musicians including Lydia Lunch and Aaron Dilloway. Her current areas of study are instrument design, film scoring, installation-based performance, and Jewish music history. Penina works as a promoter for Oberlin's Dionysus Discotheque, and as a singer at the Christ Episcopalian Church in Oberlin. She is also an organizer of Oberlin's Modern Music Guild. She spends her summers teaching kids about graphic scores and contemporary music at the John Adams Young Composers program––the place where she was first brought into the world of composition.
Photo credit: Catrina Alonzo
Johan Casal, who graduated from San Francisco State University with degrees in Dance and Cinema, is a multidisciplinary artist based in the Bay Area producing work in film, music, theater, and dance. He performed as lead male dancer in Netflix’s production of “The Queen’s Ball: A Bridgerton Live Experience in San Francisco,” and directed and produced an original feature film, “Manalo: The Movie Musical,” highlighting the shared struggles of Filipinx-Americans and celebrating the Philippines’ diverse cultures; the film received a certificate of recognition by Daly City Mayor Juslyn Manalo. In 2021, Casal started his own production company, Kuya Johan Productions, to create a safe space for BIPOC and queer artists to develop projects. Casal is a company member of Kularts, the premiere presenter of tribal and contemporary Filipinx arts. His latest short film, “Coven of the Midnight Son,” is set to premier in the near future. Find him on Instagram at @kuyajohanproductions.
Photo credit: Catania Ayala
Onara De Silva was born and raised in Sri Lanka and moved to San Francisco in 2019 to further pursue her career in dance. While in Sri Lanka, she performed for the contemporary dance company Mesh Dance Theatre and taught for their school platform, Meshground. Their works included “Deconstructing the Embody” (2016), “Seven: the Seeker, the Thinker” (2017) and “Pluralism” (2019). De Silva graduated Summa Cum Laude from San Francisco State University and was named Dance Honoree for the School of Theatre and Dance. While at SFSU, she served as president of the Student Dance Alliance, a student-run organization that provides a community for dancers from all paths of life. She is currently a freelance dancer in the Bay Area and teaches modern dance for the Youth Program at Shawl Anderson Dance Center.
Photo credit: Sukhdip Purewal Boparai
Rowan Gould-Bayba is a filmmaker and photographer from Berkeley, California. Gould-Bayba graduated from Oberlin College with a Bachelor of Arts in Cinema Studies with a minor in Environmental Studies. He studied for a year at the Prague Film School, where he specialized in Cinematography. His films include The American Friend (a documentary about the Ohio-based Native American activist Robert Roche) and Prague, July 15th, both in post-production. He is currently based in Berlin.
Theadora Foster (she/her) was born in Los Angeles and moved to the UK as a child. She studied at the University of Oxford and trained at Prague Film School, where she specialized in cinematography. A theater-maker, dancer, and performer, Theadora was drawn to abstract photography from an early age and began experimenting with “film-poems,” short, lyrical films that draw on contemporary dance practices, spoken word and visual languages of domestic space, vulnerability, and the natural world. Her debut film as a cinematographer, Ana Nedeljkovic’s “Tezeta,” won the Audience Award for Best Short Film in the University of Oxford Short Film Festival 2023.
Photo credit: Ryan Landell
Marlayna Locklear hails from Milwaukee, WI. She began her training at the age of 12 at City Ballet Theatre and went on to graduate from Milwaukee High School of the Arts and University of the Arts In Philadelphia, PA with a BFA in Ballet and Jazz. Marlayna was one of the founding members of the Milwaukee Dance Connection and has gone on to dance with Eleone Dance Theatre, Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble, Dallas Black Dance Theatre II , Owen Cox Dance group, NuWorld Contemporary Dance Theatre, Robert Moses’ KIN, Garrett + Moulton Productions, Deeply Rooted Dance Theatre, and Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, where she served as the company Jazz and Contemporary instructor as well as resident choreographer for DCDC II. She has performed works by Christopher Huggins, Dwight Rhoden, Ron Brown, Donald Byrd, Ronen Koresh, Donald McKayle, Diane McIntyre, and Ray Mercer, to name a few. A freelance artist, Locklear teaches and choreographs at universities throughout the U.S. She is currently dancing with the San Francisco Opera and is a guest lecturer at San Francisco State University.
Photo credit: Jonah Belsky
A jazz drummer from Seattle, Josh Setala is currently based in San Francisco where he is finishing a degree in jazz performance at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Josh is often a bandleader and sideman at venues such as Mr. Tipple's, The Dawn Club, and Bird and Beckett Books. His performing ensembles include The Playground Trio with Nate Gilbreath and Alan Jones and Ripple Æffect with Lola Miller and Aidan Siemann. Josh’s poised, empathic presence and imaginative, effervescent playing captivate audiences up and down the West Coast.