“Carnaval San Francisco sends the community the message,
‘You are alive! Look how colorful, creative, irreverent and
inclusive you can be!’ We are lucky in San Francisco to have
that tradition for 30 years, and I am honored to bring that
message from the Mission to the Bay and beyond,”
Professionally, Everett Harper,
is recognized as a leader in technology innovation for new
communities. He is just the second King [Jim
Sowers 2000 was the 1st] to come from the internet
industry or the new global media which is reshaping the eyeball
patterns everywhere. The Mission district, which most of us know
as the home of Carnaval, may be better known in this lofty
community as one of the trendiest of neighborhoods for new media
creative types. Everett is the director of community initiatives
at Linden Lab,
which is the creator of
Second Life.
Members of Second Life create and dress avatars who live, work
and conduct business in the virtual world.
Everett has helped to pioneer the social network
analysis tools and applications which have helped fuel Linden
world's explosive growth.
The 2008 Carnaval King, Everett
Harper brought classic good looks, discipline,
athleticism with many years of training in tango,
samba, salsa, modern dance, Vinyasa yoga and love to the best
choreographed couple's dance ever performed in the King and Queen
competition.
Everett holds a
MBA and M.Ed from Stanford
University, and a BSEE in biomedical engineering from Duke
University. While at Duke, as a starter, he helped his team win the NCAA National
Championship in soccer, it was Duke's first ever in any sport. Together
with his dance partner and now Queen Kellita he will rule over the world
beyond the masks of everyday responsibility, beyond time and
space, otherwise known as the land of myth, magic and make-believe.
Everett believes the fuel for his
collaboration with Kellita comes from a six-year journey through
sites of cultural collision: Havana, New Orleans, Salvador,
Cartagena, Fez, Johannesburg, New York, and Sevilla. He was
inspired by the passionate music and dance traditions that emerged
from favelas, souks and juke joints. His choreography extracts that
power and reimagines it through a modern narrative of mashups and
mezclas.
He is currently Director of Community Initiatives at Linden Lab,
creators of Second Life a rather appropriate position for the newly
elected King of makepbelieve. [see side-bar]
The 2008 Carnaval King and Queen
competition had many talented dancers doing powerful performances.
This "Only in San Francisco" version of dancing with
the stars honors the many generations of ancestors whose vibrations
are still with us in the intangible manner that physics is only
beginning to understand. For Everett and his dance partner Kellita,
this was the first year couples were
encouraged and in the first round you had to compete in one of
four categories. [more]
Winning performance in the Contemporary/Fusion
category at the
Preliminary King & Queen Competition
at de Young Museum
King Everett and his now Queen Kellita wow
the crowd with a clever medley of world dance and costumes one
reporter mistakenly called a striptease.
Everett is honored to be the King of Carnaval SF on its historic
30th anniversary, and appreciates the rare opportunity to have a
platform to express three core ideals-
creativity,
collaboration, & community.
King Everett would like to express deep gratitude to his wife Julie, two year old daughter
Damiana, the Hot Pink
Feathers tribe, the Carnaval SF committees, and especially
Queen Kellita.
"Everett Harper and Kellita Maloof are
total dance nerds. Whether talking shop about stage theory or
listening to the subtle shadings in music for choreography
ideas, the pair lives for the opportunity simply to “shake it.”
So it makes sense that these self-professed dance dweebs are
this year’s reigning king and queen of Carnaval."
"Significant images render insights beyond
speech, beyond the kinds of meaning speech defines. And if they
do not speak to you, that is because you are not ready for them,
and words will only serve to make you think you have understood,
thus cutting you off altogether. You don't ask what a dance
means, you enjoy it. You don't ask what you mean, you enjoy
yourself; or at least, so you do when you are up to snuff."
