Performances boldly reflect a changing and chaotic world
As the most exposed of all performing artists, dancers use their bodies to tell stories, mostly without the benefit or protection of mediating technologies and instruments. In a period of heightened angst and dismay over the course of the country, the Bay Area dance scene is not shying away from difficult questions. Rather, the region’s deep and diverse terpsichorean community is rising to the occasion. The fall season is conspicuously engaged with politics writ large, as companies local and touring seek to make sense of the present moment.
TRANSFORM FEST >> Under the direction of Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts seeks to bring artists into ongoing discussions about identity, justice and social struggle. With seven newly commissioned performances, Transform is a new two-week festival that kicks off its inaugural run by posing the question “Why Citizenship?” Among those seeking to provide an answer are trenchant dance companies and choreographers, including Amy Seiwert Imagery, Melecio Estrella and Andrew Ward’s Fog Beast, RAW-dance and Nicole Klaymoon’s Embodiment Project.
DETAILS >> Sept. 14-23; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; $25$60; ybca.org.
REGGIE WILSON'S FIST AND HEEL PERFORMANCE GROUP >> Cal Performances presents the California
premiere of Reggie Wilson’s “Moses(es),” a reimagining of the biblical Moses story inspired by the African-diaspora idioms of blues, gospel, and spirituals. Wilson’s Brooklyn-based Fist and Heel Performance Group is on campus for a residency preceding the performances, which also launch a new Cal Performances programming strand titled Joining Generations, which spotlights four trailblazing African-American choreographers, including Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s annual residency, Donald Byrd’s Spectrum Dance Theater and Camille A. Brown’s “Black Girl: Linguistic Play.”
DETAILS >> 8 p.m. Sept. 23 and 3 p.m. Sept. 24; Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley; $30—$68; 510-642-9988, calperformances.org.
SAN FRANCISCO TROLLEY DANCES >> Presented by Epiphany Dance Theater, Trolley Dances is the most delectable moveable dance feast of the season. Using the city as both a backdrop and unpredictable character, the peripatetic event ushers many of the Bay Area’s top dance companies off the stage and onto the street. This year’s route travels along the N-Judah line from the California Institute of Integral Studies’ South of Market campus to Kezar Triangle in Golden Gate Park with site-specific performances by Chaksam-Pa Tibetan Dance and Opera Company, Embodiment Project, Hope Mohr Dance, little seismic dance company, Maze Daiko and others. DETAILS >> Oct. 21-22; California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco; free; epiphanydance.org.
AXIS DANCE COMPANY, “ONWARD AND UPWARD” >> Celebrating 30 years at the Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts, Axis, the country’s leading physically integrated dance company starts a new era with recently hired artistic director Marc Brew by premiering “Radical Impact,” the choreographer’s collaboration with JooWan Kim and his Oakland hiphop orchestra Ensemble Mik Nawooj. The performances also feature a reprise of Amy Seiwert’s acclaimed “The Reflective Surface” and Stephen Petronio’s 2001 “Secret Ponies” performed by the original cast.
DETAILS >> 7:30 p.m. Oct. 26-29; Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts, Oakland; $20-$30; www. axisdance.org.
WENDY WHELAN, BRIAN BROOKS AND BROOKLYN RIDER >> Like Mikhail Baryshnikov, Whelan’s post pointe-shoe career is turning out to be as interesting as her incandescent career with the New York City Ballet. SF Performances presents her collaboration with dancerchoreographer Brian Brooks to reprise their duet, “First Fall,” as part of the larger piece “Some of a Thousand Words.” The evening features a live score by the adventurous string quartet Brooklyn Rider playing works by John Luther Adams, Tyondai Braxton, Philip Glass and a new piece by the Rider violinist Colin Jacobsen.
DETAILS >> 7:30 p.m. Nov. 29—30; Herbst Theatre, San Francisco; $40-$65; sfperformances.org.