Dance festival rises above doubt
In one corner of ODC Theater on a recent evening, a famous ballet dancer sold concessions incognito, while throughout the buzzy room, artists hugged and screamed. The always compelling dancer-writer Brontez Purnell caught drag queen Monique “Fauxnique” Jenkinson up on his work about to premiere in New York, as Tinypistol choreographer Maurya Kerr shared off-the-cuff feedback with Detour company co-director Eric Garcia.
But you didn’t have to be a star to feel comfortable here: Over on the bench, a Muni employee who had randomly spotted the event listing chatted with a new friend, and a fifthgrade girl sat with her grandmother, attention focused as choreographer Jennifer Perfilio introduced her piece, “Six Minutes for the ODC Lobby,” in which one dancer inflated a helium balloon and another twisted on the floor in a postmodern, non sequitur spectacle.
And this only-in-San-Francisco scene on Friday, June 3, was just a warm-up for a 10-day celebration at the Mission District venue. As ODC Theater Creative Director Chloe Zimberg exclaimed about one of the seven works in progress on offer this week, “Now it’s beginning to feel like a festival!”
This was quite a turnaround. ODC Theater’s State of Play Festival got off to a bumpy start the day before, when Los Angeles choreographer Rosanna Tavarez abruptly canceled her world premiere for undisclosed reasons and a panel discussion, which attracted only half a dozen attendees, meandered into laments about the high competition for grant funds. It seemed, at first, that State of Play’s design was just too complicated for the would-be souffle of an airy art celebration to rise.
That would have been understandable, given that the festival’s format is being invented as part of a larger shake-up at ODC, an attempt to foster organic diversity by making the theater director a supporting administrator who orchestrates guest curators. Under this new model, State of Play — which replaces the summer Walking Distance Dance Festival that ran for nine years — has involved dizzying logistics: two curators, 16 dance groups, a mix of world premieres and works in progress, and seven “community activities” ranging from debates to family game days to parties, held both at the theater and at the ODC Dance Commons down the street. Could all
that come together and actually be fun?
The answer by Friday’s day two was a resounding yes.
Along with the lightheartedness, there were substantive head- and heart-challenging works to encounter. Little House Dance from Portland, Maine, offered the first world premiere with “Hour Wolf in the Cavern,” an uneven diptych that began with Riley Watts and Heather Stewart, in fire-engine-red outfits, moving with the intensity of butoh dancers, balancing on knees and heels to form geometric shapes that echoed planks of wood that Watts dragged to the corner, as he and Stewart gradually came together in curving synchrony.
Redheaded and bespectacled, Watts is a kinetically riveting performer known for working closely with William Forsythe, arguably the world’s most brilliant living dance innovator. This background goes a long way toward explaining why the opening section, which Watts choreographed, unfailingly mesmerized. Unfortunately, the second section, “Thorns and Leaves,” choreographed by Stewart, seemed to be about everything and nothing all at once, and grew ponderous despite the committed energies of six fine dancers.
The festival’s first three days of work-in-progress showings, informal and just 30 minutes long, proved more consistently lively. Megan Lowe Dances’ “Piece of Peace” delivered solos and trios of delicious texture and athleticism, along with simple (perhaps too simple) sung lyrics exploring the performers’ mixedrace identities.
In other showings, the audience got to play a part. As Oakland’s Kendra Kimbrough Dance Ensemble previewed sections of “The Golden Thread,” a mythologyinspired epic being developed with Bay Area screenwriter Delina Patrice Brooks, Associate Artistic Director Yeni Lucero paused the dancers and asked the audience to join in taking deep breaths. Viewers gamely obliged, and the dancers’ impressive floor work found greater flow.
After a portion of Detour’s work in progress “Quake,” in which codirector Kat Goropse Cole shook intensely beneath a hat that looked like a rain cloud (or was it a jellyfish?), co-director Garcia told viewers that he didn’t want their suggestions, but he welcomed “associations, images, stories.” This prompted 11-year-old Scarlett Burns to share her careful notes. “It was past, present and future,” she offered, as other attendees suggested “grief and glamour,” “surrender,” “octopus” and “exorcism.”
The charismatic Oakland duo of Gabriele Christian and Chibueze Crouch go by the name Oysterknife. They didn’t ask for feedback, but they seized the immersive possibilities in a work in progress that involved their building small altars of mirrors and glam accessories, pulling viewers into a rocking dance party. The two then ratcheted up sound designer Rhae Dawn’s aural assault to tensely uncomfortable levels before reappearing in African ceremonial dress and leading two viewers to gaze out an open window. Interstitial videos flashing images of the late pop stars Prince and Whitney Houston suggested a kind of rebirth through commercialized Black culture to a freer state of being.
The festival carries on through Saturday, June 11, with premieres by MK Abadoo of Virginia and former Frankfurt Ballet member Nicole Peisl, among many others, as well as more community conversations and informal showings. At a moment when the uncertainties of our postCOVID era can overwhelm to a point of paralysis, co-curators Amara Tabor-Smith and Charles Slender-White have pushed forward with a festival that is messy, risky and, yes, actually a place of play for dance makers and audiences alike.
Drop by, and you’re in for meaningful adventure.