A View From the Trenches: Critical Losses

Art nourishes consciousness. It helps us identify who we are, what we value, and what we might become. “The function of criticism is the re-education of perception.” (Philosopher and educational […]

MAKING THE INVISIBLE VISIBLE: Jo Kreiter Brings Attention to Older Homeless Women

Isadora Duncan Award-winning choreographer Jo Kreiter draws from a variety of disciplines and lenses: gymnastics, Chinese pole acrobatics, social justice and urban revitalization, to name a few. Along with her apparatus-based aerial dance […]

Critical Dialogues: Rachel Howard and Pearl Marill

WHAT IF, rather than writing a review, a critic sat down with a choreographer to have a two-way conversation about the work? That’s the experiment behind Critical Dialogues. For this […]

Critical Dialogues: Heather Desaulniers and Christy Funsch

What if, rather than writing a review, a critic sat down with a choreographer to have a two-way conversation about the work? That’s the experiment behind Critical Dialogues. For this […]

Going Bicoastal: RAWdance Does a Triple Take

Photo by Hillary Goidell For fifteen years, under the banner of RAWdance, Wendy Rein and Ryan T. Smith have been teaching and producing work in San Francisco. Their leadership in […]

Grief and Patience: An Interview with Choreographer Stephen Pelton

IN MARCH, Stephen Pelton Dance Theatre returns to San Francisco after seven years with a new, full-length work Lauda Adrianna. I recently had a FaceTime with Stephen from his home […]

Searching for the Right Mix; WestWave Dance Festival 2007

A staple of the Bay Area’s summer dance scene for 16 years, the WestWave Dance Festival (WWDF) is preparing for its 2007 season at Project Artaud Theater. Once again, the […]

SPEAK: Shifting the Paradigm

Many of us teaching artists have unwittingly become stuck in dangerous perceptual habits. While this is happening across all levels of education, I want to focus on the issues of college […]

John Jasperse in the Bay Area: Gaps, Misuse, and the Possibility of Thick Description

John Jasperse is a choreographer known as: Cool. Brainy. Provocative. Naked. Virtuosic. Transgressive. Austere. Opaque. Difficult. Formal. Experimental. Critical. Ironic. Oblique. Pensive. Part of the witty, cerebral downtown New York […]

Turn Around to See What’s Coming Next: A Conversation with Brenda Way about ODC’s 45th Anniversary

DURING A RESIDENCY at the American Academy in Rome, ODC’s Founder and Artistic Director Brenda Way remarked on the way early Romans conceived of the future, not by looking forward […]