dance

December 9, 2017

Camille A. Brown & Dancers trip the childhood fantastic

When Camille A. Brown talked about the process behind her dance piece, BLACK GIRL: Linguistic Play, in her TED Talk, she described performing the initial choreography at schools. Before each performance her dancers would ask the audience, “What do you think of when you hear the words ‘black girl’?” She was shocked and pained by the negative response of one group of students, and for a moment considered not performing. But when she looked out at the sea of mostly white faces,...

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December 3, 2017

Ragamala Dance Company’s profoundly lovely “Written on Water”

Rising out of the darkened stage at the Zellerbach Playhouse was a single elongated image of layered colors in light shining on the back left of the stage. A huge projection of the game board of Paramapadam, what we would recognize as Snakes and Ladders, fell on the floor of the stage. Across the blue field of the board, red ladders leaned and large black and white snakes tapered in curves from head to tail tip, connecting squares. Across the bright game board five women were placed like...

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December 2, 2017

Smith/Wymore disappear the act at ODC

Each of the walls of large white boxes is stacked six across and five up, and together they form half of a room, an L-shaped stage within a stage. Projected across the surface of the boxes is a reedy plant, perhaps the same reedy plant that is sitting on the stage in front of the boxes. A barefoot man languishes at a piano set outside the square stage that the boxes form. As the audience quiets down, it becomes clear that Six Degrees of Freedom, the latest mixed-genre production of...

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June 24, 2017

SFDanceworks’ lovely second season

The dancer leans back, one leg extended, arms held close to the body, creating a long diagonal line from toe to head. He steps forward, leaning in the opposite direction, creating a second long diagonal. He then pulls both feet together, and stands upright, his arms...

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Categories: dance