Olivia Caldeira Holston in "OLIVIA!" filmed by Julia Sweeney. Image description: Close up of a young woman' s face and upper body, dancing outdoors, facing the camera. Background of trees against blue sky. Sky-blue linen blouse, right arm extended with fisted hand in a “power pose."

Paufve Dance Remembers and Looks Forward

By Garth Grimball

Randee Paufve gets to the point. Twenty-one months into pandemic living, twenty-one months into dance artists adjusting to digital work, Paufve Dance continues to create work that delivers on its thesis and ends. A welcome addition to a form that too often overstays its welcome.

On Sunday, November 21, Paufve Dance held a virtual screening of three new dance films directed by Julia Sweeney. “8x8x8 Time Warp Reverie” and “Uptown End Times” are tributes. “OLIVIA!” is a forward-looking dance. For 16 years Randee Paufve curated and hosted 8x8x8 in the San Francisco Bay Area, an annual dance event that invited 8 artists to share work in a space of 8×8 feet. The event is beloved for its intimacy and community.

Aviva Rose-Williams and Molly Rose-Williams in 8x8x8. Photo by Hans Holtan. Image description: A crowded nightclub, audience sitting on floor ringing the performance space. Two women – twins – face the camera, holding hands. One, in red pants, is standing on her right leg, right palm toward the ceiling; the other, in purple pants, is standing on her left leg, left palm toward ceiling.

“8x8x8 Time Warp Reverie” is a dance down memory lane. Sweeney interrupts the clips montage of performances past with an elegant framing device. She films the physical act of revisiting material. A tight shot shows her hand pulling tapes from the archive and putting them into a handheld camera. It is a gift to the community to see so many dances documented with care. Documentation is a facsimile, a reminder of the care we showed each other in-person at 8x8x8. I had the pleasure of participating in the 2019 production and remember it as an evening of joy and togetherness.

Randee Paufve and Chris Evans at The Uptown. Image description: An empty nightclub. Close up on cellist facing away from camera, wearing black top and black hat. Dancer facing cellist, red pants, black jacket, right arm extended, right thumb up like a hitchhiker. 

The Uptown venue in Oakland was home to 8x8x8 for ten years. It is one of many Bay Area spaces lost to the pandemic. “Uptown End Times” is a loving memorial and companion piece to “Time Warp Reverie.” Randee Paufve performs with composer and cellist Chris Evans bathed in purple light in The Uptown during its final days before closing. Paufve’s dancing shifts between formalized movement and improvised responses to Evans’s playing. The framing creates the visual sense that Paufve is not dancing with the space like a duet, but the performer and the space are two solos, parallel and independent.

“OLIVIA!” is a showcase for dancer Olivia Caldeira Holston. It’s the longest film of the evening and it earns every minute. Holston is a joy to watch. She projects serenity on screen and dances with equal parts articulation and surrender. “OLIVIA!” travels from sidewalk to beach to hill top often with jump cuts. Holston interprets Paufve’s choreography of loose-limbed dexterity with a lived-in quality. The filming and editing evokes home movies, experimental films, and the collaborations between Charles Atlas and Michael Clark. For a brief moment Holston disappears and the screen fades to Norma Bengell’s “Eternamente Pagú.”

The genre and set switching isn’t messy because Holston is at the center. In post-post-post modern, new-contemporary dance making, process-as-product is fetishized to the point of caricaturing itself. “OLIVIA!” is never fetishistic in letting the process make its way into the frame. It’s marginalia. The clip of Bengell, moments of Holston talking or waiting for the cue to start are rendered like the notes written in the margins of a book. The text is complete and in print. Next to the words is the space to respond, remind, and explore new ideas.

Garth Grimball is a dance writer and artist based in Oakland, CA. He hosts the Reference Desk podcast and is the co-director of Wax Poet(s) performance collective.

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