Category: Review/Response

Igor Ptashenchuk, Yonatan Simon, Hani Sirois, Londiwe Khosa, Yael Ben Ezer, and Sean Howe in YAG. In Batsheva’s YAG, It’s A Family Affair By Garth Grimball “Once my family loved, really loved, really really loved to dance.” This is the thesis statement of YAG, spoken by each of the six cast members in an exploration…

Erin Yen and Emily Hansel (background), Samuel Melecio-Zambrano and Katherine Neumann (foreground). Photo by Robbie Sweeny. An Afternoon Walk and Dance Through Glen Canyon Park: FACT/SF’s "Diffusion" By Molly Rose-Williams It’s been over a year since theaters around the Bay Area shut their doors. Like much of the rest of our lives, art-making and performance…

  A Moveable Dance from LA Dance ProjectBy Garth Grimball Four bodies appear from the emptiness cast by a building’s corner. They dance in unison. Between them the space stays equal. Faces masked and bodies covered in loose, transparent overcoats, their forms disintegrate before outlines snap into being. The unison ends, the energy diffuses into…

Nick Blaylock in Full View. Photo by Marissa Mooney.   Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company and Categorizing Dance on Camera By Garth Grimball   How many categories are there for a dance experienced via screen? Dance film. Screen dance. Live streaming dance event. Previously recorded performance. TikTok. The categories bloom and wilt without capturing the aura of…

Photo by Del Medoff Virtual Healing with RAWdance By Garth Grimball The Bay Area is entering the 11th month of quarantine/lockdown/shelter-in-place/life with COVID-19. At the beginning of this week California Governor Gavin Newsom announced the current six weeks of sheltering-in-place was coming to an end and counties can “re-open” to varying degrees. At the end…

Screenshot from Utopia, capturing the 9 actors in the production   With Appreciation and Admiration: A Few Musings on Utopia By Jill Randall Eight months into quarantine life as a dancer, I have dabbled in a few online art experiments, as an audience member a handful of times and by producing two projects. We long…

Annique Roberts. Photo by Mohamad Sadek. State of Darkness and the Internet of Dance By Garth Grimball Reproduction is beautiful. Reproduction is corrosive. The bonding of animals through sex to create new life is miraculous. Copying someone else’s intellectual property is unethical, illegal. The former is a welcoming of the new. The latter is a…

Screenshot from "Borderlessbodies, Transsoils" by Río Saúl Shift into Queer Time By Aiano Nakagawa Today's writing explores the 2nd Annual Queering Dance Festival, presented by Shawl-Anderson Dance Center in Berkeley, California. The 2020 iteration took place on September 19 and 20, 2020 on Twitch, with both live and pre-recorded pieces. Nakagawa reflects on the September…

Screenshot from "bodyfabric" by Octavia Rose Hingle   of our bodies, in time by audrey johnnson Today's writing explores the 2nd Annual Queering Dance Festival, presented by Shawl-Anderson Dance Center in Berkeley, California. The 2020 iteration took place on September 19 and 20, 2020 on Twitch, with both live and pre-recorded pieces.   FROLIC this…

Screenshot from the website of Monica Bill Barnes and Company The Dancer is Present with Monica Bill Barnes By Garth Grimball Modern dance is being very considerate. Before March 2020, experimentation meant confronting expectations for many dance makers. The role of the spectator, “acceptable” lengths of time, and the very definition of dancing were all…