Two great dance shows coming up this week that I’d hate to see get lost in the holiday bustle, both by relatively young San Francisco companies worth watching carefully.
Janice Garrett and Dancers’ Heidi Schweiker
–I tend to think of Janice Garrett and Dancers as “old fashioned modern dance” in the best sense: musical, sculptural, deeply human. I’ve written this before, but the thing I find most compelling in her work is the vibrant sense of community, the way you can see the dancers fully present and responsive to each other. Garrett’s tone ranges from the slap-stick to the spiritual, arranged in all cases with a mathematician’s attention to structure. Last year her newer works struck me as pretty and solidly constructed but lacking trajectory; I can’t wait to see what she comes up with for this third season, which features two world premieres and runs December 1 through 10 at the Cowell Theater. For details, click here.
–LEVYdance is the creation of Ben Levy, a preternaturally accomplished grad of UC Berkeley’s dance program. His work is edgy and often futuristic (as in the returning hit, “Holding Pattern”), with dense layers of movement that isolate and torque the joints in mesmerizing ways. His captivatingly committed dancers have the envious strength and freshness of youth. They’ll be performing three world premieres, including a Meet the Composer-funded dance set to a new score by Keeril Makan. One-weekend-only run starts Thursday at ODC Theater; click here for more info.
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