My review of Margaret Jenkins Dance Company’s Danger Orange is up on Voice of Dance:
“The storm passed and the clouds cleared just in time for the premiere of Margaret Jenkins?s Danger Orange Wednesday, and what a sight. Two screaming orange stages connected by a path of orange boxes stood on the vast expanse of the Embarcadero?s Justin Herman Plaza. To the left loomed Armand Vallaincourt?s hulking water fountain, its square, worm-like pipes wrapped in orange cargo net. On strode the thirteen dancers of the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company in yellow tops and pants. Suddenly the lush palm trees and the Ferry Building, clock tower and all, became just an exotic backdrop for the eye-popping human drama playing out before it. Office workers on their lunch break gathered on the steps, the continual crush of rushing water obliterating all aural distractions.
Danger Orange, continuing through Saturday, possesses its public space in such a way that the contributions of its collaborators cannot be singled out for its success. Alexander V. Nichols did the bold but simple visual design; Jay Cloidt did the sound design, often filling the air with electronic reverberations that sounded eerily like gunfire. Jenkins, of course?one of the Bay Area?s seminal postmodernists?created the choreography. Clocking in at 40 minutes and excerpting in full her 2003 work Fractured Fictions, much of it is not new. But all of it proves that dance can explore politically timely emotions without pushing a political agenda.”
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