A Petite Reflection on "ODC: Dance Downtown 2013"

This past Sunday, Natalie Marsh treated me to a show at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. We saw  ODC: Dance Downtown 2013, Program A. In 2011, I had the pleasure of being introduced to this company during the Trolley Dances in San Francisco. They performed their piece "Transit" in front of the San Francisco Main Public Library. It was incredible and moving. And after today I can safely say I was again enchanted by their performance. I emphasize performing because I believe that beautiful dancing is great, but if you can also ACT and be a beautiful dancer --- well then, in my opinion --- you can shake the earth beneath your feel and project your magic onto any audience member.

 I love this company. The show demonstrated their range in performance style by blending ballet, contemporary, and modern dance.

"Cut-Out Guy" was my top favorite piece today because there was an array of contact movement that was swift but always with purpose. There was no one contact expression that was showy or self serving. The dancers were present and every lift, tug, pull, collapse, and push had an intention both in their bodies and their faces. My eyes teared up at the sight of them touching.

"Breathing Underwater" had a quality of making you sigh every time a body immersed from the unison group gesture. The gestures were very well developed; it was uncanny how connected the dancers were both in limb and breath. They were always together.

I laughed at the start of "Lifesaving Maneuvers," but by the end I felt pulled apart. I wanted to hold onto that emotion of being in love. The sound of water while a dancer sung as she was being pulled away gave the theater and eerie feeling of longing and loss. Meanwhile, a duet center stage entangled themselves in each others body. They held on and froze for a moment as if to say, this will be saved in time but never replicated. A truly touching piece of work.

I hope you get to see these performances someday. I will be dreaming of mermaids swimming with birds tonight.

ODC Company: http://www.odcdance.org/dancecompany.php
Yerba Buena: http://www.ybca.org
Trolley Dances: http://www.epiphanydance.org/work/trolley-dances/
Image and Video borrowed from ODC website.