ODC Presents World Premiere of Katie Faulkner's DIVINING

ODC Theater is pleased to open its 2019 Season, February 14 - 16, with the world premiere of DIVINING, choreographed by Katie Faulkner for little seismic dance company. Created with a quartet of Bay Area dancers, and featuring a commissioned score by Ben Juodvalkis, Divining is a physical investigation of embodied forms of knowing, from prayer to palm reading to water witching. Performances run Thursday to Saturday at 8 p.m. Tickets are $15 - $30, and may be purchased online at odc.dance/tickets or by phone at 415-863-9834.

Faulkner founded little seismic dance company in 2006 as a vehicle for her own choreographic inventions, garnering critical acclaim and several awards. A former Resident Artist at ODC Theater, she has also held prestigious residencies at the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography, the Rauschenberg Residency and the Djerassi Resident Artist Program, among others. Divining is Faulkner's first evening-length work.

"Whether through the use of dowsing rods, pendulums, tea leaves, patterns in the clouds, bird migratory shapes or pig's entrails, human beings have throughout history used all manner of materials in order to make meaning of their current circumstances, to interpret the future and have some sense of what's coming," said Faulkner. "These are practices of divination, and they formed the springboard for research for Divining."

"The intensely disorienting experience of living in this fractured global moment finds many of us digging deep to make meaning and find solace. My work with this idea has been spacious, spanning a number of inquiries: What states of being - of powerlessness, loss, or hope - compel us to ritualize behavior? How does magic help us to cope? How is it that the feeling of knowing can inspire both ecstasy and a hardening of mind? And what do our bodies know about all of this?"

"Divining also becomes an apt metaphor for choreographing," Faulkner added. "The practice of tuning your body as an instrument for discovery feels meaningful to me. In the end, what Divining as an evening-length dance promises to do, is not to reenact any specific ritual practice or to transmit some specific knowledge per se, but rather to communicate a feeling."

Through a minimal aesthetic, with lighting design by Allen Willner, Divining centers the body above all else, resulting in an intensely physical work performed by Alex Carrington, Chinchin Hsu, Tara McArthur and Suzette Sagisi.

For more information, visit odc.dance/divining.

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