ODC's Music Moves Festival to Run 7/31-8/24

ODC Theater has announced the program for the Music Moves Festival, nearly a full month of diverse performances emphasizing the relationship between music and dance. Festival highlights include the West Coast debut of Dance Heginbotham as well as works by Joe Goode, Pearl Marill, Kate Weare, Randy Paufve and Brenda Way. A series of one-night only concerts features artists Holcombe Waller, Keith Terry & Corposonic, Dandelion Dancetheater's Bandelion ensemble and San Jose Taiko with DJ Bangerz. Finally, the Festival spotlights Namita Kapoor and Rueda con Ritmo, performing as part of ODC Theater's biannual Dance and Diaspora series, and Milissa Payne Bradley and Antoine Hunter, this year's Theater Unplugged artists. The Music Moves Festival runs July 31 to August 24, 2014.

"Music Moves features music choices that teach us how to view dance, and choreography that shows us how to listen to music," says Theater Director Christy Bolingbroke. "The Festival is also timed to correspond with ODC's inaugural Next Moves Summer Intensive, a dance training program designed to connect aspiring professionals and seasoned dancers with top choreographers, teachers and performers. We wanted to amplify our summer programming this year to provide quality performances for these students as well as our Bay Area audiences."

On Thursday, July 31 ODC's flagship dance company ODC/Dance opens the festival with its Summer Sampler, featuring two works by ODC Founder and Artistic Director BRENDA WAY. Breathing Underwater is a dance for four women set to music by popular "avant cellist" and composer Zoë Keating, well-known for using a foot-controlled laptop to record layer upon layer of sound. ODC dancer Natasha Adorlee Johnson sets the tone for the piece and for the Festival when she enters the stage singing. Way's Lifesaving Maneuvers, by turns humorous and darkly evocative, reflects on the human capacity to endure. Created for the full company and set to an original commissioned score by celebrated composer Jay Cloidt, Lifesaving Maneuvers is structured as a series of chapters investigating the things we do to survive - from the sly or invisible to the sensational.

The Festival continues Sunday, August 3 with two evenings of song and dance by the JOE GOODE PERFORMANCE GROUP performing excerpts from the last two decades of the company's repertoire. Titled Irresistibly Drawn, the evening features company alumna Marit Brook-Kothlow as a guest performer. Portland-based singer-songwriter Holcombe Waller, who collaborated with JGPG on Small Experiments in Song and Dance (2009), will also make a guest appearance.

John Heginbotham spent 14 years dancing with the Mark Morris Dance Group before striking out on his own as a choreographer three years ago, earning plaudits for his "distinct voice" (Dance Magazine) and "magical mind" (The New Yorker). ODC Theater is pleased now to present DANCE HEGINBOTHAM in its West Coast debut, Thursday, August 7 to Saturday August 9. The company will perform three works. Twin is a work for six dancers, set to music by Aphex Twin,described by The Guardian as "the most inventive and influential figure in contemporary electronic music." Closing Bell, a quartet, is set to Tyondai Braxton's large-scale orchestral score Central Market. Finally, Heginbotham will himself perform a solo based on an Air Mail Dance score by Remy Charlip.

PEARL MARILL is a Bay Area artist known for her impressive athleticism and comic acuity. In the premiere of Some Bodies Confessional, Sunday, August 10 to Monday, August 11, Marill will offer audiences her trademark blend of conceptual performance and pop culture. Within a new performance framework for Marill, this evening-length work for a small ensemble of dancers is a choreographed blend of "dance purges," interspersed with music and text.

Though based in New York, KATE WEARE grew up in the Bay Area, and over the last few years she has returned again and again, making ODC somewhat of a second home. On Thursday, August 14 - Saturday the 16th ODC/Dance will perform one or more works by Weare. Details about the program will follow this summer.

Kate Weare shares the bill with PAUFVE DANCE, founded in 2001 by one of Weare's former teachers, Randee Paufve. Paufve will perform Soil, a solo piece set to live music for cello and piano by Chris Evans and Elijah Wallace. In Soil Paufve smashes stereotypes of the aging dancer, revealing a fertile ground not typically associated with female middle age. Soil weaves together five dances by three choreographers - Paufve, Della Davidson and Gregg Bielemeier - using the transitions to draw out connections between audience and performer.

The Music Moves Festival will also feature several one-night only performances. The San Francisco-based Dandelion Dancetheater's BANDELION ensemble has been deeply engaged in experiments at the blurred edges of dance, music, theater, performance, ritual and community action for the past decade. On Tuesday, August 5, the group will perform Triangulating Home, directed by company Founder and Director (and former ODC Theater Artist in Residence) Eric Kupers. Triangulating Home will immerse the audience in dreamlike realms of sound and movement.

On Tuesday, August 12, KEITH TERRY & CORPOSONIC showcase the range of Body Music - chest slaps, foot slides, cheek pops, clapping, stepping, singing - "music you can see and dance you can hear." The Oakland, California-based sextet is deeply rooted in jazz, funk and world music grooves. Corposonic has been a featured performer at the International Body Music Festivals in San Francisco, Brazil and Turkey.

SAN JOSE TAIKO WITH DJ BANGERZ performs on Sunday, August 17. Juxtaposing two seemingly disparate musical art forms - taiko and hip-hop - San Jose Taiko x The Bangerz finds a middle way between the "human" timing of taiko drumming, a timing which ebbs and flows with asymmetry, and the metronomic and less forgiving tempo of deejaying.

On Tuesday, August 19, singer, songwriter and performance artist HOLCOMBE WALLER will perform an evening of his own music. Part-indie, part-folk and part-pop, Waller's music has been commissioned for dance performances, film scores and a number of multidisciplinary performances, including two with the Joe Goode Performance Group. Waller has also self-released three albums to enthusiastic reviews.

The Music Moves Festival closes the weekend of August 22-24 with a double-bill of global dance and a one-night only work-in-progress showing that offers audiences a candid look into the artistic process. On Friday, August 22 to Saturday the 23rd, Bay Area-based NAMITA KAPOOR will present a work titled Hind

u Jazz blending the percussive and rhythmic genres of jazz and North Indian music. The second half of the evening belongs to RUEDA CON RITMO, performing works of Cuban salsa and Afro-Cuban folkloric dance

. Finally, on Sunday, August 24, ANTOINE HUNTER and MILISSA PAYNE BRADLEY present short works as the culmination of a two-week, shared residency curated by ODC Theater Director Christy Bolingbroke. "One of the brainiest and most entertaining late-summer dance programs," wrote Rita Felciano (San Francisco Bay Guaridan) in describing the annual event.

Tickets range between $15 and $45 per concert; a Festival Pass is $150. All tickets go on sale May 7, and may be purchased online at odcdance.org/buytickets.php or by calling 415-863-9834, Monday through Friday from 12 - 3pm.

Photo credit Lisa Voll

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