Joe Landini Dance Reprises Two Dance Pieces Next Month

Joe Landini Dance will reprise two dance pieces for in-person audiences three Saturday evenings, June 8, 15 and 22, 2024, at SAFEhouse for the Performing Arts, 145 Eddy Street, San Francisco. Rites of Spring premiered in June, 2023. Freddie vs. Elvis was presented at the San Francisco International Arts Festival in May, 2024, at Dance Mission Theater.

There will be two separate shows each night: Freddie vs. Elvis will be performed at 7:00pm. Rites of Spring will be performed at 9:00pm. Admission is $20 for each, with a discount of $30 for both. Advance ticket purchase highly encouraged for reserved seating at safehousearts.org/get-tickets.

Freddie vs. Elvis is a full-length, original dance piece in two parts. The songs of Freddie Mercury of Queen, are featured in part one; and, in part two, the King, Elvis Presley. Joe Landini, choreographer and director, explains in a recent interview with Bay Dance, about how he deconstructs iconic songs using dance vocabulary. Read full article here.

"When you see the work performed, emotionally, the audience will have memories associated with the song, but you will see dancing that doesn't correspond to memories." Landini says, "A lot of my work is built around the idea of taking something that has emotional resonance and creating something new."

    Landini further interplayed music and movement by isolating Mercury’s vocals from the soundtrack recording. "I was fascinated by his voice...and also the big gaps of silence where the music used to be. I thought that was very interesting architecturally, because if you think of the song as a building, these vocals are certain rooms, and the music is certain rooms. When you remove the music, then you have empty rooms."

    Elvis’ later career in Las Vegas sparked the challenge of putting his songs onstage for today’s audiences: "I knew I wanted to do a similar deconstruction. We dressed the dancers in Vegas costumes. Instead of using Elvis' actual songs, Landini has choreographed four ballets to the instrumental music of karaoke songs. Members of the audience will be invited onstage to sing the lyrics while the dancers perform."

    Rites of Spring is Joe Landini’s masterful re-working of Igor Stravinsky’s classical score and famous ballet about an ancient pagan Russian society that was fiercely controversial for its day. There is no pagan ritual here, yet Landini’s take stands up as social commentary for our time. There is all-out, visceral dancing by six intense performers.

    The rituals are enacted through a series of organic scene changes. The audience enters the main room where the sorority acts out pedestrian kitchen chores—sometimes friendly and hospitable and sometimes passively violent. Once escorted to a tight space, the audience jostles with the dancers. Ronja Ver stands out as a soloist who fights against the others; who succumbs, yet is not defeated. Perhaps they are an instrument of peace. As the music crescendos, the audience processions full circle back to the main room where a large banquet table has been set for them to feast.

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