ODC Theater Announces Fall 2021 Season

ODC Theater has announced its Fall 2021 Season, offering patrons options for in-person and virtual performance. Tickets, starting at $20, and digital access season subscriptions, starting at $40, will go on sale July 27.

Highlights of the Fall Season include two works originally slated for premiere last year: EPOCH, a 12-hour event created by choreographer Christy Funsch for a cast of 12 dancers, and These Are the Ones We Fell Among, a collaboration between award-winning interdisciplinary artist Ann Carlson and inkBoat. EPOCH will take place one day only before a live audience with a digital simulcast on Saturday, October 2. These Are the Ones We Fell Among will be performed in person Friday to Sunday, November 5 - 7. On Sunday, November 7 at 12 p.m., ODC Theater will broadcast the show online.

ODC Theater is also pleased to welcome several returning companies with which it shares long ties: Amy Seiwert's Imagery, Chitresh Das Institute, Kinetech Arts and RAWdance. While the programs for Amy Seiwert's Imagery and RAWdance will be virtual only, Chitresh Das Institute and Kinetech Arts will each premiere new works before live audiences with a digital simulcast of select performances.

"We are eager to welcome audiences back on site for in-person performance," said ODC Theater Creative Director Chloë Zimberg. "After the completion of a comprehensive suite of repairs and upgrades this past year, we feel confident in the decision to reopen the Theater. Among the improvements we've made are hospital-grade filtration and air exchange in our HVAC system, better climate control and touchless surfaces in all bathrooms. In addition, we will continue to support patron choice by offering digital access to our programs for the foreseeable future."

A chronological list of ODC Theater's Fall 2021 Season follows. For more information, visit odc.dance/fallseason.

FUNSCH DANCE EXPERIENCE

EPOCH (world premiere)

October 2

Saturday, 10 a.m. - 10 p.m. PT

In cheeky defiance of Doris Humphrey's warning that "all dances are too long," Funsch Dance Experience's EPOCH unfolds over a span of 12 hours in a gratuitous surplus of movement, interrupted by moments of nothingness. Is endurance political? What bonds does an unlikely scenario forge? EPOCH features 12 performers, an original sound score by Cheryl Leonard and lighting design by Danielle Ferguson. Presented in person inside ODC Theater, the work will have suggested time entry points, and at 6 p.m., a public discussion with the artists, joined by local performance scholars and representatives from the Mission Economic Development Agency. A live digital simulcast will be offered starting at 10 a.m.

Since 2002, Artistic Director Christy Funsch has created 11 full-length works for Funsch Dance Experience. She has been awarded residencies at Djerassi, Ucross and Yaddo, and in 2014 was named one of "25 to Watch" by Dance Magazine.

CHITRESH DAS INSTITUTE

Mantram (world premiere)

October 15 - 17

Friday - Saturday, 8 p.m. PT

Sunday, 4 p.m. PT

The Chitresh Das Institute, led by Artistic Director Charlotte Moraga, brings to the stage performances exploring the depth and versatility of North Indian classical kathak dance and music. For the company's newest work, Mantram, Moraga explores resonance and the bonds of connection through movement, music, percussion and Vedanta, the world's oldest, unbroken oral tradition. Mantram features a commissioned score by renowned sarod maestro Alam Khan, son of the legendary Ustad Ali Akbar Khan.

Mantram is co-presented by the Chitresh Das Institute and ODC Theater, with all performances in person, and one show offered as a live digital simulcast.

On Thursday, October 14 at 5:30 p.m. PT, ODC Theater will present This is Also the Art with members of the Chitresh Das Institute. This is Also the Art is the Theater's ongoing series of lively virtual conversations between artists and collaborators as they provide a glimpse into the process of their works. Attendees have the opportunity to participate in the conversation, directing questions to the featured artists and reacting in real time.

AMY SEIWERT'S IMAGERY

SKETCH 11: Interrupted

October 22 - 24

Friday - Saturday, 7:30 p.m. PT (virtual)

Sunday, 4 p.m. PT (virtual)

This fall brings the 11th iteration of ODC Home Company Amy Seiwert's Imagery's celebrated SKETCH series, an annual creative laboratory providing a safe place for risk-taking in ballet-based choreography. Organized around the theme of "interruption," SKETCH 11 features new works by Artistic Director Amy Seiwert and Artistic Fellow Ben Needham-Wood. Following in-person performances of the works at ODC Theater this August, October's presentations will be virtual only. SKETCH 11: Interrupted pays homage to the worldwide disruption of the pandemic. Seiwert and Needham-Wood, inspired by choreographer Susan Rethorst's "Wrecking" procedures, will use tools of deconstruction and reconstruction to lay bare each other's conscious and unconscious habits in pursuit of fresh acts of imagination.

SKETCH 11 is co-presented by Amy Seiwert's Imagery and ODC Theater.

KINETECH ARTS

Passage (world premiere)

October 23 - 24

Saturday, 7 p.m. and 8:15 p.m. PT

Sunday, 2 p.m. and 3:15 p.m. PT

Studio B, ODC Dance Commons

Kinetech Arts, founded by former ODC Resident Artists Daiane Lopes da Silva and Weidong Yang, works at the intersection of dance, science and technology to create innovative and socially responsible performances. Their newest project, Passage, explores the relationship between entropy and time through an immersive experience of live and virtual movement, sound and video installation. With a cast of performers from the Bay Area, Seattle and Chicago, Passage "embraces the transience and uncertainties of each moment, and the infinite future possibilities that are inevitably collapsed into memory."

Passage is co-presented by Kinetech Arts and ODC Theater, and will be performed in person in ODC Dance Commons' Studio B. One of the four performances will be offered as a live digital simulcast.

RAWDANCE

TAKE 3 including Shadow (part 1) (world premiere) and The Healer

October 29 - 30

Friday, 8 p.m. PT (virtual)

Saturday, 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. PT (virtual)

ODC Home Company RAWdance's three co-artistic directors offer two works, including one world premiere, created for the stage and re-envisioned for film. Shadow (part 1), choreographed by Ryan T. Smith and Wendy Rein, features a quartet of dancers from San Francisco and New York. With commissioned music by Surabhi Saraf, it's the first section of a multidisciplinary opus exploring identity as constructed through the murky world of our digital footprints. Rounding out the program is The Healer, choreographed by Katerina Wong in memory of her late aunt, an internationally recognized health and wellness practitioner who integrated Eastern and Western healing modalities. The Healer mines the ancient history, systems and beliefs of Traditional Chinese Medicine to shed light on humanity's innate ability to overcome physical and emotional suffering.

A co-presentation of RAWdance and ODC Theater, TAKE 3 will be offered virtually.

INKBOAT with Guest Choreographer ANN CARLSON

These are the Ones We Fell Among (world premiere)

November 5 - 7

Friday - Saturday, 8 p.m. PT

Sunday, 4 p.m. PT

These Are the Ones We Fell Among is a new work by award-winning interdisciplinary artist Ann Carlson in collaboration with inkBoat, featuring dancers Shinichi and Dana Iova-Koga. These Are the Ones We Fell Among is informed by the movement, behavior, metaphors and mythologies surrounding earth's largest land mammal: the elephant. It dives into the absurd and the playful, and collides at the edges of quandary and uncertainty. With rhythm and rhyme, jump cutting time, the performers inhabit a circus world, a cave, an underworld and multiple parallel universes. The absurd, cruel and curious settings they visit reflect captivity, domestic behavior and loss.

These Are the Ones We Fell Among will be performed in person with original music by Carla Kihlstedt and Shahzad Ismaily, lighting design by Allen Willner and scenic design by Frank Lee. A virtual screening of the Friday premiere will be offered on Sunday, November 7 at 12 p.m. PT.

InkBoat is a physical theater and dance company founded by Shinichi Iova-Koga in 1998. Repertory and research integrate the interplay of multiple artistic disciplines and viewpoints, drawing primarily from the Japanese performing and martial arts, improvisational arts and Daoist internal arts. Carlson's work borrows from the disciplines of dance, performance and theater, as well as visual, conceptual and social art practices.

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