Artistic Leadership

BRENDA WAY (Founder and Artistic Director) received her early training at The School of American Ballet and Ballet Arts in New York City. She is the Founder and Artistic Director of ODC/Dance and creator of the ODC Theater and ODC Dance Commons, community performance and training venues in San Francisco’s Mission District. Way was instrumental in forming an inter-arts department at Oberlin College and Conservatory of Music in the late 1960’s before relocating to the Bay Area in 1976.

She has choreographed more than 100 pieces over the last 53 years. Among her commissions are Unintended Consequences: A Meditation (2008) Equal Justice Society; Life is a House (2008) San Francisco Girls Chorus; On a Train Heading South (2005) CSU Monterey Bay; Remnants of Song (2002) Stanford Lively Arts; Scissors Paper Stone (1994) Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater; Western Women (1993) Cal Performances, Rutgers University and Jacob’s Pillow; Ghosts of an Old Ceremony (1991) Walker Art Center and The Minnesota Orchestra; Krazy Kat (1990) San Francisco Ballet; This Point in Time (1987) Oakland Ballet; Tamina (1986) San Francisco Performances; Invisible Cities (1985) Stanford Lively Arts and the Robotics Research Laboratory. Her work Investigating Grace was named an NEA American Masterpiece in 2011.

In 2024, Way was inducted into the California Hall of Fame and is being featured in the NY Public Library’s Jerome Robbins’ Dance Division Oral History Project. Her work was selected by the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2010 to represent the US in a tour of Southeast Asia, as part of the inaugural DanceMotion touring program sponsored by the US Department of State. She is a national spokesperson for dance, has been published widely, has received numerous awards including Isadora Duncan Dance Awards for both choreography and sustained achievement, and 40 years of support from the National Endowment for the Arts. She is a 2000 recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2009, she was the first choreographer to be a Resident of the Arts at the American Academy in Rome, and in 2012, she received the Helen Crocker Russell Award for Community Leadership from the SF Foundation. She is currently involved in helping to reimagine the future of the San Francisco Arts institute campus. Way holds a Ph.D. in aesthetics and is the mother of four children.

Kimi Okada is a founding member of ODC. Her work includes more than 30 choreographies for ODC/Dance, as well as commissions and collaborations with Geoff Hoyle, Bill Irwin, Julie Taymor, and Robin Williams. She has choreographed productions for the American Conservatory Theater of San Francisco, Yale Repertory Theater, the New Victory Theater in New York, the Children’s Theater Company in Minneapolis, Theatre for a New Audience in New York, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, the American Music Theater Festival, the Santa Fe Opera, Los Angeles Music Center Opera, Los Angeles Theatre Center, the Pickle Family Circus, and the San Francisco Mime Troupe.

She was nominated for a Tony Award for the Broadway production of Largely New York, which she co-choreographed with Bill Irwin. She received a 2014 Isadora Duncan Award for Outstanding Choreography for ODC’s Two If by Sea. Since 1996, Kimi has served as director of the ODC School, which she has brought to the forefront of international and national dance education for youth and adults. She has been honored with a California State Legislature Assembly Resolution for choreographic and community contributions. She also directs one of ODC’s two teen companies, the ODC Dance Jam.

MIA J. CHONG (Co-Artistic Director) was born and raised in San Francisco, where she began her dance training at the ODC School at age 5. Mia danced with Robert Moses’ Kin and Dance Theatre of San Francisco before joining ODC/Dance, where she performed for six seasons and received a Princess Grace Award and Chris Hellman Dance Honor for her work as a company dancer. She returned to the company as Staging Director in 2024, where she has collaborated with Brenda Way and KT Nelson on numerous restagings and reimaginations of ODC/Dance repertory and assisted guest choreographer Sidra Bell in creating new work.

Mia was the founding Artistic Director of EIGHT/MOVES, a contemporary dance company dedicated to creating unity through movement and utilizing dance to generate cultural and social change. Through EIGHT/MOVES, she has collaborated with Rena Butler, Keerati Jinakunwiphat, KT Nelson, RJ Muna, and Sidney Chen. Mia’s choreography has been presented by Post:ballet, FACT/SF, RAWdance, NYU Tisch School of the Arts, UC Berkeley, Gonzaga University, BODYSONNET, and more. Her choreography for film has been selected and screened by more than ten festivals around the world, reaching audiences in South Korea, England, Turkey, and Italy. Mia has also received a Jacob’s Pillow Hicks Choreography Fellowship, Aninstantia Grant, Zellerbach Community Arts Grant, Alonzo King LINES Ballet Homer Avila Award, and Metro Film and Arts Foundation Grant, among other honors. She earned a BA in Social Sciences with a concentration in Organizational Behavior and Change from New York University and an MS in Arts Administration and Cultural Entrepreneurship from Northeastern University. Mia is grateful for the constant support from Brenda, KT, Kimi, and the countless other mentors she’s found through the ODC community throughout her journey, and she is excited to premiere her first work on ODC/Dance at Summer Sampler this July.

BRANDON W. FREEMAN - Assistant to the Artistic Directors - Better known as “Private” hails from Colorado. He is an ODC veteran having first joined the company in 1996 - and has passionately danced, coached, taught, choreographed, and championed for ODC ever since! He has also been a guest artist, collaborator, and choreographer for many other Colorado and Bay Area companies and schools, and was a Principal Dancer in the movie, “The Matrix 2: Reloaded”. Private has always brought his outside experiences back to his artistic home to enrich and deepen his contributions to ODC. Nominated multiple times, Mr. Freeman received Isadora Duncan Dance Awards for Ensemble Performance in 2002 with Brian Fisher (Sonya Delwaide), 2012 with Katie Faulkner (Little Seismic Dance), and 2014 with Katherine Wells (Imagery) Notably, Private received a nomination for Individual Performance in 2004 for his role, which he helped to create, in Brenda Way’s masterpiece, Investigating Grace. As a teacher, incorporating ODC's values, he enjoys teaching ballet and modern dance technique as well as Dance for Parkinson’s Disease. Mr. Freeman also has had the honor of being entrusted by Val Caniparoli to set Mr. Caniparoli’s work on Singapore Dance Theater and Ballet X in Philadelphia.

Private seeks to exhaust the joys of life! He is a woodworker, oil painter, voice actor, a poet, and an actor. He has solo flown an airplane; and served honorably as a Sergeant in the Army National Guard for 11 years. He gratefully acknowledges all who have influenced his career; specifically Brenda, KT, Sonya, and Randy.

private@gallerybrandoni.art
Instagram: @PvtPilot73