Mary Jane Agnew
FACT/SF’s 2023 Summer Dance Festival at ODC Theater kicked off on August 18th. The first weekend featured the Shaun Keylock Company from Portland, Oregon. FACT/SF’s PORT (Peer Organized Reciprocal Touring) program brought the Shaun Keylock Company down to San Francisco for this show. This “removes depending on presenters to choose us”, FACT/SF’s founder and artistic director Charles Slender-White says of the PORT program. Next year FACT/SF will join Shaun Keylock in Portland.
The visiting company presented two works; ManTango Opera Lounge by Gregg Bielemeier, and Anthem by Shaun Keylock in collaboration with the dancers. ManTango Opera Lounge originally premiered in 1993. This piece features two dancers and explores their relationship to each other and the music. The movement is full of large swinging motions, jumping, turning, and at times feels nonstop. The dancers go from moving together to commanding music against a red cyc, to taking turns watching each other move in silence. They then dance through a playful exchange that is curious and explorative of the other person.
Anthem is a recent work by the Shaun Keylock Company. The piece begins with the dancers silhouetted, walking across the stage. A series of solos, duets, and trios follow one after the other as the dancers smoothly and quickly move in and out of formations to crescendos of music notes. There is constantly something to look at, and the dancers perform fast and reaching movements highlighting long lines and strong partnering work.
To close out the show FACT/SF premiered Pivot, a new work choreographed and performed by Keanu Brady, Katherine Neumann, and LizAnne Roman Roberts. In a series of vignettes, the dancers explore different concepts and playing with specific stage lighting in shapes on the floor, a manual light that casts shadows, colored construction paper, and even a song from the new Barbie movie soundtrack. Each new section was shaped by the previous one and each contained athletic and interesting movement from the dancers.
The Shaun Keylock Company dancers displayed incredible strength and musicality in their performances. The structure of Anthem highlighted each dancer’s individual movement as well as how they moved as a group. Some dancers were were moving quickly in a solo, then synched up with the rest of the group’s timing just as quick. Their movement was amazing to watch.
Mary Jane Agnew is a Bay Area-based writer dancer, and artist. She studied Performing Arts and Social Justice, Journalism, and Anthropology at the University of San Francisco. She values interdisciplinary and intergenerational collaboration and writes and makes art about issues she is passionate about.
FACT/SF’s Summer Dance Festival Kicks Off with Shaun Keylock Company was originally published in ODC.dance.stories on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.