ODC Theater 2022 Fall Season

ODC Theater Fall 2022 Season
Digital Encores Available Nov 18 - Dec 2, 2022

ODC Theater, in collaboration with guest curators Charles Slender-White and amara tabor-smith, present three distinctive programs that bring a stellar lineup of touring artists to the Bay Area, including works by experimental performance artist Sage Ni’Ja Whitson of The NWA Project;  Brooklyn-based choreographer and performer Marjani Forté-Saunders of 7NMS; and a double bill of Rosanna Tavarez of LA DANSA DANSA from southern California and the Bay Area’s Bianca Cabrera of Blind Tiger Society. These not-to-be-missed repertory works, performed over three consecutive weekends, draw on African Diasporic art, ritual, and spirituality, as well as wild and mythic fantasy to deconstruct notions of love, warriorship, and fear. “We are so thrilled about the artists this fall, and honored to be bringing their phenomenal and necessary art to Bay Area audiences,” said Charles Slender-White and amara tabor-smith, ODC Theater’s Guest Curators.

Show Information and Digital Encores

  • Sage Ni’Ja Whitson | The NWA Project: A Meditation on Tongues

    Sage Ni’Ja Whitson | The NWA Project: A Meditation on Tongues
    Friday-Saturday, October 28-29 at 7:30pm
    Sunday, October 30 at 5:00pm

     

     

    A Meditation on Tongues is a live interdisciplinary adaptation of Marlon T. Riggs’ iconic Tongues Untied (1989).  Part abstract, part performance ritual, part live and historical document, this rigorously layered interdisciplinary project (re)images Black and Queer masculinities. It struts. It snaps. It frames new questions about loss at the height of the AIDS pandemic, while challenging constructions of Black love of/as revolution.  A bold deconstruction of Riggs’ collectivist aesthetics and a raw invocation that shape shifts gender, sexuality, and the body, A Meditation on Tongues, remixes historic and embodied invisibilities, spilling between the spaces of mourning and celebration.


     

    ASL is provided on the Saturday shows of the Fall Season.
    Additional Wheelchair seating on the Sundays of the Fall Season.

     

  • Marjani Forté-Saunders | 7NMS: Memoirs of a... Unicorn

    Marjani Forté-Saunders | 7NMS: Memoirs of a... Unicorn
    Friday-Saturday, November 4-5 at 7:30pm
    Sunday, November 6 at 5:00pm

    Watch the Digital Encore 

     

    Memoirs of a...Unicorn weaves performance, sound, and media to ritualistically remember, interrogate, and relish in the "Unicorns" of the artist's life. Occupying roles like Father, Husband, Brother, Son, Uncle, Cousin, Homie, Pahtna, and Fam, these powerful figures merge with images of the magical creature that is full of mercurial passion, timelessness, and fortitude. Unicorn was spurred by stories from Marjani Forté-Saunders’ father’s life and came from an urgent need to thicken the common and seemingly inhumane narratives of Black People. These narratives were intersectional for the artist as the mother of a son, so Memoirs of a… Unicorn unveils the celestial ecliptic journeys of folks identifying with—and building legacies within—the spectrums of blackness, maleness, and womb-ness. It is a two-time NY Dance & Performance/Bessie Award winning project and recently had its international debut in Brussels, Belgium (Bersschouwberg, 2019). 

    This collaboration between ODC Theater and Marjani Forté-Saunders was made possible in part by the Association of Performing Arts Professionals ArtsForward program, generously supported by The Mellon Foundation, to aid the presenting and touring field’s safe, vibrant, and equitable reopening and recovery

    Co-Presented by MoAD and CounterPulse. 

           

     

    ASL is provided on the Saturday shows of the Fall Season.
    Additional Wheelchair seating on the Sundays of the Fall Season.

     

  • Rosanna Tavarez / LA DANSA DANSA: Piece X Piece & Bianca Cabrera/Blind Tiger Society: Fever Dreams

    Rosanna Tavarez / LA DANSA DANSA: Piece X Piece & Bianca Cabrera/Blind Tiger Society: Fever Dreams
    Friday-Saturday, November 11-12 at 7:30pm
    Sunday, November 13 at 5:00pm

    Watch the Digital Encore

     

    Piece x Piece presents Tavarez’s mother’s immigration story to explore the challenges of transitioning from one territory to a drastically new one. It toggles between the escapist, rags-to-riches fantasy narratives of telenovelas and the heartbreaking reality of the immigrant experience, utilizing sewing as a metaphor for the deconstruction of “The American Dream”.

    Fever Dreams is a dizzying dance spectacle based on Mexican folk Artist Pedro Linares’ Cartoneria known as Alebrije. Ornate and vibrantly colored costumes decorate dancers as they transform into Linares’ mythical creatures who are as loud and unapologetic as the heat hallucinations that sired them. Wild imagery and sensuous yet eerie movements are the backbone of these birds of paradise and they haunt the space with stories of longing, lust and looming fears.
     

     

     

     

    ASL is provided on the Saturday shows of the Fall Season.
    Additional Wheelchair seating on the Sundays of the Fall Season.

Artist Biographies

  • Sage Ni’Ja Whitson

    Sage Ni’Ja Whitson (NY/LA) is a multi award-winning Queer Trans/mogrifier Nonbinary Artist and Futurist. They are a
    United States Artist Fellow, Creative Capital and two-time “Bessie” Awardee who engages transdisciplinarity through a critical intersection of the sacred and conceptual in Black, Queer, and Transembodiedness. Whitson is an 18th Street Artist in Residence (Los Angeles), 2020-2023 New York Live Feed Artist in Residence, featured choreographer of the 2018 CCA Biennial, 2018-2020 Urban Bush Women Choreographic Center Fellow, and invited presenter at the 2019 Tanzkongress international festival. Residencies and fellowships include Center for Performance Research, Jerome/Camargo, Dance in Process at Gibney, Hedgebrook, Movement Research, Bogliasco Fellowship with commissions including St. Mark’s Church at Danspace, American Realness and Vision festivals, EMPAC, and the California African American Museum.

     

  • Marjani Forté-Saunders | 7NMS (seven names)

    Marjani Forté-Saunders | 7NMS (seven names)
    Marjani Forté-Saunders is a mother, choreographer, performer, and organizer. She is a 2021 Dance Magazine Harkness Awardee, a 2020 recipient of the Foundation of Contemporary Arts Grants for Artists Award. Her work as an artist and organizer is informed by years in anti-racist training with the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond and as a lead facilitator with UBW’s Builders Organizers and Leaders through Dance. Anchored in a steady collaboration with partner and composer Everett Asis Saunders, the duo has emerged as 7NMS (seven names), currently developing their latest work, PROPHET. They are also founding directors of ART & POWER (2018), a platform and conduit dedicated to Black Radical Experimentalists, driven by purpose and innovation. 

  • Rosanna Tavarez/LA DANSA DANSA

    Rosanna Tavarez/LA DANSA DANSA
    Rosanna Tavarez received an MFA in Choreography from The Ohio State University and a BFA in Choreography from University of Michigan. She has a diverse background as a performer/entertainer and has had the honor of working with Marina Ambramovic, Ryan Heffington, Travis Payne, Tony Michaels and Rosanna Gamson/Worldwide. She also toured with N’SYNC and Jessica Simpson as one-fifth of the girl group Eden’s Crush and covered the Emmys, Grammys and Oscars in addition to hosting her own shows as a television personality for FOX, E!, TVGuide Network, and Telemundo/NBC.

    As a dance educator, Tavarez is on faculty at CalArts Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance. She has taught as faculty and guest artist at numerous institutions including USC Kaufman School of Dance, University of Michigan, Loyola Marymount University, Scripps College, CalState Long Beach, Studio School, University of Southern Mississippi, Texas State University and Cal State LA. She is also a certified Countertechnique teacher and has had the pleasure of teaching the practice nationally and internationally.

    Her work has been presented at The Broad Museum, American Dance Festival, REDCAT, Dance Camera West, The Odyssey, Breaking Ground Dance Festival, LA Department of Cultural Affair’s LA Dance Platform, Sarasota Contemporary Dance and Highways Performance Space, and has been supported by CalState LA’s Research, Scholarship and Creativity Awards, ARC grant from the Center for Cultural Innovation, UCLA Hothouse Residency and Show Box LA.

  • Bianca Cabrera/Blind Tiger Society

    Bianca Cabrera/Blind Tiger Society
    Fever Dreams is a ritualistic rave and dizzying dance spectacle based on Mexican folk Artist Pedro Linares’ Cartoneria known as Alebrije. Dancers transform into Linares’ mythical creatures who are as loud and unapologetic as the hallucinations that sired them. Wild, sensuous and eerie movements are the backbone of these birds of paradise and in an incantation of color and canción, they haunt the space with stories of longing, lust and looming fears.

    Bianca Cabrera/BlindTiger Society's work is driven by the bias Bacchus before Buddha and is built by a vibrant amalgamation of baton twirling, burlesque, ballet, go-go, club, cabaret, camp, contemporary and modern dance. Ferociously femme with an unquiet queerness, Blind Tiger Society is Cabrera's (she/they) main conduit through which she lets loose her Latina, creating song and dance that runs the gamut from graceful to gruesome; from refined to homespun. Between 2012-2022, Cabrera created 10 full length works and many more short works, with performances and commissions for The Garage, ODC Theater, ODC Youth Company, CounterPULSE, vîv dance collective, SAFEhouse Arts, the Seattle Inter|National Dance Festival, Links Hall/Midwest Nexus, RAW Concept Series, Ann Schnake/Mobile InTent, Yerba Buena Gardens ChoreoFest, Sheridan College, SweetPea Festival, CocoSpa and Kate Mitchell Creative. Cabrera's work was nominated for a 2014 Soul of Oakland award and has been supported through the Fleishhacker and Rainin Foundations.

    Their two decade performing career includes work with many celebrated dance artists and companies including: Lingo Dance/KT Niehoff, Amii LeGendre, Kristen Tsiastios, Lou Henry Hoover, Kim Epifano, LevyDance, The Fossettes, Sonya Smith, Erika Tsimbrovsky/AvyK Productions, Flyaway Productions and Cielo Vertical Arts. Bianca is a founding member of Latinx Hispanix Danza Unidxs and served on the Isadora Duncan Dance Awards committee in 2019-20.

Co-Presented Events

  • Artist Talk | Trina Michelle Robinson, Marjani Forté-Saunders, and amara tabor-smith in Conversation

    Join us for a conversation with Emerging Artist Program artist Trina Michelle Robinson, choreographer and performer Majani Forté-Saunders, moderated by artist Amara Tabor-Smith. 

    This program is co-presented with ODC Theater. 



      

  • BLUEPRINT

    Memoirs of a…Unicorn weaves performance, sound, and media to ritualistically remember, interrogate, and relish in the “Unicorns” of the artist’s life. Occupying roles like Father, Husband, Brother, Son, Uncle, Cousin, Homie, Pahtna, and Fam, these powerful figures merge with images of the magical creature that is full of mercurial passion, timelessness, and fortitude. 

    During Unicorn’s creation and initial performances, Forté-Saunders collected footage of interviews, production processes, and more, and went deeper into her investigation by making a 30 minute film entitled, BLUEPRINT. Not only did the project give an inside look into the making of the stage work and family-line, but it was a reinterpretation of the piece, focusing on questions like, “what was your flight pattern?” (i.e., how’d you get to be so fly?) and “what was your blueprint for becoming?”. 

    Join Marjani Forté-Saunders | 7NMS, CounterPulse, MoAD, and ODC Theater for a screening of this powerful and accessible film and to engage in dialogue around the work before the final presentation at ODC Theater Friday – Sunday, November 4-6, 2022. 

     

      

  • Countertechnique & Rep with Rosanna Tavarez and Bianca Cabrera

    Countertechnique & Rep with Rosanna Tavarez and Bianca Cabrera 

    Co-Presented by David Herrera Performance Company - Latinx Hispanic Dancers United
    Saturday, November 12, 2022 at ODC Theater. 
    This workshop is free! 


    Join Rosanna Tavarez and Bianca Cabrera for an afternoon of dance! Rosanna will lead a short Countertechnique warm-up to get everyone started, and then dancers will get to learn luscious choreography from Rosanna's Piece x Piece and Bianca's Fever Dreams.

     

       

Theater Fall Season Brochure
Download the Theater Fall Season Brochure.

Theater Fall Season Sponsors

                               

 

Accessibility Services
ASL will be provided for Saturday shows of the 2022 Fall Season. Additional Wheelchair seating will be available for Sunday shows of the 2022 Fall Season. Captioning will be provided for Digital Encores. Please see individual performance pages for details and dates. Please contact the ODC Box Office with accessibility requests or questions boxoffice@odc.dance.
 
Ramaytush Ohlone Land Tax Fund Donations
ODC is on the ancestral lands of the Ramaytush People in Yelamu. We pay respects to elders past and present, who are still here and part of our community. We recognize that regenerative land management is not new, but is a continuation of practices from Native cultures and from our own ancestors. It is our responsibility to steward the land with care, as our elders did before us. ODC is donating $.50 for each in-person ticket (seat) sold to all performances in the Theater in 2022. ODC will donate these funds to the Association of Raymaytush Ohlone land tax fund. We encourage you to consider paying land tax donations, and to learn about the land where you reside by visiting native-land.ca.
 
Arts Access Ticketing
ODC is offering a limited number of lower-cost Art Access tickets to every ODC presented performance and a limited number of free tickets held at the door for walk up attendance. These additionally subsidized tickets, available on a first come, first serve basis, are reserved for those for whom price is a barrier.

We know living in the Bay Area is expensive. We also highly value the art onstage and are invested in supporting the artists that create it. Ticket prices only cover a small fraction of the resources invested in the performance and we strive to make them as accessible as possible. Continued financial support through ticket purchases and charitable donations from people like you make Art Access tickets possible. 

With any additional questions, do not hesitate to contact the ODC Box Office at boxoffice@odc.dance. 
All ticket sales are final
 
Reopening Guidelines / FAQ
Proof of full vaccination is required for all in-person activities. Learn more at odc.dance/reopening. Please refer to our Performance and Event FAQ for any general questions. 

With any additional questions, do not hesitate to contact the ODC Box Office at boxoffice@odc.dance. 

All ticket sales are final.