Malinda LaVelle and Emmaly Wiederholt

Malinda LaVelle and Emmaly Wiederholt: What the Hell Happened in San Francisco?
Saturday, August 29, 2026, 6:30pm: ASL Interpretation Provided
Sunday, August 30, 2026, 7:30pm
 

Get Tickets


What the Hell Happened in San Francisco? (Bay Area Premiere)(2024) is an evening-length work of dance-theater wrestling with idealism, dreams, and disillusionment. Malinda LaVelle and Emmaly Wiederholt met in 2008 in San Francisco while trying to “make it” as contemporary dance artists. They burned that dream bright and fast, living and dancing together for several years before moving on to other schemes. Fast forward to 2021 and Malinda and Emmaly found themselves fortuitously living in the same city once again–this time Albuquerque. On a hot summer night relaxing in Emmaly’s backyard, they reminisced about the experience of living in the Bay Area as young dance artists. Malinda sighed and said, “What the hell happened in San Francisco? We should make a piece about it.” 

What was this experience of moving to the big city to pursue their dreams really about? When did disillusionment set in? What was the cause of the disillusionment? Why does that time in their lives still reverberate all these years later?

Sunday, August 30 at 10am - From Risk to Reflection–Giving Form to Your Dance Story with Malinda LaVelle & Emmaly Wiederholt
Participants will reflect on how one’s relationship with dance changes over time. Using visualization, writing, verbal expression, and movement, we will create dance theater vignettes based on these reflections that give form to our dance stories.
 

Malinda LaVelle (she/her) is a choreographer, dancer, and artist with roots in the Southwest currently based in Albuquerque, NM. She graduated with a BFA in Dance from the University of Arizona and is an alumna of the San Francisco Conservatory of Dance (SFCD). Malinda also earned her MA in Dance/Movement Therapy and Counseling from Antioch University New England. 

Malinda began choreographing dances as a child in her living room. Living with chronic pain has shaped her relationship to dance and performance, with choreography offering an accessible way to engage with movement. From 2009-2017, Malinda founded and directed Project Thrust (projectthrust.com), a dance-theater company in San Francisco. Her work has been described as simultaneously hilarious and disturbing, using irony and satire to explore identity and the absurdity, pain, and tenderness of living. Malinda’s work has been presented in multiple venues in San Francisco, Colorado, and New Mexico, and has been supported by several grants. Throughout her time as artistic director, Malinda participated in artist residencies at the Peñasco Theater, SAFEhouse for the Performing Arts, and she was commissioned to choreograph for the performing arts and social justice department at the University of San Francisco.

As a performer, Malinda has worked with Alex Ketley, Manuelito Biag, Alyce Finwall, and 20 Moons Dance Theater. She was awarded an Isadora Duncan Award for her performances with Alex Ketley’s The Foundry. As a teacher, Malinda has enjoyed working with teens and young adults at SFCD and Ballet Durango, and she is currently a teaching artist at the National Dance Institute of New Mexico. At SFCD, Malinda developed an improvisation class dubbed “Jam Class” which was featured in Dance Magazine and taught regularly in the pre-professional training programs at SFCD. Presently, Malinda works as a dance/movement therapist and clinical supervisor and has had the honor of collaborating with many communities across the life span, most recently with military-connected personnel. She enjoys being a new mom and spending time with her incredible family and friends.

@malindaraelav

Emmaly Wiederholt (she/her) is a dance artist and arts journalist based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She is the founder and editor of Stance on Dance (stanceondance.com), a dance journalism nonprofit that produces an online and print publication distributed throughout the US. Her first book, “Beauty is Experience: Dancing 50 and Beyond,” was published in 2017, and her second book, “Breadth of Bodies: Discussing Disability in Dance,” was published in 2022. 

Emmaly earned her MA in Arts Journalism from the University of Southern California and her BFA in Ballet and BS in Political Science from the University of Utah. She further trained at the San Francisco Conservatory of Dance, and performed around the Bay Area with multiple companies including Project Thrust, Alyce Finwall Dance Theater, Christine Cali and Co., Little Seismic Dance Company, and AXIS Dance Company. Since leaving the Bay Area, she has choreographed and presented her own work in Santa Fe and Albuquerque at multiple venues, as well as collaborated and performed with choreographer Malinda LaVelle throughout the Southwest. 

Emmaly is a founding member of the dance advocacy nonprofit ABQ Dance Connect, to which she has been integral in creating opportunities for ABQ dance artists. Emmaly is also a master DanceAbility instructor. She has facilitated movement groups at senior centers in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, and currently leads weekly groups at the UNM Hospital adult psychiatric center through the arts-in-medicine program. She is a proud mom to two small children, Eugene and Cariad, who keep her on her toes. 

@stanceondance

In 2024, Malinda and Emmaly premiered the piece at Fusion in Albuquerque, followed by a 2025 Southwest tour to the Railyard Performance Center in Santa Fe, NM and The Light Box in Durango, CO (hosted by 20 Moons Dance Theater).