State of Play

About the Artists

• Ajani Brannum: the wasp project

  Friday, August 4, 2023 at 6:00pm (ASL provided)
  Sunday, August 6, 2023 at 4:00pm

  Artist BioAjani Brannum (they/them) is an undisciplinary artist who works between movement, writing, sound, facilitation, and divination. They develop animist strategies for locating and relating in the world. Originally hailing from Anchorage, Alaska, Ajani holds a PhD in Culture and Performance from UCLA, and is an alum of Jade T. Perry's Cecilia Weston Spiritual Academy.

  
  Project Description
  the wasp project  is an exercise in undisciplinary wayfinding. Hovering somewhere between story circle, conversation, and ceremony, the work stays orienting in and to the world (however, wherever, we find and define it). the wasp project is part of an ongoing investigation into practices for doing-self, and it asks how Afro-diasporic cosmologies help make performance happen. It seeks the wisdom of living and non-living beings alike. It won’t leave any of us alone. It explores how we be in the ever-unfolding present.

  Debut Status
  world premiere

• Audrey Johnson: land|body|memory

  Saturday, August 5, 2023 at 5pm (ASL provided)
  Friday, August 11, 2023 at 5pm

  Artist Bio
  Audrey Johnson (she/her) is dance artist with roots from Detroit, MI/Anishinaabe land, currently living in Oakland, CA/Ohlone land. Grounded in a lineage of queer Black feminist praxis, her work experiments with improvisation and embodied time travel. Her performances have been presented in the Bay Area by CounterPulse, Gravity, FRESH Festival, Queering Dance Festival, 2727 California Street. Audrey has collaborated with dance artists including Gerald Casel, Jennifer Harge, Biba Bell, and Stephanie Hewett.

  Project Description
  land|body|memory is an iterative dance performance and research project occurring as a series of movement prayers. A call and response to and from the land and body, the work centers Black folks in relationship to land through study, interview, food, and performance. Johnson activates and experiments with improvisation and ritual. 

• Baye & Asa: Suck it Up

  Thursday, August 3, 2023 at 6:00pm
  Saturday, August 5, 2023 at 6:00pm (ASL provided) 

  Artist BioBaye & Asa is a company creating movement art projects directed & choreographed by Amadi ‘Baye’ Washington & Sam ‘Asa’ Pratt. They’ve presented their live work at The Joyce Theater, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The 92nd Street Y, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Jacob’s Pillow, DanceHouse Vancouver, Blacklight Summit, Battery Dance Festival, and were selected as one of Dance Magazine's "25 to Watch" for 2022. Their film work has won numerous awards and been presented internationally.

  
  Project Description
  Heteronormative advertising campaigns tell men that they are weak, small, balding and flaccid. These commercial images promise status, offer solutions to inadequacy, and breed entitlement. Men mimic this commercialized masculinity and act out when they are not rewarded. Internalized deficiency creates a culture of resentment and has led to violence. Suck it Up confronts the violent fallout.

  Credits
  Commissioned by Blacklight Summit, Made Possible through the Artist Residency Program at 92NY in NYC.

  Debut Status
  West Coast premiere

• DANDY: A DANDY Affair

  Friday, August 11, 2023 (ASL provided)
  Sunday, August 13, 2023

  Artist Bio
  DANDY is a creative partnership designed to celebrate and elevate the Black cultural landscape of Seattle, WA. David Rue (Liberian-born) and Randy Ford (Seattle-born) use art, dance, fashion, and pop-culture as forms of activism, story-telling, and joy centering.
   

  Project Description
  A DANDY Affair is a multi disciplinary performance experience showcasing the work of DANDY, a west-coast based creative partnership created by David Rue and Randy Ford. Join DANDY for a night of original music (written and performed by Rue and Ford), dance, fashion, and performance designed to help you celebrate who you are, no matter the circumstance.  This performance acts as a living portrait of these artists' love of beauty, joy, and social justice by reimagining elements of performance to communicate who they are, where they come from, and what they believe in.  Audiences will bear witness to how creativity became this creative partnership's antidote during times of duress in the hopes to inspire others to do the same.  A DANDY Affair is a multi-year project designed to elevate the beauty of the Black artistic experience with nothing to prove, only to share. 
   

  Debut Status
  Bay Area premiere
   

• gizeh muñiz-vengel: una Agua

  Friday, August 11, 2023 (ASL provided)

  Artist Bio
  gizeh muñiz vengel (she/they) Mexicana. Movement artist, Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapist and educator. They are devoted to the study of being a body, through movement and stillness.

  
  Project Description
  una Agua: a piece by gizeh muñiz vengel with the sound and vibration of grisel gg torres

  You dive deep into the bottom of the cenote. 
  You spend a long time underwater, knowing you'll have to come out at some point, even if you don't want to. 
  You think it is absurd that you need to get out at some point even if you don’t want to. 

  And then you think of all the things that are absurd in the world. You think of how absurd making dance is, for example. And then you remember Wislawa’s words: "I prefer the absurdity of writing poems to the absurdity of not writing poems". You know you prefer a world where you make dances, even if making dance makes no sense. 

  So you get out of the water, and go make dance. 
   

• TABLEAU STATIONS / Isak Immanuel, Marina Fukushima, and Surjit Nongmeikapam: HOME WAVES

  Thursday, August 3, 2023 at 7:00pm
  Friday, August 4, 2023 at 7:00pm (ASL provided)

  Artist Bio (Organization)
  TABLEAU STATIONS is an intercultural performing arts platform engaging local and global questions of place. Initiated by interdisciplinary artist and dancer Isak Immanuel, projects actively develop collaborative perspectives to precarity, displacement, and presence. Since 2004, numerous works have been created in the SF Bay Area and nomadically through experiential research, communal social arts practices, and in collaboration with many renowned artists, including Anna Halprin (Marin), Marina Fukushima (SF), Surjit Nongmeikapam (Manipur), Yuko Kaseki (Berlin), Luigi Coppola (Lecce/Brussels), and Pijin Neji (Kyoto). Past support includes Japan-US Friendship Commission/NEA, Attakkalari India Biennial, Kenneth Rainin Foundation, Taipei Artist Village, YBCA, CounterPULSE, Center for Cultural Innovation, SF Arts Commission, Akiyoshidai International Art Village, Dock11 Berlin, Fabrica Europa, and Headlands Center for the Arts.

  Isak Immanuel is an interdisciplinary artist and dancer making work within outdoor urban environments, theaters, and for camera. He initiated and co-directs Tableau Stations. Alternately living and working in SF and nomadically, creation is formed from a myriad of between spaces.
  
  Marina Fukushima is a dance artist born in Tokyo and based in SF. From a cross-cultural perspective, her creative focus is on silence, family, and intergenerational relationships. Since 2005, she choreographed and performed with numerous artists/companies across the US and internationally.
  
  Surjit Nongmeikapam is a dance artist primarily based in Manipur, India and often working in collaborations globally. He is the Co-founder and Artistic Director of Nachom Arts Foundation. Through dance and as a movement therapist, listening to land and the nature of communal bodies.

  Project Description
  HOME WAVES is an intermedia dance performance project by TABLEAU STATIONS featuring collaborations spanning from the Bay Area to Manipur, India with Isak Immanuel, Marina Fukushima, and Surjit Nongmeikapam. The project questions precarity and placemaking through a nuanced lens of body and camera. From fragments of searching for home amidst the pandemic and the repurposing of marginalized urban spaces for affordable housing, HOME WAVES navigates along coastlines, SF Mission Bay apartments, and a series of indeterminate landscapes. Additional ensemble layers are created through an intergenerational collaboration with fellow tenants of Immanuel and Fukushima with Mercy Housing, reflecting on homemaking and daily somatic movement.
  
  Credits
  Additional support from the Kenneth Rainin Foundation's Open Space program (Developmental phase), Mercy Housing, US Artists Relief Fund, and with fiscal sponsorship by Intersection for the Arts.

  Debut Status
  world premiere
   

• Jerron Herman: VITRUVIAN

  Thursday, August 10, 2023 at 6:00pm
  Saturday, August 12, 2023 at 6:00pm (ASL provided)

  Artist Bio
  Jerron Herman is a disabled artist working in dance and text to facilitate welcoming. He has premiered pieces at Danspace Project, Performance Space New York, and The Whitney Museum. VITRUVIAN premiered at Abrons Arts Center while Jerron was an Artist in Residence and will tour 2023-2024 on the Mid-Atlantic Arts roster. He began his training as a company member with Heidi Latsky Dance from 2011-2019 and is a collaborating member of Kinetic Light’s WIRED. Jerron is represented by Candace Feldman’s INTERIM, a boutique management consortium for disabled artists that includes Molly Joyce and Christopher Unpezverde Nunez.
  
  Project Description
  Hailed by the Brooklyn Rail as “a triumph of intention and reinvention, centering disability and celebrating Herman’s rebirth as his own divine form”, VITRUVIAN shares an allegorical tale of the life cycle of the Vitruvian man as he traverses multiple hemispheres, now in the embodiment of a Disabled Black man. Based on Da Vinci’s famous sketch, the piece explores the ways natural phenomena and history enter and live in the body. 

  VITRUVIAN has been featured on NY1 and CBS New York as a show to see. The full evening was commissioned by Abrons Arts Center and developed during artistic and scholastic residencies at the Petronio Residency Center and Georgetown University. Other presentations have included a site specific interpretation at Governor’s Island and virtual showings for the Passport Program at Lincoln Center as well as a month-long screening season at Abrons Arts Center. VITRUVIAN was archived into the Jerome Robbins Dance Division at the New York Public Library of Performing Arts following its premiere.

  Credits
  VITRUVIAN was supported by a grant from the Jerome Foundation and the Grants to Artist Award (2021) from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Additional support was provided by the Disability Futures Fellowship from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Ford Foundation and the Wynn Newhouse Award from the SI Newhouse Foundation. VITRUVIAN was partially developed at the Petronio Residency Center through the Petronio Award.

  Debut Status
  West Coast premiere

• Kensaku Shinohara: Good Bye

  Thursday, August 10, 2023 at 7:00pm
  Friday, August 11, 2023 at 7:00pm (ASL provided)

  Artist Bio
  Born in Sapporo, Japan, Kensaku Shinohara (he/him) is an artist who brings an education in anthropology to bear on his work as a choreographer/performer. He has presented his works in the U.S.A., Canada, Malaysia, Taiwan and Japan. Shinohara is a recipient of a 92Y Harkness Dance Center AIR, Exploring the Metropolis AIR, Queens Arts Fund, Japan Foundation New York to name a few.

  Project Description
  lunch box #3 is a collaborative dance piece choreographed and performed by Kensaku Shinohara and sam wentz. This mobile dance piece, with less tech-dependent elements, is accessible in diverse settings outside of a traditional theater space, such as museums or galleries. It explores how dance can transform for a different setup, for potential of intimacy and distance between performance, and how view, soundscape, unexpected noises, movement, and random seating will affect the dance. 

  Choreographer/dancer Kensaku Shinohara shares Good Bye, a dance performance that reflects on sexuality, objectification, intimacy, dominance and boundaries. In this autobiographical piece, Shinohara traces the cultural shift in his moving from Japan to the U.S., the chaos and confrontation that he experienced, and the (literal) plunges he takes as he navigates the war zone of identity and physical collisions.
   

  Credits
  Good Bye has been supported, in part, by 92Y Harkness Dance Center AIR, Queens Council on the Arts New Work Grant, Exploring the Metropolis AIR, Marble House Project AIR, JACK NYC, François Ghebaly, Center for Performance Research, Movement Research at Judson Church, DraftWork at St. Mark’s Church, Chez Bushwick, International Interdisciplinary Artists Consortium and California Institute of the Arts’ Nick England Intercultural Arts Project Grant.

  Debut Status
  West Coast premiere
   

• Marissa Brown / Lone King Projects: How lonely sits the city

  Saturday, August 5, 2023 at 7:00pm (ASL provided) 
  Sunday, August 6, 2023 at 5:00pm

  Artist Bio
  Marissa Brown is a biracial, Black and Portuguese, Multidisciplinary artist. Her primary language comes from movement of the body and translates into works of live performance, film, installation, photography, and publication. She has her BFA in Performance and Choreography from University of California Irvine and MFA from California Institute of the Arts. Her work has been shown extensively in San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles. Under the name Lone King Projects, she creates and shares intimate moments of expression.
  
  Project Description
  How lonely sits the city is a poetic layering of dance film and live performance that tells the quiet interior stories of Black identifying dancers who take on angelic-like characters. Personal and historical narratives unfold throughout the films that have been formed publicly in and around historically Black neighborhoods of Los Angeles, CA. 
  In this moment, we open vast interior landscapes and embrace the multiplicity of our expression.

  Debut Status
  Bay Area premiere

• pateldanceworks: fault lines: witness

  Saturday, August 6, 2023 at 3pm (ASL provided)
  Saturday, August 13, 2023 at 3pm

  Artist Bio
  Movement artist and writer Bhumi B Patel directs pateldanceworks and is a queer, desi, home-seeker, and science fiction choreographer (she/they). In its purest form, she creates performance works as a love letter to her ancestors. Patel moves at the intersection embodied research and generating new futures, using improvisational practice as a pursuit for liberation. She is a member of Dancing Around Race and has presented her choreographic work in the Bay Area, Hawai’i, Los Angeles, New York, and Columbus, Ohio. Bhumi is currently a YBCA 100 Honoree and a 2022-2023 Dance/USA Fellow. Making art is her way of tracing the deeply woven connections in which we live–past, present, future–as a way to build communities of nourishment and care.
  
  Project Description
  fault lines: witness is the second of several ongoing, iterative, multidisciplinary performances and experiential activations. Each offering emerges from its last evolution and includes different constellations of members involved with pateldanceworks. In witness, we journey with water memory, like the path of a river's serpentine flowing through wide valleys or flat planes to loop and curve making an exploration of the in-between spaces of identity and geography, with Patel exploring her own Asian-American identity and queerness as in-between. In this piece, Patel brings together lineages of displacement, alienation, transnationalism, and hybridity in her existence, reconciling through the river's haunting in the body.

• Yanira Castro / a canary torsi: I came here to weep

  Saturday, August 12, 2023 at 7:00pm (ASL provided)
  Sunday, August 13, 2023 at 5:00pm

  Artist Bio
  Yanira Castro is a Puerto Rican born interdisciplinary artist living in Lenapehoking (Brooklyn, NY). Since 2009, she has made participatory performances and interactive installations with a team of collaborators under the moniker, a canary torsi. Her work is rooted in communal construction as a practice of radical democracy and invites the public into co-creation. Castro is the recipient of a 2023 Creative Capital award for “I came here to weep” and a 2022 Herb Alpert Award for Dance. She has received two Bessie Awards for Outstanding Production and a NYFA Choreography Fellowship as well as various commissions, residencies and national project grant awards. Her latest projects include: “Last Audience: a performance manual” created and published with Museum Contemporary Art Chicago and a performance podcast, “Last Audience,” a 3-part space opera grounded in Boriken to be found on most podcast platforms.

  
  Project Description
  I came here to weep is a performance co-created with its audience. It is a confession, an intentional undoing, an exorcism. Castro asks questions about gathering in performance, catharsis and manipulation: Why are we here? How do we assemble? Are we community? The project contemplates assembling and weeping as direct action, as communal trust. Composed of participatory scores for the public, dances for mourning, and the re-composing and redaction of U.S. treaties on territorial possession, “weep” is a space for congregating, negotiating with the public how we inhabit together.

  Credits
  I came here to weep is made possible, in part, by a commission from The Chocolate Factory and with support from Creative Capital and a NYSCA Individual Artists’ Interdisciplinary Artist Commission made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature.

  Debut Status
  West Coast premiere

ABOUT THE ART

• Experimenters: unleashing new releases in the making.

  Experimenters welcome audiences into 45 minute works in progress showings in ODC Dance Commons studios, providing an intimate glance into the creative process. 2023's Experimenters include Audrey Johnson, gizeh muñiz vengel, and pateldanceworks.

  Audrey Johnson: August 3 and 5, 2023 at 5pm

  gizeh muñiz vengel: August 11, 2023 at 5pm

  pateldanceworks: August 6 and 13, 2023 at 3pm

• Curious Creators: serving a slice of artistic splendor.

  Curious Creators present 30-minute works in ODC's B.Way Theater, engaging audiences with thought-provoking dance in digestible portions, sparking curiosity and possibility. 2023's Curious Creators include Ajani Brannum, DANDY, Baye & Asa, and Jerron Herman.

  Ajani Brannum: August 4, 2023 at 6pm and August 6, 2023 at 4pm

  DANDY: August 11, 2023 at 4pm and August 13 at 4pm

  Baye & Asa: August 3 and 5, 2023 at 6pm

  Jerron Herman: August 10 and 12 at 6pm

• Risk-takers: inspiring a taste for bold ventures.

  Risk-takers present evening length works in ODC's B.Way Theater, pushing the boundaries of bold artistic expression. 2023's Risk-takers include Kensaku Shinohara, Tableau Stations, Marissa Brown, and Yanira Castro.

  Kensaku Shinohara: August 10 and 11, 2023 at 7pm

  Tableau Stations: August 3 and 4, 2023 at 7pm

  Marissa Brown: August 5, 2023 at 7pm and August 6, 2023 at 5pm

  Yanira Castro: August 12, 2023 at 7pm and August 13, 2023 at 5pm

State of Play Festival Joint Curatorial Statement

We began, unknown to one another, with cocktails, seeing work together, sharing hopes and disappointments for the field, curiosity, research, utopian lists, instinct, and much expectancy for what could be.

We found ourselves in solidarity and intrigued by a particular artistic integrity—of the work, the statement, the depth, the person, and the experience. We approached this curation with a desire for justice and transformation, and centered the profound promise that exists beyond white supremacist, patriarchal frames.

Our hope, as guest voices in the 2023 ODC Theater season, is to help usher in some new possibilities for dance—dance that sits and stares back at you, lays claim, folds you into its arms, demands, incites, and gives unabashedly. We found our cohort.

These artists and works accumulate into a statement about expansion and reimagination. Together, this season, we will celebrate the multitude of nows and the futures that dance can embolden us to inhabit. The revolution will be embodied. You’ll see. Join us in the resistance, the rage, the sorrow, and the joy.
 
Maurya Kerr & Leyya Mona Tawil
Curators, State of Play Festival

Additional Information

Accessibility Services

ASL and additional wheelchair seating will be provided for select shows; please see individual event pages for more information. Captioning will be provided for Digital Encores. Please contact the ODC Box Office with accessibility requests or questions at boxoffice@odc.dance.

About ODC Theater

ODC Theater exists to empower and develop innovative artists. It participates in the creation of new works through commissioning, presenting, mentorship and space access; it develops informed, engaged and committed audiences; and advocates for the performing arts as an essential component to the economic and cultural development of our community. This 170-seat venue is the site of over 150 performances a year involving nearly 1,000 local, regional, national and international artists.

Since 1976, ODC Theater has been the mobilizing force behind countless San Francisco artists and the foothold for national and international touring artists seeking debut in the Bay Area. The Theater, founded by Brenda Way, has earned its place as a cultural incubator by dedicating itself to creative change-makers, those leaders who give the Bay Area its unmistakable definition and flair. Nationally known artists Spaulding Gray, Diamanda Galas, Bill T. Jones, Eiko & Koma, Ronald K. Brown/EVIDENCE, Karole Armitage, Sarah Michelson, Brian Brooks and John Heginbotham are among those whose first San Francisco appearance occurred at ODC Theater. ODC Theater is currently under the Creative Direction of Chloë L. Zimberg.

Make a donation to support ODC Theater

Arts Access

ODC offers 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.
If you have any other questions, please don't hesitate to contact the ODC Box Office at boxoffice@odc.dance.

ODC is ADA Accessible

ODC Theater and Dance Commons are ADA Accessible. For all ODC/Dance and ODC Theater presented performances, ASL is provided for shows with performed text for at least one performance during the show run. Additional wheelchair seating is provided for select shows. Captioning is provided for all Digital Encores. ODC Theater restrooms are All-Gender and All-Gender restrooms are located upstairs, outside of Studio B in ODC Dance Commons. Please see individual event pages for more information. Questions? Please contact the ODC Box Office at boxoffice@odc.dance.

Health & Safety Information

Learn about ODC's current health and safety measures at odc.dance/healthandsafety

ABOUT ODC

ODC is dedicated to the lifecycle of the artistic process. Through our company, school and theater, we aim to inspire audiences, cultivate artists, engage community, and foster diversity and inclusion through dance. LEARN MORE