Felipe Barrueto-Cabello and Melecio Estrella in a work by Joe Goode, photo by Margo Moritz

ODC Theater is planning a splash of dance and music events for its summer intensive students that will interest local audiences as well. In addition to favorite Bay Area choreographers like Joe Goode, KT Nelson, Brenda Way, and Randee Paufve, the Music Moves Festival brings the West Coast debut of John Heginbotham. The rising New York choreographer presents his group works Twin and Closing Bell, and will also dance a solo based on an “Air Mail Dance” score by the late Remy Charlip. (Heginbotham’s wonderful “Why I Dance”  was written just before he started making dances.) Plus, it includes Kate Weare’s collaboration with ODC/Dance which she mentions in her “Choreography in Focus.” Antoine Hunter, whose “Why I Dance” was particularly touching,  is also on board.

Dance Heginbotham in Twin, photo by Taylor Crichton; photo of Twin on homepage, with Lindsey Jones and Kristen Foote, is by Liza Voll

The festival intersperses dance fare with live music groups that highlight the physicality of creating sound. Keith Terry and Corposonic perform body percussion like “chest slaps, foot slides, cheek pops, clapping, stepping, and singing.” San Jose Taiko X The Bangerz combine taiko drumming and hip-hop.

Breathing Underwater, Brenda Way’s collaboration with Zoe Keating, with ODC dancers  Natasha Adorlee Johnson, Vanessa Thiessen, Anne Zivolich, and Yayoi Kambara, photo by Margo Moritz

Namita Kapoor, photo by Gundi Vigfusson

The closing weekend goes global, splitting a program between local choreographer Namita Kapoor’s Hindu Swing and Rueda con Ritmo’s Cuban salsa.

July 31 to Aug. 24. Click here for more info and for tix.

Seeing dance in the context of other arts can stimulate us to make new connections. That is the hope of Mark Murphy, director of the enterprising REDCAT theater in the heart of Los Angeles. The New Original Works festival presents eight premieres in three programs, mixing and matching dance and music, film and performance. Murphy has stirred vibrant local performers into a pot “where disciplines are challenged and blurred.”

Wilfried Souly, photo by Andre Andreev. Homepage photo is also of Souly.

Program I, from July 24–26, features Wilfried Souly, whose dancing is like his name—soulful. Trained in African dance in his homeland of Burkina-Faso, he’s been studying with Victoria Marks at UCLA. I saw him in a duet of hers and was very moved by a quality that I would call emotional truth. In his solo Saana/The Foreigner, he creates a tapestry of dance, music, and spoken word to represent his search for a new life in his new land. Sharing the program are choreographer Rosanna Gamson and musical group Overtone Industries.

D. Sabela Grimes

In the second program, July 31–Aug 2, D. Sabela Grimes, who began his career dancing with Rennie Harris Puremovement in Philly, challenges gender stereotypes in black culture in his Electrogynous. In The Singing Head, multi-media artist Carole Kim creates an environment out of live video imagery, scrims, and costumes in which butoh dancers Oguri and Roxanne Steinberg emerge as denizens. Completing the bill is Marsian de Lellis’ absurdist play, Object of Her Affection, which uses puppetry and “object theater.”

Concluding the series, on Aug 7–9, will be the new Israeli company in L.A., Ate9 dANCE company, directed by Naharin protégée Danielle Agami. When I saw them recently at Peridance, I loved the company (despite it’s trendy punctuation) for its waywardness and humor—and that willingness to be awkward that’s a special Israeli trademark. In her new piece, For Now, she collaborates with Persian hip-hop musician Omid Walizadeh. She shares the program with performance artist John Fleck’s Blacktop Highway, which promises to be an epic work of  the “gothic horror” genre. Click here for full info.

Ate9 dANCE cOMPANY, photo by Scott Simock

Dancers Responding to AIDS always puts on a beautiful show at Fire Island, made even more stunning with the bay as backdrop. This year, three of today’s most charismatic dance stars will be on hand: Marcelo Gomes, Desmond Richardson, and Sara Mearns.

Marcelo Gomes, photo by Daniel Robinson

Marcelo will be dancing the balcony pas de deux of MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet with Luciana Paris, but he’ll also be premiering a new work that he choreographed for Complexions Contemporary Ballet. I’ve found his previous choreographic efforts to have musicality, humor, and inventiveness, so I am looking forward to this new one. In this Quick Q&A, he talks about what inspires him as a choreographer.

Desmond Richardson in Moonlight Solo, photo by Sharen Bradford. Photo of Ballet Hispanico on Homepage by Rosalie O’Connor

The eternally fantastic Desmond Richardson, who is now appearing in After Midnight, performed at the first Fire Island Festival in 1995, so it’s fitting that he’s returning for the 20th anniversary. He will be dancing Moonlight by Dwight Rhoden. As chance would have it, Complexions, co-led by Richardson and Rhoden, is also celebrating its 20th year.

Sara Mearns has been dancing a ton of roles at New York City Ballet as well as doing outside gigs. For this festival she’ll dance with eight guys in a new piece by Josh Bergasse, who choreographed for the TV show Smash.

Also on the program will be Ailey II in a section of Revelations, Troy Schumacher’s BalletCollective in a new work, MOMIX, and other groups. July 18–20. Tickets are expensive, but it’s all for a good cause. For more info, click here or call 212.840.0770, ext. 268.

Carmen de Lavallade is a miracle. Not just because she’s still dancing at 83, not just because a simple hand flourish can wow you with its natural elegance, not just because her honeyed voice can make any monologue interesting, not just because her body is incredibly lovely or her bearing is incredibly proud or her timing is incredibly theatrical. But also because watching her perform is a lesson in what stage instincts are about.

Photos © Julieta Cervantes

I’ve been enthralled every time I’ve seen her onstage. In 1962 at the Delacorte in Central Park, she swirled in a solo by Geoffrey Holder (her husband) with a kind of island-girl beauty. In 1992, partnered by Ulysses Dove in John Butler’s part jazzy/part tragic Portrait of Billie, she played the role of Billie Holiday with great pathos. (Click here to see it on the Pillow’s Dance Interactive) In 2002 she and Gus Solomons jr teamed up in Dwight Rhoden’s mesmerizing It All, which depicted the two as exhausted-but-questioning troupers in life.

Next week at Jacob’s Pillow she’ll be performing a new work, As I Remember It. To take a look back on her long career in dance and theater, she’s enlisted the help of director Joe Grifasi and dramaturg Talvin Wilks. June 20–22. For tickets click here.

Carmen with Alvin Ailey, c. 1950s