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Dance Weekly: Risk meets Reward

By Jamuna Chiarini
April 6, 2016
Culture, Dance

Every artist is a risk-taker, spending hours upon hours creating something that he or she finds interesting, with no idea whether the public will find it intelligible at all. Failure always seems imminent, but the internal desire to create, the process of creation and the personal gain completely outweigh the possibility of failure.

This week’s dance offering are all about personal gain and, of course, lots of incredible dancing.

Performances this week

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ODC in Triangulating Euclid. Photo courtesy of White Bird.

Giant & Triangulating Euclid
ODC/Dance
Presented by White Bird
April 7-8
Newmark Theatre,1111 SW Broadway

Forty years ago Brenda Way formed ODC (or Oberlin Dance Collective) at Oberlin College in Ohio. In 1971 she and her collective of 16 dancers, painters, writers, photographers and musicians moved to San Francisco and stayed. Since then, she and founding members KT Nelson and Kimi Ocada have established a massive modern dance empire in the Bay Area that includes several dance companies, a school, two theatres and a repertory of more than 160 dances.

This weekend ODC will be presenting Kate Weare’s Giant, a dance that explores the act of heroism and our perceptions and fantasies that accompany it. We will also be seeing Triangulating Euclid, a collaboration between Way, Nelson and Weare inspired by Euclid’s Elements—a 13-book treatise on math and geometry. The dance moves through the structures of geometry and demonstrates how even parallel lines intersect at the human heart.

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Pearl Dive Project. Photo by Michael Shay-Polara Studio.

Pearl Dive Project
BodyVox Dance
April 7-21
BodyVox Dance Center, 1201 NW 17th Ave

Have you ever wanted to choreograph a dance but aren’t a dancer? Well BodyVox Artistic Directors Jamey Hampton and Ashley Roland have invited a group of non- dancing artists to do just that. Artists from a variety of other artistic disciplines have entered the studio and are translating their art into dance. Talk about risk.

Those artists are writer Byron Beck, Pink Martini singer China Forbes, visual artist Malia Jensen, Music Director for the Oregon Symphony Carlos Kalmar, violinist and physical therapist Raffaela Kalmar, Place Studio: Landscape Architects, and commercial director Clark James.

Dance Wire Dance Passport participant. Click for details.

The Journey
Inclusive Arts Vibe Dance Company/Disability Art and Culture Project
April 8
10:30 am Performance (Audio Described)
7:00 pm Performance (ASL interpreted/Audio Described)
New Expressive Works/Studio 2-Zoomtopia, 810 SE Belmont St #2

Founded in 2005 by Kathy Coleman, Erik Ferguson (also co-artistic director of Wobbly Dance) and Jody Ramey to support the artistic expression of people with apparent and non-apparent disabilities, DACP’s mission is to utilize the performing arts as a method of examining disability in relation to society and to support established and emerging artists, as well as the community at large, in developing knowledge and expression of disability culture and pride.

In 2015 Inclusive Arts Vibe Dance Company launched a successful Kickstarter campaign raising funds past their goal. Check out their video and blog for the story of that journey.

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Intisar Abioto. Photo courtesy of Intisar Abioto.

Ignite
PDX Dance Collective
April 8-9
The Headwaters Theatre, 55 NE Farragut

Ignite is an evening of fire-inspired choreography that explores six different choreographers’ relationships to fire and its power to move and shape us.

PDX Dance Collective is a collective of dancers interested in experimentation and collaboration, fostering diversity, passion and a shared creative spirit.

Dance Wire Dance Passport participant. Click for details.

TedXPortland
9 am April 9
Keller Auditorium, 222 SW Clay St

Intisar Abioto, a Portland photographer, writer and dancer focusing on the African Diaspora, will be one of 18 speakers as part of TedXPortland.

TED talks are about 18 minutes or less, on a range of topics from technology to entertainment to design to science to global issues.

Coming up next week

April 12-14, Shen Yun
April 14, Leo, A contemporary dance by Ron Amit
April 14-23, Beautiful Decay, Oregon Ballet Theatre
April 15-17, DIVA Practice, A night of dance and contemporary drag
April 15-16, UO Repertory Dance Company, University of Oregon
April 14-May 1, In The Heights, Stumptown Stages
April 15, Table of Contents, Heidi Duckler Dance Theatre
April 19-20, Timber!, White Bird
April 19-24, Newsies, Disney

Oregon ArtsWatch Archives