The electric company

Performers shine at ODC/Dance's 35th anniversary season

By Rita Felciano

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Flying high on the energy and buzz created by the recent move into its spacious new headquarters, ODC/Dance opened its yearly "Dance Downtown" series with two world premieres, artistic director Brenda Way's fractured time remaining, and co–artistic director KT Nelson's explosive Stomp a Waltz. The somewhat awkwardly structured March 2 program also included Way's Part of a Longer Story, choreographed over seven years and set to Mozart's divine Clarinet Concerto in A K622.

This was one evening during which fireworks were set off more by the quality of the performances than by the company's additions to the repertoire. I can't think of a more vibrantly alive bunch of exuberant and fabulously trained modern dancers, including former San Francisco Ballet principal and ODC guest artist Joanna Berman. While the announcement that longtime dancers Brian Fisher and Brandon "Private" Freeman will retire at the end of the season is difficult to accept — they seem to be so much at the heart of what ODC is all about — no doubt their replacements will make their own mark on this 36-year-old institution.

In time, Way's take on the dehumanizing results of rigidity led her into exploring discontinuity and fragmentation. Paradoxically, this is a piece in which a mental deep freeze is reflected by some of the most fiercely physical choreography Way has created in recent years. It's an intriguing concept, and for the most part convincingly realized.

The opening image of a tightly clustered ensemble burst into fragments of simultaneous duos and trios that repeatedly stopped midaction, as if a switch had been thrown. The effect was like looking at still shots of explosions: There was mindlessness but also antic excitement to those intertwining limbs, flying hops, and yanking-of-partners.

But Way couldn't resist spelling out the reason behind the chilling arbitrariness of these driven lives. Somebody has to pull the strings, right? Freeman ripped off the tie that covered his clerical collar; Corey Brady donned a stole; and three church ladies hop-skipped with open bibles in their hands. Dancers put their foreheads to the ground, meditated, folded hands, and bowed down — you get the idea. In the end, just for good measure, Jay Cloidt's sound design gave us a fractured version of "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God."

Personally, I found these images just a little too obvious. However, Freeman, as a lascivious and insidious seducer (a role he has played before), was magnificent in his duet with Andrea Flores, who was frozen in terror yet titillated by this slimy creature. Nelson's equally intense and in some ways similarly structured Stomp a Waltz follows time, a sequencing made explainable by the exigencies of an opening-night gala — though it made for awkward viewing. I hope to see Waltz again in a different context.

Nelson set her dancers against a take-no-prisoners string score by Brazilian composer Marcelo Zarvos, not so much mining it for specific qualities but using it to fuel the energy level of turbo-driven choreography. Constantly reconfigured units of dancers flew in and out of the wings with an inevitability that might have become tedious were it not for Nelson's fluid ability to combine and recombine. Against the steady onslaught of the music, she established rhythmic visual patterns that tightened and expanded with a jazzlike, almost improvisatory presence. Maybe that's why the work started with clapping and stepped rhythms that had incantatory qualities to them.

Still, I would have welcomed more of the quiet moments: the slow-motion quartet on one side of the stage, Anne Zivolich holding back on a solitary turn, or Brady leaning into his exhalation. These were opportunities to come up for a gulp of air in a sea of churning hyperactivity. The athleticism and give-and-take of Freeman and Yayoi Kambara's high-flying, deep-diving duet were a showcase for equalized partnering.

Freeman also sweetly partnered with Berman, in her new career as a modern dancer, in the second movement of Part, Way's delicious reading of Mozart. But that piece really belonged to Fisher's solo in the finale. He was suave, elegant, and danced it with just a touch of a wink and a flourish. *

ODC/DANCE'S DOWNTOWN 2006

Through March 19

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater

700 Howard, SF

$10–$75

(415) 978-ARTS

www.odcdance.org