RAWdance, known for crafting thought-provoking contemporary works, is a mainstay of the Bay Area dance scene. Co-Artistic Directors Wendy Rein and Ryan T. Smith have made the most of this anniversary year. They began in December 2023 with Loving Still, a stunningly intimate piece of dance theater on the theme of caring male relationships. In the spring, they curated the 31st iteration of their signature CONCEPT Series, a biannual showcase of eclectic works-in-progress by local choreographers. In July, Dancing on a Decade, an athletic trio of large-scale site-specific dances, commemorated a fruitful 10-year partnership with Yerba Buena Gardens Festival.
Tonight’s 20th Anniversary Home Season (20th) marks RAWdance’s long-anticipated return to the ODC Theater, following a March 2020 pandemic cancellation. ODC Theater is where Rein and Smith’s career defining Double Exposure (2016), a tour de force of thirteen duets by leading choreographic voices, played to sold-out houses prior to its presentation at NYC’s Joyce Theater.
RAWdance’s 20th looks to the future with four world-premieres: two by the directors, and a pair of commissions created for the evening by duos of company members. A program should be judged on its merits, not its absences, but I am probably not alone in having hoped to see the charismatic onstage pairing of Rein and Smith.
In their place, Kelly Del Rosario and Erin Yen steal our hearts with their dynamic dancing and engrossing character development. Their choreography and performance of Refer is fresh and fun, and has the audience whopping and wanting more. Contemporary dancers with expressive faces, backgrounds in martial arts, and a shared lightness of being, they flow from one-armed-handstands to robotic riffs, reeling us in as they go until we hang on their every knowing wink. With a stylized cartoonish quality, Del Rosario and Yen feed off each other’s joy and creativity.
Refer choreographer/performers Kelly Del Rosario and Erin Yen fly off stage at the end of bows, Photo: J. Norris
This home season is bookended by twenty-minute works choreographed by Rein and Smith. Social Circle, a quartet for four women, is performed against a soundscape of repetitive piano cadences and drolly read snippets of 19th century etiquette and dancing guides, which highlight the impossibly confining and conflicting expectations for women’s comportment.
Arms bent in proper ballroom form, Social Circle’s doll-women fight to maintain decorum, periodically caving in on themselves; they flop forward, or melt sideways before springing upright again, as a music-box-ballerina reliably does. A voice states, “If one is certain of being correct, there is little to be anxious about,” and yet anxious is exactly what these women are in this nightmarish dance, which begins with genteel promenades and builds on a slow boil towards a feverish finish. As the movement becomes more frenetic, the dancers struggle to maintain ever more complicated waltzing patterns. Head-flinging female hysteria pervades as madhouse-worthy tresses obscure whirling faces. The women are trapped in society’s relentlessly rule-bound world, too much like the waning life of the proverbial frogs who don’t feel the water’s temperature rising until it is too late, and sanity is ebbing. Given today’s too often successful efforts to suppress women’s rights, Social Circle is a haunting reflection on the objectification and control of women’s bodies by others.
Escape, the finale piece of 20th, is an odd bird, which lacks a clear perspective. Part free-wheeling romp, and part social commentary, with a dollop of sentimentality on the side, it resembles a sketch comedy showcase shaped around the idea of a destination resort. Some of the material is gay (both the lighthearted kind, and the sexually attracted to people of one’s own sex kind), and sections of it are humorous, though some may bristle as the humor turns sharply toward darkness once.
Tight-laced Nick Wagner arrives at the seashore in sports coat and tie. The cawing of seagulls and hippy-era guitar riffs accompany Wagner’s emotive disrobing. Wrestling with his worries, he reaches a point of self-affirmation as the unveiling of his flowered swim-trunks signals a shift to buoyancy. Also shedding their workaday worlds, Leesha Zieber, Tajh Malik Stallworth, Del Rosario and Yen jolt into overdrive for a glorious, sunglass-twirling, pony-prancing, towel-surfing, dance number worthy of a Broadway musical.
Leesha Zieber carries Kelly Del Rosario during rehearsal for RAWdance's Escape Photo: J. Norris
After the resort’s PA announcer mentions swinging singles, an eclipse descends, or so it seems from the abrupt isolation of Wagner and Stallworth in an arc of backlight. Facing pensively, they mirror each other’s gestures. This hesitating sequence fails to culminate in more than glancing touches before other singles intrude, breaking the spell.
Resort Activity Director Stallworth foists a game of Tajh Says (Simon Says for adults) upon the guests. Stallworth’s game instructions evolve into mocking tone policing which leaves the contestants feeling abused and the audience feeling uncomfortable as Stallworth tells the affable Del Rosario not to “be such a fairy.” While the tonal shift feels contextually disjointed amidst the more carefree material, no doubt this skit grew out of ideas around the exclusionary societal conditions that created the Yiddish Borsch Belt retreats and queer friendly destinations like Provincetown. Ironically unwelcoming to other minorities, these places also became clannish.
As a stand-up comic, Yen’s enviable elastic facial facility is on full display as her broadly physical unvoiced jokes have the audience laughing out loud.
Erin Yen's comic stylings has castmate Tajh Malik Stallworth laughing during rehearsal for Escape Photo J. Norris
Good Grief, choreographers Stacey Yuen and Nick Wagner’s exploration of finding the freedom to grieve beyond contemplative mourning rituals opens powerfully with a series of human silhouettes bowing in the distance. As the stage fills with the golden light of Del Medoff’s lighting Yuen, Wagner, Claire Fisher-Mendez and Juliann Witt stagger in their loss, falling into each other’s arms, being caught, carried, dragged and supported by one another. With the passage of time, limbs loosen and hair is let down. A sweeping limb draws the body into a spiral arc. In an apt representation of tension’s release, heads whip around causing the dancers’ long locks to billow. Water flies from the lashing strands of Witt’s mane. Catching the light, the droplets sparkle as they fall. A little of this hairography goes a long way, especially after its presence earlier in Social Circles.
While maintaining an artistic home in San Francisco, Rein and Smith now live full-time in New York’s Hudson Valley. This arrangement has to date been artistically seamless. On this outing however, whether for the challenges of directing from afar, or unrelated rehearsal challenges, the opening night performance was uncharacteristically uneven. Here’s hoping its smooth sailing from here on out and the three closing shows are as stylistically polished as RAWdance customarily delivers.
Review by Jen Norris, published October 26, 2024
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PRODUCTION CREDITS
20th Anniversary Home Season at ODC Theater October 24 – 27, 2024
RAWdance Artistic Direction: Wendy Rein & Ryan T. Smith
Lighting: Del Medoff
Production Management: Jessi Barber
Social Circle (Premiere)
Choreography: Wendy Rein & Ryan T. Smith, with the performers
Performance: Claire Fisher-Mendez, Wendy Rein, Tajh Malik Stallworth, Nick Wagner, Juliann Witt, Erin Yen, Stacey Yuen
Refer (Premiere)
Choreography and Performance: Kelly Del Rosario and Erin Yen
Music: Aaron Gold
Good Grief (premiere)
Choreography: Nick Wagner and Stacey Yuen with the performers
Performance: Claire Fisher-Mendez, Nick Wagner, Juliann Witt, Stacey Yuen
Escape (premiere)
Choreography: Wendy Rein & Ryan T. Smith, with the performers
Performance: Kelly Del Rosario, Tajh Malik Stallworth, Nick Wagner, Erin Yen, and Leesha Zieber
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