FACT/SF Summer Dance Festival

TICKETS - Weekend 1, July 29 & 30 at the Joe Goode Annex

TICKETS - Weekend 2, August 5-7 at ODC Theater

August 5 & 6 at 8pm
August 7 at 3pm

Note: Performance on Saturday, August 6th, includes ASL Interpretation

The 2022 FACT/SF Summer Dance Festival runs July 29 - August 7 and includes premieres by FACT/SF, Amit Patel & Ishika Seth, Chinchin Hsu, DISCO RIOT (San Diego), Drama Tops (Seattle), Sharp & Fine, and slowdanger (Pittsburgh).

The Festival brings together an array of contemporary dance works by choreographers from the Bay Area and beyond. The purpose of the Festival is to juxtapose a variety of works to spur dialogue, support artists and artistic growth, and present to audiences a range of perspectives. In its inaugural year, the Festival was described as “a very strong debut and a great addition to the SF dance festival circuit.” - Heather Desaulniers, DanceTabs

overview

Weekend 1
July 29 & 30, 8pm
Joe Goode Annex, San Francisco
TICKETS

Featuring premieres by local artists FACT/SF, Sharp & Fine, Amit Patel & Ishika Seth, and Chinchin Hsu, and visiting artists slowdanger (Pittsburgh, PA) and Drama Tops (Seattle, WA).

Weekend 2
August 5 & 6, 8pm
August 7, 3pm
ODC Theater, San Francisco
TICKETS

Featuring works by FACT/SF and DISCO RIOT (San Diego, CA). These performances are self-produced by DISCO RIOT and FACT/SF, and supported by ODC Theater’s Rentals Discount Initiative, the Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation, and individual donations from DISCO RIOT and FACT/SF supporters. Weekend 2 of the Festival is part of FACT/SF’s PORT program.

The FACT/SF Summer Dance Festival is part of FACT/SF Fieldwork, a set of programs that nourish the contemporary dance ecology by providing opportunities, support, and material resources to fellow artists. In addition to the Festival, Fieldwork currently includes Production Support Grants, Fiscal Sponsorship, Summer Dance Lab Scholarships, and our touring platform, PORT (Peer Organized Reciprocal Touring).

2022 Artists

Amit Patel & Ishika Seth

Photo by Jordan Gartenberg

As a first-generation born Indian-American, Amit Patel strives to fuse his Eastern culture with his Western training to create an idiom of Indian contemporary dance. He has a significant digital presence, extensive stage performance experience and has toured all over the world teaching classes and creating safe spaces for the LGBTQ+ community. Amit is equally notable for his rebellious pieces in heels, which challenge the norms of sexual identity in dance. His goal as an artist is to create work and community that has the potential to unite, inspire, and empower people across generations and cultures.

Ishika Seth (she/her) is an Indian immigrant, choreographer, dancer, dance educator, writer & parent. She combines Indian and Western aesthetic and movement styles to create an idiom of Indian Contemporary dance movement. Her eclectic training in modern dance, contemporary, jazz, yoga, mayurbhanj chhau, ballet and Bollywood enable her to constantly explore and expand her movement vocabulary and art-making. She obtained her BA in Dance from SJSU and was the Assistant Artistic Director of Mona Khan Company from 2011-2021. She recently co-directed "Unearthed:Untold Stories from the Ramayana" along with Amit Patel at ODC and is also a dancer with Noorani Dance. She strives to create works to challenge social, cultural and political constructs and to amplify marginalized voices.

Photo by Kristin Lin

Chinchin Hsu (she/her/她), was born and raised in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. moved to the U.S. in 2004 and now resides on Ramaytush lands; a southeast asian immigrant, a teaching artist, now a dance mama of two little humans. she has trained in tai-chi, chinese martial art, chinese ballet, western ballet, various modern techniques, improvisation and composition. being away from the stage for 2+ years, 2 births later, chinchin is curious how imaginations and motherhood combine themselves in this process of creativity and how they will manifest a stage sharing performance today. she thanks brianna for their playful collaboration and loving trust in making of time eater.

Photo by Samantha Zauscher

DISCO RIOT & Zaquia Mahler Salinas
DISCO RIOT Artistic Director and Co-Founder, Zaquia Mahler Salinas, is from San Diego. After receiving her BA in Dance with Honors from UC Santa Barbara in 2011, she returned to San Diego and danced for Jean Isaacs’ San Diego Dance Theater from 2012-2018. In 2017 she obtained her MFA in Dance: Creative Practice with Honors from Saint Mary’s College of California where she focused on dance as a platform for social justice. Zaquia is also a dance educator; she is the Coordinator of the Envision Dance program and Conservatory at Canyon Crest Academy. As an artist, Zaquia has been choreographing and producing work since 2011, and has presented live and filmed dance works throughout California, Texas, Peru and Mexico.

Photo by Salt Photo

Drama Tops, Elby Brosch, & Shane Donohue
Seattle's hottest post-modern, nightlife performance duo, Drama Tops was born with the artistic partnership of Elby Brosch and Shane Donohue. They began making work together five years ago with the creation of a solo on two bodies. The dynamic between their trans body and cisish body has created beautiful moments of frustration, competition, tenderness, and comedy. Drama Tops blends the worlds of nightlife and concert modern dance to create an interesting and unique blend of accessible, funny modern dance. You may have seen the Drama Tops perform in their self produced show, Drama Tops, this is for you, at Washington Hall, at On the Boards in Northwest New Works, at Velocity in Fall Kick Off, at Kremwerk in Family Meal and Catharsis, in Heels! At Cha Cha, and at a pop up party at Photon Factory.

Elby Brosch (he/him) is a dancer and choreographer who moved to Seattle after receiving his BFA in Dance from the University of Illinois. He is the co-creator and co-choreographer of the Drama Tops, a queer performance duo with Shane Donohue. Drama tops has produced their own work and has been presented by On The Boards in Northwest New Works and by Velocity Dance Center in Fall Kick Off and Next Fest Northwest, as well as Heels! at Cha Cha, Family Meal, and Catharsis. He is also a performer in Scott Shoemaker’s “:PROBED”, and BenDeLaCreme and Jinkx Monsoon’s Holiday Special in the live show and on Hulu, as well as with Christin Call, Mark Haim, Dylan Ward, Babette DeLafayette Pendleton, Shannon Stewart, and Alyza DelPan-Monley. Elby is honored to be a Velocity Dance Center “Made in Seattle” Artist alongside his bff, Shane.

Shane Donohue (he/they) is a Seattle based dance artist currently working as co-top with Drama Tops. He also works closely with zoe | juniper as a dancer and rehearsal director. He has set work with, and for, Zoe Scofield at the University of Washington, Strictly Seattle, Whim W’him, Bard Summerscape’s production of “Le Roi Arthus” in 2021. He also works as an artistic collaborator and performer with Kim Lusk, Kinesis Project, Scott Shoemaker’s “:PROBED”, and BenDeLaCreme and Jinkx Monsoon’s Holiday Special in the live show and on Hulu. Shane is honored to be a Velocity Dance Center “Made in Seattle” Artist alongside his bff, Elby.

Photo by Gema Galina

FACT/SF & Charles Slender-White
FACT/SF is a San Francisco-based contemporary dance company, founded in 2008 by Charles Slender-White as a platform for organizing collaborators, building community, and creating choreography. FACT/SF regularly performs in the San Francisco Bay Area, maintains a core group of local collaborators, and has developed an extensive international network of partners. FACT/SF has premiered 42 works, with tours throughout the US, across Russia, and to Serbia, Bulgaria, Croatia, and Macedonia. FACT/SF’s Fieldwork programs provide support and material resources to contemporary dance artists outside FACT/SF.

Charles Slender-White is a San Francisco-based queer contemporary dance artist of mixed European and Roma descent. He is an instigator, organizer, dad, husband, and the Artistic Director of FACT/SF. Charles is one of 36 Countertechnique Teachers worldwide, and he has taught, performed, and made choreography across North America, Europe, Russia, and in Hong Kong and Australia. Charles is currently a faculty member at the American Dance Festival, and a Guest Curator and Resident Strategist at ODC Theater. Charles graduated with honors from UC Berkeley with degrees in English Literature and Dance & Performance Studies.

Photo by Benjamin Hersh

Sharp & Fine is a San Francisco-based contemporary dance company co-founded in 2011 by sisters Megan and Shannon Kurashige to facilitate choreographic work that grows out of a shared history of experience in both classical ballet and contemporary dance and a desire for deep collaboration with artists from different disciplines.

S&F creates narrative performance work that brings together physically exuberant choreography, emotionally nuanced text, live music, and multi-disciplinary collaboration. Our work is informed by the technical rigor of classical ballet, the human intensity of contemporary forms, and the conviction that telling a story built on personal truths is a powerful and communal act of communication and empathy.

S&F works with composers, musicians, writers and a group of dancers who have helped us continuously develop and refine our creative process.

Photo by Audrey Gatewood

slowdanger
taylor knight & anna thompson are co-founding artistic directors of slowdanger, a multidisciplinary performance organism based in Pittsburgh, PA. slowdanger uses a systematic approach to movement, integrative technology, found material, electronic instrumentation, vocalization, physiological centering, and ontological examination to produce their performance work, which utilizes ritual practice to delve into circular life patterning including effort, transformation, and death. Through the process of making each piece, slowdanger deepens their understanding of energy, synergy, action, gender, time, and storytelling.

previous summer dance festivals

(Note: The 2020 & 2021 Festivals were cancelled due to COVID-19)

Maurya Kerr’s my beloved comet
Photo by Robbie Sweeny

2019 FACT/SF Summer Dance Festival

Review in DanceTabs by Claudia Bauer
The 2019 Festival included works by:

Joy Davis’ Consider the Star
Photo by Robbie Sweeny

Fog Beast’s Manimal Suite
Photo by Robbie Sweeny

2018 FACT/SF Summer Dance Festival

Review in DanceTabs by Heather Desaulniers
The Festival was launched in 2018, featuring works by:

present work with us in 2023

For the 2023 Festival, FACT/SF will curate 5 choreographers to share work on a mixed-bill with FACT/SF. Each choreographer will present 8-12 minutes of finished work. We aim to curate a festival that includes artists from diverse geographical regions, so choreographers do not need to be Bay Area-based. Unfortunately, we cannot provide housing or transportation.

Selected choreographers will each receive:

  • $1,000 stipend

  • Full production support

  • Complimentary tickets

  • Photo and video documentation

  • Limited marketing support

  • Inclusion in the FACT/SF season calendar.

Our curatorial priorities are to:

  • Engage BIPOC artists and LGBTQ+ artists

  • Engage artists with a track record of making high-quality work

  • Juxtapose works of local and non-local artists

  • Support artists and works that are viable relative to artist’s capacity, artist’s history, and the scale of the Festival

self-NOMINATION process

Self-Nominations for 2023 will open in October 2022.

For reference only: 2022 application information.

Applications for curation into the Summer Dance Festival will be considered as part of the 2023 Fieldwork Request for Nominations. We have streamlined the application process for all of our Fieldwork programs, so artists may now self-nominate for any or all of the 2023 opportunities to get involved during one process. All Fieldwork applicants who complete the self-nomination process will receive a $25 honorarium to recognize the time and labor involved in preparing their application. For more information, please see the Fieldwork page.

In addition to completing the self-nomination process, applicants must:

  • Identify as a maker of contemporary dances

  • Engage in two-way and open communication between our respective teams to facilitate and deepen our relationships as fellow artists

  • Adhere to a policy which prohibits and prevents discrimination against people on the basis of race, color, ethnicity, religion, age, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, marital status, physical disability, veteran's status, national origin, ancestry, or socio-economic status

Banner Image: Robbie Sweeny