Summer Dance Festival

FACT/SF SUMMER DANCE Festival overview

August 14-16, 2026 - ODC Theater, San Francisco

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Works by:

FACT/SF
Ishami Dance Company
Sarah McCullough and Shannon Hummel
Megan O’Brien
Karla Quintero
Sonam Tshedzom Tingkhye

Erin Coyne, Jonathan Kim, and Keanu Brady in FACT/SF’s *Maelstrom* at the 2025 FACT/SF Summer Dance Festival. Photo by Robbie Sweeny.

Now in its seventh year, the FACT/SF Summer Dance Festival is curated from a highly competitive pool of contemporary dance works by choreographers from the Bay Area and beyond. The Festival has become a cornerstone of the Bay Area dance scene, includes a mix of six world premieres and re-staged works, and offers audiences six pieces from a wide range of perspectives and contemporary dance disciplines.

The Festival is a core 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.

2026 Festival Artists

FACT/SF

FACT/SF is a San Francisco-based contemporary dance company, founded in 2008 by Artistic Director 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 colleagues and partners. FACT/SF believes that civic life is made more vibrant by the contributions of dance artists, and that robust and equitable arts ecosystems enable artists to work at their greatest potential. The dance field continues to prohibit the full participation of BIPOC and LGBTQ+ people, so we prioritize their inclusion across all of our programming. Within this context, FACT/SF collaboratively creates dance performances for the public, employs and advocates for ethical work practices, and offers programs that fortify dance artists in their work.

lshami founders Amit Patel and Ishika Seth. Photo by Jyotsna Photography.

Ishami Dance Company
Ishami is a contemporary dance company based in the San Francisco Bay Area that blends South Asian and global dance forms. Our mission is to center queerness, women’s voices, and experiences of the South Asian diaspora. We blend tradition with modern storytelling and spark conversations through art. We straddle the line between commercial and experimental, traditional and contemporary, beautiful and provocative. Performance highlights include our production “Pehchaan'' that premiered in 2023 and toured to New York in 2024 and Chicago in 2025. Ishami has been featured at the Asian Art Museum, World Arts West Festival, Oakland Asian Cultural Center, Fresh Meat Festival, Queering Dance Festival, and San Francisco Pride. We have collaborated with San Jose State University, Bay Area Independent Chinese Dancers, Noorani Dance and organizations including Maitri, Narika, Home of Hope, and Art Together.

Sarah McCullough and a raw chicken. Photo by Nick Lents.

Sarah McCullough and Shannon Hummel

Sarah McCullough (she/her) is a Minneapolis-based dance artist and educator in contemporary forms. She is a highly collaborative artist who is passionate about aliveness in performance, and seeks work that centers humanity, vulnerability, and play. Sarah is curating a body of commissioned solos, forging a new path toward agency and independence as a performance artist. Cluck, the first in this curation, is a tenderly absurd solo by Shannon Hummel/Cora Dance exploring themes of longing, delusion, and the human capacity to cling to hope with an unconventional partner—a raw chicken.

Megan O’Brien
Megan Mary O’Brien is a disabled dancer/artist born in Salt Lake City, Utah. She studied at the University of Utah School of Dance on full scholarship and graduated with a BFA in Modern Dance. She is currently a dancer for Repertory Dance Theatre and has performed works by many wonderful choreographers including Zvi Gotheiner, Lar Lubovitch, Yusha Marie Sorzano and Noa Zuk. She is compelled to share her passion for accessible art with the community through disability rights advocacy, teaching young artists and independent choreographic projects that support the belief that everyone has potential to use creativity to benefit their lives. She has had the privilege of creating work for Fem Dance Company, UVU Dance Department's Senior class, Brine Dance Festival and many choreographic opportunities with local freelance artists through RDT's Emerge series. She believes adaptability and accessibility can be limitless when we nurture curiosity. Outside of dance, she loves to read, write, take photos with old cameras, snack on salt n’ vinegar chips, and swim in the ocean.

Karla Quintero
Karla Quintero's (she/her) cross-genre improvisation performance practice is informed by contemporary, club and partner dance, somatics, and a deep love of genre (ie. horror, telenovelas). Across her 14+ years performing, she has danced works by Gerald Casel, Hope Mohr, Catherine Galasso, Robert Moses, Alma Esperanza Cunningham, Aura Fischbeck among others. Karla collaborates closely with dance artist Belinda He under the shared identity ALLOYED METTLES, recently in residence at Dance Nucleus (Singapore) & featured by MR at Judson Church (NYC). She explores the intersection of dance and horror in film and media with Shareen DeRyan through the collaboration GRUMN. Karla is based in Huichin/Oakland.

Sonam Tshedzom Tingkhye. Photo by Allina Yang.

Sonam Tshedzom Tingkhye
Sonam Tshedzom Tingkhye is a Tibetan-American dancer, choreographer, filmmaker, and durational performance artist working between Seattle and Boston. She practices embodying states of transformation by intersecting ancestry, memory, ecology, media, Buddhist philosophy, and politics. Through movement and visual art, she aims to create alternative portals and expand the public imagination. She’s fueled by responsibility, and her current creative process focuses on repairing and connecting fragments of her homeland and culture. She is interested in research, both in self-directed and company projects and has worked with artists across mediums including Marina Abramović, Alice Gosti, Fox Whitney, The Merce Cunningham Trust, Sara Markovic, Volta Collective, and Boston Early Music Festival. She has presented her work with The Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art, On the Boards, Velocity Dance Center, The Boston Conservatory at Berklee, Kaleidoscope Dance Company, Northwest Film Forum, and Tibet Film Festival. Originally from Seattle, she grew up training in modern dance with Anne Green Gilbert while also studying Odissi Indian classical, Tibetan dance, Classical and Tibetan music. In 2022, she received her BFA in Contemporary Dance Performance from the Boston Conservatory at Berklee where she graduated as an alumni award winner for her academic and artistic achievements.