The Right Way

Can art save civilization? The question matters deeply to Brenda Way, who has dedicated her life to the arts in San Francisco. The question also became pressing to me, for unexpected reasons, while watching ODC/Dance’s gala program dedicated to Way’s works.

Performance

ODC/Dance home season gala

Place

Blue Shield of California Theater at YBCA, San Francisco, CA, April 11, 2025

Words

Rachel Howard

Jenna Marie, left, Katie Lake and Rachel Furst embrace in “Unintended Consequences (A Meditation)” by Brenda Way. Photograph by Natalia Roberts

A little backstory: In 1979, the troupe formerly known as the Oberlin Dance Collective was wise enough to buy its own building in San Francisco’s Mission District, now expanded into a 23,000 square foot campus vital to the city’s whole dance ecology. Because of this, and because of Way’s skill with advocacy, the 12-member troupe she leads holds outsized importance as a link between artists and the city’s patrons and politicians. Way’s words are influential, and for ODC/Dance’s 55th annual season, she ripped up her usual curtain speech and spoke to the moment, proclaiming that, “As Trump and his administration are busy tearing down the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., we here in San Francisco are building.” (Indeed, ODC is right now remodeling an additional 14,400 square foot building.) She told the champagne-gladdened audience of movers and shakers in fancy clothes that art is a mark of civilization, and “civilization is what we are working to save.”

“Civilization”: from the root word “civil,” from the Latin “civalis,” and according to etymological dictionaries, “relating to a society, pertaining to public life, relating to the civic order, befitting a citizen." What does it mean for art to be a “mark of civilization”? Does art make us better citizens? If so, how? Perhaps one function of art is that it takes us into deeper states of contemplating our connection to others, thus opening us to the kind of compassion that creates happier, more stable societies. The six dances and excerpts on the YBCA stage for the one-night gala program seemed to test this theory. If the works Way chose for what amounted to a career retrospective wouldn’t stir a viewer to greater compassion, empathy, and kindness, I don’t know what could.

Rachel Furst leaping with, from left, Christian Squires, Brandon Private Freeman and Jeremy Bannon-Neches in “Something About a Nightingale” by Brenda Way. Photograph by Robbie Sweeny

The night began with an excerpt from a work-in-progress, “After the Deluge.” The music was gentle, minimalist-leaning selections from Nils Frahm, Max Richter, and Bach as reinterpreted by pianist Chad Lawson; the costumes, by Kyo Yohena, were pastel pajamas. What emerged most powerfully from the ensemble passages was the repeated image of a dancer holding his or her partner upside down. Jenna Marie and Colton Wall had an especially charged duet, her hand tracing down his body, the crook of her knee cradling his face. At last, he jumped at her to clutch her waist, and she held him, levitating, slowly lowering the crown of his head to the ground. We seemed to be alone with them in a silent room, time suspended, pain and beauty both intensified.

“Something About a Nightingale,” from 2005, changed up the atmosphere to one of flirtation, with the ruffle-skirted and charismatic Rachel Furst as primary mischief-maker among an ensemble of six. The movement vocabulary here was signature Way, mixing pedestrian gestures, jazzy hip-twitches, and an occasional burst of balleticism delivered in finest form by Jaime Garcia Castilla. (Way’s work has long felt torn between Judson Church-style postmodernism and the virtuosity of ballet technique; as a child she trained at the School of American Ballet.) The music, slightly folksy guitar and violin compositions by Tin Hat Trio, felt lightweight, a passing novelty. Then the extraordinary part of the program began.

“Part of a Longer Story,” from 1996, is one of Way’s most masterful works, and if you have ever had to separate from someone you love, the second movement duet, which Way excerpted, will make you cry. The Eclecta Quartet took to the pit with clarinetist Carlos Ortega to play the larghetto from Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet, one of the most moving compositions in all classical music. The sound was meltingly beautiful. The dancing on stage was equally affecting. “Part of a Longer Story” has drawn achingly lovely performances out of many fine interpreters over the decades (former San Francisco Ballet principal Joanna Berman performed it memorably), but it was in the finest hands imaginable with Brandon “Private” Freeman as the man in white, and Furst as the woman in black. Again and again, with a demeanor balanced on knife’s edge between infinite patience and unbearable frustration, between resistance and surrender, between need and resignation, the two approached each other, struggled, and parted, building toward Furst’s run into Freeman’s hands for a tremendous lift.

From left: Christian Squires, Brandon Private Freeman, and Jeremy Bannon-Neches in “Something About a Nightingale” by Brenda Way. Photograph by Robbie Sweeny

Unfortunately, as this was unfolding onstage, another spectacle was unfolding three rows ahead of me. Two women had their cell phones out. Their screens, recording, hovered in our sightlines, devices surreptitiously erect in their hands. A flash blared. Bright light again. No one asked them to stop. This went on for most of the dance. The music ended and the house lights came up for intermission.

I felt particularly distressed because this was Freeman’s farewell performance—after thirty years as one of ODC’s finest dancers (more accurately, as one of the country’s finest dancers), he is retiring from the stage. I took a deep breath and, meekly, approached the women who had used the phones. Perhaps appealing to their compassion could ameliorate the situation. I asked if I could speak with them for just a minute, and gently explained that the work we were seeing was very special in this moment, that the dancer starring in it was retiring, that I wanted to be wholly immersed in it and had driven a long way to see it. I told them quietly that the theater’s policy about cameras and recording had been announced before curtain—no photos or video were permitted. I was pleading with them, really. I told them phone cameras were distracting and I hoped we could experience the dancing after intermission fully in the moment. Then, after twenty minutes, we all came back from the chattering lobby and resettled.

The Eclecta Quartet took their place again to deliver Mozart’s music for another excerpt from “Story,” the third movement, jauntier in tone. Christian Squires was terrific as the sharply dancing misfit ping-ponging among the other four dancers, who can’t make heads or tails of him. I wanted to be immersed in the ramifications of this little social drama Squires was navigating, but do to so was almost impossible. The two women several rows ahead of me had their cameras out again. As though they had not cared about a word of my pleading, they were holding up the devices, recording.

Christian Squires, left, and Jaime Garcia Castilla in “Collision, Collapse and a Coda” by Brenda Way. Photograph by Shawna Sarnowski

Perhaps I took their dismissal of our exchange too personally, or too seriously. I couldn’t shake a sensation of worry and sadness during the excerpt from Way’s “Collision, Collapse and a Coda” that followed. The juxtaposition of art and life felt bitterly ironic. “Collision,” created last year, is about our societal moment. In its first and second sections, not included at this gala, the dancers rush about in a frenzy, tormented by the news, their relationships disintegrating into violence. For the excerpt on the gala program, we dropped straight into the final section, set to Chopin as reinterpreted by Lawson, with the Eclecta Quartet providing the string parts live. In Way’s long coda, the dancers find solace through trust and intimacy, often bracing each other’s heads together, until at last the eloquent Ryan Rouland Smith ends the dance on his knees, clutching Furst’s thighs.

I want to believe that such open, honest, vulnerable dancing can save us. That it can reawaken us to the only thing that truly matters, which I do believe is love. I want to believe, like Way, that art saves civilization, and that it does so by making us more alert, more honest, more able to hold ambiguity—and sometimes, by breaking our hearts. But the women three rows ahead of me had been watching this beautiful dancing all night. It had not stirred them to care about the people around them. They had taken out their phones to do what our society, under this aggression-fueled autocracy, is conditioning us to do: care about only ourselves. But perhaps I was being narcissistic, placing myself at the center of that drama. Perhaps I was too predisposed to read every microcosmic social interaction as a symptom of macrocosmic society. I confess that I was tempted to jump to a conclusion: that the culture of selfishness promoted by our current president and his cult is infecting us all, indiscriminately changing those with liberal beliefs, fascist tendencies, and no political beliefs at all. I confess I became worried that no amount of vigilance against this influence can protect us.

I hope I was wrong, and Way is right.

Rachel Howard

Rachel Howard is the former lead dance critic of the San Francisco Chronicle. Her dance writing has also appeared in the New York Times, the Hudson Review, Ballet Review, San Francisco Magazine and Dance Magazine.

comments

Jack Bernard April 17, 2025

Thanks, Rachel. I think you’re right. Come to Seattle. R and J this month.

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