FACT/SF & Jenna Riegel Open 5th Annual Summer Dance Festival
Ki’ Shae Qetlah
FACT/SF’s Summer Dance Festival returned to San Francisco for two weekends of performances at ODC Theater. Opening weekend featured a split bill between FACT/SF and Jenna Riegel.
Varvara featured wooden, oak structures and garment props. This solo choreographed and performed by Riegel, was inspired by a photograph taken by Alexander Rodchenko entitled, “Performing Furniture” and by the works of Varvara Stepanova, herself. Riegel began by breaking the wall which typically restrains the audience as spectators. She prompted the viewers to observe the piece in its entirety as she stood in front of them with a jet-black, asymmetric wig and her best Russian accent and then asked them to determine if this performance was imaginative or instead appropriative.
Riegel as Varvara addressed the topic of the body as a machine…set, calibrated, and controlled versus the body as a means of rebellious expression. This was demonstrated not only by the musical score riddled with Swedish pop rock, industrial, and quirky electro but also by Riegel’s spoken text, “I have purpose, I have purpose, I can make something.” Her movement was whimsical, even jammy and also contemporary and jarring. Surmounting expectation, Riegel’s life and her perception of Varvara’s life were woven together, and the audience was left hollow-eyed and in wonder.
The second act could not have been more different. Dancers entered and swiftly built a rainbow-colored racetrack for toy cars and assembled a structure of color correspondent boxes on stage before beginning. The piece presented by Fact/SF — Half Time, Full Out, was influenced by competitive sports and half-time shows and envisioned an athletic environment which welcomes queerness. Half Time, Full Out, seemingly a series of smaller pieces, featured dancers in bold sequined and shining costumes. Movements varied from short sequences of gestural movement layered upon pop punk tracks and Countertechnique, a recently (2012) developed contemporary dance style which employs dancers to utilize opposition within the body and move beyond oneself.
The audience again took moments to participate and enlivened the room periodically with satisfied howls as the dancers dynamically propelled their bodies onstage with sass. Embedded inside the celebration though, was a heartfelt sentiment perhaps longing expressed in a short solo performed by Artistic Director, Charlie Slender-White. This moment rang clear that it was personal, and this is no revelation considering Slender-White’s history as one of two competitive athletes embodying their truth as openly queer during their time at the University of California, Berkeley.
The first weekend of the Fact/SF Summer Dance Festival canopied every emotion. Like a nice red, the evening was full bodied.
Ki’ Shae Qetlah is a SF based, multi-disciplinary artist and educator most prominently focused in performance, culinary, and literary arts. Qetlah is particularly driven in non profit and community based work and the emphasis of dance as such a valuable gift to our society.
