Welcoming the possibility of failure is the secret of Sketch’s success.
Launched in 2011 as the primary focus of Amy Seiwert’s Imagery, the Sketch series quickly earned notice as an invaluable opportunity for rising and revered choreographers to try something new. Over the years, ASI has commissioned some three-dozen new works, including 27 by women choreographers, while showcasing 47 dancers and dozens of collaborations.
“Gordon Moore, the father of Intel, was known for saying that if everything he’s trying is working, he’s not trying hard enough,” said Seiwert, a longtime Bernal Heights resident. “Sketch became an environment that cultivated an audience for that kind of risk taking, which can be mildly terrifying.”
The series is coming to an end with this weekend’s production, Sketch 13: Lucky, which runs July 28 to 30 at ODC Theater. Featuring dance makers renowned and rising, the concluding lineup makes a compelling case that the concept is as viable as ever. But Smuin Ballet, where Seiwert first earned widespread notice as a dancer and budding choreographer, is bringing her back into the fold as the company’s associate artistic director, a position she feels requires her full attention.
As a choreographer who has attracted increasingly high-profile commissions over the past two decades, and helped shatter ballet’s glass ceiling with her 2018-2020 tenure as artistic director of Sacramento Ballet, Seiwert is intimately familiar with the paradoxical vicissitudes of heightened visibility.
“When I started, nobody was paying attention,” she said. “I could do anything. The more opportunities that came my way, the more I heard the nagging doubt monster in my head. What if it’s not amazing? Wanting to be amazing, and failing to take a risk, will destroy you. The elevator speech for Sketch is that we’re fostering an environment for risk in contemporary ballet. We need to have space for the bad ideas too, though an Imagery board member once asked me not to talk about failing quite so much.”
Attention is being paid now. Hours after this story first posted, Smuin Ballet announced that Seiwert will lead the company following the retirement of Celia Fushille at the conclusion of the 30th season in June 2024. Seiwert brings a vast web of dance connections to her new roles.
The roster of choreographers who’ve presented Sketch works includes Val Caniparoli, Nicole Haskins, Adam Hougland, Gabriella Lamb, Stephanie Martinez, Ben Needham-Wood, KT Nelson, Gina Patterson, Susan Roemer, Marc Brew and Seiwert herself. She’s also in the mix for the closing season, along Imagery’s second artistic fellow, Natasha Adorlee, whose world premiere, “Blooming Flowers and the Full Moon,” draws on her fusion of contemporary ballet, martial arts and modern and contemporary techniques.
Rising Québécois choreographer Hélène Simoneau, a 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship recipient who was awarded first place for choreography at Stuttgart, Germany’s, 13th Internaltionales Solo-Tanz-Theater Festival, is introducing herself to the Bay Area dance scene with her Sketch premiere. And Trey McIntyre, a veteran master who has created many pieces for San Francisco Ballet over the years, premieres a new work inspired by his recent collaboration with pioneering deaf dancer and choreographer Antoine Hunter.
“For this piece, I asked the dancers to come up with a secret to base their movement on,” McIntyre said in a statement. “They worked to learn to sign these secrets using ASL. In the studio, each word of their signing dictated the shape and thrust of each next movement.”
The fact that Sketch made it to its 13th season is a testament to Seiwert’s love of the Bay Area scene. When Sacramento Ballet hired her in 2018, it would have made sense to close down her company, Imagery, but she was determined to maintain a San Francisco toehold.
Cut short by the pandemic, the abbreviated Sacramento run made it clear that directing a major company “leaves no space for anything else,” she said. “The Pandemic taught me to focus well, to bring my best self forward. Continuing this and Smuin felt more exhausting than inspired. I wanted to do one thing insanely well.”
After years of creating works on the road, setting dances on ballet companies from Austin, Texas; Atlanta, Georgia; Louisville, Kentucky; Cincinnati and Dayton, Ohio; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; and Milwaukee, Wisconsin,she’s bringing a granular, national perspective to Smuin (which relocated to Potrero Hill in fall 2019). While she thrived working as an independent artist for hire, “the pressure of producing work after work, I love it, but I don’t want as much of that in my world as it takes to survive,” she said.
Working closely with Celia Fushille, Smuin’s artistic director since the unexpected death of the company’s founding choreographer and artistic director Michael Smuin in 2007, Seiwert is easing into her new role. The timing is fortuitous, as Smuin opens its 30th season with “Dance Series 1” at Walnut Creek’s Lesher Center for the Arts, Sept. 15 to 16, Mountain View Center for the Arts, Sept. 21 to 24, and San Francisco’s Cowell Theater, Sept. 29 to Oct. 7.
In the meantime, Sketch isn’t the final ride for Imagery. The company is finishing an eight-minute film, “Organized Hope,” featuring Alvin Ailey dancer James Gilmore, “who I’ve been working with since he was 18,” Seiwert said. “It was all shot here in the Bay Area.” Based on Seiwert’s choreography, the film also features stop-motion animation by Cosa Nostra Strings percussionist Aaron Kierbel, music by Daniel Bernard Roumain, and a libretto by Marc Bamuthi Joseph.
For a final performance, Imagery will present the full premiere of Natasha Adorlee’s “Blooming Flowers and the Full Moon.” “She started it outside of Sketch, and is presenting it in Sketch as a duet,” Seiwert said. “I’ve seen two different versions, and she’ll continue to work on it,” creating a new piece via trial and error and experimentation, which is exactly what Seiwert envisioned for Sketch.