Choreographer and Bay Area dance pillar KT Nelson will premiere a new work for ODC/Dance as part of the upcoming Summer Sampler that runs from July 17 to 20.
It is KT Nelson’s first new work for the company since 2017.
“Nothing is Going to Make Sense,” a 23-minute work for ten dancers, is a meditation on Nelson’s experience after the unexpected death of her husband of 47 years, Doug Winter, an early member of ODC who went on to pursue dance photography and graphic design before becoming a contractor after the couple had a son.
He died in 2023 of an undiagnosed abdominal aneurysm.
“My world just turned upside down, like I couldn’t make sense of the world the way I used to know it,” said Nelson.
Nelson generally begins new work with a clear idea of where she is going. This time, she had to feel her way through. She worked more closely with the dancers, walking them through some of her healing processes, activities that varied from physical exercises to drawing.
One exercise was an improv, in which the dancers walked or stood as Nelson instructed them to feel their bodies, and then feel the back or front of the room pushing against them or holding them. This stemmed from Nelson’s experience of feeling incredibly alone in her body through her grief, and being held by others.
“I think that made me at ease working with them, and them at ease working with me, that the mystery of it connected us, made us share a world, as opposed to me coming in from a different world,” said Nelson. Nelson credited the dancers for their openness and generosity, allowing her to take them to weird places in the studio.
The ballet unfolds in three sections.
Outside of the final section, which is set to Gabriel Faure’s haunting “Requiem Op 48:7,” the piece is primarily choreographed to music by Bay Area composer Gabriela Smith. Nelson first heard the 33-year-old Smith’s music on the radio while driving home late one night.
Coincidentally, Smith came up in conversation with a composer friend shortly thereafter. Smith’s work draws from the natural world and Nelson felt that connection, something that speaks to her own grief and her concerns about the climate crisis. The latter has figured in Nelson’s earlier pieces, including “Dead Reckoning.”
One section of the new ballet is set to “Bard of the Wasteland,” a collaboration between Smith and cellist and composer Gabriel Cabezas from their album “Lost Coast.” The lyrics reflect concerns about the climate crisis. The contrast between the music’s lighthearted melody and dark words mirrors Nelson’s own journey of grief, she said.
“Understanding my new life has been realizing that love and grief are married. They belong to each other. The aloneness that grief brought but also the community; they live together, not separately. They’re not opposites, they’re a union.”
The music revealed another pairing Nelson has come to see in her life and the choreography: The real and the unreal.
“There’s something so real about (death), like you cannot shift it. You try to. You try to talk to them, you try to bring them back. You try to change how they died. You try — you can’t. And so there’s something about this unreality and reality living together,” said Nelson.
Nelson’s choreography is known for its exploration of the human experience, often addressing social issues affecting the world at large. Her most famous work may be the “Velveteen Rabbit,” the company’s first full-length ballet created in 1986 and performed every holiday season since then.
Unlike the straightforward narrative of ODC’s holiday classic based on the children’s book of the same name, this piece found its form in a non-linear structure. Nelson described it as a package wrapped in various types of wrapping paper.
“Going into the depth of the loss and the darkness and the dauntingness, the process of going in there and holding hands with others is our future,” said Nelson. “Find others that are with you on this path. And be good to them and yourself.”
Play was another word Nelson emphasized, a quality she connects to joy, something that ultimately brings people together.
Nelson hopes audience members are okay with the piece’s lack of a strong narrative.
“I’m pretty sure this won’t all make sense to people, but I also feel like I’m on a longer arc of the journey that I’ll be able to understand better in five years than I do right now. I can only say that it doesn’t make sense, but I feel connected,” said Nelson.
“Learning to share the loss gave me some hope and possibilities. And, as much as loss can rip you from yourself, it also helped me connect myself to myself by sharing.”
ODC/Dance Summer Sampler will run from Thursday, July 17, to Sunday, July 20, at ODC Theater.
Nelson will share the evening with ODC stager Mia J. Chong, whose work “Theories of Time” will make its world premiere along, with Catherine Galasso and her world premiere of “10,000 Steps: A Dance About Its Own Making.” Tickets can be purchased through ODC’s website, here.
