Fact/SF, a San Francisco contemporary dance company, will host its sixth annual Summer Dance Festival over the next two weekends at ODC with dancers arriving from across the United States including artists from Chicago, the Twin Cities, Brooklyn, and Boston.
Performances will take place from August 15-17 and August 22-24 at the ODC Theater at Shotwell and 17th Street
The festival began in 2018, with Charlie Slender-White, its founder, hand-picking the participants, but after shutting down during the pandemic, Slender-White saw a chance to restructure how the festival was curated.
“What are we missing? How could this be more equitable? How could we find people that we don’t know yet? And not at the expense of maintaining the relationships that we already have, but in the spirit of making sure that the doors are open,” said Slender-White.
From there, the festival began an open application process. And in 2022, the festival started paying applicants, recognizing the time and effort artists were putting in. “Let’s acknowledge that this is not optional labor, Slender-White said. “It is a real and ongoing component of being in the field, and that it is actually work and part of the cultural values and politics of Fact/SF is that labor needs to be compensated.”
The lens on equity that Fact/SF holds for artists also extends to audience goers in its “No One Turned Away for Lack of Funds” policy.
This year’s festival slate includes The Davis Sisters, Heather Dutton, Clairey Evangelho, Chafin Seymour with seymour::dancecollective, Taja Will, and Fact/SF. The artists represent a diversity of geography, gender, sexuality, style, interest, and approach toward movement.
Jenna Riegal, who performed her self-choreographed, Varvara, in last year’s festival, returns this summer as a choreographer, premiering to the marrow. The piece will be danced by Slender-White and Fact/SF company member Lizanne Roman Roberts.
Riegal and Slender-White first met as students at the American Dance Festival in 2006. Collaborating decades later has been a gratifying experience for the long-time colleagues. “We were in our 20s then, really hoping to have careers. And now, [we] are all in our 40s, and it’s really nice to be mature adults who are still dancing and still making and just to have those relationships unfold over a long time,” said Slender-White.
Slender-White will also premiere a new work, Maelstrom. Set to electronic music by Röyksopp, Aphex Twin, Sigur Ross, Trent Moller, and Ryoji Ikeda, the quartet is inspired by the maelstrom created by two currents going in opposite directions. This natural phenomenon serves as a guidepost for exploring work that emerges from shared human interactions. The work is part of a larger project about light, sound, and brain waves.
Each weekend of the festival offers a different set of performances, so attendees won’t see the same show twice.
“The purpose of the evening is to go beyond entertainment. That’s something really great about the festival—there is a very wide range of work and a very wide range of identities being represented on stage,” said Slender-White.
Tickets for Fact/SF Summer Festival can be purchased here. If ticket price is a barrier, please email FACT/SF Operations Manager, River Bermudez Sanders at rbermudezsanders@factsf.org.
