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Review: Dance Brigade presents: A Woman’s Song for Peace, A Tribute to the Past, A Vision for the Future, Jan 19, 2025, Herbst Theatre, San Francisco

Writer's picture: Jen NorrisJen Norris

On the eve of Inauguration Day 2025, San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre is full to the brim with 900-plus patrons, a vast majority of us are women over sixty. Feisty feminists, resolute resisters, and passionate peaceniks come together to bask in and be renewed by the artistry of A WOMAN’S SONG FOR PEACEA Tribute to the Past, A Vision for the Future. This show, conceived by founder and choreographer Krissy Keefer to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Dance Brigade and its predecessor the Wallflower Order, features legendary women’s music scene artists Holly Near, Ferron and Dance Brigade. Generations of women have now performed in Keefer’s guerilla theater, dance, and taiko performances which have consistently shined a light on injustice and demand change.


Performers in Krissy Keefer's Dance Brigade performing "A Woman's Song for Peace" Photo: Shmuel Thaler for the Santa Cruz Sentinel
Performers in Krissy Keefer's Dance Brigade performing "A Woman's Song for Peace" Photo: Shmuel Thaler for the Santa Cruz Sentinel

Folk and protest singer-songwriter Holly Near kicks off the evening. Now in her mid-70’s and despite having recently ridden the rough tides of chemo, radiation, and a stroke, she is in strong voice. Setting the tone for the evening Near opens acapella with lyrics: “I am open and I am willing, to be hopeless would seem so strange, it dishonors those who go before us, so lift me up to the light of change.” The seeds of unity are quickly sewn, as from the orchestra pit, the band, Michelle Goerlitz (percussion), Tammy Lynne Hall (keyboard), Jan Martinelli (bass) and Christelle Durandy (vocals and musical direction), joins in and the audience harmonizes on the chorus.


In response to the recent losses of a woman’s right to choose, Near offers her poignant “Why Oh Why,” which imagines choice from a mother’s point of view. During her interstitial patter, Near reminds us to stand our ground, and make our opponents do the work of moving us, as did the woman imprisoned for protesting a strip mine, who inspired Near’s “Mountain Song/Kentucky Woman” (1978). The refrain of “You can’t just take my dreams away,” resounds with the crowd. As does “We’re Still Here,” which speaks to the power of all people to stand up for justice and choose love over fear. The lyrics “Watch out for the ego of the hour, the ones who say they know it, are the ones who will impose it on you,” from Near’s “I Ain’t Afraid,” (2000) seem hauntingly prescient. 


Holly Near receiving a lifetime achievement award from Freight and Salvage in 2023
Holly Near receiving a lifetime achievement award from Freight and Salvage in 2023

Closing Near’s set with the participatory “Singing For Our Lives,” which Near crafted in the wake of the assassination of Harvey Milk, brings a tear to my eye. As we, the assembled grey haired activists, are surely on this MLK Day “a gentle angry people…singing for our lives.”

Guest artist Woody Simmons’s fingers fly over the steel strings of her banjo as she performs “Suite for Wings,” (1977) a song which Keefer tells us accompanied many of the Wallflower’s dances of yore.


“"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair,” the opening lines of Dickens’s “A Tale of Two Cities” fills the room at the start of Dance Brigade’s “Voluspa1.” A trio of women, glazed in amber light, sway and rock. Workers, mothers, daughters, the varied styles of their cotton dresses speak to the multitudes they represent. 


A racially diverse cast, ranging in age from 18 to 75, share drumming, singing and dancing duty.  Megan Lowe keens, as the women cave inward around the fists held tightly at their bellies. From their unclenching hands, red petals bloom, as a narrator speaks of ongoing wars and “great puddles of blood on the earth.”  Loud and insistent drumming intercedes, as cries for justice echo. Women warriors emerge. Prancing, galloping they are unbridled energy, moving relentlessly, pounding their hands into their upturn palms. Gestures and phrases drawn from the dance traditions of many cultures intertwine.  Conjuring peace with unerring spirit, the well-muscled arms of the drummers pulse with each strike of their sticks upon the waist high drums arrayed onstage. 


Dance Brigade performing "A Woman's Song for Peace"
Dance Brigade performing "A Woman's Song for Peace"

Canadian singer-songwriter Ferron opens the second act.  Acoustic guitar in hand, and supported by percussionist Goerlitz and Shelley Jennings on electric guitar and keyboards, Ferron croons her most popular songs. They speak, in poetic metaphors and unflinching narrative, of her hard scrabble roots and treacherous path as a touring lesbian musician and truth-teller, coming up in the 1970’s.  Ferron’s fans know all the words to her complex songs, which offer the uninitiated no easy repetitions.  The precarious nature of the world resonates as she sings “The strap that holds the cart in rein, has been let loose by wearing thin, by wearing thin, by biting through, the shift in power leans to you, and the cart is on a wheel…and the wheel is on a hill.”


A sense of nostalgia floats over the proceedings. Ferron took to the road young and has experienced housing insecurity more than once as she conveys movingly with “Girl on the Road.” The soft-rock vibes of “Shadows on a Dime,” and “Our Purpose Here,” tell of a peripatetic life, tough breaks and lost loves.


For Keefer’s “Gracias a La Vida,” Dance Brigade’s taiko and dance corps return to the stage accompanied by their musical guests. The evening culminates with a dynamic compilation of spoken word, song, drumming and dancing.  “THIS is the revolution,” they insist. Hip-hop, Jazz, and Contemporary dance all have a place their place in this resistance movement.

Reaching and churning in defiance, soaring in joyful leaps, and flexing to the polyrhythmic drumbeats, the dancers’ high-energy is contagious. Manifesting a wish, they declare that when confronting the attempt to deport millions “we will not be faceless, we will stand in solidarity.”


Face down, her cheek to the earth, Bianca Mendoza-Prado lays in a pool of light. Rising, her chest open and arms spread she invokes the missing, in Brazil, in Uruguay, in El Salvador. Beatific in her vulnerability, she balances in flight, rooted to the earth upon an assured leg, as Near offers an exquisite solo rendition of “Hay Una Mujer.”


As they cast their frenzied spell, dancers spring vertically, knees bent, hands thrown skyward.  Individuals offer their unique flavors to the mix. KJ Dahlaw soars in their split leaps, while Frederika Keefer shows off her slinky body rolls. Making eye contact with the audience, Johanna Gormley is magnetic with her commanding delivery of each jump, fist pump, and pirouette.


The evening ends prayerfully, as into a dark stage a single candle enters. Gradually, other performers enter carrying candles causing the light to grow, as Ferron, together with much of the audience, sing heartfelt successive choruses of her “Testimony.”


Review by Jen Norris, published January 21, 2025


1. The name VOLUSPA originates from an ancient Norse poem, meaning beauty created from chaos.


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