Review: FACT/SF Summer Dance Festival 2025 Weekend One, August 15-17, 2025 ODC Theater, San Francisco, CA

FACT/SF’s Summer Dance Festival brings together an array of contemporary dance works by choreographers from the Bay Area and beyond. The Festival got off to a marvelous start, August 15, with its Weekend One program featuring three world-premiere dances at the ODC Theater. 

Make (It) Work: ((A) Work In Process) (Working Title) created and performed by guest artists Joy and Alexander (Alex) Davis, known as The Davis Sisters (Sisters), had us laughing from the get go. An assemblage of excerpts from a half-dozen Davis Sister pieces from 2017-2024, this mid-career retrospective melds musical comedy and post-modern dance, along with a dash of soul-searching reflection on the challenging state of arts funding and touring contemporary dance. Joy and Alexander’s keen comic instincts, wide-ranging multi-disciplinary dance techniques, and commitment to not taking themselves too seriously, are used to great effect in this 50-minute work.

A folksy duo of pseudo middle-aged Midwesterners in shag wigs greets us in the lobby before taking the stage to introduce themselves as Gloria and Gerald, the proud parents of the performers.  Setting the stage for the show, they regale us with news of backstage dramatics. It seems the Sisters are dispirited and contemplating quitting show business.  This evening’s revue may be their last dance.

The Davis Sisters performing Make (It) Work: ((A) Work In Process) (Working Title) Photo: J. Norris

After a brief pause for a FACT/SF welcome, the artists, transformed into their 30-something selves, take the stage anew. In scruffy fur coats over black athleisurewear, Alex swims on his belly as Joy shadow boxes. Casting coats aside they perform a complicated gesture sequence, which we learn at the post-performance talkback they call “vagueing,” i.e. a looser version of Voguing. The balance of silliness against artistic rigor is pitch perfect.

In the next scene, Joy, wielding an enormous dictionary, reads the definition of “Entropy,” while Alex conjures some compelling madness with a golf club wedged between his toes. Seemingly unconscious of the consequences of the club’s connection, he lifts to swing, drawing the foot awkwardly high behind himself.

Along the side of the stage, an arm floats in a bright spotlit, its accompanying body hidden within the folds of the black stage-curtain.  Hand and arm are busy getting ready for a night on the town gesticulating as if cheeks are being powdered, lips lined, hair brushed, and boobs adjusted. It’s fascinating how much narrative a single limb’s antics can convey.

The Davis Sisters Photo: Brad Wakoff

Unsatisfied with their delivery and synchronization, the duo parses a Broadway-style jazz sequence as pink lights flash and music throbs. They introduce a post-modern-dance section by reassuring us that there will be no meaning, but that if we see meaning, we are probably right. The ensuing dance, full of ill-timed lifts and random wiggles, amusingly sends up modern-dance tropes. Sharing a pair of pantyhose, the two roll about, vying for top-dog position. The retrospective portion ends there; but the piece continues with an overlong, if “earnest attempt, to create something new.”

A confessional podcast by Alex and Joy brings Make (It) Work to a close. A third member of the cast, the coveralled assistant, Maggie Costales, who has been helping throughout, moving discarded costume pieces about with a push broom, creates her own dystopic dance amidst the Sisters’ detritus.  I hope this is not the Davis Sisters last dance, but if it is, they went out with a bang.

to the marrow, choreographed by Jenna Riegel, in collaboration with dancers, LizAnne Roman Roberts and Charlie Slender-White, both FACT/SF company members, speaks to me on a number of levels: as a dance-lover, as one who appreciates the somatic wisdom of our bodies and their connections to other bodies, and finally as a parent. LizAnne and Charlie began dancing and creating together a dozen years ago. They share a nonverbal language and know each other in ways that their partners cannot. Both newish parents, their reservoir of shared experiences continues to grow. 

An egg serves as the physical manifestation of the delicacy and durability that characterize young children.  Charlie stands still, an egg balanced atop his lifted foot. LizAnne slides awkwardly across the floor on her stomach. She uses her bent forearm to gently nudge an egg, which rolls haltingly along in front of her. 

Storing their eggs in a safe corner, the duo dance in-synch with easy familiarity, loose and graceful.  A repeated phrase finds them tipping forward and back, cradling an arm and rocking it softly. 

A recording of a conversation between a man and a woman (poet Clint Smith and PBS journalist Krista Tippett), discussing parenthood and what kind of world they wish to leave for their children accompanies the dance. The specificity and relatability of the stanzas of Clint Smith’s “Ode to Those First Fifteen Minutes After the Kids Are Finally Asleep” (text in production credits) pulls my attention from the dancing, but even that seems an apt metaphor for parenting which requires near constant multi-tasking.  The precarity and wonder of parenthood resonate as the lights fade on the pair who have resumed balancing eggs atop their lifted feet.

A clubby percussive beat resonates as saturated red light coats the stage. A quartet of dancers in form-fitting sheer black costumes, twist and turn against a blank void at the opening of Maelstrom. Conceived by Director/Choreographer Charlie Slender-White, with significant contributions from the performers Keanu Forrest Brady, Erin Coyne, Jon Kim, and LizAnne Roman Roberts, the piece explores the stability and calm that can be found within chaos and volatility. Images of whirlpools abound as the four circle the stage, while also rotating from within. The torque travels up from their feet, through knees, hips, torsos, heads, and finally arms.  The music stops, but the churning persists, the dancers’ heavy breathing a reminder of the effort of going with, and/or fighting the flow.

Lunge sequences, with arms jutting forward, replace the circling.  Alone onstage, Brady is transformed into slices by a lighting effect (Lighting Designer Del Medoff) which reveals only his upper (torso and head) and lower body (shins and feet), while masking his middle in darkness.  Fascinated, we watch as ripples of energy roll through his body, disappearing midway only to reappear below the knees.  Roberts’s solo moment finds her standing on one leg, arms spread, folding and rising while maintaining her balance, a foraging shorebird astute to threat.  In addition to sequences of dance in near silence, Slender-White effectively uses extended moments of stillness, which allow for deeper reflection.

As if caught in an eddy, Maelstrom winds down inconclusively, which may be a comment on the endless chaos of life, or perhaps due to the fact that it is the first part of a diptych. We can look forward to the second part, Waves, in April 2026. In the meantime, FACT/SF Summer Dance Festival resumes August 22-24 with Weekend Two Program including include works by local groups seymour::dancecollective and Claire Evangelho & Ezra LeBank, alongside works by visiting artists Heather Dutton (Brooklyn, NY), Dani Oblitas (Chicago, IL), and the Taja Will Ensemble (Minneapolis, MN).

Review by Jen Norris, published August 20, 2025.

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Production Credits

fact/sf artistic director Charlie Slender-White

lighting design Del Medoff

production Manager River Bermudez Sanders

Stage Manager Quinn Todd

Production Assistant Jess Brown

Technicians Mary Clare Blake-Booth and Taylor Rivers

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Make (It) Work: ((A) Work In Process) (Working Title) (World Premiere)

Created and Performed by The Davis Sisters (Joy and Alexander Davis)

Artistic Associate: Maggie Costales

Sound Design by Eric Mullis featuring music by Eric Mullis, Rob Flax, Arvo Pärt, Andrew Hamilton, Björn Ulvaeus, Henry Purcell, James Murphy, Cole Porter, and Kids TV 123

Lighting Design by Del Medoff

Costume Design by The Davis Sisters with Diane Davis

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to the marrow (World Premiere)

Choreography by Jenna Riegel, in collaboration with the dancers

Performances by LizAnne Roman Roberts and Charlie Slender-White

Music: For Wanda by Silver Mt. Zion, The Dress Looks Nice on You by Sufjan Stevens and a cover of Kurt Cobain’s Come As You Are by Sam Crawford

Text excerpts from On Being with Krista Tippett: Clint Smith, What We Know in the “Marrow of Our Bones”

Sound and Costume Design by Jenna Riegel

Lighting Design and Technical Direction by Del Medoff

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Maelstrom (World Premiere)Concept & Direction: Charlie Slender-WhiteChoreography: Charlie Slender-White, with significant contributions from the performers

Performers: Keanu Forrest Brady, Erin Coyne, Jon Kim, LizAnne Roman Roberts

Lighting Design & Technical Direction: Del Medoff

Music: Röyksopp, Fever Ray, trentmøller, Aphex Twin, Ryoji Ikeda, Sigur Ros

Sound Design: Charlie Slender-White

Costume Design: Sporadic Assembly

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POEM by Clint Smith that is read as part of “to the marrow”

“Ode To Those First Fifteen Minutes After the Kids Are Finally Asleep”:

“Praise the couch that welcomes you back into its embrace as it does every night around this time. Praise the loose cereal that crunches beneath your weight, the whole-grain golden dust that now shimmers on the backside of your pants. Praise the cushion, the one in the middle that sinks like a lifeboat leaking air, and the ottoman covered in crayon stains that you have now accepted as aesthetic. Praise your knees and the evening respite they receive from a day of choo-choo training along the carpet with two eager passengers in tow. Praise the silence. Oh, the silence. How it washes over you like a warm bedsheet. Praise the walls for the way they stand there and don’t ask for anything. Praise the seduction of slumber that tiptoes across your eyelids, the way it tempts you to curl up right there and drift away even though it’s only 7:30 PM. Praise the phone you scroll through without even realizing that you’re scrolling. Praise the video you scroll past of the man teaching his dog how to dance merengue, praise the way it makes you laugh the way someone laughs when they are so tired they don’t know if they will ever standup again. Praise the toys scattered across the floor, the way you wonder if it might be okay to just leave them there for now, since you know that tomorrow they will simply end up there again.”