Review: Greenlit: Choreography Showcase, Zaccho Dance Theatre, San Francisco, May 29-30, 2026

Making dances is gratifying, but sharing those dances with others is next level fun. This is why choreographer and performer Lauren Settembrino, a relative newcomer to the Bay Area dance scene, decided to organize some fellow dancemakers and produce Greenlit Choreography Showcase at Zaccho Dance Theatre May 29 & 30.

Beyond creating more performance opportunities and building community among the participants, Settembrino’s goals for the evening include honoring and embracing all parts of the development process, and as such, the show includes new, old, and work-in-progress dances.  A minor quibble, but perhaps a disservice to some of the collaborators, the printed program contains limited information as to the development status of the seven works.

Settembrino, herself, is a revelation. She is tempestuous and charismatic in her self-made, program-closing solo, Flee pornia (2023) which explores and pushes back against performative sexuality.  A coarse crotch grab accompanied by declarative eye contact yields quickly to chest-clutching shame or fear.  There is a bold physicality to the movement as Settembrino toggles beguilingly between moods, from alluring, to horrified, to defiant. It left me thinking more deeply about societal expectations and the trauma associated with meeting them.

Lauren Settembrino taking a bow following her performance of Flee pornia 

Settembrino’s The Hollow Men is a compelling and mysterious quartet, beautifully danced by Sarah Emmons, Abigail Hinson, Livanna Marissa Maislen, and lu price.  Ominous undertones accompany the sounds of wind which buffet a clump of “men.” In lowlight, they appear armless, as their angular black kimono-jackets hang with truncated sleeves over raw linen shirts whose fraying edges suggest an underlying decay. The group appears to stutter as the collapse of a knee and resultant sideward cant thrusts one body into another.  Hips and torsos torque above fixed feet as bodies twist around themselves. A totem, blank-faced and soulless, Emmons sits unmoving astride Hinson’s shoulder.  Animal-like, the four creep backwards on palms and forefeet. Later, the thrust of their extended arms is ineffective at preventing them from being forced to retreat in unison.

Sarah Emmons, lu price, Abigail Hinson, & Livanna Marissa Maislen bow following Hollow Men

There is a clear trajectory from human to robotic in Tracey Lindsay Chan’s Soft Computers (work-in-progress).  The soundtrack begins with the happy noises of children at play as performers Daniela Durkin and Anna Gichan drape atop and roll over one another, maximizing their bodies’ interconnections. Playground noises are overtaken by church bells, later replaced by industrial noises whose volume grows steadily over the course of the dance. Mechanical gestures increasingly pervade the more organic relational phrases. A glowing oversized-floor-tile pulses center stage.  It fascinates the women, drawing their focus first, initially with longing glances and eventually bodily as they press faces and hands into the glowing surface, their almost magnetic attraction to the technology replacing their reliance on each other’s attention.

Alice Svetic’s duet, Not, which she dances with Ellie Daley, is an intriguing abstract modern dance, performed to Big Thief’s song “Not,” whose female vocalist attempts to explain love by listing all the things it is not. The pair move in tandem crafting long diagonals and deep plies. They gain speed as they offer twin twirling arabesque and shimmy-rich vertical jumps. Declaring their strength, they punctuate their building ferocity with well-placed stomps.  Destined to fail, due to vulnerability or self-sabotage, they thrust fists into their bellies and collapse to the floor.  Loud, electronic instrumental music accompanies their tortuous regrouping upon the floor. Resilient but altered, they gradually progress from supine, through seated poses and a one-armed arch, to rise to a leg-lifted balance.

After several dance seasons in which emerging artists have tended to overreliance on spoken text to accompany their dances, Greenlit is refreshingly free of speaking with the exception of the enigmatic and frenetic dramatic monologue Unknown, created and performed by Livanna Marissa Maislen.  An extended mad scene, danced with uncommon fervor, Unknown includes text drawn from Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Maislen’s own worrisome musings. As in a fevered dream, Maislen fascinates and revolts as she draws a long white tail from between her lips. She lingers over the creature’s emergence until what might have been a mouse is revealed to be a tampon. 

Tai Lum’s God as A Swiss Army Knife, which premiered earlier this spring, is an abstract contemporary dance trio that didn’t hold my attention.  The hypnotic looping synthesizer tract “2/2” from Brian Eno’s “Music for Airports,” matches the flat pacing of the movement.  

It is always a treat to see what The Straw Dogs, Manuelito Biag, Tristan Ching Hartmann, Nol Simonse & Victor Talledos, have been up to.  Here they showed promising work-in-progress excerpts, part of an evening-length work to be shown July 25 at City Dance, which I will anticipate all the more for the virtuosic and emotive dancing of Amy Foley and Sarah Bauer as partnered by Nol Simonse, in separate duets.

The cast of the Straw Dogs work-in-progress showing bows.

While the evening was likely not conceived with a theme, the uneasy balance between human emotion and faceless technology emerged repeatedly. An unconscious ode to the pervading national anxiety related to the prevalence of AI in our lives.

The showcase was lit by simple floor mounted LED fixtures that created color washes and just enough illumination. Pieces earlier in the evening had the benefit of ambient daylight through the numerous warehouse windows that line one side of the Zaccho Studio.  I applaud Settembrino and her collaborators for their gumption and execution. The full-house of attendees demonstrates they are meeting a desire for more dance performance in the Bay on this early summer weekend.  

 Review by Jen Norris, published May 30, 2026

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Production details

Greenlit Choreography Showcase

Zaccho Dance Theatre

May 29-30, 2026

 Soft Computers (excerpts)

Choreography: Tracey Lindsay Chan

Performers: Daniela Durkin, Anna Gichan

Music: Natasha Barrett, Impossible Moments from Venice 2; GOOSE & Soulwax, Synrise (Soulwax Remix)

Not 

Choreography: Alice Svetic

Performers: Ellie Daley, Alice Svetic

Music: Big Thief, Not

Unknown 

Choreography: Livanna Marissa Maislen

Performer: Livanna Marissa Maislen

Music: Stephan Micus, Adela; Rita Payes and Elisabeth Roma, Porque llorax blanca nina

Spoken text from William Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Livanna Marissa Maislen

The Hollow Men 

Choreography: Lauren Settembrino

Performers: Sarah Emmons, Abigail Hinson, Livanna Marissa Maislen, lu price

Music: Demdike Stare, Matilda’s Dream; The Haxan Cloak, Miste; Raime, Passed over Trail

Untitled (excerpts)

The Straw Dogs (Manuelito Biag, Kara Davis, Tristan Ching Hartmann, Nol Simonse, Victor Talledos)

Performers: Sarah Bauer, Tanya Bello, Ria Fifield, Amy Foley, Tai Lum, Eli Shi, Nol Simonse, Clara True Stanford

Choreography: The Straw Dogs, in collaboration with the participants of The Straw Dogs’ Training and Gathering Sessions

Music: Plain White T’s, Hey There Delilah; Message to Bears, You Are a Memory; Ben Howard, Promise

God as a Swiss Army Knife 

The Dance Ranch

Choreography: Tai Lum

Performers: Marie Hammel, SiQi He, lu price

Music: Brian Eno, 2/2 Performers: Marie Hammel, SiQi He, lu price

Flee porneia 

Choreography: Lauren Settembrino

Performer: Lauren Settembrino

Music: Ruin, Zamilska; Duel 35, Zamilska