Review: ODC/Dance presents Summer Sampler 2026 ODC Theater, San Francisco, CA July 30 – August 2, 2026
There is a satisfying weightiness to ODC/Dance’s Summer Sample 2026 on offer 4-nights only (July 28-August 2) at their intimate home theater in the Mission District. Two of the three pieces on this 3-act program literally dance around the precarity of sound mental health. The finale is a highly theatrical, a suitable homage to the three women responsible for ODC/Dance’s enduring relevance.
Founded in 1971, ODC/Dance (ODC) has left an indelible mark on the life of San Francisco. With the precarious state of the arts, how has a modern dance company, not just survived but, thrived? The answer is multi-fold: rigor and discipline, creative curiosity, a lot of chutzpah, strong relationships, and perseverance. Owning your own artistic home and not being afraid to renovate and expand, welcoming students ages 2-102 to your school (open every day of the year), and an ethos of collective leadership, all play a role in the miracle that is ODC at 55. But really it comes down to the cooperative energy and creative genius of a trio of artists who came West together. ODC Artistic Director Brenda Way, ODC School Director Kimi Okada, and ODC company mainstay choreographer KT Nelson, began as trailblazers and are now stalwarts. Their artistic output continues to enliven our city, and thus it is fitting that San Francisco Board of Supervisors President Rafael Mandelman (born two years after ODC’s founding) prefaces opening night with a presentation of Certificates of Honor to the triumvirate.
Appointed ODC Co-Artistic Director in 2025, Mia J. Chong is the face of the future. A talented emerging choreographer with her own nascent dance company EIGHT/MOVES, Chong uses the opportunity of her second ODC commission to create a piece utilizing dancers from both companies. The participating dancers from EIGHT/MOVES are Cora Cliburn, Kira Fargas, William Brewton Fowler Jr. and Colin Frederick. The members from ODC/Dance include Rachel Furst, Ja'Moon Jones, Joanne Kim, Jenna Marie and Colton Wall. This cast of nine superlative dancers embody their inner demons with troubling relatability in the aptly named, Notes on Disquiet. The dancing is dynamic and highly physical.
From darkness, the wandering saxophone notes of composer Raffi Garabedian resound. He is slowly revealed noodling away on his sax. Garabedian comes and goes throughout the piece, playing solo, or accompanying a recording of jazz combos created with co-composer Ari Chersky. Scenic designer Chad Owens has dressed the stage as a house without walls. A living room vignette, with couch, lamps and a rug, lives in the lefthand stage quadrant closest to the audience. In the opposite corner, upstage, a sturdy square dining room set and room-defining carpet reside. A row of chairs, mid-stage, serves a variety of purposes including as a waiting room, where a half-dozen strangers sit side-by-side. All scroll through moods from boredom to impatience, frustration, and nervousness, blind to each other’s shared pain. There is a gentle humor here, which well balances the more disturbing mental health crises that manifest along the way.
Colton Wall crouches, quivering. Fargas approaches to provide solace while suppressing her own discomfort, evident in the firm way she presses a hand to her side. Both shrug off help despite their obvious need. As a counterpoint, Frederick and Jones hug tightly in the background.
Fowler, Jr. is magnetic in his living room solo, ripping at his chest and rocking his cradling arms. His long limbs dramatically extend as he balances, foot-in-hand. I am struck by how lonely and overwhelming the world is when we keep our challenges and insecurities to ourselves.
Fighting his own demons, Jones pirouettes with remarkable speed, an embodiment of the swirling emotions in his head, or perhaps an attempt to silence or escape them. The ensemble rolls and tumbles violently through the space, as if tossed by an invisible giant.
Relationships are varied and complicated. A fight breaks out around the table, arms thrown high in outrage as participants scatter. A playful queer romantic threesome finds Jones, Frederick and Wall sharing a couch and each other. Constant relational readjustments make their moments of restful tenderness too fleeting.
Over the course of the piece, the furnishings are gradually removed, leaving open dancefloor. Fresh more group-minded activity develops. As individuals all are still twitchy, busy swiping imaginary bugs off their skin, but optimism rises as they move together.
Act 2 is KT Nelson’s Nothing's Gonna Make Sense (Reflections on Grief) (2025). The piece for the full ODC company is an attempt to manifest the craziness of the grief Nelson is experiencing following the sudden death of her husband of 47 years, Doug Winter.
Rich in imagery, non-sensical and yet full of meaning, this fever dream of a dance is captivating and well deserving of this reprise. Rachel Furst wears a bright pink pageboy wig. Sometimes she represents Nelson in her quest for renewed meaning and sometimes others carry that weight.
Dancers pair up in ways that demonstrate deep physical co-dependencies. People literally climb the walls. Simple white bedsheets exemplify the power of a mundane object to slay us following a catastrophic loss. Here the cloths become shrouds or tails, costume muppet-esqe creatures, and are waved as flags of surrender.
UNRELIABLE NARRATOR, Catherine Galasso’s documentary theater piece celebrating the tenacity and brilliance of the “ODC Three,” prominently features audio recordings of interviews with the celebrants themselves: Way, Okada, and Nelson. Way regales us with tales of teenage pregnancy, early but long-lasting marriage, waitressing in Paris, and stepping in to lead Oberlin’s dance program, before heading west with the collective.
Through a haze, eerily aglow in bright edging up-lights, dancers crawl in the dawning twilight of the ODC creation story. A woman lays her head tenderly in the lap of a castmate, as Okada speaks of her sadness that her mother died before her granddaughter’s birth. Clutching the striding ankles of another, a dancer is dragged, as Way speaks of attracting science majors to her dance program. It all seems a bit too clever for its own good. And don’t get me started on the snippets of reconstructed choreography, from ODC’s days of old, which infuriate with their brevity and lack of context.
The narrated stories are so captivating that the dancing which accompanies them seems almost superfluous. The exception being the extraordinary sections when, decades after their last performing forays, each honoree takes the stage to dance.
Okada speaks of her devotion to Way and ODC, taking on whatever job she is assigned, be it crafting a quirky dance to fill-out the bill, or the task of creating a school from thin air. Spreading joy in her wake as she soars above the stage, carried like dance royalty by her colleagues, I am awestruck at how game and unflappable Okada continues to be.
Nelson, never at a loss for a novel approach, performs her charming hip-swaying dance facing upstage, while in her recorded narrative owning the choice as being potentially “freeing.” Grief weighs heavily for Nelson of late. Untethered from employment and widowed, she confesses to a loss of self-identity exacerbated by the dispiriting state of the world, and yet she carries on.
In conclusion, Way rolls on. Seated in a wheeled desk-chair, she becomes the center of a family portrait with all the performers arrayed to frame her. Struck by the longevity and accomplishments of the founders, and moved by Galasso’s intergenerational story-telling, my guest for the evening, a young woman attending her first ODC performance, is teary-eyed and genuinely moved. She thusly dispels my concern that this tribute might only speak to ODC devotees, when in fact the uninitiated may well be its best audience.
A new day is dawning for ODC as Chong steps forward, but how wonderful that we don’t yet have to choose. The “ODC Three” seem ready to carry on for years to come.
Review by Jen Norris, published August 1, 2026
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Production Notes
ODC/Dance presents Summer Sampler 2026
ODC Theater July 28 – Aug 2
Notes of Disquiet (World Premiere)
Co-produced with EIGHT/MOVES
Direction & Choreography Mia J. Chong
Music Composition & Performance Raffi Garabedian
Co-composition, Select Works Ari Chersky
Lighting Design Thomas Bowersox
Scenic Design Chad Owens
Costume Design David Calhoun of vipère
Vocal Coach Tim Silva
Dancers & Co-Creators
ODC/Dance Rachel Furst, Jenna Marie, Colton Wall, Joanne Kim, & Ja’Moon Jones
EIGHT/MOVES Cora Cliburn, Kira Fargas, William Brewton Fowler Jr., & Colin Frederick
Nothing’s Gonna Make Sense (Reflections on Grief) (2025)
Concept & Direction KT Nelson
Co-Creators ODC/Dance of 2025
Music Gabriella Smith, Gabriel Fauré, & Gabriel Cabezas
Lighting Design Thomas Bowersox
Costume Design Jamielynn Duggan
Dancers Jeremy Bannon-Neches, Rachel Furst, Jaime Garcia Castilla, Colton Wall, Joanne Kim, Addison Norman, & Ja’Moon Jones
Understudy Caitlin Hicks
UNRELIABLE NARRATOR (World Premiere)
Concept & Direction Catherine Galasso (In collaboration with ODC Company Dancers) Dramaturge/Rehearsal Director Phoenicia Pettyjohn
Lighting Design Thomas Bowersox
Costume Design Jaimelynn Duggan
Wig Design Becky Fernandez
Original Music/Sound Design Dave Cerf
Recorded Violin Julia Ogrydziak
Recorded Voice Catherine Lipsetz Dauer
Recorded Interviews Brenda Way, Kimi Okada, & KT Nelson
Audio Interview Edits Catherine Galasso
Dancers Full ODC Company, Brenda Way, Kimi Okada, & KT Nelson
Excerpts
Format II (1978) Brenda Way
Archipelago (1985) Kimi Okada
Worksite (1983) KT Nelson
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