Review: Queering Dance Festival presents FROLIC! Program A, March 27 & 29, 2025 at Counterpulse, San Francisco

The Queering Dance Festival returns to Counterpulse March 27 -29 with eight Bay Area LBGTQ+ artists across two programs as part of FROLIC! 2025.   Program A features a trio of solos performed by choreographers Octavia Rose Hingle, ‍Blake "K-ZO da Snowman" Hihara, and ‍Audrey Johnson. Production values are strong and the works are artistically rich, with well-developed dramaturgy which reveals and revels in the complexity of these creators’ queer identities.

under earth, a project of choreographer and performer Octavia Rose Hingle and composer Alexandrea Archuleta (working under the moniker Piano Rain), is a ritual of devotion inspired by the gardens and memoirs of queer English filmmaker and Gay rights activist Derek Jarman (1942-1994).  The multi-talented Hingle gracefully casts spells with their sinuous arms while harmonizing perfectly with Archuleta’s lush futuristic soundscape.

The gauzy beauty and simple pleasures of videographer Ainsley Tharp’s projected landscape backdrops are transporting. Fields of clover and fennel, dappled in sunlight, accompany Hingle’s poetic monologue of sexual awakening. As Hingle rubs their wrists together, a recurring theme, one imagines the application of an alluring scent. Early stanzas speak of a child springing forth from eucalyptus pods. Later the child becomes a youth with a “desire yet to be named,” as subtle glimpses of naked bodies coupling in the bushes play.

Queering Dance Festival Program A artists Blake Hihara, Octavia Rose Hingle, and Audrey Johnson bow.

Hingle recites their tale while moving with poise in the space, emphasizing texts with gestures. The verse, “He lays down in the garden, where these tired tissues melt to seed,” is a fitting tribute to Jarman, who died of AIDS. It isn’t clear from the program notes if Hingle is the author of the poems, or if these words are drawn from Jarman’s writings, but whatever their source, their pairing with Archuleta’s transporting score and Hingle’s embodiment forms an engaging and loving tribute to an ancestor gone too soon.

Blake Hihara’s dance is surprising and fun. Kid Chanpuruu celebrates Hihara’s individuality as a mixed white, Japanese, and Uchinanchu dancer who also has a passion for modern Black American street dances (waacking and breaking).  ‍Suitably titled, Hihara mixes his dance stylings the way his Okinawan family might mix-up "Chanpuru" (チャンプルー), a type of stir-fry dish, featuring a wide range of ingredients.

Hihara’s musical selection Shirahama Blues, performed by Yara Families, demonstrate a similar fondness for cross-pollination. Accompanied by this intriguing combo of Uchinaaguchi vocals and mid-20th Century surf rock beats, Hihara toggles between athletic street dance feats of strength and balance, and the stylized forms and traditional gestures of ancient Uchinanchu udui (traditional dance).  Balancing on his head, supported by his bent arms as his legs churning through a series of angular shapes, Hihara’s cool, easy vibe belies the difficulty of his breaking.

Kneeling upstage, his back to us, Hihara swaps his grey Okinawa logo t-shirt and backwards ballcap for a more traditionally feminine large-sleeved salmon pink kimono.  To the soothing sounds of waves arriving on the shore, Hihara methodically cinches his hip-length garment with a woven belt, and arranges his newly uncovered long hair into a bun.

Properly transformed, Hihara blows us popstar kisses accompanied by the high-pitched vocals of J-Pop singer Yuuri Hamagawa’s 2021 hit Umi Nu Kanata. Both coy and showy, his arms are held parallel to each other as he adopts the stances and angular attitudes of traditional Uchinaanchu dance. His legs too, remain parallel and slightly bent, as if his gliding step is due to the gentle restrictions of a long dress.  

Turns out Hihara’s happy place is in between these two identities.  Having snuck an arm out of its sleeve Hirara performs his final arm waving blessings whimsically clothed in an off-the-shoulder asymmetrical-kimono-style of his own design.

Closing the program, Audrey Johnson shares an intriguing half-hour of ARTEMISIA: encounter, a dance theater solo project she is developing under her performance moniker, ARTEMISIA. Per the program, this substantial work “explores shadow, fracture, and redemption within American identity, mythologies, and obsessions on a journey through the backwoods of self.”  On a platform high above the audience, Johnson sings Karen Dalton’s country blues song Katie Cruel. Her white rabbit fur jacket, high-necked gold lame blouse, and form fitting brown leather skirt suggest the tough as nails protagonist in the lyrics. “Here I am, where I must be…” she croons before slipping into the darkness.

Minutes later Johnson emerges in contemporary garb, a tank top and boxy cotton pants. Masking her eyes with a hand, she stands assuredly on a single leg. Breaking from this posture Johnson seems to be seeking a new shape.  Moving from floor to feet to floor once more, changing direction often, scribbling sideways, rising and falling, her search seems relentless yet fruitless as the steel strings of a banjo thrum. 

A mystical sound environment develops, ushering in a more contemplative tempo. Johnson is a charismatic mover. We avidly follow her fluid pivots which are led by the momentum of a soaring hand. 

A diagonal headlight blinds Johnson, as it casts her giant twin upon the backdrop.  Turning to gaze warily upon it, there is palpable tension between the figures, one flesh, one silhouette, as they lean toward each other.  As a green light washes the stage, the alter-ego shadow disappears, trigging an urgency in Johnson, who frantically resets the stage with a chair and a standing mirror ill-disguised under an oversized coat.

Johnson dons the coat, simultaneously masking her form and revealing her reflected image.  Slouching in the chair she regards us, before sliding down to twist across the floor.  Rocking, with an arm wiping away the cobwebs above her head, she sings of building houses without mirrors, and avoiding one’s reflection, before confronting the mirror head on and carrying it downstage center.

Perched downstage facing the mirror, we watch her confront herself in a sultry lip-synch to Dalton’s Green Rocky Road.  Having applied lipstick, Johnson looks provocatively over her shoulder at us during the choruses of “Tell me who you love;” an interesting query from a queer artist.

Self-reflection, and the desire for self-determination outside of societal expectations is exhausting. Johnson’s closing remarks speak of endless mirrors where reflections radiate until seeing becomes too much and the lights must be turned off.  Johnson’s exploration concludes with her contemplative gaze into encroaching nightfall as the country stylings of Dalton’s “Everytime I think of freedom,” fold into the woodsy sounds of nature at twilight.  I look forward to seeing how this work develops and anticipate further explorations by the Queering Dance Festival, whose voices are all the more urgently needed as the Trump administration targets artists, queerfolk, immigrants and all those who celebrate differences.

Review by Jen Norris, published March 31, 2025

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Queering Dance Program Page, note Erik Wagner did not perform at the March 29 performance I attended.