Review: Tether Dance Project presents Flux & Form, Joe Goode Annex, San Francisco, November 14-16, 2025

Contemporary dance in the Bay Area has a fresh and exciting contender in Tether Dance Project (Tether), co-directed by Tatianna Steiner, Ella Wright, and Teo Lin-Bianco, a trio of recent UC Berkeley graduates.  Recognizing the hard-realities of limited space and financial resources, compounded by the diminished arts funding, these enterprising artists launched Tether to support young and upcoming artists.  Their first production Flux & Form at the Joe Goode Annex November 14 - 16, is a dynamic showcase of fresh voices which I found engaging, intriguing, and energizing.  The 2.25-hour program includes 9 live performances and 2 screen-dance films: all the place I run to have no room for me by Ellis Emerson and Escape to Yesterday by Corinne Dummel.

The offerings are varied and include aerial rope, drag performance, and a spectrum of contemporary movement manifest with influences of ballet, jazz, heel-work and club dance. Production values are strong. Riley Richardson’s lighting sculpts haunting environments for all.

So many new names and faces, in the program, onstage, and even in the audience, where I tend to recognize a good many of the San Francisco dance regulars. As if to announce its intention to change the narrative, Flux & Form opens with aerial rope artist Fosse Lin-Bianco’s Unwind, a stunning contemporary circus piece which finds him winding his horizontally-held body vertically up his apparatus until he reaches the roof.  The taut V of his legs as he pendulums himself to gain the momentum to change his body’s alignment, speaks to the dancer within.

Copper P*SS Lasagna, a duet by Teo Lin-Bianco, with choreographic input from Tatianna Steiner and Teo’s performance partner Tai Lum, is brave, breathtaking, and feels deeply personal.  Performed atop a stage-sized white tarp it opens Act 2.  An intimate dance of brothers, lovers, friends, combatants, the duo begin intertwined, happy and familiar in their interdependence.  Their touches are confident and tender. They sleep nested, bare chest to back. A film (Visuals Jonathan “Fetz” Fetzer, David Naylor, David Sorrell) of snippets of the pair’s greater shared intimacy is projected larger than life behind them.  They cartwheel into and out of each other’s arms.  It takes shoving to create needed separation as the sound of a flesh-on-flesh slap resounds. In darkness, damage is done. They rise with red paint smeared upon the victim’s back, and the aggressor’s palms. Projections of texts scroll feverishly by. “I love you,” “I miss you,” morph into “A lot of your actions hurt me, continuously.” As Tai stands flipping his hands over and over in disbelief, Teo gently washes the blood from Tai’s face.

Tai Lum (L) and Teo Lin-Bianco performing Copper P*SS Lasagna

Choreographers and performers Abigail Hinson and James Jared show off their wide-ranging slinky, clubby, ballroom skills in the provocative How Many Am I? Their pairing is electric as they catwalk coyly toward us atop high heels. Dropping to twerk, hips thrust propulsively. Clutching, drawing each other close, they couple. A shifting power dynamic adds fascination as one moment he is planked above her, and the next she is standing assuredly with him wrapped in fetal position at her feet. He is naked but for black briefs and the suit pants which tangle at his ankles. Re-suited in noir formal-wear they slow dance, wrangling for the lead to pulsing music, roils of revulsion or attraction rolling through their torsos.

Tatianna Steiner’s Callus Theory features soloist Teo Lin-Bianco and an ensemble of four. It investigates how we evolve into adulthood by adding layers of experiences while struggling to maintain personal authenticity. Initially, Teo, the heart of the dance and dressed in red, is isolated and self-focused, exploring their own body with gliding, searching hands. Ensemble members, dressed in solid black or white, enter, circling, striking poses and balances. Whispers flow and breaths are gasped as fingers shaped like guns are held to silence lips.  The quartet manipulates Teo’s limbs, forcing a physical self-punch, necessitating the wheelbarrow hand-walk of a schoolyard game. A thrilling sequence finds Teo held aloft by the four, parallel to the floor. Teo strides along the side and rear stage walls, before being smushed face front into a wall and allowed to ooze down its face as his supporters slowly collapse. Between interactions Teo returns to self-touch, as if to inventory their own ever-evolving being. A silent scream communicates the anguish and pain of the process.

The cast of Tatianna Steiner’s Callus Theory part of Tether Dance Project's Flux & Form

Chêne, by Elizabeth “Liz” Wiehe features SiQui He and Isabella Soo-Hoo as childhood friends, or sisters, fondly reminiscing in dappled sunlight. Their conversation unfolds solely in movement. As limbs twine and heads peek under armpits, these serious girls seem cautious of separation. Chêne is performed to a pair of French songs by Francoise Hardy, "Le premier bonheur du jour," which translates to "The first happiness of the day,” followed by the melancholy “La nuit est sur la ville," or "the night is upon the city." The piece is engrossing, and by its somber end I was contemplating whether the dancers represent parts of a single individual. The untranslated French lyrics add to the riddle of the dance.

Several slighter works, still make an impact. I’ve Had It, a solo ballet by Mai Corkins, is a nostalgic tribute to her family’s long connection to, and recent eviction from, San Francisco. It is performed to The Deslondes’s twangy country-folk song “Hurry Home,” and recordings of Mai’s mother, recalling her attendance at the 50^th Anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge and her father’s presence at the bridge’s opening.  Mai’s movement is measured and thoughtful. Her open face embodies longing as she glances over her shoulder at her backward flicking foot. Periodically assuming a fisted angular pose, she resembles the defiant figure of Rosie the Riveter and her ilk.

Matty Mx!/Matt Barry’s Honk. Boom. BAM! (an excerpt of a work-in-progress) touches on buffoonery, queer-identity, and self-acceptance through a popstar clown aesthetic. The drag performer, in white clown face, is charismatic. Making the most of their trailing train-like length wizard’s cap, they swirl in through the air conjuring their own wonderland.

Choose Left by Lily Gee is a send-up of the absurd sincerity of some rehearsal processes. Gee casts herself as the choreographer, in this dance within a dance, directing five young angsty modern dancers. Their many layers of rehearsal clothes convey their need for protection from their evident self-doubts which playout in voice-over recordings and onstage skirmishes.    

The evening ends impactfully with Ella Wright’s contemporary dance Catalyst, in which seven dancers move as one.  Clustered, their bodies pulse, ripple and pivot as a single jazzy organism. With textures reminiscent of a Fosse ensemble, I found this dance sexy and mesmerizing.  It left me wanting more.

What a great first showing for this nascent company of creatives! The work was gender-inclusive and touched on identity-politics in sophisticated and authentic ways. Tether has the potential to help rejuvenate a more robust Bay Area dance scene.

Review by Jen Norris, published November 17, 2025

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Production Credits

Tether Dance Project presents Flux & Form

Friday, November 14 - November 16, 2025

Joe Goode Annex - 401 Alabama St, San Francisco, CA 94110

Curators and Directors Teo Lin-Bianco, Tatianna Steiner, and Ella Wright

Stage Manager Luca Giles

Lighting Designer Riley Richardson

Rigging Scott Cameron and David Freitag

Program and Performers

Unwind – Fosse Lin-Bianco

Music: "Comptine d’un autre été : L’Après-midi" - Yann Tiersen Arrangement & Piano: Russell Woo

How Many Am I? – Abigail Hinson & James Jared

Music: "My Goodies" - Ciara, "We_Were_Not_There" - Murmler, "WTF" - SCRIPT

I’ve Had It – Mai Corkins

Music: "Hurry Home" - The Deslondes

Musical support: Kyle Athayde

Text: Isabelle Burgess-Corkins

Chêne – Elizabeth "Liz" Wiehe

Performers: SiQi He, Isabella Soo-Hoo

Music: "Le premier bonheur du jour" and "La nuit estsur la ville" - Françoise Hardy

Performers: Tindra Olsson-Hoffman

Music: "Peace of Mind" and "Fountainhead" - Courtney Swain

FILM all the places i run to have no room for me – Ellis Emerson

Performers: Tindra Olsson-Hoffman

Music: "Peace of Mind" and "Fountainhead" - Courtney Swain

Callus Theory – Tatianna Steiner

Performers: Teo Lin-Bianco, Emma Lowe, Tatianna Steiner, Vivien Terrell, Ella Wright

Music: "3 Chords" - Rival Consoles, “Reverse Culture Music” - Steve Hauschildt

Copper P*ss Lasagna – Teo Lin-Bianco

ACT i: babyboy, it’s confusing sometimes

Performers: Teo Lin-Bianco, Tai Lum

Choreography: Teo Lin-Bianco, Tai Lum, Tatianna Steiner

Music: "Silver Springs - Live at Warner Brothers Studios" - Fleetwood Mac; "The Belldog" - Brian Eno, Dieter Moebius, Hans-Joachim Roedelius; "Bleeds Through" - Noah Praise God

Visuals: Jonathan "Fetz" Fetzer, David Naylor, David Sorrell

Choose Left – Lily Gee

Performers: Lily Gee, Raychel Hatch, Natalie Junio-Thompson, Leila Massoudi, Zoe Mueller, Gabby Wei

Music: "Billi" - Alex Weston, "I’m Every Sparkly Woman" - Ana Roxane, "Cho" - Akshara Weave

Musical Score and Composition: Alex LaFetra Thompson

Honk. boom. BAM! (Excerpt) – Matty Mx! / Matt Barry

Music: “Queen” - Perfume Genius

Musical Score and Composition: Matt Barry

Costumes: Pangaea Colter / HOUSE OF PERCEPTION

FILM Escape To Yesterday – Corinne Dummel

Director, Editor: Corinne Dummel

Production Assistant: Kadrick Blatt

Music: "We Insist" - Zoe Keating, "Still Here" - Rival Consoles, "Conspiracy Origins" - Gesaffelstein

Catalyst – Ella Wright

Performers: Carmen Cortez, Marlena Gittleman, Abigail Hinson, Teo Lin-Bianco, Emma Lowe, Tatianna Steiner, Vivien Terrell

Music: "a thousand shades of green" - efdemin, “hive.mind” - James Shinra