Review: Yerba Buena Garden Festival presents Choreofest 2026 featuring Yeni Lucero & Dancers, Sharp & Fine, BrasArte and PUSH Dance Company, San Francisco, CA July 25, 2026
- Jen Norris
- 11 hours ago
- 6 min read
The experience of site-specific dance is richest when the dance and the location feel inexorably connected. Gratifyingly, this is the case with quartet of dances on YBG Choreofest Program A.
ChoreoFest, now in its 9th year, is an outdoor festival of contemporary dance. It invites an array of Bay Area dancemakers to create and perform dances within the varied landscape of Yerba Buena Gardens, in downtown San Francisco. For the 4th year, presenter Yerba Buena Gardens Festival has engaged David Herrera, of David Herrera Performance Company, and Ashley Gayle, of PUSH Dance Company, as Co-Curators. Two unique programs of 4 original works each are to be presented over a pair of late summer Saturdays (July 25 & Aug 1).
Admission free, Choreofest invites audiences to discover new dancemakers and see the Gardens with fresh eyes. Audiences stroll, en masse, from one performance location to the next. With limited chair seating available, most viewers sit on the ground, perch on nearby low walls, or stand, working cooperatively to find room for all at each new location. The amplified music, large crowds, and enticing performances draw in passersby, expanding the audience over the course of the show.
Program A begins in Jessie Square. Situated on a diagonal, with the Gothic Revival style St Patrick’s Church on our left and the innovative architecture of the Jewish Contemporary Museum to the right, we sit in the heart of a city balancing history and progress. In the foreground lies an inviting plaza with elements of brick and grass, and a reflecting pool through which a path of blocky steps allow dancers to traverse.
The hauntingly wise lyrics of pianist and composer Adi Goldstein’s “The Unspeakable World,” spoken in old school radio ethos, call us to embrace silence and observation in order to fully experience life. “When you don’t name things anymore, you start seeing;” with these and similar framing thoughts, choreographer Yeni Lucero’s The Becoming of QAVAH, sets the stage of the whole afternoon.
Beginning with the breathless running entrance of one woman, the work soon expands to the trio of Mecca Boutte, Mika Lemoine and Amayah Lucero Akintunde. All wear light blue blazers over bright t-shirts and black leggings and high-end white kicks, suggesting a universal office worker guise.
On a journey of renewal and self-acceptance, Mecca Boutte is an open-hearted seeker; arm extended, she strides in lingering balances, her bent trailing leg lifted. The ladies impress us with complicated footwork sequences, deployed with their hands tucked behind their backs.
Arms whip and torsos torque as waves of energy transfer back and forth between the trio. Reaching and lunging, responding to each other, they are separate but also part of a whole. From the haunting choral harmonies of Hans Zimmer’s “Angels & Demons” score, to the breathy poetic intro of Sabrina Claudio’s “About Time,” to the pulsing futuristic Afro-house music of South African DJ Mörda, Lucero’s astute musical choices carry the dancers and the viewer toward the promised liberation of true embodied feeling, which exists beyond words.
Crossing the street, we reassemble on a raised plaza. The insistent beat of a taiko drum sounds, heralding the beginning of Sharp & Fine’s Will the Wind Come, a promising collage of excerpts from their evening-length work, Iphigenia, set to premiere October 23-25 at Z Space.
Molly Levy grasps a wide roll of stiff brown paper. It is blank but perhaps represents a map or a story. Holding the scroll’s end above his head, Eric Avery turns away, unrolling it as he walks, using his strength to draw its courtyard-spanning length taut. Charmaine Butcher emerges from below, to wrestle the parchment to the ground, in order to slide and crawl upon the trail it now assumes. Highly sculptural, the paper’s evolving form, as modeled by the dancers and the wind’s sporadic currents, becomes a significant component of this theatrical dance.
Microphone in hand, Avery lays out the dilemma at the heart of this Greek Tragedy, asking us to imagine we are on a path which splits, leaving us to choose between all in the world which matters to us, or the one person we most love.
With their foreheads married, Avery and Levy perform an intimate duet of attachment, which is steeped in tenderness and tenacity. Twisting and turning below and above one another, drawing back to arabesque, their singular brow-connection continues. Eerie violin music accompanies as Butcher gathers what I imagine as the strands of time, before coiling herself in the bulky shape-shifting paper and ascending a vacant sculpture plinth.
Sharp & Fine make ingenious use of their location, incorporating the stair entry, the varied paving surfaces and gravel areas, and the statue platform. I could not picture this dance working as well in another setting, which makes me anticipate all the more the scheduled full-length theatrical presentation of Iphigenia this October.
The samba stylings of the BrasArte ensemble are flirty and fun. Performed to medley of Brazilian classic sambas, Tupi or Not, choreographed by Tainah Damasceno in collaboration with her fellow performers Carmen Del Valle, Nadiah Qabazard, and Jaguaray Santana is a crowd pleaser.
In a dancehall, these dancers’ virtuosity would surely impress, but performing here on the unforgiving surfaces of a compact dry pond, its bordering boulders and sand-surfaced entryway, surrounded by soaring Redwoods, amid glints of sunlight bouncing off the glass façade of the Metreon mall, it is difficult not to feel there is something subversive underway. With all the showgirl trimmings the women perform with ballroom elegance. Out of necessity they navigate the complexities of the rock garden with radiating confidence and grace. Reflecting on the disconnect between the women’s sparkling demeanors and the challenges of performing intricate and precise footwork atop a rock, one feels the delta between appearances and reality. Questions of authenticity, colonization, cultural heritage, and assimilation rise, while all the time red skirts swirl, and shoulders shimmy. The partner dancing of Damasceno and Santana is stupendous. Hip to hip they twist and turn, feet weaving in and out in syncopated rhythms.
PUSH Dance Company’s jazz-infused contemporary dance quintet Stardust features principal choreographer Ashley Gayle and her collaborators Jeremy Brooks, Ethan Clyde Dennis, Erik K. Raymond Lee, and Jeremie Secrease. This heartfelt and spiritual piece is aptly set in front of the Martin Luther King Memorial Fountain and performed to songs by Afrobeat jazz band Kokoroko whose unique sound draws from the Highlife music of the 1960s and 70s.
Rituals of wide-armed blessings to the water, prayerful clasped hands, and palms held to hearts resound. A quaking communicates the vibration of emotion. In the lifts of an individual and the groups’ leaps we experience the caring for and exaltation of brethren. Bodies curve inward in contraction and then expand to linear full-bodied diagonals, as the dancers navigate both emotional highs and lows.
The site-specific performances of Program A highlight the spectacular strength, diversity, and vibrancy of the Bay Area contemporary dance scene. Saturday, August 1, four additional companies: La Mezcla, David Herrera Performance Company, Ishami Dance Company, and A. Spearman & Co., will premiere work in a second weekend of admission-free outdoor dance presented by Yerba Buena Gardens Festival.
Review by Jen Norris, published July 27, 2026.
___________________________________
Production Notes
YB Choreofest 2026 Program A - July 25, 2026
Yeni Lucero & Dancers
The Becoming of QAVAH
Location: Jessie Square
Choreographer: Yeni Lucero
Performers: Mecca Boutte, Mika Lemoine, Amayah Lucero Akintunde
Music: The Unspeakable World - Adi Goldstein feat. Alan Watts God Particle - Hans Zimmer Obsidian - Judah Earl & Boda Berghain - ROSALÍA, Björk & Yves Tumor About Time - Sabrina Claudio Mörda By Mörda (Louie Vega Original Version Remix) - MÖRDA & Louie Vega
Sound Design Mixed and Mastered: Yeni Lucero
Sharp & Fine
Will the Wind Come
Location: Crepe Myrtle Garden
Choreographers: Megan & Shannon Kurashige - Choreography created in collaboration with the performers
Performers: Eric Avery, Charmaine Butcher, Molly Levy
Music: New composition by Jordan Glenn
BrasArte
Tupi or Not
Location: Reflection Pond
Choreographer: Tainah Damasceno in collaboration with the dancers
Performers: Tainah Damasceno, Carmen Del Valle, Nadiah Qabazard, Jaguaray Santana
Music: Medley of Brazilian Classic Sambas
PUSH Dance Company
Stardust
Location: Martin Luther King Memorial Waterfall
Choreographer: Ashley Gayle in collaboration with the dancers
Performers: Jeremy Brooks, Ethan Clyde Dennis, Ashley Gayle, Erik K. Raymond Lee, Jeremie Secrease
Music: Mixed by Ashley Gayle - Ti-de by Kokoroko, The Ocean by Anchorsong - Bookend, Adwa by Kokoroko
Comments