Friday night dance shows are disadvantaged from the beginning: chatty crowds can find it hard to focus after the work week with the second act being the only thing keeping them from a cocktail. ODC, the local company that set up shop in San Francisco after arriving with a busload of dancers from Ohio’s Oberlin College in the ’70s, has worked around that problem. (It is also one of two American companies to join the State Department in a cross-cultural look at dance education in South Africa, according to The New York Times today.)
In staging its the second of its original spring 2010 programs at Yerba Buena, the 10 dancers under Brenda Way’s charge present simultaneously athletic and intentional performances that demanded audience attention. Despite neutral costumes, the playful choreography of “Something about a Nightingale” and the premiering “Labor of Love” is a perfect way to showcase the ability that has helped the company win tests of strength against Cal athletes in recent years. But the keynote of the program, “In the Memory of the Forest,” is most compelling with its video backdrop of dancers interacting in the forest as a live performance of the original score bounces and climbs. The very capable dancers’ imaginative approach reminds me of an observation of e.e. cummings’ poetry: it’s only when you know the rules of the craft well that you can break them.