ODC/Dance presents Summer Performance Series: SUMMER SAMPLER, 7/27-29

ODC/Dance, San Francisco's world class contemporary dance company, presents its annual summer event, Summer Sampler, July 27-29, 2017. The three-night series gives audiences a chance to experience the dynamic ODC dancers up close in the company's intimate Mission District theater on the ODC Campus.

This year's Summer Sampler ups the ante from previous years and presents two brand new works, in addition to a remount of ODC Founder and Artistic Director Brenda Way's 1978 work, Format II. ODC Co- Artistic Director KT Nelson collaborates with Korean choreographer Na Hoon Park on a world premiere for three ODC dancers. The two choreographers met while Nelson was traveling to Korea under the aegis of America Abroad. Park is a director, choreographer, performer and lecturer at SungKyunKwan University in Seoul, Associate Director for Singapore's ODT Company, and Director of Park Nahoon Dance.

Choreographer Kimi Okada explores the different ways we cope in a world premiere of a quartet entitled Head in the Sand. Drawing from personal experience dealing with bad news and challenging times, she delves into our mechanisms for carrying on, from denial to humor. ODC Founder and Artistic Director Brenda Way refigures her 1978 work, Format II.

The work is part of a series of six improvisational music scores written by her Oberlin colleague, composer Randolph Coleman, which Way transposed to dance over a period of eight years. She explored the elegance of mathematical sequences realized in movement, the drama of improvising to set variables against the constraint of a ticking stopwatch, and the unexpected and often humorous dancer interaction with a massive staircase designed by sculptor Athena Tacha. In Format II, Way asks the dancers to interpret the score by responding to the symbols (musical, pictorial and free floating notes) within strict time constraints and in an order determined nightly by a timekeeper.

A film of Way's Format V, featuring several of the original ODC dancers, will also screen in the lobby of ODC Theater. The choreographers and artists will be on hand after the performances to raise a glass to art and summer. For more information visit www.odc.dance/summersampler.