Tere O'Connor Dance visits ODC Theater in November

ODC Theater is proud to present Tere O'Connor Dance in the West Coast premiere of Long Run. Performances run November 14 - 16, Thursday to Saturday at 8 p.m. Tickets are $15 - $30, and may be purchased online at odc.dance/tickets or by phone at 415-863-9834.

One of the foremost choreographers of our day, O'Connor has created more than 40 works for his company, touring throughout the United States, Europe, South America and Canada. He has also created numerous commissions including works for Mikhail Baryshnikov, Jean Butler, the Lyon Opera Ballet and White Oak Dance Project. His many honors include a 2013 Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, three Bessies, a 2009 United States Artist Rockefeller Fellowship and a 1999 Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2014 he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

O'Connor's Long Run (2017) is a major work which, said the choreographer, "pushes the emotional content of my movement to new physical extremes, allowing time-based elements like polyrhythms, velocity and duration to become critical forces, overtaking the eight performers as they struggle to bring their bodies into a state of calm." O'Connor's dancers next month include Simon Courchel, Eleanor Hullihan, Emma Judkins, Heather Olson, Silas Riener, Matthew Rogers, Lee Serle and Jin Ju Song-Begin.

"For O'Connor, dance is not a form of translation, but rather detached from language, a system with its own properties, a non-specific emergence," said ODC Theater Director Julie Potter. "His choreography conjures a subterranean force of dance, offering a river of images."

Among his collaborators on Long Run are costume designer Strauss Bourque-Lafrance and lighting designer Michael O'Connor. Notably, Long Run is O'Connor's first work to date for which he composed all of the original music, but in keeping with his longstanding practice, the process of music composition occurred after the choreography was complete. "My dance is not there to decorate the music," quipped O'Connor.

Following the performance on Friday, November 15, ODC Writer in Residence Sima Belmar will moderate a conversation with O'Connor. The following day from 11 a.m. - 12:30 p.m., as part of the ODC Theater Institute, O'Connor and Riener will teach a dance workshop at the Theater based on the composition of a solo featured in Long Run. Participation in the workshop is free; to register contact theater@odc.dance. That same day, at 6:30 p.m., Potter will present a preview of ODC Theater's 2020 Season as tickets for next year go on sale.

Long Run was co-commissioned by Live Arts Bard at the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College through a Choreographic Fellowship with lead support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and NYU Skirball. This presentation of Long Run is made possible by The New England Foundation for the Arts' National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and The Cultural Development Fund. Additional funding is provided by the New York State Council on the Arts, The National Endowment for the Arts' Art Works Grant, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the Marta Heflin Foundation, the Harkness Foundation, and the research fund from University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. The development of Long Run was made possible in part by the National Center for Choreography at The University of Akron.

For more information, visit odc.dance/LongRun.

Photo credit: Ben McKeown