Dana Genshaft, SFDanceworks artistic director since 2021, is keeping the company focused on its mission to present the past, present and future of world-class contemporary dance in a mixed repertory format.
“We lean into pulling work from the past, so, work with a historical perspective, and we will often dig up modern or contemporary dance classics that were foundational or influential building blocks for the work being created today,” Genshaft says. “We also commission and license work by leaders in the field and do what we can to identify voices we feel have potential to become leaders in the future.”
Founded in 2014, the troupe’s Season Eight program on July 10-12 at Z Space in San Francisco emphasizes present and future. It includes a world premiere by Aidan Carberry and Jordon Johnson (known as the JA Collective); the North American premiere and Bay Area debut of Emma Portner’s “elephant”; and the Bay Area premiere of Yue Yin’s “A Measurable Existence.”
Genshaft says of the choreographers: “They are artists who, even though they haven’t been making work for a long time, have been influential and have been changing the landscape of what we think of as contemporary dance.”
Los Angeles-based Carberry and Johnson, who trained under the forward-looking William Forsythe—known for integrating ballet and visual arts—make dances for pop music videos. A trio they created and danced in their SFDanceworks’ debut last fall impressed Genshaft.
“They were just so fresh and dynamic that I felt like we didn’t want to wait too long to bring them back because they were just on such a steep inclination,” she recalls. “It’s a trajectory in their career that I felt like the sooner we get working with them, the better.”
JA Collective’s unnamed upcoming premiere is a quintet for company veterans Isaac Bates-Vinueza, Sarah Chou, Emily Hansel, Lani Yamanaka and, in his company debut, Ja’Moon Jones.
Genshaft says that working with two choreographers may be new and demanding for the dancers.
“They’re very sincere in their effort to create an environment that’s positive, productive and thoughtful for the people they work with, knowing that they’re going to be pushing them very hard because their language is new to our artists — they’re not used to moving that way,” she explains. “It takes a lot of brain power to assimilate the detail of the choreography and the speed.”
With electronic music by Daniel Mangiaracino, lighting by San Francisco Ballet’s James French and costumes by Brett Conway, the piece is a fusion-style work that Genshaft says, “feels really American and of the moment, with hip hop and commercial dance.”
Portner’s “elephant,” a duet that premiered at Copenhagen’s Kammerballeten in 2024, was made in the wake of her 2023 diagnosis of trigeminal neuralgia, a painful and sometimes debilitating condition. That experience prompted Portner to ask whether a dance that “doesn’t hurt” is possible. In San Francisco, Portner will partner with Conway in the piece, which is set to music arranged by Alexander McKenzie that moves between very quiet and intense.
“There’s something deeply moving about the work and its intentionality, like, where is it going and what’s making her move or what’s her thinking on steps,” Genshaft says. “When I watch her work, I feel moved by what she’s doing, and there’s depth and vulnerability behind her work.”
Yin, founder and artistic director of New York’s YY Dance Company, returns to the Bay Area with the local debut of “A Measurable Existence,” which blends Chinese folk and contemporary dance, and features Bates-Vinueza and frequent YYDC collaborator Nat Wilson.
Set to music by Rutger Zuydervelt, the duet, Yin says, expresses how humans’ existence is often measured, remembered, shared and felt by their interactions with space, time and each other. Notably, she created the work in 2020 during the pandemic, a difficult time for personal interactions.
“I would liken Yin’s style to a force of nature—it moves and eats up space in this really organic way that’s rooted in the earth,” Genshaft says. “It’s physically challenging in that she asks the dancers to dance to their full capacity and use all the momentum they have in their body to achieve these movements.”
SFDanceworks Season Eight performances are at 7:30 p.m. July 10-12 at Z Space, 450 Florida St., San Francisco. For tickets ($45-$120) visit zspace.org.
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