ODD: source of inspiration

Odd Nerdrums paintings have been the inspiration for "ODD" ever since the beginning of the project. We feel that seeing Odd Nerdrums paintings prior to the show can be enriching for your experience as an audience member.

We therefore invite you to explore his paintings online at nerdruminstitute.com as well as looking at the photos taken during our performance at ODC last week : pakhan.com

"ODD": Nov 12, 13 @8pm, Nov 14 @2pm
Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts, Oakland, CA
painting: Odd Nerdrum
photo: Michelle Clement

One Down, ODD to go...

What an incredible weekend at ODC!


The recently refurbished ODC Theater is a beautiful space that allowed the wonderfully articulated movement of the dancers to resonate alongside dynamic live composition by Jean Jeanrenaud and Dohee Lee. I have been given the great privilege to perform alongside the company as a guest dancer. Being both physically and strategically involved with this year’s home season has given me a new burst of passion for dance. ODD is beautiful, hypnotizing and pulls you into the paintings of Odd Nerdrum. David Molesky, a San Franciscan based artist who apprenticed with Odd, will be painting his own impression of the choreography this coming weekend at The Malonga, needless to say I am looking forward to seeing the final product!
I am also looking forward to celebrating at the after party, especially if it’s anywhere near as good as last week, plus I won’t have to wait for BART home!


I’ve been continuing my adventures of the Bay and beyond. Last night I took my first ever Brazilian dance class, have been enjoying weekend brunches at the great cafes around, San Francisco sightseeing up Coit Tower and I have a trip planned with friends to Monterey Bay next weekend. Yes I will go to the aquarium!


Being over half way through my internship I’ve begun thinking of what’s next? Maybe what’s next for you is taking my place in the AXIS office- the pink pilates ball I’ve been sitting on will be lonely otherwise! AXIS is looking for applications for the Winter internship beginning January 2011, so if you enjoy working in a fast-moving environment and a laugh a day then give us a call!

A quick thought on what makes us a dancer!

During my time in the US I’ve been asked many many times “are you a dancer?”
My answer: “We all move in our own unique way and exude a personal spirit through our movement. A job, a style or payment does not define us as a dancer and being a dancer does not define who we are. We are all dancers as everybody dances- don’t pretend you don’t move around your bedroom now and again!”

ODD Notes and provoked musings……

by AXIS board member Chuck McAvoy

I was able to attend the two opening performances (Friday and Saturday) of ODD at the ODC Theater in San Francisco. I was able to talk to a few folks after the performance Friday night. It was interesting that about 50% of the audience on Friday were SF State dance students. Only one person had ever heard of AXIS and most were at the performance as part of a class they were taking. All had high praise for the performance and were very interested in how ODD was developed.

On Saturday I spoke to a couple who attended because they were fans of Shinichi Iova-Koga. They said they always try to see work done by Shinichi because it was always a surprise. The couple were both dancers and they really liked ODD. They were especially impressed by the integration of inkBoat and AXIS. They had never seen AXIS before and were stirred by the performance.

I was stimulated by the performance of ODD. I had unexpected emotions and felt at some points sad and at other points uncomfortable. The piece is powerful… The integration of AXIS and inkBoat was done well and the dancers combined to paint a compelling picture.

I was particularly impressed by the musical accompaniment by cellist Joan Jeanrenaud and the multi instrumental Dohee Lee. They brought an almost magical sound and feeling to the overall mood of ODD.

I plan on seeing ODD at least two more times at the Malonga Center this weekend. And I hope to see this piece as AXIS performs it while touring. In my opinion this is one of the best works of AXIS Dance Company.

Chuck

SF Chronicle: ODC Theater gets jump on butoh with 'ODD'

By Allan Ulrich (photo by Pak Han)


Welcome to the wide, wonderful, wacky, sometimes wearying world of butoh. This school of expressionist dance theater spawned in Japan after the horrors of World War II will be much with us the next couple of weeks. The style's most peripatetic practitioners, the Sankai Juku company, will visit the Bay Area through Sunday, while films of Kazuo Ohno, butoh's peerless pioneer, will be screened at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

However, ODC Theater got the jump on the rest of the pack Friday evening with its premiere of an unusual, unprecedented collaboration. "ODD," inspired by the Norwegian figurative painter, Odd Nerdrum, united Shinichi Iova-Koga's inkBoat collaborative with Oakland's Axis Dance Company, which integrates able and disabled performers. In the past, the troupe has commissioned pieces from dance world heavy hitters like Bill T. Jones and Joe Goode, but rarely has it been tested as in this unbroken, 75-minute opus. And rarely has it emerged with such stunning results.

The lexicon of butoh inclines to graduated movement delivered by supple, contorted bodies and often articulated at a glacial pace, frequently approaching stasis, not surprising from a country that suffered nuclear attack. The apocalyptic mood yields the gaping mouths and confrontational gazes appropriated from Edvard Munch. Choreographer Iova-Koga has worked brilliantly with Axis, smoothly deploying wheelchair-bound Alice Shepherd and Rodney Bell, who, near the start, delivers an ominous monologue about guns. Long-time Axis fans who have come to expect Bell's duetting with diminutive Sansherée Giles will not be disappointed.

Iova-Koga strives to vary the pace and patterning. He fills the performance space with processions, unisons and solo outings. He smoothly blends his dancers and those from Axis, and, in the finale, he sets 19 barefoot dancers whirling, shuffling and hopping manically across the field of vision. The individual personalities of the inkBoat performers also come through, notably in a playful (everything is relative) duet for Yuko K and Peiling Kao.

Iova-Koga expertly mines the dark vein of absurdist humor that infiltrates butoh. His opening monologue describing Nerdrum's style (a projection of a painting might have helped) concludes with a physical feat that left this observer gasping. The recounting of a hilarious anecdote about John Lennon and Paul McCartney almost passes without notice.

The danger in butoh performance lies in treading a thin line between sustaining a vocabulary that depends on a high degree of physical rigor and permitting the stylization to slip into mannerism. Iova-Koga never crosses that frontier, though a bit of editing might improve the piece.

"ODD," which transfers to Oakland next weekend, arrives with an impressive team of collaborators. Cellist Joan Jeanrenaud, a frequent participant in Axis' ventures, contributed an effective score performed live and amplified. Seated on an elevated platform, Jeanrenaud alternates contemplative passages with discordant episodes. The versatile Dohee Lee supplies percussive interludes, some barely perceptible, others painfully resonant, and wordless chants which suggest rumblings in the soul. Heather Barsarab's lighting does the job magnificently.

ODD: Axis Dance Company and inkBoat. Through Sun. Malonga Casquelord Center for the Arts, 428 Alice St., Oakland. $10-$22. (800) 838-3006. www.brownpapertickets.com.

E-mail Allan Ulrich at datebookletters@sfchronicle.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/11/08/DD951G899C.DTL

This article appeared on page E - 2 of the San Francisco Chronicle