ODC puts politics into 'For the Record' dance
Rachel Howard, Chronicle Dance Correspondent

Monday, April 28, 2008

One of our city's most important dance spaces, ODC Theater, is closed for a major rebuild this year, but director Rob Bailis isn't sitting idle. He's teamed with the historically beleaguered, heroically persevering management of Project Artaud Theater just a few blocks away in the Mission for an ambitious series of festivals.

"For the Record," which opened last weekend, will be followed by "Local Heroes/Big Picture" in June and July, and "Off Book: Stories That Move," a partnership with the wildly popular local literary festival Litquake, in October. In the meantime, "For the Record: Dancers Debate the Body Politic" unfolds in phases, too: Legendary local rabble-rouser Sara Shelton Mann will unveil the full triptych of her "Inspirare" next weekend, and homegrown choreographer Miguel Gutierrez returns from a burgeoning international career with two works about the intersection of politics and the body the weekend after.

Body eclectic
He is Miguel Gutierrez -- and he will challenge you
BY RITA FELCIANO, Wednesday May 14, 2008
When Miguel Gutierrez left the Joe Goode Company in 1996, he was a hot dancer. He returned to the Bay Area a mature artist. In Retrospective Exhibitionist and Difficult Bodies, part of ODC Theater's recent "For the Record: Dancers Debate the Body Politic" at Project Artaud Theater, Gutierrez worked at breaking down the invisible divide between performer and audience. Granted, this idea has been tried before — but few have taken it as far, or developed it as consistently, as Gutierrez has done. The result was an evening of dance theater that at times pushed beyond what I can stomach but nevertheless left me full of admiration for the skill with which he works the material and the audience.