Season 7
November 7th-10th, 2024
Z Space
SFDanceworks hit the stage at Z Space for the first time in our INAUGURAL autumn season with a captivating mixed repertory format, sfdw showcased two world premieres, a west coast premiere, new collaborations and groundbreaking performances set in the round. With so many firsts, Season 7 was full of artistic exploration and creative risk.
Rena Butler's World Premiere: Featuring the ethereal voices of the Young Women’s Choral Projects, led by Matthew Otto. Lighting design by Jim French.
JA Collective World Premiere: A world premiere by co-choreographers Jordan Johnson and Aidan Carberry, who first met at the Kaufman School, where they forged their ongoing partnership. Mentored by William Forsythe, JA Collective earned its reputation in commercial dance projects and is now branching out into concert dance. We are thrilled to support their artistic growth and development. Jordan and Aidan also performed in their work, showcasing their charisma as performers.
Marco Goecke's Acclaimed Solo, Äffi: SFDW was thrilled to present a highly acclaimed solo by Marco Goecke, a choreographer long established in Europe for his unmistakably unique movement vocabulary. In a highlight that was mesmerizing, Rena Butler made a much-anticipated return to the stage in the stamina-testing eleven-minute solo, set to music by Johnny Cash.
Season 7 also welcomed the return of our esteemed long-time collaborators: the masterful Jim French on lighting, and dynamic dance artists Emily Hansel, Lani Yamanaka, Sarah Chou and Isaac Bates-Vinueza. Adding to the excitement, we were thrilled to introduce two stellar new dancers from NYC, Chris Bloom and Gabrielle Sprauve, who contributed their exceptional talents to Rena's creation.
Rena Butler
Sheep’s Gothic
World Premiere
In collaboration with The Young Women’s Choral Projects of San Francisco
Rena Butler hails from Chicago, IL. She began her studies at The Chicago Academy for the Arts, studied overseas at Taipei National University of the Arts in Taiwan, and received her BFA from SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Dance. Rena danced with companies including Hubbard Street Dance Chicago (also a choreographic fellow), AIM by Kyle Abraham, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, David Dorfman Dance, Manuel Vignoulle/M-Motions, The Kevin Wynn Collection, Pasos Con Sabor Salsa Dance Company, among many others. She most recently danced with Gibney Company and was their inaugural Choreographic Associate.
She is a recipient of the prestigious 2019 Princess Grace Foundation Award for Choreography and created works for the National Ballet of Canada, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Parsons Dance, Charlotte Ballet, Boston Dance Theater, Ballet X, Oregon Ballet Theater, Oklahoma City Ballet, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Parsons Dance Company, Pony Box Dance Theater, AIM by Kyle Abraham, Whim W'Him, Norrdans, San Francisco Opera’s Orpheus and Euridice, The New Orleans Museum of Modern Art in collaboration with Academy Award-Winning jazz composer, Terrence Blanchard, CHTV Stories television program in Switzerland, a film portrait for Third Coast Percussion x Devonté Hynes/Blood Orange, The Young Choreographer’s Festival in NYC, The Juilliard School, Jacob's Pillow Contemporary Summer Program, The Ailey/Fordham School, TEDxChicago Virtual Salon 3.0: Design Your Life, and more. She has been spotlighted in Dance Magazine’s On The Rise feature in 2013, and the featured cover story in Dance Magazine’s November 2021 issue.
Butler has taught dance and choreographic workshops at L’Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Danse de Marseille in France, The Macau Cultural Center in China, Ailey Camp Chicago, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Dance.
She served on the Consortium for Chicago Dancemakers Forum for 3 years, was on the annual panel for Black Girls Dance in Chicago, and co-created and directed DanceLab—a free, choreographic course for Chicago teens, empowering participants of varying socioeconomic backgrounds + identities to find commonality in creation. She currently serves on Dancewave’s Artistic Advisory Council in NYC.
JA Collective
impact III
World Premiere
"We are thrilled to be collaborating with SFDW. This whole process is significant for our creative journey, especially in that it is our first time premiering our work on a professional dance company in the concert scene. In doing this, it feels meaningful to go back to one of the first live works we ever made and redefine it for a more mature audience with more mature dancers. We are honored to share a space imbued with such rich history and vibrant energy. DanceWorks' open and exploratory environment inspires us, and we are excited to be a part of it. This opportunity will lead our art into new spaces literally and metaphorically.”
JA Collective is a creative collaboration between Los Angeles natives Jordan Johnson and Aidan Carberry. JA Collective was formed at University of Southern California when Jordan and Aidan found themselves drawn to making work together. Aidan’s strong background in various hip-hop forms and acting, plus Jordan’s contemporary and theater background lead to them developing a unique style together. They are known commercially for their work with the band half•alive for which they’ve made international touring shows, music videos, and tv performances. Also, they have collaborated commercially with Future, Frank Ocean, Taika Waititi, Mike Mills, Paul McCartney, Olivia Wilde, Shia Labeouf, and More. Aside from their commercial success, Jordan and Aidan have been traveling and performing in a new work of William Forsythe’s that they helped choreograph called “Friends Of Forsythe”. They have also been developing their own live performance works in Los Angeles and abroad. Through JA’s continual play in different realms of dance and multidisciplinary forms, they hope to challenge and positively impact the community around them.
Photo Credit: Skye Schmidt Varga
Marco Goecke
Äffi
West Coast Premiere
Marco Goecke completed his ballet training in 1988 at the Heinz-Bosl-Stiftung ballet academy in Munich as well as at the Royal Conservatoire of the Hague, where he received his diploma in 1995. Engagements followed at the Berlin State Opera and Theater Hagen. It was in the year 2000 at this theatre that Goecke created his first choreography, entitled Loch. There followed several choreographies for the Noverre-Society with dancers from the Stuttgart Ballet, and an invitation to the New York Choreographic Institute. In July 2003 Goecke won the Prix Dom Pérignon in Hamburg with the piece Blushing, danced by the Stuttgart Ballet. In the years that followed, he received numerous commissions for international companies such as Les Ballets de Monte Carlo, the Norwegian National Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet in Seattle and the Berlin State Ballet.
In the 2005/2006 season Marco Goecke was appointed Choreographer in Residence at the Stuttgart Ballet, and it was there in December 2006 that he created his first narrative ballet The Nutcracker, which was later also filmed for the ZDF theatre channel. From 2006 to 2012 Goecke also held the post of Choreographer in Residence at the Scapino Ballet in Rotterdam. Since the 2013/2014 season he has been Associate Choreographer at the renowned Nederlands Dans Theater. Between 2019 and 2023 he was Artist in Residence with Gauthier Dance Stuttgart and held the position as Artistic Director of the State Ballet Hannover.
Of the over ninety works Goecke has created in just a few years, many are also performed by companies for whom they were not originally created, for example in Tel Aviv, in Sao Paulo, by Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal, by the Canadian National Ballet, by the Ballett-Theater in Munich, by the Finnish National Ballet in Helsinki, by the Stanislavsky Theater in Moscow, by the Zurich Ballet, by the German Opera on the Rhine in Düsseldorf, and by the Vienna State Opera.
Goecke has received several international awards, including the Culture Prize of the State of Baden-Württemberg in 2005, the Nijinsky Award in Monte Carlo in 2006, the Choreographer of the Year in the critics’ survey by the magazine Tanz in 2015, and the Dutch dance prize Zwaan as well as the Italian prize Danzadanza for the best choreography of the year in 2017. This award was for the full-length work Nijinski, which he created in 2016 for Gauthier Dance in Stuttgart; since then it has been performed on worldwide tours to great success.
In 2022 he was awarded with the Jiří-Kylián-Ring and the German Dance Prize 2022.
The book Dark Matter (Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg), published in 2016, offers a concise overview of his oeuvre.
His most recent successful works include the full-length piece “A Wilde Story” based on the live and work of the author Oscar Wilde for the Staatsballett Hannover and “In The Dutch Mountains” for the Nederlands Dans Theater created in 2023.
From the season 2025/26 he will be Artistic Director and Resident Choreographer of the Ballet at Theatre Basel.
Photo Credit: Rahi Rezvani