Sheetal Gandhi at last year's Commuter Festival at CalArts.
The Fourth Annual Commuter Dance Festival takes over The Sharon Disney Lund Dance Theater at CalArts tonight and tomorrow (Oct. 7-8), featuring LA-based choreographers and companies: Catch Me Bird, Helios Dance Theater, Keith Johnson/Dancers and Luminario Ballet of Los Angeles.
Each of the performers brings different styles of dance to the stage. C. Derrick Jones and Nehara Kalev of Catch Me Bird experiment with contemporary dance, improvisation and aerial arts. Helios Dance Theater, led by Laura Gorenstein Miller, creates material with emotional content, storytelling and “movement invention.” Choreographer Keith Johnson explores momentum and how the ability to direct and re-direct it at any given time has a “motional and emotional effect on both the performer and audience.” And finally, Luminario Ballet–formed in 2008 by Judith Flex Helle and Charles Evans Jr.–brings contemporary ballet into focus.
CalArts encourages the exchange of creative processes among local educational and professional dance communities, so the “commuter” festival concept was developed to present works by regional choreographers while exposing the CalArts community to the working artists in the area, and vice versa.
Commuter Dance Festival
The Sharon Disney Lund Dance Theater
Thursday and Friday, Oct. 7 and 8
8 pm
Reserve tickets