Bay Area Shorts Program

During a time of isolation and restraint, the need for human connection has only grown stronger. Technology can only bring us so close, but nothing can compare to physical touch.

Turfing is an Oakland-born dance form that combines roots in gang culture with elements of tutting, gliding, and bone-breaking.

A young girl watches her mother perform onstage as her imagination runs wild.

Before and after another sweet life enters this world.

The original choreography for “Barrer/let’s sweep” was a duet inspired by Afro-Peruvian artist Victoria Santa Cruz’s song “Hay que barrer”.

GOLDEN is a wordless screen-dance in which a woman discovers, after years of domestic life, that her independence, intellectual curiosity, and sexual vibrancy are as powerful as ever. In dream-like sequences, she encounters the self she has been and the self that she can become.

Shot in Pacifica, Calif., to the backdrop of the Pacific Ocean, Pacifica is a short film of 8 dancers exploring community-centered movement, emotive expression, and the spiritual elements of dance.

“Another Sky” follows one woman’s journey from static confinement to life more momentous. Floating between the feminine nature and the manufactured environment, “Another Sky” explores fluidity and restrictions using choreography and the visual frame.

A beautiful girl goes to work in her beautiful outfit and high heels working for hours and hours until she gets overwhelmed by paperwork and falls asleep on it. She dreams of being in a gorgeous green environment where all she has is the freedom to move freely and joy herself.

Lotus Dickey wrote The Storm, adapted and arranged here by Evie Ladin for her all-female Body Music Moving Choir – MoToR/dance. Filmed and edited by Chafic Saad & Kris Lee of Kind Motion at the Albany Bulb, California – a public land rich with folk art and abandoned ad repurposed spaces.

Starring San Francisco Ballet principal dancer, Angelo Greco

Lyra is the result of a deeply collaborative, multi-perspective process rooted in the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.

Oakland, California natives KrowtheGod and SnooptheShooter collaborate with a fellow Bay Area native and dancer @dooli-J. The trio masterfully creates Contention, an emotion-stirring production that details struggle.

‘Portrait’ is a cinematic adaptation of choreographer Dana Genshaft’s ballet of the same name, which premiered at San Francisco’s ODC Theater in 2016.

Directed, filmed, and performed by Connor Alhart, “Lovely” is an experimental film that uses modern dance techniques and elements of contact improvisation. The film tells a simple story of what it feels like to look into the mirror can not recognize the person looking back.

We Sleep No More is a “power wheelchair ballet” directed and set to original music by Carina Ho, who also performs music under the moniker ONIKHO.

Imagination is set adrift among cityscapes and clouds in this film that combines dance, animation and time-lapse photography.

A young woman is stranded in a desert.

Choreographer laura e. ellis in collaboration with the artists of Dimensions Dance Theater and MIJIS Productions; exploring through body memory and physical expression: resilience, grief, loss, hope in being… black, woman, mother, child. 

The Bates Dance Festival community and disciples of Albert Mathias’ music join together with big dancing and big heart in this uplifting music video.