Golden Season – Dance

Amy O’Neal

Dancer Amy O'neal at Bathtub Gin, a tucked away, tiny speakeasy in Belltown. Photo by Janae Jones.

Amy O’Neal dances with a ferocious intensity that demands her audience to stop and look, and maybe hold its breath a little bit. Her every movement is powerful, controlled, determined— a little hip-hop and a lot modern, with a precision gained through many years of training.

O’Neal’s focus and style have made her a mainstay in Seattle’s vibrant dance scene for years. She has performed solo and with numerous companies on stages citywide (and as far beyond as Tokyo). Last year she splashed onto the Internet as the lead dancer and choreographer in Reggie Watts’ “Fuck Shit Stack” video.

In February, O’Neal curated The Lowdown: An Unexpected Night of Seattle Dance at the Moore Theatre. Performing in her latest incarnation, a new company called Amy O/ tinyrage, O’Neal put together an evening that was built like a rock show and premiered a new work featuring an all-star cast of dancers alongside dubstep DJ PotatoFinger.

This fall O’Neal will perform as part of Genre-Bender at Heineken City Arts Fest, collaborating will filmmaker Wes Hurley in a piece that explores tragic humor and personae. As part of her 2011 choreographic residency at Velocity Dance Center, she will also present her latest explorations of the modern warrior, the operatic diva, the gladiator booty dancer.

“I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about how I move and how I teach,” O’Neal says. “I want to be able to dance forever.”

Kathleen Hermesdorf of San Francisco’s La Alternativa—one of O’Neal’s “dance heroes”— will visit Seattle in October, teaching a week-long series of classes at Velocity that culminates in a performance by both Hermesdorf and O’Neal. Both women will perform a solo (Hermesdorf’s is an excerpt from Tiger, Tiger) and they will share the floor for a duet created during that week together at Velocity.

Says O'Neal, “It’s about really being larger than life and not cowering away from it.” LEAH BALTUS

Oct. 28 & 29 » Velocity Dance Center Oct. 21 » Heineken City Arts Fest

Merce Cunningham Dance Company

Avant-garde choreographer Merce Cunningham changed dance forever, creating some 200 dances and more than 800 site-specific works in a career that spanned seven decades and ended with his death two years ago.

Born in Centralia, Cunningham was discovered by renowned choreographer Martha Graham in the late 1930s in a class at Cornish. After performing for years as a soloist (during which he began his lifelong partnership with composer John Cage), Cunningham started the Merce Cunningham Dance Company—which is now on tour for the very last time.

The dancers on the Legacy Tour are strong and intense, infusing their performance with energy visible in stiffly held limbs and powerful extensions. Their movement reveals the

choreographer himself—an iconoclast who broke from narrative-driven modern dance to explore abstract movement inspired by technology and philosophy. Still, his pieces contain the grace of underlying technique—pointed toes, turned out legs, centered torsos.

Cunningham believed music and dance can inhabit the same time and space, but should be created separately. His company’s dancers often didn’t hear the music for their performance until the night of the show.

Per the choreographer’s wishes, the company will disband after this tour and Cunningham’s works will pass on to a custodial trust, which will allow future generations to study and perform them. RACHEL GALLAHER

Oct. 27 & 29 » The Paramount Theatre

zoe | juniper

Juniper Shuey and Zoe Scofield started out 2011 by stunning the judges at on the board’s the A.W.A.R.D.S Show! with a short excerpt of a new work that ended with two nude dancers barking at each other. the husband-and-wife team will end the year by revealing the rest of the story, performing the full-length piece, A Crack in Everything.

Video installation artist and photographer Shuey met dancer and choreographer Scofield at bumbershoot in 2003. the couple first collaborated on a piece called I am nothing without you for the 2005 Northwest New Works Festival, also at OtB (one of this year’s Mayor’s Arts Awards winners). their collaborative debut has since led to commissions from Spectrum Dance theater, the Frye Art Museum, ten tiny Dances and, most recently, a princess grace award for choreography.

A Crack in Everything is the culmination of two years' work. It examines a non-linear relationship to time and memory, ideas Scofield manifests through slow motion, heavy repetition and reverse movement. there is a “fog of meaning that permeates the work and comes off of it,” Scofield says.

A Crack in Everything premiered at the prestigious Jacob’s pillow Dance Festival in the berkshires in July. Scofield says the work has changed substantially since January's preview at OtB.

“The underlying blood or cellular level is very similar," she says.

"I think that art is sort of a living breathing thing. When you are making work it’s not necessarily a static object.” RACHEL GALLAHER

Dec. 1–4 » On the Boards

All Wheeldon

PNB principal dancer Carla Körbes with company dancers in Wheeldon’s Carousel (A Dance). Photo by Angela Sterling.

“A choreographer is only as good as his dancers,” contemporary dance-maker Christopher Wheeldon once said, “and a ballet only comes out as something special if the dancers are invested in more than just the steps.”

The dancers at Pacific Northwest Ballet will prove their investment this season in a moving, theatrical, occasionally funny performance of four works from the Wheeldon repertoire. The PNB bill features Carousel (A Dance), an homage to Broadway that retells the classic love story, and After the Rain pas de deux, a sensual duet danced sans pointe shoes.

At 38 years old, Wheeldon is often touted alongside masters like George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins (for whom he danced at New York City Ballet) and has been called one of the greatest choreographers of his generation. His work has classical roots: He pays close attention to line, highlighting limbs and torso shape, and emphasizes strong legwork (jumps, leaps, extensions). His pieces are often dramatic and abstract, with a focus on movement rather than story.

The British-born Wheeldon started classical ballet training at a young age, eventually dancing with London’s Royal Ballet and the NYCB. In 2001, he began choreographing for the NYCB, retiring three years later to become the company’s first artist-in-residence, a position he held for seven years.

This sampler will woo you with its effortless intimacy and contagious spirit. RACHEL GALLAHER

Sept. 23 through Oct. 2 » Pacific Northwest Ballet