San Francisco Movement Arts Festival - for change dance collective

The San Francisco Movement Arts Festival is a mere six weeks away, arriving at Grace Cathedral with its Stations of the Movement program on Friday, January 25th. As it approaches, we are continuing our blog series highlighting just a few of the many SFMAF choreographers/companies/dance artists. This month, we caught up with Claire Calalo, Artistic Director of for change dance collective.

Pictured: for change dance collective
Photo: Douglas Calalo Berry of DVB Photo

Founded by Calalo, Jessica de Leon and Lauren Baines, for change has been a part of the Bay Area dance ecology for close to a decade. Back in 2010, Calalo, de Leon and Baines found themselves craving a different kind of creative/artistic outlet. They knew that they wanted to work together to create performance with a social justice lens. But to do that, to shed light on issues like inequality and entrenched systems, the traditional dance company format felt like a mismatch. “Hierarchical, authoritarian pedagogy didn’t fit with the subject matter we wanted to explore,” Calalo explains, “we wanted a highly collaborative environment where all present have shared and equal ownership over the work, where everyone is invited to contribute choreography and movement.” To that end, they formed for change dance collective with the goal of living into this process of “democratic dancemaking.” And the pursuit has been a fruitful success; the collective has been quite busy since those early days. They have presented three home seasons over eight years, the most recent entitled At Night, We Go Inside To Sleep this past October at Dance Mission Theater. In addition to these full-length evening endeavors, for change has also dipped their toe into the thriving Bay Area dance festival circuit with several different appearances including, of course, at the San Francisco Movement Arts Festival.

for change dance collective is one of SFMAF’s veteran companies having participated in all three past Stations of the Movement, and being slated for 2019’s edition as well. In the first year, they brought work that had been a part of a recent program; in 2017, an excerpt of a piece that had been created for SAFEhouse Arts’ West Wave Dance Festival; and last year, gave audiences a preview glimpse into what was percolating for the collective’s upcoming home season. Being different works, each had their own payoffs and surprises; challenges and lessons, but they did share something in common. All provided the opportunity to take a deep dive into the site-specific process. “Adapting the work to the space and responding to the environment in a site specific way, the excerpts inevitably change,” Calalo describes, “they become less like an excerpt from a larger idea and more like a dedicated, new experience.” for change has also been fortunate to be able to dig into this site-specific philosophy throughout the cathedral. Every year, they have been part of a different station – the Station Behind the Main Altar, Station in Front of the Nativity Chapel and Grace Chapel.

Pictured: for change dance collective
Photo: Douglas Calalo Berry of DVB Photo

The trend continues this year as the group will be part of yet another station, the Station by the Glass Doors, directly to the left of the cathedral’s central pulpit. Certainly a dramatic backdrop to frame for change’s dramatic 2019 offering. They will be revisiting a section from their recent home season at Dance Mission, the result of their years-long collaboration with Teatro Catalina, a non-profit organization that provides arts education in rural Nicaragua. “Our collaborative project with Teatro has been all about taking stories of survival and resilience and translating them into a theatrical container,” relays Calalo. October’s home season featured a series of multi-layered vignettes, and for SFMAF, they will be bringing one of these penetrating stories, a narrative that centers on motherhood, endurance, instinct and perseverance. Primarily a solo (though other performers will join the scene from time to time) danced by for change collective member and mother of three Ruth Perez, the choreography mines gesture and modern genre physical vocabulary, with lots of floorwork and release technique influences. And like most of for change’s work, spoken text is incorporated, which in this case, was recorded by the woman who inspired the piece, Dona Catalina. But with the Station by the Glass Doors being one of spaces without recorded sound, for change is playing around with the idea of having someone come in and speak the accompanying monologue. Be sure to come by on January 25^th and check out the final iteration devised for SFMAF.

Finally, we came to the question being posed to all the SFMAF artists we are talking to ahead of this year’s festival: why do you keep coming back year after year to perform at this event? Like Lissa Resnick of No Strings Attached Dance Company, Calalo had a number of thoughts. First, she credited producer James Tobin’s advocacy for local dance, “we’ve known Jim for a long time through the dance community; he’s always been such a strong supporter of dance, but equally of dancers, dancemakers and dance artists.” Second she extolled SFMAF’s distinct qualities. “I can’t think of another festival that is like SFMAF, it is so unique,” she says, “it gives the audience this great opportunity to see a lot of work at the same time and also challenges them to make decisions.” And lastly she spoke of how SFMAF facilitates new connections for each participating artist. “Not only do we get to see what other people are doing, but we also get to grow our audience and show our work to more people,” Calalo adds, “our goal at for change is to convey the human experience through storytelling and movement; we want to connect with people, create material that folks can relate to and maybe even acquaint them with a new perspective.” 

To learn more about for change dance collective, please visit: https://forchangedance.org/