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Home / Oddyssey Theatre

Six-week contemporary dance festival comes to Odyssey Theatre

Odyssey Theatre Ensemble returns with its annual six-week celebration of contemporary dance that has established the company’s unique “Dance at the Odyssey” festival, curated by series co-founder Barbara Mueller–Wittmann, as the go-to place to view new work by companies and choreographers.

The festival kicks off Jan. 12 with “We Are Destroying Ourselves: A Dance Wrecking,” choreographed by Rebecca Pappas. Over three evenings, an invited artist dismantles, remakes and shares a volume of “my body as the topic of coming around again” by choreographer Rebecca Pappas. “Open Dance Wreckings,” a pre-show starting 90 minutes before each performance, invites audiences to watch as a local artist dismantles and remakes one of Pappas’ dances in real time.

From Jan. 19 through Jan. 21, “Archetype” explores the commonalities between Carl Jung’s theories about archetypes in human behavior and the discography of Sinéad O’Connor. Director/choreographer Lily Chumas explores the various stages of life as she follows a central figure from pre-conception, to childhood, through adulthood and beyond in this redevelopment of her dance film, “Red Football.”

Next up from Jan. 26 through Jan. 28, Mexican dance company Punto de Inflexión, directed by Stephanie García, exposes feminine and deep human emotions in “downcast” (2021), dealing with the duality that inhabits human experience; “Incandescent,” a solo work about the complex imbalance life shows us from time to time; and “Abrirse el Cuerpo” (2022), a reflection on the ongoing creative investigation of gender violence and identities not aligned with the colonial project.

Punto de Inflexión. | Photo by Todd Collins

During the first weekend of February, Goblin Party performs in the world premiere of “Nomad,” directed and conceived by Hyoin Jun with choreography by Jun, Mizuki Sako and Tulsi Shah. In this new piece, an imaginative nomadic tribe travels, explores, and performs a way of living of their own way.

The following weekend, choreographer Azuki Umeda and seven dancers unravel an exploration of sounds that unify meaning in movement in “how i became kinder, and kinder.”

To close the festival, Galiana & Nikolchev’s The Useless Room presents the world premiere of “The Un(Double),” adapted by Anthony Nikolchev from “The Double” by Fyodor Dostoevsky and various court transcripts, and featuring choreography by Lukasz Przytarski, Anthony Nikolchev and Gema Galiana. Dostoevsky’s first published novella serves as the backbone of this physical dance/theater piece that seeks to unravel the heroic narratives that drive an individual’s life journey and the devastation when that projection of self is not met.

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