Dance and the Ties to Community

Heidi Duckler Dance and San Pedro Arts Festival connect Angelinos via screenings

Restricted by the pandemic and COVID-19 lockdown measures, local artists across all mediums have had to make use of social media and other video platforms to connect to their audiences. That’s been particularly true for dance choreographers. The results are incredible productions linking various dance forms with community spaces in a place as huge and diverse as Los Angeles.

The Re-Quest, a Heidi Duckler Dance production, is the latest such screening. The dance company invites audiences to rediscover Los Angeles through sound, movement, and conversation.

In October 2020, the dance company celebrated 35 years of programming in Los Angeles by shooting ten premieres in ten different locations in Los Angeles.

The film covers ten Heidi Duckler Dance premieres in ten different locations in Los Angeles. It will air at 6 p.m. on Dec. 6 and 7. 

For 35 years, choreographer Heidi Duckler has been staging dance performances at far-flung and unexpected locales, from an abandoned Studio City gas station to the Frank Gehry-designed Cabrillo Marine Aquarium in San Pedro.

One important production was on the campus of Charles Drew University of Medicine and Science and the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital. Three years ago, Duckler received a $75,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to create not just dance but a more cohesive community.

The two year project, entitled “Two-Eyed Seeing”  had just concluded this past July. One of the goals of the project was to use the dance-making process to build bonds among medical personnel, patients, students and residents in one of Los Angeles County’s most ethnically diverse and economically challenged neighborhoods. Partnering with government and community groups, Duckler’s company will test the theory that dance can be the glue holding a place together.

The Re-Quest is just the latest Duckler project that seeks to bring Angelenos together. The  footage is from seven live performances that took place in Baldwin Hills, Montecito Heights, Boyle Heights, the Fashion District, Studio City, Culver City and Watts. 

The Re-Quest also features two short films: one shot at a historic landmark in Koreatown and the other on a vintage boat parked in the Arts District in downtown Los Angeles. Author and magazine editor Nancy Griffin will moderate a talk-back with some of Los Angeles’ most innovative creatives who collaborated on The Quest. Through short interviews and films, this experience will explore themes of health, education, architecture, sites of memory, community, the environment and our democracy. 

Following the two-night screening, the 10 performances will permanently live as chapters in HDD’s first ever digital book, releasing on Dec. 20. RSVP.

Time: 6 p.m. Dec. 6 and 7 

Cost: $5 to $120

Details: https://re-quest.eventbrite.com/

COVID Moves Dance Online with the San Pedro Arts Festival

The San Pedro Arts Festival, directed by Louise Reichlin, is presenting a digital festival in the form of two 2-hour curated programs shared for free on Vimeo. The festival as a whole features 10 dance artists across a number of styles with many falling under the contemporary concert dance umbrella. The program features works mostly captured on video prior to the COVID lockdown, including a number of works presented through archival footage of dances performed in theaters for a live audience. In addition, there are examples of dances created for the camera from both before and during the COVID closures and documentaries of dance projects. Because a few of the works were created post-COVID-lockdown, the festival as a whole feels even more timely and responsive to the current state of affairs.

Time: through Dec. 6.

Cost: Free

Details: vimeo.com/showcase/sanpedroartsfest