Each taking personal experience and translating it into something layered and alive, dancer-choreographers Mia J. Chong and Molly Rose-Williams are presenting new works at ODC this summer. Both artists identify as queer, and while that informs their work, it’s not the headline.
Their pieces, showcasing at ODC/Dance’s Summer Sampler (July 17–20) and ODC Theater’s State of Play Festival (July 31–August 3), respectively, are first and foremost about craft. They play with rhythm, character, and structure. They manipulate time, tone, and attention. They’re interested in the body: how it remembers, how it feels, how it reveals.
In theory
For Chong, a San Francisco native and longtime member of the ODC family, this summer marks her first commissioned work as a guest choreographer with the main company. The piece, “Theories of Time,” takes inspiration from research into time perception: why it seems to slow in moments of heightened emotion, or speeds up when we’re not paying attention.
“It felt like a relevant theme for me to explore,” she said. “I’m reaching a point in my life where I’ve witnessed the full life cycle. I’m surrounded by a lot of the birth of new life, but also some loss as well.”
She’s been a part of ODC since she was five years old, first as a student, then as a member of the teen Dance Jam ensemble, and later as a full company dancer. After six seasons performing with ODC/Dance, and receiving a Princess Grace Award along the way, Chong became the company’s staging director. Now, she’s stepping into the role of choreographer for ODC/Dance’s Summer Sampler.
Chong describes her style as abstract but emotionally grounded, shaped by her years at ODC under co-artistic directors KT Nelson and Brenda Way.
“I tried to take ideas about how we experience time and translate that into physicality through certain gestures, structure, and speed,” she said. “There are slow-motion moments, really fast, dense movement material, and some fast-forward and retrograde ideas that I tried play with in this piece.”
The music, a classical composition by Henrik Schwarz, came to her alongside the concept.
“I was reading a lot of Claudia Hammond’s work, she writes about time perception,” she said. “And I was also listening to Rick Schwartz’s music. I started to instantly visualize movement material, and it felt like a really good match. The concept in the music. It’s super cool.”
Chong also runs her own company, Eight/Moves, which she sees as complementary to her work at ODC.
“I think there is a common theme around community with the way that I work in both spaces,” she said. “The beauty of having this connection with ODC and having new works on the horizon with my own company is that I get to explore a broad range of concepts. I’m not sure the pieces coming from me in both spaces will be connected at all, but they definitely are made through a similar creation process that's super collaborative.”
While time can be a scary concept, she hopes audiences feel a sense of hope and optimism after seeing the work.
“It couldn’t hurt for audiences to have a little bit of joy.”
Crushing it
Molly Rose-Williams will perform her solo work, “Crush,” at ODC’s 13th annual summer dance festival, State of Play. Her process has been rooted in emotional experience. She first began developing the piece about five years ago, just after a breakup, while taking a solo performance class.
“The only thing I could do was make pieces about heartbreak,” she said. “Every week, I tried to make something different, but I couldn’t. That was all that was coming out of me.”
Over the following year, she returned to the material periodically, layering in new experiences, including a new relationship, until “Crush” became a full-length, 60-minute solo show. It’s part dance, part physical theater, and part comedy, tracking the arc of falling in and out of love while navigating all the confusion in between.
The piece is character-driven. Rose-Williams embodies multiple personas throughout the show: a stoic “heart,” a high-energy “balloon,” a genderless pair of “hands,” and more.
“They each feel really, really authentic to different parts of me,” she said. “They’re super fun to get into, and I love the way that they’re able to talk with one another and hash things out. That is part of where the queerness shows up in the show.”
She identifies as genderqueer and uses she/they pronouns.
“My gender was something that led to a greater sense of disconnection and alienation,” she said. “To have it become a thing that actually leads to a profound sense of connection when people are watching has been cool, especially in getting to play with the drama and character of it.”
Rose-Williams describes the work as both absurd and deeply felt. Her choreography blends her background in sports and Chinese acrobatics with storytelling and humor. And while the piece began as catharsis, it’s become something more refined over time.
“Now I approach it like I would an editorial draft,” she said, noting her other work as a podcast producer. “What’s working and what's not working? The show that doesn't rely on me being in any sort of emotional space for it to work. The show can hold itself.”
Her approach to solo work also gives her freedom.
“I don’t have to explain things to anyone,” she said. “That freedom, autonomy, the lack of constraint from explanation or logical sense is something that I love in a solo form.”
“Crush” is inherently queer, though that wasn’t something Rose-Williams consciously emphasized at first, until her straight sister pointed out all the gender play she was already doing.
“I realized that was the case,” she said. “And I was like, ‘Oh, I could get even more intentional about that.’ That was when the gender of those characters came to life for me consciously. Previously, I wasn’t thinking about their genders.”
For both artists, queerness isn’t the sole subject of their work, but it informs how they create and how they show up. They’re part of a generation of Bay Area artists who are moving past identity as category and toward a more expansive view of what queer performance can be outside of a political space: playful, rigorous, and radically inventive.
ODC/Dance’s ‘Summer Sampler,’ $30-$100, Thursday-Saturday, July 17-20, 3153 17th St. July 19 is LGBTQIA+ Night, with an afterparty hosted by Black Benatar across the street from the theater at Mission Bowling. http://www.odc.dance/summersampler
ODC’s ‘State of Play,’ $0-$300, Thursday-Sunday, July 31–August 3, multiple locations http://www.odc.dance/stateofplay
https://www.miajchong.com/
https://www.mollyrosewilliams.com/
Never miss a story! Keep up to date on the latest news, arts, politics, entertainment, and nightlife.
Sign up for the Bay Area Reporter's free weekday email newsletter. You'll receive our newsletters and special offers from our community partners.
Support California's largest LGBTQ newsroom. Your one-time, monthly, or annual contribution advocates for LGBTQ communities. Amplify a trusted voice providing news, information, and cultural coverage to all members of our community, regardless of their ability to pay. Donate today!
