Preview: Avant Cellist Zoe Keating Joins Forces with MagikMagik Orchestra

At ODC/Dance Downtown, the home season of San Francisco’s internationally acclaimed contemporary dance company ODC/Dance, celebrated cellist Zoë Keating will make her San Francisco dance debut. Keating performs live with the Magik*Magik Orchestra in Breathing Underwater, a world premiere work by ODC Artistic Director & Founder Brenda Way.

Breathing Underwater is a piece for four of ODC’s women dancers. In collaboration with Keating and lighting/stage designer Alexander V. Nichols, Brenda Way structured Breathing Underwater to invoke the historical constraints of a woman’s world. Beginning in silence, small and large perturbations of female behavior are interspersed with tightly composed unison passages. Layers of movement and sound create a visual and kinesthetic world that quietly mounts in intensity over the course of the choreography until it comes to its breathless end. “Fragility, tension and outstanding individual dancing characterize this piece,” says Way.

Sometimes called “a one-woman orchestra,” Zoë Keating has risen to the top of the iTunes classical and electronic music charts for her use of a foot-controlled laptop to record layer upon layer of her cello performance. The effect is extremely intricate and haunting music. Keating is known for both her use of technology and for her grassroots, DIY ethic. She has sold over 40,000 copies of her albums without a record label, management or physical distribution.

Keating has performed and recorded with a wide range of artists, including Imogen Heap, Amanda Palmer, Curt Smith of Tears for Fears, DJ Shadow, John Vanderslice, Rasputina, Pomplamoose and Paolo Nutini. She is a regular collaborator with the creators of WNYC’s Radiolab and is also known for her work in film. Commissions include music for the San Francisco MOMA’s audio tour and soundtracks for the films Ghost Bird, The Devil’s Chair and Frozen Angels. Her cello playing can be heard on Mark Isham’s scores The Conspirator, Warrior and The Secret Life of Bees.

ODC/Dance Downtown 2012 will also feature two additional world premiere works: Cut Out Guy by ODC Co-Artistic Director KT Nelson featuring music by experimental composer Ben Frost, and Transit also by Nelson in collaboration with San Francisco bicycle artist Max Chen.

PERFORMANCE DATES/TICKETING

ODC/Dance Downtown runs from March 15-24 at the Novellus Theater at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 700 Howard Street, San Francisco.

Tickets for ODC/Dance Downtown range from $15-$65 and are available at 415.978.2787 or at

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