After eleven weeks of creating, fine-tuning, and probably lots of serious sweating, six emerging choreographers presented their work this weekend at ODC for Pilot 59 that showed an eager, sold-out audience what they've got. It turns out, that entails quite a bit -- the diversity in dancers and themes was striking. Two pieces especially caught my eye.

I loved the sex-bot, robo-girl piece choreographed by Bianca Cabrera, titled “Feral.” It gave a peculiar vision of the future, with a hint of zombie take-over and a pinch of nasty. The glittery costumes were fantastic. Major props to her dancers on capturing pixilated pulsations perfectly. Very impressive.

I also enjoyed “Allegretto,” choreographed by Charles Slender. I'm a bit of a FACT/SF groupie and find their work incredibly innovative and perfectly quirky. Set to Beethoven's familiar Symphony No. 7 in A Major (if you heard it, you'd recognize it), the dancer's movements struck me as innovative and beautifully strange. The beginning of the piece made me think a bit of traffic guards, while my husband said that it reminded him of Russian kittens (the fuzzy hats probably had something to do with that). Slender's ability to make people dream of the bizarre (i.e. flag signals and cute pets, all in the same dance) for me, is the genius of his choreography.