Luminous Dance from Aakash Odedra; Sometimes Too Luminous

Spinning on his heels, arms slashing, Aakash Odedra electrified the stage at the David and Dorothea Garfield Theatre on Tuesday. For the other solos on the program, titled “Rising,” he turned to three contemporary choreographers: Khan, Russell Maliphant, and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. And it happened that the order of the pieces here marked a progression from breathtaking to meh.

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Half a Great Show: Malashock Dance’s “Without a Net” at WOW

Though the circus artists mostly occupied center-stage in “Without a Net,” the dance smartly complemented them, setting an edgy European-circus mood. I was primed to see something weirder at the midpoint in the 80-minute program, when my half of the audience switched places with folks who’d been at the “Side Show.” Weird, it was.

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The “Point Loma Pause” as Art: Ikaros at the WOW Festival

It’s called the Point Loma pause: the 10 or so seconds when a plane roars over Point Loma, and you have to stop mid-sentence. Every time it happened during “Ikaros,” the piece that Third Rail Projects created for the WOW Festival, the three performers went into stillness and looked up. I looked up, too, seeing this everyday occurrence as if with fresh eyes; marveling at the miracle of flight.

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The Genius of Ambiguity: Mark Morris at La Jolla Music Society’s Summerfest

The performance by the Mark Morris Dance Group at Summerfest last week was like a loaf of artisan rye bread—dense, complex, chewy. The evening at the Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center was so packed with dance, music, and ideas, I would have like multiple viewings: once to focus on Morris’s choreography and brilliant movers, once for the world-renowned Summerfest musicians, and a third time to lose myself in the thrilling voice of countertenor John Holiday.

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A downpour where you can hear individual raindrops: Dorrance Dance

The danger of amplifying tappers’ footfalls, especially with up to eight dancers onstage, is that if anyone goes a hair off-beat or doesn’t tap cleanly, it’s exposed. Dorrance and her seven dancers nailed it, whether in tight unison or doing a counterpoint like a downpour of sound—a downpour in which you can hear individual raindrops, they’re that precise.

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