This weekend the Shaun Keylock Company and the San Francisco-based dance company FACT/SF are sharing a mixed, quite mixed, bill of work at New Expressive Works, on Portland’s Southeast Belmont Street. I saw the second performance, Friday night, along with many denizens of the Portland dance community.  (The final of three performances is at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 26.) 

The show began with the usual pre-curtain speech, shared by both artistic directors, Keylock and FACT/SF’s Charles Slender-White, who introduced their company dancers and explained PORT, which stands for Peer Organized Reciprocal Touring, “a touring model created to enhance opportunities for contemporary dance companies from the West Coast and beyond.”

Portland is of course one of those communities; FACT/SF, under these auspices, according to the program, has toured throughout the United States, and danced in Russia and Serbia. Keylock also made a pitch for funding, reminding us that several years ago the board of Conduit Studio Theater transferred their 501c3 nonprofit status to the SKC, partly to create a “living archive” of Portland dance.

Gregg Bielemeier (disclaimer, we are friends), longtime Portland choreographer and a founding member of Conduit, was the first to have a full evening of his work brought to life by Keylock’s company, at Lincoln Hall, in 2021 (Hannah Krafcik reviewed it for ArtsWatch here). On the current program his Where for Art Thou is wittily, elegantly repeated on this program by SKC dancers Annabel Kaplan, Jillian Hobbs and Simon Lace.

I was particularly charmed by Lace, whose hair is thinning, and chin is bearded, moving with tremendous chic in his “little black dress.” His performance was very different from original cast member Mike Barber’s, as were those by Annabel Kaplan and Jillian Hobbs, assuming roles originated by Eric Skinner and Kristin Young. Bielemeier’s movement vocabulary is trickier to execute than it looks: it’s highly detailed, quirky, eccentric, and requires impeccable timing. The music is Kevin Volans’ White Man Sleeps, performed by the Kronos Quartet; like Bielemeier’s choreography, it is packed with quirky, detailed timing and rhythms. Over the years, I’ve seen this trio performed by many casts — this was one of the best.

The show opened with Keylock’s solo Tesseract, a dancer-specific piece that premiered Friday night.  The dancer in question, Seattle-based Eva Crystal, possesses the long, space-devouring legs of a Balanchine ballerina, and costumed in red, she did full justice to Keylock’s classically textured movement vocabulary. It was dramatic, cinematic, and thoroughly engaging, and I was sorry when Tesseract, performed to Shawn Henson’s Grasslands from Radio Badlands, came to its theatrical conclusion. 

This was not the case with For A, set to Tchaikovsky’s only violin concerto, as well performed as it was by the FACT/SF dancers. The “A” in question is Russian violinist Leopold Auer, who refused to perform the Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35, although Tchaikovsky had dedicated it to him, rather than the person he wished to honor — Iosif Kotek, likely his lover, and compositional collaborator.  

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This sad tale (and Tchaikowsky’s life was very sad, indeed) was what inspired White to make the piece, in collaboration with the dancers. While it contains some very lovely movement, For A goes on much too long, and badly needs editing. In one section, a large piece of cloth is thrown over the head of a dancer, wrapped tightly around her, and she’s then dragged across the studio floor, which reminded me of the kidnapping of Rigoletto’s daughter in Verdi’s eponymous opera, a very different kettle of musical notes from anything by Tchaikowsky. 

In another section, the dancers perform with their shadows, in much the same way that postmodern choreographer Lucinda Childs did with film in her groundbreaking Dance. For A also contains quite a bit of voguing, some gratuitously fussy hand movements, and a sharp-edged trio for the cast (Keanu Brady, Katherine Neumann, and LizAnne Roman Roberts), giving it a welcome energetic conclusion.

Welcome energy is what the same company and choreographer gave the evening with Extra, which I and the audience clearly adored. White is a former cheerleader and competitive diver who is interested in creating athletic spaces that celebrate queer identity. Extra is the conclusion of an ongoing project called QAF (Queer Athletic Futility).

Costumed in gold-sequined warmup jackets and boxer shorts, Extra is replete with glitter and glam, and the four dancers — Brady, White, Neumann, and Roberts — have a whale of a good time dancing it. There are plenty of little skippy steps, like prizefighters skipping rope, maybe; one dancer does a bit of a striptease, self-congratulatory high fives punctuate the dancing. I and others clearly would have liked some more — and more than a few of us coveted those spangly jackets, too.