ODC's Bicycle Ballet

March 26, 2013

If you were lucky enough to be hanging out in front of the San Francisco Public Library one morning about a year ago, you might have seen a bizarrely mesmerizing work of performance art. It involved several dancers and a “frankenbike”—an ingeniously engineered bicycle with a park bench attached to it. It’s hard to describe the multitudinous ways those dancers flowed on, over and around the bench and across the library plaza, so instead I’ll just show you:

The work, Transit, was performed by the ever-awesome ODC/Dance, with choreography by ODC co-artistic director KT Nelson. This past week, the group brought Transit to the stage of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, re-shaping its swirling patterns to fit the proscenium space (and re-christening it Transit: Next Stop). The revised version upped the ante a bit, too, with a second “frankenbike” creation—a cafe table with four chairs, on wheels.


ODC/Dance in “Transit: Next Stop.” Photo by Margo Moritz.

Miss the performances? Not a San Fran-er? No worries: ODC hopes to take Transit: Next Stop on tour sometime soon. We’ll keep you posted.