It’s no easy feat to keep a dance festival going year after year, let alone decade after decade. Men in Dance, founded in Seattle 30 years ago, deserves a well-earned cheer, celebrating the contributions of men in contemporary dance since the 1990s.
Richard Jessup, a dancer/choreographer/teacher for more than 40 years, came up with the idea for Men in Dance in 1994, frustrated by what he then saw as a lack of visibility for men in local dance performance.
“There were quite a few female-oriented companies in town, and I didn’t feel like there was as much opportunity for men,” he said in a telephone interview. The festival was initially called Against the Grain/Men in Dance. “At that time I really felt like being a male and focusing on dance as a career was kind of going against the grain of what society perhaps was suggesting we should be doing,” he said. “I was trying to make more opportunity for men specifically to get together and create the onstage experience of men dancing together.”
This year’s festival takes place Oct. 4-6 at Erickson Theatre on Capitol Hill.
Times have changed, and Men in Dance has evolved over the years; though the performers remain all male-identifying, the festival has welcomed female choreographers for some time. “We’ve kind of become a forum,” Jessup said, “where men can come and kind of explore their identity as men, through these dance pieces.”
Initially an every-other-year festival featuring multiple dancers and companies, the format has also changed with time. “We started getting feedback from people that they would really like to have a yearly event,” Jessup said, so in 2015 the organizers created an off-year choreographers showcase — a smaller event that involves feedback sessions with audiences and local dance professionals, which has taken place every other year since then.
This year’s event is a full festival, featuring eight artists. “I can say with confidence, this is our strongest program,” Jessup said. It was an unusually strong round of submissions, which Jessup thinks is due to the festival going virtual during the pandemic. “Because people were able to access it online, I think it opened up our company to people who would not have heard of it otherwise.” The lineup includes artists from New York City, Southern California, Philadelphia, Florida and two from Seattle: Gary Champi, who’s presenting a new duet complete with live musicians; and Jeremy Zihao Yuan, who will choreograph and perform a solo.
Jessup is especially excited about this year’s featured guest artist, Jameel Hendricks, a Philadelphia-based dancemaker who is bringing his company, MOVE Dance Collective. Hendricks’ company previously performed in last year’s Men in Dance choreographers showcase, “and his piece was just fantastic … it really blew the roof off the place, and people were very excited by what they were seeing,” Jessup said.
Hendricks is bringing a new work to this year’s festival, called “NIRVANA,” and also will be teaching a master class open to the community, at which he and company members will teach some of the choreography of the new work. “People are really going to be able to experience Jameel and what he is all about,” Jessup said. He described Hendricks’ works as contemporary, incorporating some street dance, but “the classical technique that his dancers have is just outstanding.” Their work, he said, “was so dynamic … kind of raw and very emotional.”
The 30th anniversary of the festival’s founding is an appropriate time to think about the future, and Jessup said the organizers have been talking about that. “Many of us on the board have been there since almost the beginning,” he said, “and we are looking for those younger artists who are wanting to step in and carry this forward.” He’s confident that the festival will continue and evolve. “We have very dedicated audience members who look forward to it every year,” he said. “I look forward to seeing where it goes from here.”