It’s 10 p.m. on a Saturday and I’m nearly in tears. No, this is not an overly emotional farewell to RADFest 2023, but rather a moment of stunned appreciation for the final dance of the festival’s short works series. Excuse the cliche, but the RADFest curators sure know how to save the best for last. On the wooden floor of…

Kayt MacMaster and Rachel Rizzuto huddle together under a sheet, telling stories of fifth century B.C. debauchery by flashlight. MacMaster lays on her back. Rizzuto wraps the sheet around her waist and straddles MacMaster who occasionally pops out from beneath the makeshift skirt to bark a blunt declaration about dicks. Many dicks. Anarchy ensues as the pair rope the unsuspecting…

A light breeze of patchouli wafted throughout the Wellspring Theater as the lights rose on Friday evening for the second of four professional short works programs curated for RADFest’s 2023 season.  Bent at the waist, head dropped, Alice (Al) Svetic windmilled their arms forward until the turbulence lifted their oversized, striped button down shirt. They stood with breasts bare and…

A March snowstorm was no match for the hearty Michigan audiences who brushed off their boots and flocked to the Wellspring Theater for Friday night’s opening of the 2023 Midwest Regional Alternative Dance Festival. Now in its 14th season, RADFest has become an arts staple in Kalamazoo, attracting performers from across the U.S. and Canada to teach, create and perform….

KALAMAZOO, MI — Miami native Thryn Saxon is a freelance choreographer, educator, performer and hope-focused activist currently based in New York City. She is the director of SAXYN Dance Works and holds professional performance credits with Doug Varone, Helen Simineau, Kate Weare and Punchddrunk’s “Sleep No More.” This week, Saxon will travel to Michigan to premiere her new work, “Seolh,”…

KALAMAZOO, Mich. — In an all-digital format, the 12th edition of the Regional Alternative Dance Festival (RAD Fest) brought tastes of this splendid festival to an at-home audience. The schedule kept to the conventions of years past, with two streamed concerts, a youth performance, a dance film screening, classes and discussions held throughout the weekend. Watching the smattering of dance works…

KALAMAZOO, MI — In 2017, Fox News dropped the slogan “Fair and Balanced.” They claimed it was because the motto had been written by its dismissed chairman Roger Ailes, swapping the phrase for “Most Watched, Most Trusted.” Whatever you think about Fox News, the change certainly provides a more accurate picture of the network’s essence. I thought about this watching…

KALAMAZOO, MI — Two rows of chairs form a semi-circle around a projection screen hung at the front of the Judy Joliffe Theater. A third ring of audience members stands behind these chairs. On the screen, a video flashes footage of current events – the Women’s March and various other protests, and the Access Hollywood Billy Bush tape, for example….

KALAMAZOO, MI — It is often the case that the dance festival setting provides a broad, but shallow view of an artist’s work. It’s an understandably impossible conundrum; festival organizers throughout the country want to bring as much variety as they can to audiences, and offer opportunities to as many artists as possible. In coming to the Midwest Regional Alternative…

Author’s note: To read additional coverage of the 2018 Midwest RAD Fest, click here. KALAMAZOO, MI — Each of RAD Fest’s four juried live performances asked audience members to travel from the Epic Center’s Wellspring Theater to the Judy Jolliffe Theater across the hall, a flexible blackbox with gleaming, gorgeous wood floors. We’re told to stand or sit wherever we like,…