SF: sound moves.

Last July, the twelfth annual edition of San Francisco's Summerfest/dance presented a new venture to bridge the gulf between the Bay Area's contemporary dancers and its composers. The Choreographers & Composers Consortium (C&CC) paired four dancemakers with four musicians for a six month collaboration. The works developed during that period, some finished, others still in progress, were performed July 11 and 12 at the McKenna Theater, San Francisco State University. A small chamber ensemble performed the original scores. C&CC was launched in July 2002 by Summerfest/dance and Earplay, a San Francisco-based contemporary music group, out of a perception that Bay Area composers and choreographers rarely, if ever, interact.

"It's an isolation which is very hard to overcome because we are in crisis and survival mode all the time," says Joan Lazarus, Executive Director of Dance/Art, Inc., which produces Summerfest/dance. "So this was to give people a chance to work in a way they may not have done before."

To get the process rolling, both organizations sent out invitations to a January arts marketplace at ODC/Theater. Twenty choreographers and thirteen composers signed up for what Lazarus calls a "speed-dating" event. The composers brought compact discs of their music, the choreographers arrived with dancers. Eventually, eleven couples submitted dual applications. Summerfest/dance evaluated the choreographers; Earplay judged the musicians. The university offered free weekend use of McKenna.

Making the final cut were choreographer Cathleen McCarthy with composer Daniel Feinsmith; Janice Garrett with Matthew Pierce; Amy Helmstetter with Nurit Jugend; and Amy Seiwert with Jonathan Norton. During the next months the teams got together to discuss rehearsal schedules and the number of musicians they could afford--six was the maximum, as it turned out--but also to talk about the process of collaboration. They all approached it quite differently. "Some argued, some pushed and pulled, sonic did it incrementally," Lazarus observed. After Earplay withdrew from the project, ODC/Theater director. Rob Bailis, who is also a musician and conductor, stepped in as C&CC's music director.

C&CC appears to have struck a chord among Bay Area choreographers and composers. The second arts marketplace took place October 19.