Strength and silliness in summer dance show

Photo: Matt Haber

Strength and silliness in summer dance show:

In dance, summer has traditionally been a time for choreographic experimentation. As with any experiment, there can be hits and misses - sometimes both in a single night, as was the case at Safehouse's sixth annual Summer Performance Festival, which started Wednesday night at the ODC Theater with Jenni Bregman & Dancers and BodiGram.

Of the three recent works that Bregman showed Wednesday, "Context," a meditation in four sections for nine dancers, made the strongest statement. The 2012 work found Bregman and her eight dancers, clad mostly in shorts with loose-fitting tops, with a chic Gina Levesque in a red suit engineering mysterious yet satisfying encounters in duets and groups to a throbbing original score created by Sunshine Jones.

For the most part, Bregman's choreography bends earthward in some arresting moments. Dancers whisked ramrod arms through the air with eyes cast pensively downward, and Marco Chavez Jr. hurtled compactly yet silkily across the floor. The lighting design went uncredited in the program, so it's hard to know whether the rather intriguing moire effect on a scrim behind Bregman's solo was intentional, but nonetheless, it lent a dizzying constant shift to her restive solo.

Following on the program was "Force," an earnest, yet not terribly revealing solo for Bregman, and "Home," a childlike adventure for six dancers, whose ideas were sketched out more succinctly in the drawings created on sheets of butcher paper than in the actual choreography or execution.

The Summer Performance Festival is curated by Joe Landini, director of the performance space the Garage, where many of the works on the festival's five-day program were forged. The SPF6 is the opportunity for these artists to transfer their efforts to a larger venue. Bregman's troupe is one of eight that perform through Sunday, including Aura Fischbeck Dance, Gretchen Garnett & Dancers, Angela Mazziotta, the Milissa Payne Project, Nine Shards, Vinnicombe/Winkler and BodiGram, who performed in the second slot of the doubleheader on Wednesday.

On re-entering the theater Wednesday night to be confronted with a simulacrum of a speakeasy-cum-dance hall scenario in which we were exhorted to have a drink and dance, I realized at once that we were meant to have "fun." The heart sank. To say that BodiGram's ill-conceived "D.R.U.N.K.S," choreographed by Blair Bodie and Julia Graham, was a frivolous miss would be a kindness.

What followed after 15 minutes of standing around was a performance that was as frustrating as it was sloppy - a juvenile, unfunny parade of lampoons depicting drunken debauchery. To say it devolved would be inaccurate, as this would imply there was some kind of high point involved.

Bodie, Graham, Tara Fagan and Korie Franciscus roll about onstage, do a bit of line dancing and pose fitfully while Shannon Preto dispenses drinks (yes, actual Tequila shots and Tecates) to the audience members, in what must have been a misguided impression that a shot of Tequila would help the silliness go down.

Landini reportedly considered some 120 entrants for the residencies at the Garage that led to slots in the festival. It's hard to believe that he couldn't find a work that would have been more deserving than "D.R.U.N.K.S" of the wider exposure that the Summer Performance Festival affords.

Learn how silica becomes glass at Hazel-Atlas Mine

Hazle-Atlas Mine, East Bay Regional Park District

Learn how silica becomes glass at Hazel-Atlas Mine:

Perhaps you've been sipping summer iced tea out of a mason jar, or patting the side of a ketchup bottle at a barbecue. You might not know that glassware was once made locally, and you can still see where silica was once mined near Antioch at the Hazel-Atlas Mine on guided tours at the Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve every Saturday and Sunday through November.

In an earlier era of mining, says Eddie Willis, a naturalist with the East Bay Regional Park District, the Black Diamond area represented the largest coal mining district in state of California. In the regional preserve at the foot of Mount Diablo are a dozen 19th century coal mines that have been sealed up for safety reasons and the five small ghost towns that once served the workers.

Abandoned at the turn of the 20th century, the area later opened to silica mining in the 1920s, when silica sandstone was sent to the Oakland factory of the Hazel-Atlas Glass Co. to make dishware and glass items. The Hazel-Atlas Co., which Willis says was once housed not far from the present-day Oakland Coliseum, would later purchase the mine and operate it until the end of World War II.

"The mine is set up to look like it did during 1930s operation," Willis says, explaining that the 90-minute guided tour starts with a slideshow and an overview of the park's history. After that, you put on hard hats and pick up flashlights for the trip into the shaft about 1,000 feet underground.

This Saturday at 10 a.m., a special naturalist-led program about silica mining, "Your Glass Starts Here," will trace the path of silica from the ground into modern manufactured products. (If you can't make it this weekend, the program takes place again Oct. 12.)

"For geology buffs, it's a great way to see geologic history. There are many different layers of earth that you can't see at surface, but which are visible in the mine," Willis says. "We also pass through a fault, a cut through the mine where earth has shifted, and along the way there are fossil imprints of ancient sea life.

"We try to tell the story of what took place here and why people came here to mine, as well as how the mines were used," he says.

Before or after the mine tour, there is plenty to see throughout the Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve, including the remnants of a ghost town, an old cemetery with headstones for 19th century townspeople, and some 60 miles of hiking trails, both moderate and challenging. (Read more about the preserve at http://bit.ly/14t1g1v.)

Willis suggests that you wear closed-toed shoes if you go on the mine tour, and because the mine remains 58 degrees Fahrenheit regardless of the outside temperature, it's a good idea to dress in layers and bring a sweater or light jacket.