Bandaloop, a dance company pioneering vertical performance, presents Somewhere to Oakland — free vertical dance performances on the walls of Oakland City Hall and the Rotunda. Through July 26, the performances will include live music, talks, and community featuring more than 50 local artists and partners.
Bandaloop Studios
Based in West Oakland, Calif., the company creates work for its local and global audiences. Touring performances, education and, outreach are an intrinsic part of the company’s mission. The organization has deep roots in activism, championing support and sustainability of the two crucial pillars of their work: nature and people.
Founded in 1991 by Amelia Rudolph, a love for performance-as-ritual and rock climbing grew into a different kind of dance practice. Rudolph has a background as a dancer and choreographer, and studied comparative religion at Swarthmore College and the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. Her combined experiences created a desire to celebrate natural spaces, and to create a different kind of dance company based on kindness and adventure. Safety was built into the aesthetic, with braking belay devices and other features creating security in rock climbing, rappelling, and rope-acrobatic activities. The dancers need the freedom to move their hands, and also control and limit the fall distances as part of their choreography.
Dance pushing the limits
Bandaloop had its first live performance at the City Rock climbing gym in the Bay Area in 1991. Additional performances in the Sierra, the Buttermilk Boulders in Bishop, Calif., and on Yosemite National Park’s El Capitan dovetailed into groundbreaking performances on the Seattle’s Space Needle and at the Power of Huston festivals, drawing nationwide attention. Internationally, the company has performed in over 30 countries at sites from St. Paul’s Cathedral in London to a skyscraper in Shanghai to the Himalayas and the Dolomites. Dancing vertically on surfaces instantly changes the perspective of the history of dance and what dance can do. Bandaloop’s dedicated dancers push the limits of how people view their relationships with the environment and each other.
Bandaloop’s dedicated dancers push the limits of how people view their relationships with the environment and each other.
Education and outreach are intrinsic parts of Bandaloop’s mission. Uplifting and amplifying the voices of BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ voices at home has been a sustained evolution organizationally; when the pandemic began in 2020, this effort emerged publicly with the short film #ResistanceIsBeautiful.
Somewhere to Oakland has transformed the iconic Rotunda building and Oakland City Hall into a flyaway for vertical dance, community singing, and social art practice. This intergenerational project uplifts community voices through embodied storytelling that interweaves bird and human migration in the company’s latest work, Flock, which will be performed on July 26.
Melecio Estrella, Bandaloop artistic director, says, “As a 23-year resident of Oakland, I see this project as a love letter to the city my family calls home. I am deeply concerned that Oakland lives into its beauty, and that the many cultures that migrate and land here vibrate with belonging.”
Throughout Somewhere to Oakland, writing workshops, musical performances, art-making, and other events are offered free to the public. A complete listing of these events can be found at the link above. Registration is highly encouraged due to capacity limits, but Bandaloop acknowledges sharing personal information may not work for everyone and supports unregistered attendance as possible in the spirit of shared belonging.
