“Gathering”
Yara Samar! Dance Theatre
Friday, February 27, 2026 8PM
Zellerbach Playhouse
Extraordinary! Exciting! Exhausting! Excellent…
…and not always easy to watch and absorb all the many events and movement patterns and skills that this Dance Theatre (from Palestine!) brought to the Zellerbach Playhouse this past week.
The eleven dancers are all remarkable skilled. Director, text editor and major choreographer Sama Haddad King brought her many talents to this dance/drama/group celebration performance. Very many acts were presented: group and solo choreography, text and visual projections and…to the audience’s delight, a stage full of oranges!
After an hour (8:15-9:30) the work moved into a narrative drama told on mike and on screen, by the women in the group (who came to visit individuals in the audience In white costumes). Fascinating and challenging as this was, it was an “over the top” expectation after witnessing an hour of dance. One supposes that the narrative was King’s personal story.
The evening concluded (some audience participating) with the return to the group circle activity, including some extraordinary “climb and fall” acts on and off what one can only guess was a 25 foot ladder! As amazing as this is, after the hour, the narrative, the skills become expectation, not excitement.
Yaa Samari Dance Theatre is an exciting, amazingly skilled group. It would be wonderful to see them again in an edited version of the show.
See Cal Performance’s web site for additional cast listings.