Rita Felciano | SF Bay Guardian | July 12, 2006

Dancer-choreographer Erika Shuch is a Bay Area wild child. She is running, always. Where to? She probably doesn't know. But she usually ends up in some unusual places. She'll step on a crack just to see whether it will break her back. She'll search for other universes in the smallest existing particles. She'll contemplate the ways love and cannibalism feed off each other. In her latest piece, Orbit (notes from the edge of forever), she is really stepping out. Last fall, she discussed extraterrestrial life during a packed panel discussion at the Intersection for the Arts. A rough head count showed that a good 80 percent of the audience believed that ETs exist, about a third had encountered something otherwordly, and the vast majority thought there was an intelligence guiding life. Wow. Orbit examines that search for connection between us and whatever — if anything — is "out there." While the questions that form the basis for all of Shuch's works are always, at the very least, intriguing, her ability to shape them makes her the artist she is. Fortunately for her, she has been able to hang on to the same team of dancers, musicians, and designers who have made her previous quests fascinating and so often theatrically compelling. (Rita Felciano)

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