Most people — especially outside our area — would consider the desert's premier arts and culture events to be the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival and Stagecoach country music festival, but in the professional dance world, another event comes to mind first: The Palm Desert Choreography Festival.
For over two and a half decades, this McCallum Theatre production has promoted dance as an art form by creating a venue for emerging and established choreographers. The two-day festival is part competition and part educational opportunity for its participants, and for the public, it's a chance to learn more about an artistic medium that isn't always in the zeitgeist (outside of amateur TikTok dances, that is). Rhythmic Gymnastics Leotards Artistics Professional
Nicole Berger, director of the Commercial Dance Conservatory at the Orange County School of the Arts, is one of the 25 choreographers whose piece will compete in the finals on Nov. 10 at the McCallum. As a multi-year finalist, Berger is no stranger to the festival, and said she's ecstatic to return to a theater that feels like walking into an awe-inspiring "cathedral in Europe."
"The McCallum is a stunning theater," Berger said over the phone. "It's such a privilege to perform there, and it's this amazing sacred dance space that you don't find a lot in the U.S. A lot of times you see these amazing dance companies, and they're performing in places that can't hold the amount of passion and artistry that the McCallum can hold. It's such an honor to present your art and your vision on that stage and for that audience."
The Palm Desert Choreography Festival is a reoccurring character in the story of Berger's career. The former New Yorker started as a professional dancer for various companies in Manhattan, including the prestigious Metropolitan Opera Ballet, but eventually moved to Los Angeles to pursue her interest in choreographing for television and film.
It wasn't until after she moved out West and founded contemporary ballet theater group Company Rhome that Berger first heard of the Palm Desert Choreography Festival and submitted a piece that made it to the 2015 finals.
"What I found really interesting about this festival was the type of artist that it brought," she said. "It has a beautiful range of artistry, from the contemporary world to the modern world to the ballet world, which I just loved — that diversity in talent and the level of performance is amazing, but the quality of dancing, the quality of vision from each choreographer, was extraordinary."
Berger added that after her first performance at the event, the participating dancers and choreographers bonded over food and drinks, and the community-building nature of the event really struck her. The festival became much more than an opportunity to show her work; it was also a chance to network with artists from across the country that she might never have met otherwise.
Fellow finalist Sean Aaron Carmon made a similar point, adding that even though it's not necessarily a great thing, artists' careers are really affected by who they know and who they don't know, so opportunities to network like this are worth seizing.
Carmon said he often tells his students at Dance Kaleidoscope in Indianapolis to get themselves a "net that works," and festivals like this are the perfect opportunity to do just that. Especially in such a digital world, he added, when it's easy to feel like you know an artist just because you often admire their work on social media, any chance to watch a piece in person and shake their hand is invaluable.
"Community engagement is the name of the gang, especially in America," Carmon said. "In the dance world, where we are mostly nonprofit-based organizations, the more people you have on your side, the more likely it is that your organization will survive."
Carmon was previously a festival finalist in 2017, and this year he's returning as both a choreographer and an instructor. On Saturday, he'll lead a Lester Horton-based workshop featuring repertory from famed dancer/director/choreographer Alvin Ailey.
"The word I love to use (to describe it) is anatomical," Carmon said of the technique. "It really takes the human anatomy and it creates shapes based on it ... it takes the physicality and the anatomical strength of the body, and it usually enforces everything."
The class is open to both dancers involved in the festival as well as community members who are interested in dance, and Carmon is excited by the prospect of intersecting experience levels.
"There's nothing like feeling the dance," he said. "It can be very intimidating for a lot of audience members to say, 'Oh, I could never do that. I would never be able to move my body in that way.' Well, the fact of the matter is, a lot of people can, they just don't have the confidence to step into the room. So by doing these community engagement classes and these events, it gives those people who have that excitement and that invigoration, it gives them permission to step into the studio."
As a dance instructor, Berger loves bringing her young performers to events like the Palm Desert Choreography Festival because it shows them what their future could be like if they pursue a future in professional dance. This year, she's competing with the piece "Love," which will be performed by a group of performers ranging in age from 12 to 17.
"These students are on the cusp," she said. "It's (the festival) is creating an opportunity for younger artists to experience what more developed artists get to do. So that's that's kind of amazing. ... it allows them to kind of dream about their career and doing this for your profession."
In preparing to stage her piece, "Love," Berger sat her dancers down in a circle and asked all of them who their "lighthouse" is, aka who is the person they go to when they need comfort and warmth. For many of them, it was their mothers.
"We used that as a way to sort of bond with each other, but also to give meaning behind what we're doing," she said of the exercise. "It's that idea of 'what happens when that light goes out?' So pulling with that light, that idea of needing and holding on, but then also letting go. It created this real, wonderful bond with us as a company of dancers."
Another group of students performing at the event is the annual East Valley Dance Project, an outreach project of the festival that brings Desert Mirage High School and Coachella Valley High School students together for a series of after-school rehearsals culminating in an annual performance on the last day of the festival.
Some of the young dancers, like Coachella Valley High School student Layla Bautista, loved the project so much that they've continued to come back. This Sunday will mark Bautista's fourth time performing with the East Valley Dance Project ensemble, and she said she's thrilled to return.
Though the preparation process isn't easy — Bautista said rehearsing at the dancers' respective schools for weeks on end before switching to the much larger McCallum stage is quite an adjustment — she loves the opportunity to learn about a wide range of dance styles and techniques.
"This event is special to me because I get to do it with my team that I've danced with for the past three years," she said. "Being part of this project is an incredible experience, and I love how the project offers opportunities to our local school dance team to grow as dancers."
(This story has been updated to fix a date error and include more photos.)
What: The 2024 Palm Desert Choreography Festival
When: 7 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 9 and 4 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 10
Where: McCallum Theatre, 73-000 Fred Waring Drive, Palm Desert
Cost: $33-$58 for Saturday night's professional competition, $28-$48 for Sunday evening's emerging artist competition (the latter of which features local dancers from the East Valley Dance Project)
Figure Skating Pants Jackets Custom More info: mccallumtheatre.org/productions