There are ten dances on the program, but Storyboard for a Thriller, a dark and witty bit of dance-theater by the Mexican troupe Lux Boreal, is reason enough to attend the Blurred Summer Dance Festival at Sushi this weekend.

Sexy, edgy, and technically precise, dances by Lux have made the group a local favorite. In Thriller, the troupe mines vignettes out of love-hate relationships and our acceptance of everyday violence.

Dancers in pinstriped costumes appear as hustlers and shoot each other with guns, as a knockout trio hides from the violence by busying themselves with needlepoint, to great comic effect. To be clear, the guns are realistic popguns, but they still make you jump. If you go, look for the section with high roundhouse kicks and the trio's hilarious back-story antics.

Sushi Performance & Visual Arts

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Equally rewarding but far more intimate is Urge, a solo by Alison D. Smith that swerves between the joys of motherhood and the challenge of maintaining an individual identity. The work overflows with images of birth and postpartum exhaustion, but never overly so. And you don't have to be a mother to appreciate Smith's arresting talent and clean design, as well as her soft lullaby voice and music by Joni Mitchell.

Far grittier, literally, is Grit, a duet by Kyle Sorensen and Gina Bolles Sorensen, the husband and wife team known as somebodies dance theater. Desperate to communicate and be heard, the couple scrawls messages in a pile of sand with their fingers. There is a sense that they are trapped on an island, as movement is contained in a small circle, and well, there's all of that sand. With passionate style, they slide and struggle, swirl and grind their bodies; the grit itself becomes a visual and sonic element that whips up the tension until - sorry, I won't give the ending away.

Like Lux Boreal, Subterraneo Contemporany Dance Company makes the trek from Tijuana to downtown San Diego for the festival. In the duet Corporea, which translates to physical body, artistic director Gregorio Coral is paired with a petite woman (Adriana Coral) in an unsettling game of domination, a sort of evil Twister. Forcefully, he lifts and bends her body and the two step onto rectangle shapes on a giant tarp, suggesting he controls her destiny. Is he her boyfriend? Husband? Father? A dangerous manly symbol? It is provocative, yet difficult to watch.

The Minerva Tapia Dance Group also crosses the Mexican border for the festival. In Tapia's reworked Borderline Bodies, dancers interact with mannequins to explore the obsession women have with body image. Watch for the section where the svelte women try to flick the flab on their seemingly perfect arms.

Keely Campbell and Justin Viernes of San Diego make their choreographic debut with athletic movement and musical choices that include the group Geese and Andrew Bird. Their collaborative trio that utilizes blindfolds is intriguing, but needs editing and more investigation: metaphors are often too literal and require more abstraction. The work feels too long and sequences begin to drag.

Campbell's duet that pairs her with an equally strong Lara Segura Binder is well-crafted combat, a catfight with plenty of mental cruelty. Dancers Sarah Larson and Kenna Crouch are also eye-catching in several dances, two talented young women to watch for in the future.

Familiar works by the Patricia Rincon Dance Collective (Rincon is also director of the festival) and The PGK Project round out the high-voltage festival.

The Blurred Summer Dance Festival continues through Saturday at Sushi. While the venue still suffers from an annoying air conditioning system, you won't see dancers slogging over a concrete floor. The industrial space has softened and now offers a beautiful floating wooden dance floor and professional surface.

So avoid the holiday traffic and stay in town this weekend. Clean out the garage and mow the lawn. Get those chores done early in the day and head downtown. Opportunities to see groups such as Lux Boreal without crossing the border are few, and should not be missed.

program cover

program Act I

program Act II