Embodiment Project’s Get Free Festival of street dance, now in its fourth year, lives up to its name, spiritually speaking. True, there is no charge for admission, but the real freedom here is in the “experimental battles” in which dancers and poets challenge themselves to “get weird” in a structured competition where the judges look for risk-taking and soul-baring as much as for physical virtuosity. Die-hard dancers and newcomers alike can push past their old boundaries in free workshops exploring house dance technique.
It all kicks off Saturday, July 1, with “Sacred Rowdiness,” a showcase of hip-hop dance innovators from the Bay Area and beyond, including Los Angeles’ K’niin Abbrey, Embodiment Project’s own Rama Mahesh Hall, and New York’s Lesa Junior and MariAnna Koytsan. The festival spans a whole week and crosses the bay, with events at San Francisco’s Dance Mission Theater, Yerba Buena Gardens, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and Oakland’s Destiny Arts Center.