Press
Christy was interviewed for the article, How to Get Meaningful Feedback on Your Choreographic Work–and What to do With it
Dance Magazine (October, 2022)
“Suddenly the stage resembled an invisible jungle gym, its kid players taste-testing its structures in randomised motions.”
— Maxine Flasher-Duzgunes in a review of “kid subjunctive” for Dance Art Journal (October, 2022)
“This kind of work in the Judson Dance Theater lineage has, from its beginnings in the 1960s, always been about denying the viewer ‘entertainment,’ to stretch her attentiveness, and to perhaps even transform the discomfort of ‘meaningless’ actions into imaginative agency.”
— Rachel Howard in a review of “EPOCH” for the San Francisco Chroincle (October, 2021)
“The invention was rich, the development unhurried but inevitable. The whole complex work exuded modesty, embracing what needed to be done.”
— Rita Felciano in a preview of “EPOCH” for 48hills (September, 2021)
Additional press for “EPOCH”:
“Dance Teacher talked to Funsch about how she’s teaching virtually, the dance content she’s devouring right now and the teaching tools she can’t live without.”
— Haley Hilton in a profile on Christy for Dance Teacher Magazine (October, 2020)
“Rigorous intention, integrity and unapologetic originality are ever present”
— Claudia Bauer in a review of “Golden Bull” for the San Francisco Chronicle (November, 2018)
”Keen intelligence, artistic integrity and fierce self-determination”
— Claudia Bauer in a preview of “Mother, Sister, Daughter, Marvel” for the San Francisco Chronicle (April, 2018)
“She has long matched an understated, anti-spectacular performance personality with breathtaking precision and subtle wit. These qualities bear out in her teaching as well.”
— Sima Belmar in a profile on Christy for In Dance (March, 2018)
“Funsch Dance Experience’s newest world premiere is truly striking – its composition strikes, its content strikes and its concept strikes. Le grand spectacle de l’effort et de l’artifice hits on all cylinders. Choreographed by Artistic Director Christy Funsch, the five-part dance suite invites its audience to consider form, structure, physical architecture and connective choreographic tissue. While not suggesting a linear narrative, Le grand spectacle de l’effort et de l’artifice also takes a deep dive into conversations around grandeur, display, distillation and simplicity.”
“If Funsch’s choice of venue suggests an ambition to be seen, she still brooks no compromise in Le grand spectacle (the name translates to “The big show of effort and artifice”). The work reflects Funsch at her razor-sharp best: rigorous and searingly self-discilplined in design, grounded and emotionally present in performance.”
“[This is the Girl] just felt good, like how it’s supposed to be, and I mean the whole thing, all of us, sitting there in the dark and light. The person beside me started to cry which simply seemed like part of the plan, or part of the potential of the plan, as if (Christy’s) choreography is not a plan but an invitation for an experience to happen, inside and among us.”
-Keith Hennessy, Keith’s Rants, Raves, Reflections, & Revisions, September 2014
“Funsch has a gift for distilling poetry from the mundane. In her hands, gesture has heft. Stillness has weight. Transitions became images unto themselves. After one section of the dance, the entire cast (a quintet of marvelous dancers, a chorus of young girls, and a group of teenage Taiko drummers) enters the space to lie prone for one, long moment. Then the group disperses and an entirely new idea emerges in the space. In this, as in so many other moments, Funsch gives her audiences permission to inhabit mental meandering and half-finished thoughts.”
“Her pieces some 30 solos are at once intensely private yet accessible, casual yet elegant. Onstage, she mesmerizes with impeccably crafted movement packed with rich details. Her 2012 production One on One, a full evening of solos set on a group of exceedingly diverse Bay Area dancers, showed the potential of the genre and the promise of this artist.”
-Rita Felciano, Dance Magazine, 25 to Watch January 2014
“Christy Funsch’s latest program, State: not anywhere near to now (May 31-June 2, CounterPULSE), represents what we have come to expect from her work: it is full of surprises, as comfortable as one’s own skin, and both immensely private and ever so open. It also keeps some of its secrets. Her dance making is nuanced, rich in detail, and impeccably crafted. For all their quietness, her pieces resonate like finely tuned bells.”
-Rita Felciano, Bay Area Guardian, June 2013
“Moving Still(s)” begins with her standing with her arms raised, her elbows over her ears, then she slowly puts her hands over her eyes—”something terrible has happened…reminding me of Eliot’s lines in “The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock: “I should have been a pair of ragged claws, Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.” The solo is in many ways a tour de force, a meticulously detailed performance, in which Funsch seems completely unaware of the audience, but nevertheless connects.”
-Martha Ullman West, Oregon Arts Monthly, May 2013
“Christy Funsch’s experiment in showing solo dances to one audience member at a time is daring and delightful. We all, critics or not, need to learn to really see dance. Funsch’s vocabulary moves between large lyrical or expansive movements and, towards and away from the body, with small gestures that often touch the torso or the face. In my imagination, I have named the process “in and out” since these extreme changes echo thoughtful and emotional states, uncertain but provocative.”
-Joanna G. Harris, Culturevulture.net, March 2012
“Christy Funsch’s solo, “Box Elder” to Pavement and Helene Renaunt was a lament indeed, full of nostalgia and meditation and Funsch’s carefully structured use of intimate gesture and space”
-Joanna G. Harris, Culturevulture.net, April 2010
“Christy Funsch, choreographer and dancer, excels at the dance put on in a small space for a small audience. She puts me in mind of Marian McPartland’s jazz piano playing, the artistry is exquisite, first-class, but the effects are most telling when they are most subtle. Insidious Hope,danced in one of the small studios in Project Artaud, was the most intimate dancing I saw all year. Her stage mask is like the classic actress Jean Arthur’s, and like Arthur, she uses her privacy to great purpose. Her tiniest move has outsized significance”
-Paul Parish, Bay Area Reporter, Year-End Dance Picks, 2009
“Christy Funsch’s Dapper Indiscretion Blues finds this excellent Bay Area dancer sidling and shrugging her way through a quirky solo that signifies a distinctive sensibility”
-Allan Ulrich, Voice of Dance, August 2008
“…lucidly conceived and playful…thoughtful, intriguingly structured choreography, beautifully realized by an excellent quintet of lush performers”
-Rita Felciano, Dance View Times