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Choreographer

Brenda Way

A white haired woman smiling in her headshot. She is wearing a black blazer and a necklace and earrings.

Brenda Way is the founder and artistic director of ODC/Dance and creator of the ODC Theater and ODC Dance Commons, community performance and training venues in San Francisco’s Mission District. She launched ODC (Oberlin Dance Collective) and helped create an inter-arts department at Oberlin College and Conservatory of Music in the late 1960s before relocating to the Bay Area in 1976. 

Way has choreographed more than 85 pieces over the last 45 years. Her commissions include Unintended Consequences: A Meditation (2008) for Equal Justice Society; Life is a House (2008) for San Francisco Girls Chorus; On a Train Heading South (2005) for CSU Monterey Bay; Remnants of Song (2002) for Stanford Lively Arts; Scissors Paper Stone (1994) for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater; Western Women (1993) for Cal Performances, Rutgers University, and Jacob's Pillow; Ghosts of an Old Ceremony (1991) for Walker Art Center and The Minnesota Orchestra; Krazy Kat (1990) for San Francisco Ballet; This Point in Time (1987) for Oakland Ballet; Tamina (1986) for San Francisco Performances; and Invisible Cities (1985) for Stanford Lively Arts and the Robotics Research Laboratory. Her work Investigating Grace was named an NEA American Masterpiece in 2011. 

Way is a national spokesperson for dance, has been published widely, and has received numerous awards including the Isadora Duncan Dance Awards for both choreography and sustained achievement. She has enjoyed 40 years of support from the National Endowment for the Arts and is a 2000 recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2009, she was the first choreographer to be a Resident of the Arts at the American Academy in Rome, and in 2012, she received the Helen Crocker Russell Award for Community Leadership from the SF Foundation. Also, in 2009, ODC/Dance was selected by BAM to tour Way's work internationally under the aegis of the United States State Department’s inaugural DanceMotion USA tour. She has recently added filmmaking to her list of accomplishments with Walk on Air, Sleeping Beauty, and the feature-length Up for Air/Decameron, all brought to the screen during the pandemic. 

Brenda Way holds a Ph.D. in aesthetics and is the mother of four children.

Repertory