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wild light

Tussling with alienation and imagined futures,

wild light is a two-part performance experience traveling through time and space to imagine safer, more nourishing worlds. Inspired by Donna Haraway's queer, feminist, speculative fiction work “The Camille Stories: Children of Compost,” this two-part performance experience lands us four hundred years into the future to imagine beyond the beyond,

where lines between human and more-than-human dissolve.

Premiered:​ Dec 4-7, 2025, ODC Theater

 

Collaborators:

Choreographer: 

Bhumi B Patel

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Performers:

Ài Yīn Adelski, Maxine Flasher-Düzgüneş, monique jonath, Catalina O'Connor, Bhumi B Patel

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Director of Sound: 

Rachel Austin

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Visual Artist:

Sa'dia Rehman

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Technical Director / Lighting Designer:

Jessi Barber

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Stage Manager:

Heidi Erickson

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Costumes: 

Cristina Chavez​​​

wild light imagines into the year 2425, where human creatures encounter a dying earth and look toward healing this future-imagined place as a way to heal their own sense of displacement. This two-part semi-immersive performance is made up of a solo performed by Bhumi B Patel, for a moment, earthbound, and a quartet performed by Ài Yīn 艾音 Adelski, Catalina O'Connor, Maxine Flasher-Düzgüneş, and monique jonath, ghosts of camille. Inspired by femme erasure and Donna Haraway’s queer, feminist, speculative fiction work “The Camille Stories: Children of Compost,” the work traces five generations of Camille from 2025 to 2425 during a period when the human population has rapidly dropped and only half of the species alive in 2015 still exist. The protagonists of this story, Camilles 1 to 4 are symbionts, creatures who have merged their human DNA with the monarch butterfly in order to survive the climate disasters of the Earth. In the work, the audience is asked to imagine beyond the beyond, where lines between human and more-than-human dissolve.

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You can read more about the work in this Stance On Dance piece getting the wild light into my bones by Bhumi Patel.

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Funding:

  • Rainin Foundation

  • City of Berkeley

  • Zellerbach

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Thank you to our individual donors:

  • Ian Anderson

  • Lydia Daniller

  • Charlie Dunkin

  • Eula Dunkin

  • Amelia Estrada

  • Rebecca Fitton

  • Pragati Gusmano

  • Carolyn Jeffires

  • Erika Jenssen

  • Belinda Ju

  • Erica Lessner

  • Joe Metzler

  • Hannah Schwadron

  • Deborah Slater

  • Nadhi Thekkek

  • Hannah Westbrook

  • Farah Yasmeen Shaikh

Additional Credits:

 

Public Relations:

Jill Randall

Administrator & Production Manager:

Dena Holper

Grant Writer:

Michaela Neild

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ODC Team:

Chloë L. Zimberg - Creative Director

Chris Chamberlin-Miner - ODC Production Coordinator

Katya Oleinikov - Audience Services Manager

Shayna Howlett - Theater Associate, Outreach Coordinator

Zaquia Mahler Salinas - Resident Curator

Mary Clare Blake-Booth - ODC Technician

Taylor Rivers - ODC Technician

wild light | dec 2025

"The dreamlike quality of the quartet swept me away. Beautiful moments of easeful connection, interspersed with a sense of play and giddy joy. Expansive and expanding softness. 

Rachel Austin’s live music (and recordings too) were one of the highlights of the project. What a gift to experience live music, and what a great range of sounds and feelings." 
                           - Jill Randall, One Goode Quote, Life of a Modern Dancer

"What I appreciated about wild light is how it offers glimpses of a queer future where bodies and the material world intertwine in ambivalent, boundless ways, teeming with possibility. I was drawn into a world that is both delightful and tense, shimmering with the potential of what could be." 
                           - Yanin Kramsky, audience member

ghosts of camille (excerpt) | july 2024

pateldanceworks presented ghosts of camille at the Yerba Buena Gardens ChoreoFest 2024. ghosts of camille is a quartet work with PDW company dancers inspired by Donna Haraway’s speculative fiction work “The Camille Stories: Children of Compost.” This story traces five generations of humanoids called Camille from 2025 to 2425, a period in which the human population, having at first risen from eight billion to ten billion, has dropped to three billion and only half of the species alive in 2015 still exist. The performance is haunted by the queerness of this imagined otherwise, where our identities as queer artists of color are central to the art and dance we create. 

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ghosts of camille Performers:

  • Ài Yīn Adelski, Maxine Flasher-Düzgüneş, Rebecca Fitton, Korea Venters

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Funding:

  • Yerba Buena Gardens ChoreoFest

"Love and rage contained the germs of partial healing even in the face of onrushing destruction." 
                           - "The Camille Stories: Children of Compost," Donna Harraway

"The Children of Compost would not cease the layered, curious practice of becoming-with others for a habitable, flourishing world." 
                           - "The Camille Stories: Children of Compost," Donna Harraway

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