For dancer, choreographer and teacher Krissy Keefer, 2025 is a big year. It marks five decades since she started the seed of Dance Brigade, her unabashedly feminist contemporary troupe, and 25 years since she landed in San Francisco from Oregon and helped establish Dance Mission, headquarters of Dance Brigade and community site for classes and performance.
Her comment about the achievements: “[That] I persevered,” she says with a laugh. “I didn’t give up. The fact that we’ve been able to gather resources for our house at Dance Mission [and] actually put together a tour of this magnitude … to celebrate 50 years in the field is kind of astonishing.”
“A Woman’s Song for Peace,” a seven-stop tour in Oregon and California kicking off this month, is the first of three programs in the company’s celebratory season. Dance Mission 25th anniversary showcase, a tribute to Mission District venue’s role as a crucial performance and incubator for the Bay Area dance scene, is in November, and March 2026 offers the world premiere of “Match Girl,” Keefer’s San Francisco-set dance adaptation of “The Little Match Girl,” a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen.
“A Woman’s Song for Peace,” which begins this week and concludes Jan. 19 in San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre, is more than a two-hour performance by Keefer and her collaborators. Subtitled “A Tribute to the Past, A Vision for the Future,” it’s also a demonstration of sorts, featuring Dance Brigade and special guests: songwriter-activist Holly Near, queer singer-songwriter Ferron and Afro-Cuban jazz artist Christelle Durandy.
Its segments are meant to serve as a guide and alternative to global conflicts (including the Israel-Hamas war) that occupy the headlines, particularly those involving the United States. The tour simultaneously is a tribute to Keefer, celebrating the half- and quarter-century she’s put into Dance Brigade and Dance Mission. It starts Jan. 9 in Eugene, Oregon, where Keefer conceived Dance Brigade, which stemmed from the Wallflower Order, a feminist dance collective.
“We were a pivotal part of the cultural movement,” she says of her time with Wallflower, which sought to add a missing element to the thriving women’s movement in the United States in the mid-1970s: “I think we were probably the only dance company that really put forward a kind of ‘lesbian politick’ at the time, and tried to figure out social justice issues and wove that into our work.”
After the touring company moved to Boston in 1981, it found a more agreeable political climate on the West Coast in Berkeley. However, internal clashes led Keefer to formally break away from the collective. In 1983, she established Dance Brigade in San Francisco, where she found considerable arts funding. Its first home was on Brady Street; it eventually moved to 24th Street in the Mission, where the company organized a theater and studio.
Asked if she’d attempt opening a company in that fashion today, Keefer replies no, but adds, “There has never been as much money in the state of California as there is right now, and foundations that are willing to support, particularly, dance.”
She credits organizations like the Kenneth Rainin Foundation and measures created by politicians including Gavin Newsom for continuing to create opportunities for arts funding. Buy Keefer emphasizes that the future of the arts isn’t simply in securing funds, but also in embracing diversity.
“I think the focus on artists of color has really invigorated everything,” she says, pointing out that diversity benefits both independent artists and established institutions. “I think the only way that ballet is going to survive is to have artists of color integrated and in all of the leading roles. I think that artists of color bring something very specific and transformative to the arts, and that if we can keep generating the resources and highlight artists of color, particularly Black artists, into the center of what’s going on, then the arts really have a future.”
Having reached these milestones after decades of considerable effort, Keefer has not made solid plans for retirement.
“The amount of work that it takes to run Dance Mission, I sniff around and ask people, ‘Are you interested in running this?’ They’re like, ‘No! Way too much work!’” she says.
Further considering its future, she says, “I think that what Dance Mission brings to the community-at-large is so important, because we really share all of our resources, and we promote, produce and support so many artists. I would hope that we would just be able to keep expanding on our capacity to do this.”
“A Woman’s Song for Peace” is onstage in Eugene on Jan. 9, Portland on Jan. 10, Medford on Jan. 12, Ukiah on Jan. 15, Santa Rosa on Jan. 17, Santa Cruz on Jan. 18 and San Francisco on Jan. 19. Tickets are $25-$50 at dancemissiontheater.org.
Charles Lewis III is a San Francisco-born journalist, activist and performing artist. He has written for the San Francisco Chronicle, KQED and San Francisco Examiner. Dodgy evidence of this can be found at The Thinking Man’s Idiot.wordpress.com