PREVIEW Do we have a new odd couple in town? At first glance Todd Eckert and Nol Simonse don’t seem to have much in common though both are tall, lanky dancers who allow themselves to disappear into other people’s choreography. Eckert’s steadying presence in Robert Moses’ Kin company contrasts strongly with Simonse’s febrile intensity in companies as diverse as Kunst-Stoff, Stephen Pelton Dance, and Janice Garrett and Dancers.
It turns out, not surprisingly, that the two have in common a desire to strike out on their own. Unlike ballet dancers, who are still mostly trained to interpret within a given language, modern dancers learn early on to create language and content from within themselves. So last year Eckert and Simonse hooked up for a performance of their own works. They liked what they saw. So did audiences.
For Shared Space 2, an evening of world premieres, each artist will create a solo and a group piece. Eckert’s Routines of Chaos investigates compulsive behavior: his yet unnamed quartet looks at self-sabotage in connection to relationship building. Simonse’s How Fortunate the Man with None mixes his own material with some "borrowed" from other dancers. For his group piece on grief, he examines the concept of the journey as developed by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 book, On Death and Dying.
SHARED SPACE 2 Fri/5-Sat/6, 8 p.m., and Sun/7, 7 p.m.; $20. Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St., SF. (415) 273-4633, www.dancemission.com