PREVIEW Two years ago Catherine Galasso appeared at the WestWave Dance Festival in Gnome Trouble, based on the Grimm brothers’ fairy tale Snow White and Rose Red. Freud would have loved to bite into that story of sibling rivalry. Even though Galasso’s piece wasn’t that successful, it somehow stayed in memory. Apparently she likes folk tales. She is back with another one, The Improbable Reign of Norton I, Emperor of the United States. In fact Norton was a 19th century San Franciscan, eccentric to say the least. He will be joined on stage by other semimythic Barbary Coast denizens, including Joaquin Murrietta, a Robin Hood type bandit. Sharing the bill with Galasso will be a kindred spirit, Seattle’s Salt Horse dance-sound company, with This Was a Cliff. Taking an entirely different perspective — improvisatory and nonnarrative — they also create imagistic dance-theater works in which reality and fantasy collide and cooperate. The double bill comes courtesy of SCUBA, the national touring network created by ODC Theater, Velocity Dance Center in Seattle, and the Southern Theater in Minneapolis. This small venture by cooperating presenters was founded in 2003 in a time of plenty. It seemed a good idea then. It’s an even better one today if small presenters and their artists are going to survive.
SCUBA WITH CATHERINE GALASSO AND SALT HORSE Sat/9, 8 p.m.; Sun/10, 7 p.m., $15–$18. ODC Theater, 351 Shotwell, SF. (415) 863-9834, www.odctheater.org