At Highways Performance Space, Adie San Diego’s Terms of Agreement unfolds within the intimacy of a black box theater, where even the smallest gesture carries weight. Before entering, the lobby offers a quiet prelude of a refreshment stand, comfortable sofas and artful sketches that echo the work’s interiority, hinting at a performance rooted in observation, identity, and lived experience.
San Diego, in collaboration with dancers Celine Sauquillo Davis, Robinn Jaide, Jules Mara, Julia McCullock, Melody Morrow, Frankie Peji, and Chloe Rauch, creates a work that examines the “masks” we wear. Here, those masks take the form of cargo pants—donned and shed throughout as symbols of protection, conformity, and transformation.
Adie San Diego’s “Terms of Agreement” – Photo by Bella Allen.
The opening is deceptively simple. Set to jazz-inflected music, performers in casual attire—shorts, skirts, and T-shirts—move with an ease that feels both social and stylized. As piano music emerges, the action slows. One by one, dancers don cargo pants, brought in like movable props, forming lines of separation and unity as they counter and cross the stage in deliberate silence. The act itself becomes choreography. The stillness generates a charged curiosity: Who are they? Why the pants? What do they signify?
From there, the movement language builds through relationships. Dancers lean into one another, using bodies as counterweight—lifts, dips, shared balances—constructing a physical dialogue that feels communal yet deeply individual. What emerges is a world that mirrors the social design of daily life: friendships, tensions, hierarchies, and fleeting alliances.
Adie San Diego’s “Terms of Agreement” – Photo by Bella Allen.
San Diego resists overused tropes of contemporary dance vocabulary. Instead, she leans into pedestrian movement—gestures drawn from lived experience—and shapes them into something articulate and resonant. Office culture hovers as a subtle backdrop: water cooler exchanges, “mean girl” dynamics, undercurrents of envy, camaraderie, and isolation. These are not caricatures, but recognizable human patterns rendered with nuance.
What is striking is how the choreography evolves from the ordinary into the inventive. A simple walk becomes a phrase; a shared glance becomes a motif. Unison passages fracture into variations, revealing individuality within the collective. The dancers are clearly trained, yet resist virtuosity for its own sake, choosing instead to invest fully in the authenticity of movement.
Music plays a vital role in shaping the emotional terrain. San Diego scores an eclectic blend of jazz, Latin, classical, and hints of Filipino pop. The result feels refreshingly human—melodic, familiar, and emotionally accessible—grounding the work in a sonic landscape that invites connection. At times, she dispenses with music entirely, allowing silence to take hold. These moments are particularly potent, underscoring that dance need not rely on sound, but can generate its own rhythm through presence and breath.
Adie San Diego’s “Terms of Agreement” – Photo by Bella Allen.
Underlying the work is San Diego’s Filipina-American identity, woven gently into the fabric of the piece. Culture becomes a place of return—a grounding force amid the shifting demands of social belonging. The work navigates the tension of being an “inside-outsider,” between needing space and seeking community, between self-definition and social expectation.
The cargo pants ultimately become a central metaphor. When worn, they suggest assimilation, protection, even anonymity. When removed, the dancers appear altered—more exposed, more distinctly themselves. Costume design by Jules Mara supports this transformation, while lighting by Cathleen Conte-Marerro subtly shapes the emotional atmosphere without overwhelming it.
Throughout, the performers sustain a compelling sense of character, fluidly shifting between hero and villain, agent and subject. Each is defined not only by costume and physicality, but by the emotional states they embody—friendly, isolated, jealous, playful, irate—often within a single sequence. The stage becomes a mutable landscape of identities, a living collage of human interaction.
Adie San Diego’s “Terms of Agreement” – Photo by Bella Allen.
San Diego is unafraid of simplicity. It is through simplicity that the work gains its power. Terms of Agreement reminds us that life itself is choreography—unfolding in offices, friendships, cultural memory, and the quiet negotiations of who and where we choose to be.
In this intimate, thoughtful work, the ordinary turns expressive and the familiar is seen anew, inviting the audience into a breath of acceptance and wonder. It is a deeply human gift—one that lifts us, if only briefly, from the noise of today’s challenges.
To learn more about Adie San Diego, please visit her website.
To learn more about Highways Performance Space, please visit their website.
Written by Joanne DiVito for LA Dance Chronicle.
Featured image: Adie San Diego’s “Terms of Agreement” – Photo by Bella Allen.
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