Over 10 years ago, ate9 and Jacob Jonas The Company entered the Los Angeles contemporary dance scene, soon establishing themselves as prominent voices for the city’s cultural landscape. Ate9, founded in 2012 by Danielle Agami, pulls from the choreographer’s career at Batsheva Dance Company to create visceral works with innovative approaches to movement. Jacob Jonas The Company is a non-profit organization centered on intersecting dance with nontraditional collaborations. Over the years, they’ve expanded their practice and, in Agami’s case, centralized the company worldwide. This month, the two dance entities will unite for an evening of new work that celebrates the legacy they’ve created in Los Angeles and where they’ve landed today.
“FOG” includes two world premieres at the Kirk Douglas Theatre, August 29-30: “Soon After” by Agami and “Grip” by Jonas. The program is described as a “convergence,” bringing the duo’s choreographic voices into conversation to create an on-stage experience that “feels human, instinctual, and real.” The work is expected to reflect on being present as a community. Beneath the abstractness, “FOG” marks a point of refraction for Agami and Jonas as they each share how time and growth have impacted their practice. For Agami, her transition to Europe has made her choreography softer, and for Jonas, a recent medical diagnosis has made his choreography more meditative. Consider this a new introduction. Tickets are on sale now.
ate9 – L to R Omri Drumlevich, Gianni Notarnicola in “Soon After” – Photo by Victoria Sendra.
“I think the audience can expect a nice meeting of similar but substantially different approaches to movement, even if we land in similar places, I think our access and our path to it is unique to each of us,” Agami said.
Jonas wanted the evening to be a reintroduction of Agami to Los Angeles, ensuring ate9 nurtures its connection to the city. Agami left Los Angeles in June 2023 and later based the company in Barcelona in 2024, continuing her work with ate9 on a different continent. She relocated the company to Paris in September 2024. While in Europe, she noticed how much the location has impacted her relationship with dance making. Returning to LA to share a new work, her movement will look and feel different from the version she established TKYEARS ago.
“I think that spending time in Europe allowed me to soften something and reconnect with my honest love of being on stage without the harsh critique that I had when I was experiencing my work through the lens of Los Angeles,” Agami said. “It felt for many years that Los Angeles is curious but also wants to be educated about this style of dance, and it just puts this responsibility on your shoulders.”
ate9 – L to R Danielle Agami, Omri Drumlevich, Billy Barry, Gianni Notarnicola in “Soon After” – Photo by Victoria Sendra.
In Europe, she’s felt a sense of freedom, not having to explain the context of her movement style, which is influenced by her formative years working with Ohad Naharin. “Soon After” will be “a new genre within ate9,” she said.
Agami describes Los Angeles as a former and forever home that represents the place where ate9 developed its voice. However, the company has since developed a more refined one informed by its dancers rather than its location.
“It’s not about the address, it’s about the artists they bring together,” Agami said.
ate9 – L to R Omri Drumlevich, Gianni Notarnicola, Billy Barry in “Soon After” – Photo by Victoria Sendra.
“Soon After” pulls from the raw talents of the dancers. The performers — Billy Barry, Gianni Notarnicole and Omari Drumlevich, with Agami — come from varying backgrounds and locales. As a result of this melting pot of lived experiences, the new work incorporates authentic steps and unexpectedly pedestrian moments. In teaser clips posted online by Agami, dancers play with their relationship to the environment and their bodies. One snapshot shows Notarnicole on his head, fluttering his feet and holding himself up by the edge of a table, while another shows Barry guided by the angular movement of his hand. Improvisation plays an important role. Seventy percent is planned, and the remaining 30% is discovered in the moment, Agami said.
“They are a little bit like an amusement park of personalities,” she said. “Each one of them is a bit insane and extremely skilled and experienced, so with a very simple, basic script — and some rules of choreography — we managed to focus on their personal characters.”
Jacob Jonas The Company – “Grip” – Photo by Jacob Jonas.
For Jonas, his work has evolved to incorporate new characters of his own, including nature and repetition.
“There is an intentional desire on my part as the author of the work to allow people to have a residency of time in their mind, to explore whatever thoughts are naturally coming up for them,” Jonas said. “I spent a lot of time in nature watching rivers, waterfalls, the sun and waves crashing. There’s something in that, too, where you want to go away and ask yourself a little deeper, why? Why can’t you sit with this thing that’s happening?”
His technique, The System, is a movement language centered on the spine that aims to release pain and trauma within the body through physical expression. While this aspect remains the same, in the past couple of years, his practice has shifted to incorporate repetition following his diagnosis with stage four lymphoma in November 2022. The repetition of treatment became a source of inspiration.
Jacob Jonas The Company – “Grip” – Photo by Jacob Jonas.
“I ask a lot of my dancers and audiences to be in a meditative state or a trance state to process some deeper things,” Jonas said.
Music also plays a special part in the presentation of “FOG.” For the evening performance, both Agami and Jonas will have live original music. Jonas worked with Live Footage, a music group based in Brooklyn that experiments with electronic synths and acoustic instruments.
Jacob Jonas The Company – “Grip” – Photo by Jacob Jonas.
“The relationship that I have with musicians now is similar to Merce [Cunningham], not having them compose to the dance per se or choreograph to the music, but finish a score of dance and then have them respond in real time,” Jonas said.
Agami brought on a long-time musical collaborator, Yuka Honda. Honda’s process is incredibly planned and premeditated, challenging Agami’s improv-influenced approach to movement creation.
“She pushed me into this territory and I think it made a sharper definition for who is on stage, why they are on stage, and in what way they will be on stage,” Agami said.
“FOG” reflects a changing dance landscape in LA through two figures who are expressing themselves in ways they didn’t expect to reach over a decade ago. Today, they plan to capture their legacy by embracing the authentic movement they call home.
Jacob Jonas The Company – “Grip” – Photo by Jacob Jonas.
“It [‘FOG’] is an ongoing discussion about LA, about dance, about passion, to present work, to capture the attention of audiences and dancers, to the research that we’re interested in,” Agami said.
“Fog” appears August 29 – 30, 2025 at 8:00 PM at the Kirk Douglas Theatre, 9820 Washington Blvd, Culver City, CA 90232. To purchase tickets, please click HERE.
To learn more about ate9, please visit their website.
To learn more about Jacob Jonas The Company, please visit their website.
For more information about the Kirk Douglas Theatre, please visit their website.
Written by Steven Vargas for LA Dance Chronicle.
Featured image: Danielle Agami (Photo by Jacob Jonas) and Jacob Jonas (Photo by Emma Rosenzweig-Bock) – Montage by LA Dance Chronicle.
