On Sunday, August 3, 2026, I found myself staring up at a cloudless, mid-summer pastel sky, the smell of tacos and cocktails and the sound of light chatter filling the parking lot as I waited for the final performance of Frame 001 to begin on the first weekend of the inaugural MovementFest LA. A new dance festival for Los Angeles, MovementFest LA seeks to “[connect] the spaces where dance is trained, created, performed and shared with the public,” hosting twenty-seven workshops led by choreographers and teachers in LA and beyond, a Performance Lab where artists can develop new work, as well as two weekends of performances, featuring new works from established and emerging artists. Frame 001 consisted of a double-bill performance at LA Dance Project Studios, featuring a piece by LA-based choreographer Jobel Medina and Netherlands-based choreographic duo Rebecca Laufer and Mats van Rossum.
Spirits were high outside the venue as members of the LA dance community greeted each other over food and drink, the hot summer day fading into a pleasant summer evening. We filed into the black box theater, and after a brief introduction from festival co-producer Majella Bass, the show was underway.
MovementFest LA – Frame 001 – “Leak” by Jobel Medina – Photo by Luca Renzi.
Jobel Medina was inspired to create “Leak” after “wondering how to meditate on death and how physical effort – like a prayer expressed through dance – could wash over us.” The piece opened with dancers Joey Navarette-Medina, Paul Zivkovich, Camila Arana, Judson Emery, Marlie Couto, and Jobel Medina filing onto stage in a slow-motion trance, carrying a microphone, stand, and amps with them. Navarette-Medina was an especially compelling performer in this entrance, standing dead center with a microphone stand, piercing the audience with a possessed, deadened stare. An irregular thump, like a heartbeat, was the only sound accompanying the dancers’ initial slow movements. I could feel the audience members squirm around me, perhaps uncomfortable with the intimate hold we found ourselves in, contained in silence with the dancers, their eyes fixed on us as if we were the performers.
Then, musician Dylan Marx moseyed onstage in a pedestrian fashion, plugging an electric guitar into the amps the dancers brought on stage. Slowly, as Marx began to play loud, resonant, eerie guitar chords, the dancers began to wake. A simmer of movement was accompanied by a haunting, wet chant from Navarette-Medina, who vocalized into the mic with his back to the audience. This simmer turned into a roaring boil along with the increasingly frantic music, exploding into the dancers throwing themselves across the stage in a beautifully organized array of chaos.
This havoc melted into exhaustion as the dancers fell to the ground around the midpoint of the show. In one of the most evocative moments in the piece, dancer Judson Emery breathed a steady breath into a mic as the dancers inhaled and exhaled in unison while lying supine, their stomachs extending and retracting in perfect time with one another. They burbled back to life, coming together into a gravity-defying vignette of expertly constructed balances, each body holding up another with care. The piece concluded in a wash of ecstasy; performers kissing one another, tearing and peeling clothing off, and Camila Arana standing on a dancer’s shoulders while in the nude, reaching for the light before everything cut to black. A dynamic, unsettling piece brought to life by technically skilled and emotionally committed performers, accompanied by Marx’s beautiful guitar.
MovementFest LA – Frame 001 – Rebecca Laufer and Mats van Rossum in their duet “Clay” – Photo by Luca Renzi.
After a brief intermission, we returned to our seats for Rebecca Laufer and Mats van Rossum’s piece “Clay,” a meditation on the challenges of “coexist[ing],” and the standout piece of the night. Instantly, the stage design transported me to a hazy, otherworldly era, somehow seeming distantly in the past and far off in some dystopian future, or existing in some make-believe fantasy land altogether. Mats entered the stage and sat at a desk, cigarette in his mouth, a cup falling off his desk. Falling out of his chair after the cup, he burst into a full-body, worm-like movement, the first of many physics-defying movements in this piece.
The stage cut to black, and then suddenly a chair with a jacket draped over it appeared, and Rebecca popped out from behind it, the first of many sleight-of-hand gestures peppered throughout the piece. These gestures were made even more inventive with clever props and perfectly timed lighting by Alex Lemus. A small yellow light, almost like a firefly, became an important motif in the piece, as Mat’s character retches it from his throat and tries to throw it away, only for it to continue showing up in his hands, like a magician pulling handkerchiefs out of his sleeves.
In “Clay,” we witnessed a stubborn pair constantly getting in each other’s way. They stumbled out of chairs, skittered around like demonic spiders, and threw cartoonish punches, lifting, flipping, and throwing one another about in a manner that was tinged with perfectly placed humor. Mats and Rebecca were rigorously committed performers, practically spineless as their legs flipped over their backs, bending themselves in unnatural, almost inhuman ways. The piece was unlike anything I’ve seen.
At the end, the creaky, sticky non-musical sounds that accompanied the piece transitioned into a beautiful piano score, enhancing my empathy for these stubborn, troubled characters onstage. Whether or not the characters ended with a mutual understanding is beside the point, as they seemed to come upon a mutual discovery: that this light that they’re trying to rid themselves of can’t be discarded or extinguished.
Frame 001 was a dynamic evening, rife with beautiful technique and emotional potency. A testament to the inventive choreographers and talented performers, as well as the creative vision of MovementFest LA Founding Producers Jessie Lee Thorne, Mike Tyus, and Majella Bess. This hopefully marks the start of a new tradition in the local dance community, merging education, creation, and performance to celebrate dance in Los Angeles and beyond.
MovementFest LA is presented and produced in partnership with LADP Presents, the programming arm of L.A. Dance Project dedicated to supporting non‑repertory work, community programming, and collaborative initiatives. Through this partnership, LADP provides venue support, technical resources, and institutional and marketing infrastructure that help bring the festival to life. (LADP press statement)
This weekend, MovementFest LA will present “Body of Work,” its culminating performance of the festival, featuring original works by Performance Lab Resident Choreographers Dolly Sfeir, Mike Tyus, and Diego Vega Solorza, alongside curated performances by Los Angeles–based artists Jessie Lee Thorne, Laja Field, Ja’Moon Jones, zoe | juniper, Majella Bess, Sam Fine, and Sam Cool.
For more information about this performance and the rest of the festival workshops, visit https://www.movementfestla.org/.
This article was edited on 8/5/26.
Written by Madison Huizinga for LA Dance Chronicle.
Featured image: MovementFest LA – Frame 001 – Rebecca Laufer and Mats van Rossum in their duet “Clay” – Photo by Luca Renzi.
