Dana Genshaft rushed into a Mission District coffee shop on a recent Wednesday morning wearing a plaid flannel shirt and jeans, looking more like a summer camp counselor than a former San Francisco Ballet soloist. “So sorry,” she said, explaining that as artistic director ofSFDanceworks, she is also the company’s “unofficial Uber driver,” shuttling dancers and choreographers across town to different studios.

“I do a lot of things logistically,” she said, “like, ‘Oh, you need a frying pan?’ ”

原来,夏令营是类比Genshaft使用s to prepare artists for SFDanceworks’ brief and intense rehearsal run-up. “I tell dancers, ‘You’re not going to have all your luxuries and you might be a little uncomfortable, but you’re going to have a great time, you’re going to have an experience and you’re going to reset artistically and really just focus on the art without all the extra bells and whistles.”

What sounds bare bones behind the scenes looks far more glamorous when SFDanceworks hits the stage.

Last summer, the first season under Genshaft’s leadership, SFDanceworks’ sold-out performances opened with former San Francisco Ballet principal Dores André in an iconic black-and-white dress evoking Martha Graham, whose solo “Deep Song” André danced with muscular power. When SFDanceworks’ sixth season opens atODC Theater6月30日,the program will launch with work by another modern dance legend, midcentury innovator Jose Limón.

The slate also offers world premieres by some of the international dance world’s most notable rising talents, Alexander Anderson and Bryan Arias. There’s a West Coast premiere by one of the biggest marquee names: Pam Tanowitz, the Guggenheim-winning artist whose intellectually rigorous, formally experimental work is in demand at festivals across the country. The cast includes notables like Benjamin Freemantle, another of San Francisco Ballet’s most charismatic former principals, returning from his freelance career in New York.

It’s not star power that holds this slate together, though, but a clear company mission to “present the past, present, and future of world-class contemporary dance.” Just as importantly, SFDanceworks’ particular flavor of contemporary dance has filled a void in the Bay Area, presenting a more weighted, expressionistic kind of movement that’s influential at avant-garde companies like Nederlands Dans Theater but rarely seen in San Francisco.

As dancer Nick Korkos said, “The Bay Area gets a little locked in, and it’s good to hear other voices. I mean, if Danceworks were a year-round company, I probably wouldn’t have moved to New York.”

“Danceworks is fueled by the artists it attracts,” Genshaft said.

She understands the dancers’ hunger for exploration; she retired early from performing in 2015 and transitioned to a faculty position at the S.F. Ballet School because she wanted to choreograph, realizing that many of her most fulfilling studio hours had been spent with artists like Wayne McGregor who invite dancer collaboration. SFDanceworks gave Genshaft one of her first creative opportunities: a solo she made for the company’s inaugural season in 2016.

The company functions a bit like a knowledge-building collaborative. Last year, when the dancers were all interested in learning Graham Technique — none of them had been trained in the highly specific method of moving from deep pelvic contractions, despite the germinating influence of Graham’s style — Genshaft arranged Graham workshops open to the whole dance community.

Building knowledge sometimes goes beyond the body and into a text. This year, in anticipation of Limón Dance Company member MJ Edwards performing excerpts from Limón’s “Danza Mexicanas,” Genshaft shared Limón’s diaries and letters with company members, exploring how the work was created in 1939 at Oakland’s Mills College as a reclamation of Limón’s Mexican-born heritage.

Company members end up taking on unexpected new roles, too, like Korkos spontaneously serving as rehearsal director for a premiere by former Lines Ballet member Laura O’Malley. The quintet — with a dramatic visual scheme in collaboration with this season’s costume designer, Lauren Starobin, and lighting by frequent San Francisco Ballet collaborator Jim French — is O’Malley’s third premiere for SFDanceworks and her most ambitious. “Danceworks is where I first tried choreographing, and I don’t know if I would have without it,” she said.

In this way, SFDanceworks has always been driven by an energy greater than any figurehead, passing from founder James Sofranko (now artistic director of Grand Rapids Ballet in Michigan) to Danielle Rowe (now artistic director of Oregon Ballet Theatre) to co-directors O’Malley and Conway and finally to Genshaft, who called Sofranko up late in 2022 and volunteered herself for the job. “Jim reignited the advisory board, and everyone agreed to give me a shot,” Genshaft recalled.

That “shot” has revealed a gift for leadership and unleashed new momentum for the company. The advisory board has expanded under Genshaft, who is looking at a doubling of SFDanceworks’ season. “It would be amazing to have two programs, a summer and a fall offering, and to produce a dance film every year, and possibly a gala event in 2024,” she said.

Genshaft’s commitment doesn’t come without sacrifice: Though she’s gaining momentum in her own choreographic career with commissions at Washington Ballet, American Ballet Theatre’s studio company and BalletMet, Genshaft keeps her own creations off SFDanceworks’ programming. The dancers aren’t blind to this prioritizing of the group project above her individual fulfillment.

“Dana really doesn’t have an ego,” Korkos said. “It’s wonderful to have a leader who takes your opinion into consideration and who really cares openly about it.”

If Genshaft’s “summer camp” job comes with a danger of burnout, you wouldn’t know it from her steady, no-nonsense energy as she finished coffee and prepared to jump back into the company’s constantly shifting logistics. (Just a few days after this morning break, the company would add yet another stellar offering to its program, a passionate duet by Spanish choreographer Alba Castillo.)

“I tried to bring in people that create a community together,” Genshaft said. “I feel like it sparks something bigger.”

Rachel Howard is a freelance writer.