The Best Thing You Can Do Today: Dance! Dance! Dance! at SPF18

The St. Petersburg Festival of the Arts (SPF18) has made a point of highlighting the local dance scene, and today is the pinnacle, with top-flight events in both the afternoon and evening.

The Take a Chance Dance Project ( 2 p.m., First Unity Spiritual Campus, 460 46th Ave. N., St. Petersburg, free admission) is kind of the dance equivalent of Wait! Wait! Don’t Tell Me’s “Not My Job” — except in this case the guest stars aren’t being quizzed on outlandish subjects far afield from their own profession, they’re artists who’ve been asked to translate their imaginative powers into an art form they’ve never personally tried before. Choreographer Paula Kramer has brought together a brilliant trio for the project: Maureen McDole, poet and mastermind of Keep St. Pete Lit; Bob Devin Jones, actor, director, playwright and the visionary behind Studio@620; and Fanni Green, the powerful actress most recently seen commanding the stage in A Raisin in the Sun at American Stage. Working in collaboration with Kramer, they’ve created three performance pieces that infuse dance into original narratives focusing on a sense of place. 

St. Pete Shares the Stage! (8 p.m., The Palladium, $25) is an all-star showcase of dance from throughout the region, featuring d r I f t, a poignant duet with Helen Hansen French and Alex Jones, an evocative solo by Rogue Dance’s Artistic Director Kellie Harmon, and guests companies including Sarasota Contemporary Dance in Kristin O’Neal’s Sweet Suite, Tampa City Ballet’s If I Cry, Si Te Lloro, and a world premiere by Alex Jones’s new projectALCHEMY. The Tampa Bay dance scene is rich in exciting potential right now, and tonight’s performance will show you why.

For the full schedule of SPF18 events, go to stpeteartsalliance.org/spf-festival.