What to Watch in 2009

The Chronicle asked me to list ten dance performances to look out for, appearing in this Sunday's Pink section. Here are a handful:

"San Francisco Ballet (Jan. 7-May 8, War Memorial Opera House) After last year's forward-looking 75th anniversary, Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson tends to tradition with a new "Swan Lake." Also tantalizing: the return of William Forsythe's slam-bam "In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated"; a revival of Antony Tudor's heartbreaking masterpiece of psychological insight, "Jardin aux Lilas"; and Balanchine's magisterial three-part "Jewels" - particularly alluring with the ravishing Sarah Van Patten dancing "Diamonds."

Compagnie Marie Chouinard (April 10-11, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts' Novellus Theater) The sexually provocative, fearlessly primal company from Montreal made an indelible San Francisco debut in 2005. Now San Francisco Performances brings us Chouinard's take on two erotically charged classics: "Rite of Spring" and "Afternoon of a Faun."

Paul Taylor Dance Company (April 29-May 3, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts' Novellus Theater) One year without modern master Paul Taylor is too long. Returning to San Francisco Performances after a hiatus, Taylor's sunny company will dance his usual mix of the daffy and divinely bittersweet, bringing two new works along with the classic "Esplanade" and 1969's disturbing, erotic "Private Domain."

Anna Halprin (May 1-3, Stern Grove) Eighty-eight and dancing with unbridled beauty, the Bay Area's postmodern pioneer creates a new, free site-specific work for Stern Grove, the leafy bower of an outdoor performance space designed by her husband, seminal landscape architect Lawrence Halprin."

Click here for my full list.

One extra heads-up: the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts is really on the ball for 2009, bringing intriguing visitors from Japan and New York. Be sure to check out their full line-up here.

On a personal note, I'm off to North Carolina for another graduate school residency for the next twelve days. But coming soon, a big preview package on the coming SF Ballet season in the Chronicle on January 11.

January 02, 2009  ·  04:54 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

Year in Dance 2008

My list in Sunday's Chronicle:

"HIGH: San Francisco Ballet's Maria Kochetkova in "Giselle" (Feb. 19): Tiny, delicate and irrepressibly sweet, the Russian-trained Kochetkova broke our hearts. Cutting through all the hype of San Francisco Ballet's forward-looking 75th season, the company's doll-like new principal gave a performance to remember for a lifetime.

LOW: Mark Morris Dance Group in "Romeo and Juliet: On Motifs of Shakespeare" (Sept. 26): Modern masters have their off years, too. Morris resurrected Prokofiev's original score but didn't show any feeling for the music. A handful of clever dramaturgical touches couldn't bring passion to this star-crossed production.

MOST IMPROVED: Smaller Bay Area ballet companies: They had a banner year. The reborn Oakland Ballet Company charmed in family-friendly fare, Diablo Ballet danced Balanchine with fresh panache, and Company C Contemporary Ballet romped through the world premiere of a lost Twyla Tharp creation. With the Smuin Ballet also carrying on strongly, there was ballet for everyone.

MVP: Jessica Robinson. CounterPulse's tireless executive director runs a tiny performance venue with a big impact, fostering new work by developing choreographers seemingly in all styles and genres - and just as important, promoting substantive dialogue among artists and their audiences."

And a few selections from my top 10:

"Retrospective Exhibitionist: (Miguel Gutierrez, May 9) A fleshy naked man. Holding a backbend. Singing a Kate Bush song in falsetto as a lit candle rises near his bare derriere. Gutierrez, a Joe Goode alumnus now in New York, was outrageous - but his meditation on narcissism was oddly touching, too.

Craneway Event: (Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Nov. 9) Cal Performances presented the 89-year-old modern dance maverick's timeless experiments in time and space at a former Ford assembly plant at Point Richmond. To see these superhuman dancers doing superhuman things - up close, inside a glistening palace of a warehouse perched on the edge of the sea - was heaven.

Axis Dance Company 20th anniversary season: (Nov. 15) Oakland's trailblazing troupe for dancers with and without disabilities astonished us again with the intense chemistry between feisty Sonsheree Giles and Rodney Bell, lashed tightly to his wheelchair but spectacularly agile, in a duet by Alex Ketley."

Click here for the full list.

December 26, 2008  ·  07:43 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

SF Ballet Nutcracker

Belatedly, my "Nutcracker" review in last week's Chronicle:

"In a winter of belt-tightening economic gloom - and as a silver lining, one hopes, a Christmastime not reduced to mere shopping - let's get the consumer advice out of the way. Is San Francisco Ballet's "Nutcracker" worth the outlay? The giggling children and shining parents at the War Memorial Opera House on Thursday suggested a "yes" that can't be measured in ticket prices.

Five seasons after the unveiling of Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson's luxurious production, the verdict is clear: This is one of the best "Nutcrackers" in the country and, by my estimation, the most visually elegant. The setting - 1915 San Francisco, with Clara dreaming about sights from the Panama-Pacific Exposition - is ingenious. The choice of a teenage Clara on the cusp of maturity makes for seamlessly satisfying storytelling.

The scenery - fog-shrouded Victorians, and for the second act a crystal palace that evokes the Conservatory of Flowers - is gorgeous. The battle between the toy soldiers and the mice is one of the cleverest in the business. My only serious complaint is that Tomasson's "Waltz of the Flowers," which ought to be an exuberant highpoint, feels cold and sterile. "

Oodles of photos online, if you click here for the rest of the review.

December 15, 2008  ·  01:45 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

SF Ballet Nutcracker on PBS

My little ditty of a story in the Sunday Chronicle:

"San Francisco Ballet was the first company to dance the full "Nutcracker" in North America, in 1944. But it was George Balanchine and the New York City Ballet that turned the then-relatively unknown Tchaikovsky score into a holiday tradition - and the ballet world's bread and butter - in the 1950s. Now San Francisco Ballet is about to reclaim the "Nutcracker" mantle in a big way with the nationwide PBS "Great Performances" broadcast of Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson's "Nutcracker" - set in 1915 San Francisco - on Dec. 17.

With its softly fog-shrouded sets and sumptuous Edwardian-era costumes, the Ballet's "Nutcracker"- also soon available on a DVD from Opus Arte/Naxos - looks tailor-made for its close-up. But Tomasson wasn't thinking about television when he conceived his widely acclaimed $3.5 million production, which premiered in 2004.

"After the fact, so many people said, what a beautiful production, and it takes place in San Francisco," said Tomasson, who devised a scenario in which the teenage Clara dreams about the fantastical sights she's just seen at the city's World's Fair. "That got the ball rolling."

Tomasson's "Nutcracker" was filmed over three performances last December, with eight cameras capturing every angle of glamorous Yuan Yuan Tan as the Snow Queen and technically virtuosic Vanessa Zahorian as the Sugar Plum Fairy. Emmy-winning director Matthew Diamond, who also directed the Ballet's 2003 recording of "Othello," said filming the gorgeous Act 2 divertissements of waltzing flowers, French cancan girls and a wild Chinese dragon was the easy part - it was editing the story-packed Act 1 that posed a challenge."

Click here for the full story.

December 07, 2008  ·  10:31 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)