Dance Criticism
A selection of some of what I think are my better dance reviews for the San Francisco Chronicle. If you’re looking for a particular dance company or dancer in the San Francisco Bay Area, there’s a good chance I’ve written about them. Just type the name into the “Search” box on the navigation bar, and the website will pull up the relevant results for you.
San Francisco Ballet in an All-Mark Morris program: San Francisco Chronicle, 3/16/09:
Next to Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson, has anyone other than Mark Morris played a more obvious role in making San Francisco Ballet the company it is today? Since 1994, he’s given the Ballet seven commissioned works – more than any other ballet company. And he’s been happy to serve as its mouthpiece, blithely proclaiming San Francisco Ballet the best troupe in North America. That statement is Morris at his most blustery and contentious. But on Friday at the opening of the Ballet’s all-Morris program, there was no arguing San Francisco’s dancers are among his foremost interpreters.
Which of the three pieces you feel most passionately about may depend on your mood. For silly, there’s “Sandpaper Ballet,” Morris’ green-fingered mass romp to Leroy Anderson ditties. For sexy, there’s “Joyride,” a sleek metallic cruise through John Adams’ “Son of Chamber Symphony” (in which Isaac Mizrahi’s witty costumes strike again). Both were in fine form Friday, especially with James Sofranko and Tina LeBlanc lending down-home charm to “Sandpaper” and stately Elana Altman shape-shifting like Grecian statuary in “Joyride.”
The latter ballet, with its whirl of motifs and sudden strides offstage, calls for repeated viewings: I thought I grasped the structure of Morris’ response to Adams’ fiendishly meter-changing music then lost my grasp this go-round (and wondered if the often-tentative orchestra wasn’t hanging on to this “Joyride” for dear life). But I was surprised to find myself pleasantly distracted, because I had been so taken by the program opener, 2001’s “A Garden.”
I say “surprised” because “A Garden” is one of Morris’ most subtle and peculiar ballets. The music is both baroque and romantic: Richard Strauss’ adaptation of keyboard pieces by Couperin. The postures are odd: back leaning forward, head slightly bowed, hands held out thoughtfully, one palm occasionally turning up as though to present the page of a book.
San Francisco Ballet in “Eden/Eden”: San Francisco Chronicle, 3/15/07
If you want to know where the San Francisco Ballet is headed, talk to the younger dancers. For months, they’ve been buzzing about “Eden/Eden,” the futuristic work by British choreographer Wayne McGregor that had its U.S. premiere on the company’s Program 4 Tuesday night. Such bizarre, crazy movement! Like nothing we’ve ever danced! And indeed they danced it with obvious relish.
But what may feel cutting-edge and exciting to dancers brought up in the relatively artistically isolated world of ballet is not always a thrill for the audience. “Eden/Eden” is relentless. It’s designed to be. It’s about cloning, and it uses music by the minimalist composer Steve Reich — fast repeating xylophone rhythms intercut with robotic voices, and audio clips of scientists talking about genetic engineering. The nine dancers start out in flesh-colored underwear and bald caps, looking like eerie mannequins; Ursula Bombshell’s costumes really do succeed at making them look identical. Later, apparently as they begin to take over the human race, they put on clothes; there’s also a tree hovering in the background, and it disappears along with our last shred of humanity. Think Philip K. Dick for the Opera House stage.
The movement would indeed be novel for a ballet dancer. Limbs hyperextend; arms look as if they want to pop out of their joints. Much of it is quite inventive: hips and ribs shimmying upward from deep grand plies; a leg extended with a flexed foot rocking side to side, boom-boom-boom. Muriel Maffre is the high priestess of this kind of style, but the whole cast — including corps members Dana Genshaft and Hayley Farr — clearly take to it, and the young soloist Jaime Garcia Castilla has a whip-crack solo that may be his finest moment yet.
So why then does it all grow so tiresome? MORE
Bill T. Jones’s “Blind Date”: San Francisco Chronicle, 1/23/06
“Blind Date,” for all its immediacy, has the detached aura of a sociological study. “A man in San Francisco once told me he wanted to see more ‘rage onstage,’ ” Jones intones throughout the piece, head wagging wearily. ” ‘Rage onstage.’ ‘Rage onstage.’ ” Having convincingly sketched a battle-hungry culture, Jones seems too dispirited to fight it. MORE
San Francisco Ballet All-Robbins Program: San Francisco Chronicle, 3/9/06
Ron K. Brown/EVIDENCE : San Francisco Chronicle, 1/31/06
Imagine if heaven were a New York City nightclub, where the angels danced their way toward salvation to bass-thumping house music. Now imagine their steps seamlessly blend the earth-consecrating stampings of African tribal forms, the rhythmic fierceness of hip-hop, the polish and expansiveness of modern technique, and the ecstatic throes of gospel. Can’t picture it? Then you know why Brown is such a phenomenon. The problem is that even the most arresting new aesthetic, if rolled out by the yard and not anchored to ideas or shaped by formalism, becomes mind-numbing after a while. MORE
William Forsythe’s “Three Atmospheric Studies”: San Francisco Chronicle, 1/27/07
Much fuss has been made over William Forsythe’s decision to tackle the Iraq war in his “Three Atmospheric Studies,” which had its keenly anticipated U.S. premiere at UC Berkeley’s Cal Performances on Thursday. The issue isn’t whether choreographers should make dances about the war, but whether William Forsythe should.
Forsythe has long attracted such scrutiny: He’s an American who left for the headier intellectual climate of Germany, where the Forsythe Company, which rose last year from the ashes of his celebrated Ballett Frankfurt, is based; and he’s a former savior-apparent of the ballet world who instead forsook classroom steps for relentless experimentation. He’s also the only dance artist I can think of capable of evoking war with such visceral devastation. “Three Atmospheric Studies” is sobering and deeply disturbing. It is incredibly difficult to watch, which is exactly why it ought to be seen.
There is much that is striking about “Three Atmospheric Studies,” but most important is this: It unfolds entirely from the innocent civilian’s point of view.
Forsythe builds his triptych of scenes around four images. Two are 16th century crucifixion paintings, one by Lucas Cranach the Younger, and one by Cranach the Elder; Forsythe’s interest in each is the bereaved Mary mourning her slain son. The other two images are recent photographs of mayhem on the streets of Iraq. The analogy is not subtle: Mary as an Iraqi civilian grieving over her child; the Roman Empire as — no, this is not a new idea — the American occupation. But even if one takes issue politically with the comparison, there is no arguing with the realities of carnage and suffering Forsythe puts on stage.MORE
Paul Taylor’s “Lines of Loss”: San Francisco Chronicle, 3/29/07
The Paul Taylor Dance Company’s annual San Francisco Performances engagement is one of the happier harbingers of spring, but this year the troupe’s visit to the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts arrives with twinges of sadness. For one thing, after this week’s three programs close, the Taylor dancers won’t come our way until 2009, so see them while you can. For another, it’s impossible to watch Taylor’s newest work and not be moved to mourning. “Lines of Loss,” the centerpiece of Tuesday’s opening program, is gut-wrenching, and gorgeous. It leaves a weight in the heart. And it leaves no doubt that, at 76, Taylor is far from coasting.
Like many of the best Taylor works, the subject of “Lines of Loss” seems so evanescent, and the staging is so deceptively simple that you wonder how the dance can seem so distinct from all the other wonderful Taylor dances that have preceded it. The answer is the music — an assemblage of elegiac selections by Alfred Schnittke, Arvo Part, John Cage and others, all on a recording by the Kronos Quartet — and Taylor’s responsiveness to it. Santo Loquasto contributed the white costumes and striking set, a backdrop of charcoal lines that evoke water, or striations of stone; Jennifer Tipton created the shadowed lighting. As usual, they considerably enhance the whole. But the emotional depth is in the movement.
It is sometimes monklike, as the 11 dancers pace the stage with meditatively folded hands, and sometimes ragged. Lisa Viola’s hinges into deep backbends become swifter and lower until, upon rising, she is clutching her abdomen as though stabbed. Michael Trusnovec’s solo is the beating heart of the piece, as he stretches his arms like a mole groping through darkness.
