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Nostalgia

I’m heading to exotic Fresno today for my tenth anniversary high school reunion, and then to Santa Barbara for a raucous Halloween doing “research” in Isla Vista, the college ghetto attached to the University of California there.

In Fresno I’m promised two giddy nights with five former colorguard girls and threatened with a viewing of the “video yearbook” (do I really have to look back on my fluffy bangs and once-unplucked eyebrows?). Since I think I could pass the rest of my life without returning to Fresno and not feel the slightest pang of regret, this trip is all about good company—and the strange lure of a solitary four-hour drive. I’ve got my Ipod car adapter plugged in and ready to go. In heavy rotation today: the second movement of Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A minor as performed by Leif Ove Andsnes, who had me on my feet with most of the audience at Davies Symphony Hall the other night; and “Fond Farewell” from Elliot Smith’s posthumous album.

In Isla Vista, I’m expecting 25,000 intoxicated and scantily clad students roving Del Playa, the seaside party strip. Last year I tagged along with a band of students, friends of friends—they had me dress up with them as eighties breakdancers and we toted a boombox and cardboard that we laid in the street and did the caterpillar on. This year, barring a flash of last minute-inspiration, my husband and I will probably be venturing into the mob sans costumes. The funny thing is that I never attended Halloween festivities when I was actually a student at UCSB. I was too terrified by the school’s party culture. Nostalgia works in mysterious ways.

Incidentally, the second Mark Morris Dance Group program at Cal Performances last night was wonderful, particularly the world premiere “Rock of Ages” (set to Schubert’s Piano Trio in E-flat and danced by four strong women, though co-ed and all-male casts are also slated) and 1985’s daffy “Marble Halls” (set to Bach). I’ll post a roundup of reviews and my own thoughts early next week.

October 29, 2004  ·  12:48 PM   ·  Personal   ·  Comments (0)

Underlined

“He had assumed, as a husband and then an adulterous one, that his need for a woman was as carnal as it was spiritual. But now celibacy was easy; when he imagined a woman, she was drinking with him, eating dinner. So his most intense and perhaps his only need for a woman was then; and all the reasons for the end of his marriage became distant, blurred, and he wondered if the only reason he was now alone was a misogyny he had never recognized: that he did not even want a woman except at day’s end, and had borne all the other hours of woman-presence only to have her comfort as the clock’s hands moved through their worst angles of the day.”

--Andre Dubus, “The Winter Father”

October 28, 2004  ·  04:19 PM   ·  Books   ·  Comments (0)

Another View

Gia Kourlas is back in Newsday, and surprised to find herself taken by the new offerings at ABT:

"American Ballet Theatre's new choreography usually amounts to little more than rambling forays into dance-theater and even sorrier attempts to give traditional ballet a face-lift. But for ABT's intimate City Center season, artistic director Kevin McKenzie has chosen a pair of young choreographers - Trey McIntyre and Christopher Wheeldon - with reputations for musicality and imagination."

October 28, 2004  ·  01:40 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

The Bolshoi is coming to Berkeley next week. For anyone wishing to study up (or just marvel at some gorgeous photos--check out these photo galleries), I direct you to Marc Haegeman's incredibly encycopedic web site.

For info on the Bolshoi visit, click here.

October 28, 2004  ·  01:01 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

Far-flung correspondents

Far, far from where I sit, American Ballet Theatre is back at City Center—and Tobi Tobias, whose blog “Seeing Things” covers New York ballet like nobody’s business, is providing her usual thoroughgoing analysis. Writing about two ABT premieres, she’s pulled to an eternally vexing question:

“Should the subject of dance come up outside the tiny circle of certified aficionados, “Have you seen?” or “What did you think of?” is not likely to be followed by “Theme and Variations,” “ Pillar of Fire,” or “Les Sylphides,” though the Balanchine, the Tudor, and the Fokine are being showcased during American Ballet Theatre’s three-week autumn season at City Center. No, the “news” consists of Christopher Wheeldon’s remake for the company of his VIII (about King Henry and the first two of his six wives, created for the Hamburg Ballet in 2001) and Pretty Good Year, commissioned from Trey McIntyre. Each in its own way is a decent effort, but surely unlikely to survive five years, let alone 57, 62, or 95. And what gets reviewed? First and foremost, the new. See below.”

She’s evenhanded about the McIntyre, an overrated choreographer in my book:

“Pretty Good Year, set to excerpts from a Dvorák trio for piano, violin, and cello, lives up to McIntyre’s reputation for a certain competence . . . The ballet’s opening section creates a good-humored atmosphere, one full of genuine sweetness, with the dancers going through their paces like children at play, all bounce and verve. Even this early on, though, the busyness of the choreography—a step for every note, it would seem; lifts that are too coyly devised; an almost complete absence of stillness—threatens to exhaust the spectator . . .

And rather less than impassioned about the Wheeldon:

“As a whole, VIII has the air not of a dance or dance-drama but of a pageant.”

What really stirs her is the promise of “Les Sylphides” and “La Spectre de la Rose,” and she pledges to cover both next Monday. A good read and a lot cheaper than a plane ticket . . .

October 28, 2004  ·  12:55 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

Flamenco frenzy

My review of Yaelisa & Caminos Flamencos actually ran in the Chronicle yesterday, but I was just able to find it online this morning:

"A Caminos Flamencos performance brings several guarantees: virtuosic music, striking lighting and a closing tour-de-force solo by artistic director Yaelisa to draw shouts of "olé!"

The sassy, mono-monikered Yaelisa is one of her form's most prolific local proponents and the founder of the New World Flamenco Festival in Irvine. But she's also spent her last 14 years in the flamenco-crazy Bay Area training a new generation of dancers. And in the company's latest show, which played the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater over the weekend and repeats at San Jose's Mexican Heritage Plaza on Thursday, she hands the spotlight to a protege of dazzlingly soulful maturity."

I'm no flamenco expert, but I'm seeing and loving the form more every year. And the one flamenco experience that remains most vividly in mind for me is Spain's Eva Yerbabuena. I reviewed her for Voice of Dance last year:

"Advance buzz from those who should know had it that Eva Yerbabuena was the hottest flamenco dancer now working in Spain, not to be missed. And from the moment La Yerbabuena took the Zellerbach Hall stage Saturday with her crisp articulation and a sense of intention so focused that every movement had the force of fate, it was clear the aficionados had it right. But there was a surprise as the evening unfolded, more striking as each number of the seamless 90-minute Eva, now touring North America, passed. This is impeccable choreography, a new model for transferring an intimate art form to the proscenium stage.

Yerbabuena, who has run her own company since 1998, is a minimalist: She deploys six dancers and seven excellent musicians, no sets to clutter Raul Perotti’s dramatic lighting, and simple but stunning costumes. But the understated radicalism of her approach runs deeper than this.

She uses her dancers not as personalities but as elemental presences. Her dances have a compelling formal logic, so that each unexpected entrance or departure feels simultaneously inevitable. Eva has drama in the same way that, say, Balanchine’s Concerto Barocco has drama. It is cool, sometimes distant, without even a glimmer of story (the men and women hardly look at one another), and yet you are on the edge of your seat to see what happens next. In essence, Yerbabuena has filtered a deeply expressionistic dance form through her own abstractionist sensibility."

Closer to home, the Bay Area is fortunate to have Theatre Flamenco, the elegant La Tania (who's performed memorably with, among other groups, LINES Ballet), and of course Yaelisa, whom I also reviewed last year:

Yaelisa

"At the end of Caminos Flamencos’ latest full evening show "Mujeres," a richly deserved bouquet appeared for the company’s artistic director and star dancer. Yaelisa extracted a rose and tossed it to the audience. She paused, narrowed her eyes mischievously, and revved up as though to throw the whole bunch. Almost everyone laughed but no one ducked. Yaelisa was just being playful again.

That playfulness is the hallmark of Yaelisa’s dancing, and it sparkled last weekend in two lengthy, tour-de-force soleas. Her performance alone would have earned the sold out crowd’s instantaneous standing ovation. As it happened there was so much more to applaud: sultry musicianship that turned a rainy San Francisco night into an evening in Seville, sumptuous costumes and lighting, and daringly simple stage design that lent Yerba Buena’s vast theater the intimacy of a Spanish café while shining the spotlight on gutsy dancing."

And of course there are so many other flamenco groups in and near San Francisco, and so many I haven't gotten around to seeing. If you'd like to check them out, the Flamenco Events Calendar is a good place to start.

October 27, 2004  ·  12:02 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

Morris Mis-steps

The reviews are in for Mark Morris’s “Violet Cavern,” which had its West Coast premiere at UC Berkeley’s Cal Performances last Friday. The Chronicle’s Steven Winn liked it, with one tiny caveat:

“The second half of the evening was devoted to the West Coast premiere of "Violet Cavern," a knottily drawn yet expansive full-company work on an exciting commissioned score by the jazz trio the Bad Plus. Happy as Morris fans may be to revisit familiar choreography from his repertoire, something new always heightens the mood. Almost a quarter century after founding his troupe, Morris remains one of the great, seemingly inexhaustible artists of his day . . .

The weekend's Program A did not reveal Morris and his dancers in their most openly affecting or wittiest temperaments. But in their organic evolutions, both "Mosaic & United" and "Violet Cavern" turned Morris' inventive vocabulary into an eloquent and absorbing language. Even when the meaning gets muddied at times, Morris dances speak in a lovely, strange and memorably distinctive voice.”

And the Contra Costa Times’ Mary Ellen Hunt was also partial:

“A collaboration of music, art and dance met up with imagination and wit as the Mark Morris Dance Group kicked off its two-week run at Cal Performances with the thoroughly enjoyable "Violet Cavern" on Friday night.

Set to a commissioned score by the Bad Plus -- the reverberant jazz trio of Ethan Iverson, Reid Anderson and David King, who accompanied "Violet Cavern" live on Friday night -- this engaging and highly visual work for 15 dancers isn't going to compete for precedence with such Morris masterpieces as the brilliant "L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato," which the company performed last season. Nevertheless, it amply demonstrates why Morris holds a place among the top flight of American modern choreographers.”

But Voice of Dance’s Allan Ulrich was none the less respectful but more decisive about deeming “Violet Cavern” one to file under “forgivable failures”:

“What’s different about Violet Cavern is that it is set to an original jazz-pop score, one of the few commissions the company has undertaken. If an earlier commission, Rhymes with Silver, elicited a wondrous piece of music from the late Lou Harrison (you can hear it on a New Albion compact disc) and a fanciful skein of movement from Morris, the results in this new work are more problematic. This is one choreographer who starts with the music and we should, too. Violet Cavern is the work of The Bad Plus, a trio comprised of pianist Ethan Iverson (MMDG’s former music director), bass Reid Anderson and percussion David King. It is pounded out in the Zellerbach pit and seems to consist of two motives - an assertive sequence of chords and more lyrical episodes. Listening to the music alone for 50 minutes might prove a trial, but, in the presence of Morris’ 15 bright dancers, the music, paradoxically, seems more, rather than less overextended.

What Morris has done here is to weld the open, improvisatory structure that defines jazz to a carefully plotted movement plan that leaves the viewer bewildered. Choreographers who don’t customarily take to Morris’ work (some feel he is hamstrung by his music) have found much to like here, because, as one said, the dance allows a degree of gestural expressiveness missing elsewhere in his dances. You can see where they are coming from at the beginning, when Michelle Yard sails downstage, where a group of dancers recline in darkness. You can see it, too, in a twisty encounter between Bradon McDonald and Julie Worden.

Still, the choreography is more tightly plotted than one might expect. Morris has found his own striking series of imagery here. The repeated episode of two supine dancers pushing themselves across the stage while propelling an erect dancer (or is the latter propelling them?) seems fabulously emblematic of the collaborative spirit. The choreographer mines the tension and sweep to be derived from waves of dancers rushing on and offstage. We get occasional ballet references. There are allusions, also, to pedestrian movements: are those push-ups a group launches at one point? What does not emerge is a satisfying structure. Violet Cavern, unusually for Morris, seems padded, accumulative, rather than organic.”

Mark Morris Dance Group in "Violet Cavern"

I’m with Allan on this one. Morris does his best with an overblown score constantly revving up to another drum-fill finale. But despite some beautiful motifs—dancers sliding through their partners’ arms into deep, shoulder shrugging plies; one dancer walking backwards with her eyes covered as another dancer slaps her extended hand—I hope the Mark Morris Dance Group will not repeat “Violet Cavern” often. Because it doesn’t suit Morris’s particular brand of musicality, it’s fuel for those who (mistakenly) reject his musicality as too simple. One example of how it showcases what Morris does well to very unflattering effect: Toward the end of “Violet Cavern,” the ensemble begins regrouping in rows and peeling off in complex canons—and it looks like a weirdly dour Esther Williams water ballet. Structural devices that Morris can make illuminating when set to, say, Handel, or deliciously camp when set to Richard Rodgers, look downright pretentious here.

That said, Michael Chybowski’s lighting of Stephen Hendee’s overhead panels was a marvel of isolated jewel tones. And the current company is so strong. Julie Worden, more the goddess every year, is one of my favorites, along with the lush Bradon McDonald. "Mosaic & United," while not one of my "desert island" Morris works, is well worth repeated viewings, and carried a pungent air of ritual and mystery Friday night.

Program B, which opens Thursday, includes a world premiere and the majestic “V.” For details, click here.

October 26, 2004  ·  01:25 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

Book Bites #5

I read Monica Ali’s novel Brick Lane because of James Wood’s assessment, first published in the New Republic, now reprinted in his essay collection The Irresponsible Self. I’ve enjoyed Wood’s book immensely because he analyzes aspects of craft with an almost moral fervor. And I could not agree more about Ali’s “unobtrusive patterning” and her conveyance of the story “in units of characters rather than wattage of ‘style’,” though I was equally taken by Ali’s skill in sustaining a compelling third person-point of view closely aligned with her main character for more than 400 pages.

That main character is Nazneen, a Bangladeshi village girl shipped to grimy East London’s council flats to live with an arranged husband twice her age. Eventually she finds herself in an affair, but the novel is about fate on a rather philosophic level—whether one submits to fate or shapes it—and not adultery. And its fascination lies in the gradual, utterly convincing dissolution of Nazneen’s naivete, which happens so subtly that you wonder, like a nostalgic parent, how all the milestones blurred together. Told through Nazneen’s compassionate eyes, “Brick Lane” is a novel of gentleness and warmth.

October 25, 2004  ·  02:33 PM   ·  Books   ·  Comments (0)

Michael Wade Simpson trekked through the rain to cover Trolley Dances for the Chronicle:

“A good idea borrowed from San Diego, whose trolley cars are actually a fairly wide-ranging light rail system, and where it practically never rains, had a totally different feel in downtown San Francisco this weekend. Local choreographer-producer Kim Epifano spear-headed the idea of bringing "Trolley Dances" up from Southern California, where she had participated for several years as an artist. Starting indoors at the Main Library's Children's Storytelling Room and traveling in guided groups via trolley to four different locations, ending up on the Embarcadero alongside an empty streetcar, Epifano's idea was to expose new audiences to modern dance. Apparently she didn't count on the possibility of rain, however, or the normal Saturday throngs of shoppers, tourists and regular San Franciscans also competing for spaces on the charming but incommodious F-line trolley cars. Just getting from site to site in a group of 50 was a bit of a struggle.”

October 25, 2004  ·  12:16 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

The Eternal Recurrence of Eliot Feld

That obstinate phoenix of the ballet world is back again with his Mandance Project, as Kisselgoff reports in the Times:

"Whatever Eliot Feld is eating for breakfast these days, it more than works. He is a choreographer renewed, refreshed and (why not?) reborn. Mandance Project, his new chamber dance group, which made its debut on Thursday night at the Joyce Theater with six striking premieres, is a showcase for Mr. Feld's best works in years. Ranging from urban cool to universal mystery, they resonate with originality.

Extraordinary is a word difficult to avoid for most of the dances and the performers. The New York City Ballet star Damian Woetzel and the bass clarinetist Evan Ziporyn engage in a witty dialogue that enhances the singular blend of majesty and lightness in Mr. Woetzel's dancing. Sean Suozzi, a younger guest from City Ballet, turns a gimmicky play with flashlights on his palms into a deep meditative solo."

October 24, 2004  ·  05:21 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

Time Out New York's spunky and enviably hip dance editor Gia Kourlas is in Newsday with a review of American Ballet Theatre's opening gala:

"A gala without a gimmick is a rare event, but American Ballet Theatre managed to present something classier - save a tediously pained dying swan - than the usual fare at its opening-night showcase Wednesday.

A celebration of both the work of choreographer Michel Fokine and the anniversary of Alessandra Ferri's 20th year with the company, the program included works by Jerome Robbins and Jirí Kylián, as well as a couple of blockbuster pas de deux. Even the inevitable trills of untended mobile phones couldn't put a damper on the largely phenomenal dancing gracing the stage."

This is the first I've seen Gia in Newsday, though I've enjoyed her take-no-prisoners reviews on Danceview Times in recent years. I hope this is a regular gig as she is one of the franker and more fearless voices I've encountered--certainly a woman who knows her own mind.

October 22, 2004  ·  02:20 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

Jenkins's public "Danger"

My review of Margaret Jenkins Dance Company's Danger Orange is up on Voice of Dance:

"The storm passed and the clouds cleared just in time for the premiere of Margaret Jenkins’s Danger Orange Wednesday, and what a sight. Two screaming orange stages connected by a path of orange boxes stood on the vast expanse of the Embarcadero’s Justin Herman Plaza. To the left loomed Armand Vallaincourt’s hulking water fountain, its square, worm-like pipes wrapped in orange cargo net. On strode the thirteen dancers of the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company in yellow tops and pants. Suddenly the lush palm trees and the Ferry Building, clock tower and all, became just an exotic backdrop for the eye-popping human drama playing out before it. Office workers on their lunch break gathered on the steps, the continual crush of rushing water obliterating all aural distractions.

Danger Orange, continuing through Saturday, possesses its public space in such a way that the contributions of its collaborators cannot be singled out for its success. Alexander V. Nichols did the bold but simple visual design; Jay Cloidt did the sound design, often filling the air with electronic reverberations that sounded eerily like gunfire. Jenkins, of course—one of the Bay Area’s seminal postmodernists—created the choreography. Clocking in at 40 minutes and excerpting in full her 2003 work Fractured Fictions, much of it is not new. But all of it proves that dance can explore politically timely emotions without pushing a political agenda."

October 21, 2004  ·  06:02 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

Specs

Another sign that my memoir, The Lost Night, is really happening: It now has an International Standard Book Number. Other specs just settled: It will measure a very portable five and a half by seven and a quarter inches and cost $23.95. I'm told I might see a cover design within a week.

So while the June pub date is still in the offing, it no longer feels an eternity away.

October 20, 2004  ·  10:16 PM   ·  Personal   ·  Comments (0)

Recommended this week

Dance: The San Francisco Bay Area is exploding with great dance this week. Take your pick:

Fortunately the rainy skies have mostly cleared, because the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company opens their latest show, “Danger Orange” at the Embarcadero’s Justin Herman Plaza today at noon. Alex Nichols has collaborated with Jenkins to create a “distinctive alteration of the landscape for the Plaza, including a surprise treatment of the Vaillancourt Fountain.” If the way he transformed the cold concrete Herbst Pavilion is any indication, the results could be spectacular. Jenkins, of course, is one of the seminal women of Bay Area modern dance (I like to picture her in sorority with Isadora Duncan, Anna Halprin, and Brenda Way—what a quartet!). The free lunchtime shows run through Saturday. For details, click here.

On Friday, the Mark Morris Dance Group returns to UC Berkeley’s Cal Performances with a West Coast premiere, “Violet Cavern,” set to a commissioned score performed live by jazz ensemble The Bad Plus, and “Mosaic and United.” The second program, opening next Thursday, is a can’t-miss: the world premiere of “Rock of Ages,” commissioned by Cal Performances; “I Don’t Want to Love;” “Marble Halls;” and the stirring “V.” For details, click here.

Meanwhile, the sassy and soulful Yaelisa is back with her Caminos Flamencos at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Saturday and Sunday in “Sol Viento Flamenco.” Always eliciting a shower of “Oles!,” Yaelisa is training an ensemble of distinctive young women who can each hold the spotlight in her own right. Virtuoso guitarist and adventurous music director Jason “El Rubio” McGuire promises to debut a “new electronic flamenco fusion sound of chambao, as it is known in Spain.” Whatever the surprises, Caminos Flamencos shows are consistently beautifully lit and staged. For details, click here.

October 20, 2004  ·  01:56 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

Mothers who dance

Lovely article today in the revamped New York Times arts section on American Ballet Theater's Alessandra Ferri. This passage in particular reminded me of San Francisco Ballet's own Tina LeBlanc, who is also dancing better than ever after the birth of her second child:

"What she gained from pregnancy was a deeper understanding of her body, a sense of its utility and capacity for generosity, which she had only begun to understand from ballet.

"In dancing, the strongest feeling I get is onstage," she said. "You don't just use your body, but you go through your body to talk. You know who you are in that moment. Pregnancy is the same thing. You are giving yourself totally to somebody else, which is your baby, through your body. You know why you have a body when you're PREGNANT."

And surprisingly, those 57 pounds, gained and lost, seem to have lengthened her career.

"I thought I was almost done with dancing, and then I came back from my second baby, and my body feels better than it did before," Ms. Ferri said. "I came back so totally happy and relaxed. And I know how to treat my body, so my body is giving me back something. It's a second wind." "

The article also reminded me of Lucy Gray's gorgeous photos of three San Francisco Ballet dancer/mothers. They were recently on display at the SF Public Library, but I was delighted to discover you can also see 13 of these images on the web. I love the shot of principal Kristin Long in the bath with her little boy Kai.

October 17, 2004  ·  08:51 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

The inimitable imagination of Mats Ek

I reviewed Cullberg Ballet for the Chronicle today:

"He gave the dance world a "Sleeping Beauty" hooked on heroin and a "Giselle" trapped in an insane asylum. But Mats Ek doesn't need a controversial twist on a classic to ignite his inimitable imagination.

That was the captivating lesson Thursday as San Francisco Performances brought Sweden's Cullberg Ballet back to the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater. The bald, coed flock of the company's 2002 local debut in Ek's iconoclastic "Swan Lake" has flown the coop. And with revisionist gimmicks absent, the power and fluidity of these 20 multinational dancers -- and the emotional depth of the troupe's former artistic director -- shone all the more vividly."

My favorite offering was Ek's "Solo for Two," which was all the more touching on second viewing:

"But where "A Sort Of" is nightmarish and slightly unfocused, Ek's 1996 "Solo for Two" is delicate and distilled. Gunilla Hammar and Boaz Cohen are an all-too-human couple flitting through each other's sleep. Ek's gift for weirdly compelling emotional logic comes to the fore as he finds an unexpected layer of humor in Arvo Pärt's spare music. These lovers pee in the corner and blow their noses on their pajamas. But the endearing crudities only underscore the actuality of their solitude, and a sad ache colors every action."

The show continues at the Yerba Buena Center tonight and tomorrow.

October 16, 2004  ·  01:47 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

New Dance Critic at the Times

Big news in the dance world: Anna Kisselgoff has announced her retirement as chief dance critic at the New York Times. Former rock and classical music critic and columnist John Rockwell, once a modern dancer with the Bay Area’s own Anna Halprin, will take her post in 2005. Kisselgoff has led the Times’ dance coverage since 1977, and obviously this is an important shift.

Will Rockwell make the "niche" subject of dance more mainstream? Will classical ballet receive its due? Naturally the sharp folks at Ballet Alert! are hot on the topic.

October 15, 2004  ·  06:35 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

NYCB in LA

Allan Ulrich’s review of New York City Ballet in Los Angeles is now up on Voice of Dance, with a tidbit of information that will likely tantalize many West Coast ballet lovers:

“The West Coast - at least Costa Mesa and Berkeley - have seen NYC Ballet intermittently in the past 20 years, but Los Angeles, which does not boast a resident ballet troupe of any stature, seemed most in need of this visit. Before the performance Friday (Oct. 8), Ballet Master in Chief Peter Martins indicated that, now that the L.A. Philharmonic has moved to its new home at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, thus freeing up the schedule at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion for a dance series, NYC Ballet might be back some year soon.

The time for reacquaintance was long overdue, even though this is not a great period in NYC Ballet’s history. In these three Los Angeles programs (the repertoire was somewhat different the previous week at the Orange County Performing Arts Center) it was, befitting the centennial, all gold-standard Balanchine - Serenade, the first American work; Concerto Barocco, Symphony in C, Agon, Stravinsky Violin Concerto, Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux and Who Cares?”

October 13, 2004  ·  06:50 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

Dancing in their seats

I've got an article in the Chronicle today on the 25th anniversary of Rhythm & Motion dance center:

"A jazz dancer slinked in her silky dress. Robust women shook their shoulders to Cuban drumming. Twenty-year-olds in cargo pants spun on their hands to hip-hop beats. And in their seats, with wild claps or subtle head nods, the audience danced along Friday night as the Rhythm & Motion dance center celebrated its 25th anniversary.

The studio is one of San Francisco's most popular, as the turnout proved: Nearly 900 students and friends stood in a will-call line that spilled onto Van Ness Avenue. They packed the stately Herbst Theatre with exuberant shouts that threatened to strip the gold-gilt paint off those dignified walls.

Dance forms seemed as plentiful as dancers. Ramon Ramos Alayo and Patricia West married modern and Afro-Cuban genres in a clinging duet, their torsos pulsing like gills. Sydney Tufari tossed off jazzy fouette turns in choreographer Ann Barrett's solo set to Santana. Amara Tabor-Smith and Christal Brown danced a gut-wrenching "roots modern" piece of desperate hand- to-mouth gestures."

R&M's bread and butter is the dance workout program designed by founder Consuelo Faust, whose philosophy of dance is refreshingly inclusive:

"Who would guess, watching her bow with quiet pride, that it all began with aerobics? That was the rage in 1979, when Faust decided to support her career as a choreographer by calling "grapevine left!" and "four knee lifts!"

"I had to overlook some of the silliness of it," Faust remembered on a recent Tuesday night, sitting in her third-story office at the Rhythm & Motion headquarters on Mission Street between Seventh and Eighth. One floor below her, drummers pounded out the accompaniment for West African Guinean dancing; on the ground level, tappers hoofed it up in the smaller studio while a dozen women swung their hips with Afro-Cuban zeal next door. "But I saw that I could bring my dance technique to aerobics and teach the general public, people who would never come to an official dance class because they'd be too intimidated." "

It all made me want to dance again. Don't be surprised if you see me in a Fusion Rhythms class soon.

October 12, 2004  ·  11:47 AM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

Balanchine in the 21st C.

It's incredibly difficult, I think, for anybody under 40--and especially a non-New Yorker--to write about New York City Ballet these days. There is the omnipresent shadow of the many persuasive detractors of Peter Martins's leadership, coupled with the handicap of not having witnessed the company while Balanchine was alive.

I tried to write this Voice of Dance review of the company's Orange County performances squarely from my limited perspective--which for better or worse is also the perspective of future ballet-goers:

"We have entered an age of the Balanchine smorgasbord. You can walk down the buffet line and pick your favorite Jewels as Miami City Ballet’s, your favorite Stravinsky Violin Concerto as San Francisco Ballet’s; your favorite Serenade as Suzanne Farrell Ballet’s. You can make a case for preferring these renditions based not on uniformity of technique, but on subtle yet crucial shadings of interpretation, intention, and mood. Whatever your argument, the conditions for it remain the same: NYCB no longer holds the monopoly of authority on how these ballets should be danced. Whether it relinquished this authority or whether that authority was bound to fade during the Balanchine diaspora remains, to me, an open question.

Perhaps to keepers of New York City Ballet history, this new laissez-faire Balanchine market is but another symptom of the sad slide they lament. But to those who came of age after Balanchine’s death, it is impossible to mourn a golden age you didn’t witness. Freed from memories of New York City Ballet under Balanchine, I was delighted to discover new dancers and to see new choreographic details in ballets, such as Rubies, that I had previously seen only other companies perform.

This West Coast tour is all about Balanchine: on Saturday and Sunday’s slates, the only non-Balanchine offering was artistic director Peter Martins’s swollen Thou Swell, a shrewd but choreographically vacuous package of sentimentality set to Richard Rodgers songs. The audience gave it a roaring standing ovation. Christopher Wheeldon’s Polyphonia was replaced by a repeat of Stravinsky Violin Concerto at the last moment due to injuries, and a second viewing proved NYCB’s rendition of it no less dull. Serenade, seen twice, fared better, as did Rubies and Symphony in C. That most sure-fire of Balanchine crowd-pleasers, Stars and Stripes, showed the company at its sharpest and strongest, while the bookends of Jewels, Emeralds and Diamonds, languished with undistinguished performances framed by Peter Harvey’s swampy new sets. All told, this was a chance for a Southern California audience far more accustomed to Swan Lakes than mixed bills to see a striking range of Balanchine’s genius—classicist, modernist, spiritualist, campy populist. Many, I’m sure, left as converts."

Do let me know what you think.

October 08, 2004  ·  06:45 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

Good News

Given all the (justified) hand-wringing that dance is in down-cycle in terms of creativity and popular appeal, I thought I’d post two stories about efforts to fight the malaise. For starters, New York’s $10-per-ticket Fall for Dance Festival in New York proved an unqualified hit, selling out every performance at City Center:

“Dance presenters, choreographers and artistic directors are full of praise for what they call courageous programming, for the audacity of trying (successfully) to fill a 2,700-seat theater for six nights of dance and for bringing five companies together on stage each night for a $10 ticket.

"People were pretty much feeling maxed out on formulas for increasing dance attendance," said Elizabeth Streb, whose company, Streb, appeared on Sept. 28. "This is an idea that could change the course of events for the dance world and companies. It opens the door to wondering, 'Hmm, what could I put together to have a slam-dunk effect like that?' "

And despite the surprisingly nasty backlash this article captures, I have to agree with Bill T. Jones:

“ "This is ultimately going to be good for everybody," he said.”

Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, two Seattle dancers are doing something to fight the pervasive prejudice against dancing men:

“Despite the undeniably cool moves of Gene Kelly, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Savion Glover and countless MTV b-boys, our culture still harbors a weird taboo about men dancing. And that's precisely the reason Ray Houle and Gérard Théorêt started Against the Grain: Men in Dance.

Théorêt, who now teaches dance at Cornish College, recalls, "Ray and I were saying it was too bad that dance wasn't a popular or acceptable thing for boys when we were kids." Noting that as a consequence he and Houle came to dance relatively late in life, Théorêt posits, "We could've gone so much further." He calls this realization the "germ" for the Men in Dance festival, which began in 1994.

Taking place over two weekends (at the "Oddfellows Hall," of all places), the program features a wide variety of methods, music and men. This year's festival marks the fifth biannual event and features 12 choreographers, plus special guest dancer Yoko Moshi-Moshii from the all-male Ballets Grandiva. The slate of solo and ensemble numbers includes everything from ballet to breakdancing, performed by an all-ages, all-races, all-male cast of dancers.”

In the dance world, it’s easy to forget American culture-at-large isn’t as progressive as we’d like to presume. “Billy Elliot effect” notwithstanding, I encounter snickers about men who dance from educated people I’d think would know better (no need to name names, ahem). And it’s good to know this group of dance lovers isn’t just complaining, but doing something about it.

Links via Ballet Alert!.

October 07, 2004  ·  05:39 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

Kudelka Rising

I'm en route to see the New York City Ballet in Orange County--four programs in two days. But I've just got time to post my Chronicle review of the National Ballet of Canada, which closes a Cal Performances run on Sunday:

"A mood of discovery percolated Thursday night through UC Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall, as the Bay Area greeted the National Ballet of Canada for the first time in 13 years.

The National is both a familiar name and something of a mystery in these parts. The troupe of 55-plus dancers rarely tours America despite its proximity in Toronto, but local audiences know the work of Artistic Director James Kudelka through his many commissions for San Francisco Ballet. This was the first chance to see how Kudelka has reshaped the storied National since taking the helm in 1996. The region's ballet dignitaries turned out in force and curiosity ran thick.

If the National evolved only as a showcase for Kudelka's prolific talents, that might, on the strength of the Cal Performances program repeating tonight and Sunday, be purpose enough. The evening was stacked with three Kudelka works, none a more fitting introduction to his distinctive voice than the world premiere solo, "Chacony." "

As Mary Ellen Hunt stresses in her review for the Contra Costa Times (which I'll post here later), Greta Hodgkinson was the big discovery, absolutely scintillating in the "Summer" section of "The Four Seasons."

Now time to hit the road.

October 02, 2004  ·  01:17 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)