« October 2004 | Main | December 2004 »
Nutcracker madness
In the Chronicle, Steve Winn hails the start of a crowded Nutcracker season:
“This year's competition for the yuletide dollar should be especially keen. With the San Francisco Ballet's eagerly anticipated new production of "Nutcracker" premiering on one side of the bay and Matthew Bourne's distinctively marked version bowing on the other, the public has an enriched abundance of choices. Counting such curiosities as the San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band's "Dance-Along Nutcracker" and the National Jewish Theatre Festival's "MeshugaNutcracker!," there are at least eight takes on the Tchaikovsky/E.T.A. Hoffman classic on offer. And that's with Oakland Ballet's production sidelined in 2004, as that company regroups financially.”
Among the newest entries in Bay Area holiday entertainment is a campy 1992 version of the Nutcracker by Matthew Bourne who, despite those iconic male swans, is still relatively little known in the Bay Area. London’s Alastair Macaulay, the man who literally wrote the book on Bourne, gives a run-down in the Chron:
“[I]n Matthew Bourne's "Nutcracker!" there is no pointe work, no ballet bravura, no national dances, no Sugar Plum Fairy. Sounds all wrong, but it works like a dream.
At first, it's darker and more forlorn than other "Nutcrackers" because its central characters are children in an orphanage. In due course, it's brighter and funnier than other "Nutcrackers" as the children go first to a skating-lake with behavior out of Sonja Henie movies and then to a Sweetieland with designs out of a Busby Berkeley spectacular. And it's simply revelatory in the way it makes Tchaikovsky's music strike home as never before. In the climactic dance originally conceived for the Sugar Plum Fairy pas de deux, Bourne's story manages to make the music's strokes of sudden darkness bisect its sweetness, all while sustaining fantasy and lyricism.”
It opens Friday, but I won’t be catching it until next week due to holiday travels, and I probably won’t be posting again till then either. So enjoy your Thanksgiving and if you really must go out Friday, try a holiday arts performance instead of the mall—you’ll be leave less haggard and more spirited.
November 23, 2004 · 01:20 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
B-Boys and Girls
Allan Ulrich reviews the San Francisco Hip Hop Dance Fest for Voice of Dance:
“The mood was sweet and joyful Thursday and why not? In six years, producer Micaya has built an institution on the Bay Area dance scene; I can’t believe any local dance festival attracts as much interest or as many paying customers as this one. Hip hop is definitely a growth industry; have kids deserted ballet for breaking, one wondered. The festival started with a couple of nights of dancing at now shuttered Theater Artaud and featured only Bay Area talent. This weekend, the festival should fill PFA four times over, with different performers; lectures and master classes have been added for Saturday and Sunday afternoons and the talent this time comes from all over the country. Tomorrow the world.”
The critics were stacked Thursday night—I sat next to Allan and behind the SF Bay Guardian’s Rita Felciano. And I grinned the whole program through. Some favorites: the cheeky Chaplin-esque humor of Generation 2; the musical innovation of Micaya’s SoulForce, whose number sent one man spinning to a piano interlude; the debonair quality of Chain Reaction Dance Crew, hip hop’s answer to Fred Astaire; the unreal locking of Buddha Stretch and Tweetie in their robotic duet of seduction; the insane drops of the Flavor Group as the B-Boys waged a showdown with Capoeiristas—it was a close battle, but dare I say the B-Boys won? Attempts at bringing in Eastern influences were popular—lots of meditating B-Boys (and girls), a sight you surely don’t see too often on the street. Some misses, sure, but the fun kept coming. This was my first Hip Hop Dance Fest, and I’ll be back next year.
November 22, 2004 · 12:14 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
And the winner is . . .
Not much of a surprise at Pacific Northwest Ballet, where Peter Boal is now officially the next artistic director:
“The 39-year-old principal dancer with New York City Ballet will take over the company on July 1. PNB had announced Boal was its "lead candidate" for the job early last month. Kent Stowell and Francia Russell, who have led the company since 1977, are retiring at the end of the current season. Boal has been working with them to put together PNB's 2005-2006 season.”
Meanwhile at the National Book Awards, the fiction honor goes to Lily Tuck for “The News from Paraguay”:
“Ms. Tuck began her acceptance remarks with a salute to "my fellow unknown finalists," a reference to the debate sparked by the finalists, who included two first-time novelists, Sarah Shun-lien Bynum for "Madeleine Is Sleeping'' (Harcourt), and Christine Schutt for "Florida'' (TriQuarterly Books/Northwestern University Press), and the authors of two collections of stories,"Our Kind'' (Scribner), by Kate Walbert, and "Ideas of Heaven'' (W. W. Norton), by Joan Silber.
Ms. Tuck is one of the better-known finalists, having been nominated in 2000 for the PEN/Faulkner Award. She is the author of three previous novels.”
Links via Ballet Alert! and Arts Journal.
November 18, 2004 · 12:53 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
Photo Op
As a first-time author sweating the details of publicity and jacket photos, I’ve been well aware of Marion Ettlinger. Her photo credit under an author photo signals that the writer in question is being positioned as a literary contender. But this New York Times piece by Lee Siegel analyzes her status with eviscerating thoroughness:
“Just as the Brazilian photographer [Sebasti-o Salgado] unintentionally romanticizes grim, back-breaking labor in his attempts to ennoble the workers he portrays, Ettlinger's photographs separate fame from achievement in her attempts to, well, separate fame from achievement. This isn't so easy to pull off: her obscure authors look like children forced to wear adult-sized clothes in preparation for a party they haven't been invited to. The few actual famous people Ettlinger has shot survive her grandiloquence by the sheer force of having come through life and triumphed in their work. Elizabeth Hardwick, for example, is one of the very few writers in the book to look down and away from the camera, as if she sensed something secretly deflating about Ettlinger's superpolished inflations.”
The question remains: To be Ettlingered or not to be Ettlingered? I’m not the first author-to-be to face the uncomfortable issue, as this very funny Salon story by George Packer reassured me:
“Publishers have always expected readers to judge a book by its cover. Now they expect a writer to be judged by his face. Given the unlikelihood that good books will be written by beautiful people, publishers can either lower their literary standards or improve their authors' faces. More and more seem to take the second approach.
I've gotten used to picking up a book by someone I know personally and checking the back flap to see what authorship has done to their appearance. Dark background, unusual garment, oblique angle, tilt of head, hair falling forward, chin resting on hand, cool gaze: my nervous-smiling, twisty-nosed, sad-eyed acquaintance has undergone the most startling transformation. I never understood how it was done.”
November 17, 2004 · 12:12 PM · Books · Comments (0)
Trials of a Hometown Critic
My heart goes out to Tom Strini of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel who, in this disarming defense of his own review, steadfastly explains why he can’t pretend to be moved by schlock:
“However obvious it might seem, let me state for the record that I very much want Michael Pink and the Milwaukee Ballet to succeed financially and artistically. My life will be far more pleasant if they do. And yes, I know how hard it is to keep a ballet going in a market this size. I have written any number of "ballet on the brink" financial stories over the years, and I would prefer not to have to write another one.
But I work for this newspaper and its readers, not for the Milwaukee Ballet. I would love to be able to say that "Hunchback" is brilliant and recommend it to everyone, but it is an affront to my aesthetic values. To say otherwise would be dishonest . . .
"Hunchback" and the like make the viewer a passive punching bag that gives a prescribed response to each assault. Thwack! Pathos. Smack! Horror. Pow! Sympathy. Sock! Hearts and flowers.
Lots of people like to be knocked about in this way - if it makes them cry, it must be good art. Emotional manipulation has made a lot of money for Celine Dion, John Williams, Andrew Lloyd Webber and many other pretentious popsters who bore me to stupefaction. I would hate to see their aesthetic become the aesthetic of the Milwaukee Ballet.”
Link via Ballet Alert!.
November 14, 2004 · 12:25 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
Tears for Alonso
The Telegraph’s Ismene Brown files a long diary from the Havana International Festival of Ballet and concludes with some striking thoughts on National Ballet of Cuba founder Alicia Alonso:
“I leave torn between extremes of optimism and pessimism. The Cuban Ballet's structure is built with palpable love, its school feeder system possible only under such a political regime. These are blissfully joyful and carefully trained dancers, and in Alonso they have a great model. But Alonso has now become the problem.
I shut my eyes and imagine a woman pirouetting in the dark, searching for the glow of a light to anchor herself to, inventing a new technique. By visualising inwardly the mechanics and ideals of ballet-dancing, I suspect she pioneered and passed on to today's Cuban dancers an unmatched command of balance, as well as a unique, old-world gracefulness.
And yet her blindness is blocking creative rejuvenation no less damagingly than the US blockade, driving dancers into unhappiness and even defection.
Ironically, the more walled up it is, the more the Cuban Ballet could mutate merely into a nursery for fine dancers who leave for greater rewards abroad. If that humiliated Castro, I wouldn't cry, but I would for Alonso, whose vision, impaired as it became, was magnificent.”
November 14, 2004 · 12:09 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
Bolshoi Bonanza
The DanceView Times sent three correspondents to the Bolshoi’s Berkeley appearances. Ann Murphy reviews “Romeo and Juliet”:
“Clearly, the Bolshoi was finally, if awkwardly, moving into late 20th century dance at the dawn of the 21st century. Its new director, Alexei Ratmansky, who came on board after this "Romeo" was commissioned, has already shown himself a witty and winsome choreographer in his "Carnival of the Animals," created for San Francisco Ballet in 2003. But the 21st century is already proving highly problematic, and well into the middle of the Act I, so was this "Romeo." Crowds of men and women ran around portentously like actors from 1920's Berlin theater, or hovered over a horizontal wall like bobbing dolls. Meanwhile, the famous lovers, dressed modernly in white and ice blue-he in loose pants and jacket, she in shorty-style silk pajamas—stretched into jazzy side-long piques and rounded over in simulacrums of an angst I was feeling all too strongly. It was immediately clear that Mr. Poklitaru, who graduated from the choreographer's school of the Byelorussion State Academy of Music, has oodles of contemporary moves in his dance bag. But Angelin Prejlocaj put his Orwellian version on the map long before this young choreographer from Kishinyov met up with the British director. What was clear was that Mr. Poklitaru was showing off how much and how little he knew and Mr. Donnellan was not helping matters.”
Rita Felciano finds “Raymonda” largely unsatisfying:
“Looking at the Bolshoi Ballet this week felt like entering a time warp. Rarely has the gulf between East and West been so intensely felt. What the company apparently considers daring and a step into the avant garde, Radu Poklitaru and Declan Donnelan's punkish "Romeo and Juliet," despite its intriguing idea of using the corps like a Greek chorus, looked incredibly simple minded and dated. "Raymonda", on the other hand, judging from the bored rendering the work received, must be considered old hat by the dancers. Yet "Raymonda", its limping plot line not withstanding, has so much to be admired, and deserves a better performance than it got.”
And Paul Parish sees a matinee cast:
“Raymonda is a famously difficult role, and now it's obvious why. The ballerina is dancing all the time, one difficult solo after another exploiting the whole range of the technique. It's a uniquely challenging part. But although the matinee starred Maria Allash and Alexander Volchkov, who rank only as First Soloists, they succeeded far better than the opening night stars (Anna Antonicheva and Sergey Filin) at making an emotional connection with the audience and bringing their characters to life. In particular, Ms Allash began to get happy in her dancing; when the music went allegro, her heart lifted, her eyes opened up, and a sweet, spontaneous smile animated her face—as she did the most difficult things.”
November 12, 2004 · 01:05 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
Next-generation Balanchine
It’s easy enough to talk about how Balanchine transformed ballet technique. Sandra Kurtz, in this review of Pacific Northwest Ballet for the Seattle Weekly, shows it vividly. Then she goes on to consider PNB’s stewardship of the Balanchine legacy:
“Dance is most clearly preserved in the living bodies of dancers, not in books or on films or videotapes. Even before Balanchine's death in 1983, there was apprehension about preserving his works. Twenty-one years later, some critics swear that they are still performed as he would have liked; others find fault on a regular basis, saying that the New York City Ballet, the logical caretaker of his legacy, has not lived up to its responsibility, and look to other artistic directors and companies to preserve the work. PNB co-director Francia Russell is one often looked to in this regard. Both she and co-director Kent Stowell danced with the New York City Ballet, but it is Russell who has had the main responsibility of protecting Balanchine's legacy here, bringing not just his choreography but also his philosophy of dance into the studio every day.
Now that she and husband Stowell are retiring from the PNB leadership, continuing the tradition will fall most likely to Peter Boal, an acclaimed dancer with the New York City Ballet. Boal admits that his connection with the Balanchine heritage has been through the work, not the man. As time passes, and the generation that had firsthand connections moves on, Boal's experience will be the more common one. Just as we know Bach and Shakespeare better through their art than through their biographies, with time Balanchine's legacy will need to be constantly rediscovered inside his ballets.”
Link via Arts Journal.
November 12, 2004 · 12:45 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
Book Bites #6
Why did I not discover Andre Dubus earlier in life! His name has floated through popular culture lately: His story “Killings” was the basis for the independent film “In the Bedroom” several years ago (a fact I did not pick up on when I saw the movie and loved it). And of course “House of Sand and Fog,” a novel by his son Andre Dubus III, made it to the big screen last year. But only because of the persistent and unprompted swooning from one of the members of my writers group (thanks, Stephanie!) did I dip in to the elder Dubus’s body of work.
Dubus wrote only short stories, and he became a master. Every tale telescopes a whole life, and every sentence drips with emotion. Normally the snobbish side of me would turn its nose up at movie tie-ins, but this slim volume with an unnecessary preface from “In the Bedroom” director Todd Field proved a most satisfying introduction. In my favorite selection, “The Winter Father,” a young divorcé’s guilt towards his children begins to melt with the snow; in “The Fat Girl,” a studious dieter betrays her true self; in “All the Time of the World,” a thirty-something woman jaded by the sexual revolution finds the unexpected promise of love. The sentences are elegant and keenly psychological, practically each a little aphorism of feeling. These are stories to read again and again, to uncover their craft.
As a bonus, click here for an audio clip of the younger Dubus talking about his own work and his father’s influence.
November 11, 2004 · 01:22 PM · Books · Comments (0)
Hot off the (virtual) press
I’ve got a new review of the Chitresh Das Dance Company’s latest premiere up on Voice of Dance:
“ “I am turning 60 and one-quarter of 60 is 15 and half of that is 7 and one-half, so that is what I will dance,” Pandit Chitresh Das announced at the Cowell Theater Saturday night (Nov. 6) before launching into a flurry of brilliant rhythms and arch facial expressions. He spun in ever more syncopated flashes; he dragged his toes so that the heavy bells on his ankles hissed like snakes; he doubled the phrase to 15 beats and assumed the fleeting, sensual guise of Lord Krishna, imaginary hunting bow striking on a devastating final stop.
Indeed, there is mystical meaning in numbers when it comes to Kathak, the North Indian classical form that stresses mathematically complex rhythms over storytelling. And here’s another number worth noting. It’s been 34 years since Chitresh Das came to America with a dream of teaching what he calls his “rainbow coalition”—a multi-racial company that embodies the universal appeal of Classical Indian culture.”
Also freshly posted to the site is Allan Ulrich’s review of Alonzo King’s “Before the Blues,” which Allan finds one of his best works (I’m looking forward to seeing it this weekend):
“King created Before the Blues at White Oak Plantation in Northern Florida (in between hurricanes) and it is footage of that area of the world we see at the beginning of the piece, projected on twin rear screens, images of nature at its most serene. Sanders offers "Let Us Go Into The House of the Lord," a mournful sax commentary, a threnody, really. King has structured the work as a 15-part suite, each section distilling a particular moment or suggesting a historical situation. Working with small complements of dancers - all eight rarely appear together - has focused the choreographer’s craft and his intentions in a manner that recalls the splendid pieces commissioned from him recently by the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.”
November 10, 2004 · 03:09 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
Tired or Timely?
Two views of Fokine at American Ballet Theatre. Mindy Aloff:
“Michel Fokine’s “Les Sylphides” is so distant in tone, subject, and technique from what today’s ballet dancers are trained to put over that when American Ballet Theatre announced that it would revive the ballet, along with several others by Fokine, after an absence from the repertory of nearly two decades, one might have well wondered, “Why?” The answer became clear at the first performance of the lovingly curated new production this season: because audiences need it. We are starved for intricate patterning on the ballet stage and for the magic involved in transforming a massed force into a weightless image—the kind of effect one sees at sunset, when flocks of birds, before settling down to sleep, rise and wheel, like handwriting. We are also starved for a certain kind of deportment in the human figure—for an alliance of tenderness and self-sufficiency, for privacy and respect, for beauty that emerges fully formed, without a Darwinian dark side. We are starved for the Renaissance.”
And Robert Gottlieb:
“We were also given the beginning of A.B.T.’s attempt to reclaim Fokine as a viable part of the repertory: Both Les Sylphides and Le Spectre de la Rose re-entered the repertory after many years’ absence. Les Sylphides has strong associations for the company—staged by Fokine himself, it was the opening ballet on A.B.T.’s opening night, Jan. 11, 1940. But more than 60 years have gone by since then, and Sylphides has lost its vitality—I haven’t seen a convincing performance in 20 years. Yes, it’s of immense historical importance, looking back in its groupings to Petipa and Ivanov and forward to the Balanchine of Serenade. But today—let’s be honest—it’s more than a little boring, and even a little silly, though that may be because we’ve seen it most frequently these past years through the skewed vision of the all-male Trocks. Its poetic delicacies aren’t natural to today’s athletic dancers—certainly not to the cast I saw the other day, who solemnly (and very, very slowly) went through the motions to almost no effect.”
November 10, 2004 · 12:02 PM · Dance · Comments (1)
A tiny venue gets bigger
As part of my dance-writing blitz last week, I took the time to check out emerging San Francisco choreographer Leslie Seiters’ new show, and review it for Voice of Dance:
“Leslie Seiters’ work is so delicate, you almost wonder how she can bear to share it. The mental worlds she constructs are fragile and almost painfully intricate—last year, for instance, she and Rachel Shaw duetted among dozens of tiny, hand-painted teacups hung from fishing wire. That show, a minefield of emotional vulnerability, won Seiters good buzz on the San Francisco modern dance scene and a residency at ODC Theater. For the last two weekends Seiters was back at 848 Community Space with a newly formed company, little known dance theater, and an hour-long premiere as entrancing as an unlocked diary.
Leslie Seiters's "The Way to Disappear"
The Way to Disappear explores dark-hour-of-the-soul questions in a dreamy, light-filled landscape. The work is essentially a danced installation, and for the first 15 minutes the audience is invited to wander through. Seiters and Shaw inhabit a room of floating vintage green wallpaper, their paper dresses blending into the background. On the side of the stage, where Sean Riley’s set design creates an alcove from strings anchored by old men’s shoes, Jessica Swanson, Frieda Kipar, and Marielle Lauren Amrhein work vigorously at erasing charcoal drawings of their faces—but stubborn traces remain. At the back of the stage, Christy Funsch snips away at tissue paper bearing projected handwriting.”
It was a lovely little show, and this seems the perfect time to let Bay Area dance folk know that 848 Community Space, perhaps the funkiest of San Francisco venues (yes, even funkier than Dance Mission), is moving to bigger digs and renaming itself CounterPULSE. The original 848 is essentially a low-ceilinged room with a bulky heater hung stage right, with doors on the back wall leading to a kitchen and bathroom serving for entry and exit. But its sweaty intimacy was is its charm, and there’s nothing small about many of the talents that have graced it over the last 13 years. One of my favorites, Scott Wells (a choreographer who really should be better known outside the Bay Area), hung the ceiling with fake flowers and used the tight confines to let his dancers slam against the walls. That piece couldn’t have been created anywhere else.
Scott Wells and Dancers
I’m sure the new space at 1310 Mission Street, with its 1700-square-foot floor and 22-foot ceilings, will have the same plucky spirit. But if you want to say your fond farewell, and help support the move, 848 will be hosting Anniversary Shows to benefit the relocation November 19 and 20. The lineup includes Keith Hennessy, Robert Henry Johnson, Scott Wells, Leslie Seiters, and many others. For details, click here.
November 09, 2004 · 11:46 AM · Dance · Comments (0)
Feld Reborn?
Tobi Tobias weighs in on Eliot Feld’s Mandance Project:
“The more things change, the more they remain the same. The proverb might have been generated to describe Eliot’s Feld’s choreographic career. Feld’s latest company, Mandance Project—consisting of five men and a lone woman—recently made its debut in New York with a repertory of 11 dances, all but one of them brand new. Astonishingly, the work looks like much that Feld, a huge but inexplicably stymied talent, has been doing for the last quarter-century. The pieces—six of them on the program I saw—are typically astutely crafted but rigid, confined, and obsessively repetitive. The very antithesis of early Feld works like Intermezzo and At Midnight, they say no to organic flow and depth of feeling, substituting aren’t-I-clever? gimmicks for the qualities that lie at the heart of expressive dancing.”
November 09, 2004 · 10:59 AM · Dance · Comments (0)
A boatload of great dance writing in the Chronicle today. Ann Murphy reviews the Chitresh Das Dance Company:
“After the company performed a traditional invocation of the gods and cleansed the space, Das performed a solo that showed his ever-deepening assurance as a rhythmic master, with tight shoulders the only sign of aging. Talking with the audience as Kathak masters do and dressed in a white tunic and pants, Das informed us he would perform in the difficult 7 1/2 time. The two tabla players promptly demonstrated the headlong pattern with its hiccough ending. Then Das joined in with enormous playfulness, coming to sudden crisp poses at the phrases' end, with the same air of improvisatory high jinks of American jazz. Rhythms, meanwhile, seemed to come from at least three different places on his highly splayed feet, which are as articulate as the hands of the percussionists.”
And Michael Wade Simpson has a rapturous take on Alonzo King’s latest for LINES Ballet:
“Alonzo King's take on the post-Civil War South, in his world premiere, "Before the Blues" is like a Cubist Picasso nude -- a brilliant skewing of realism that leaves traditional form in the dust.
Where Alvin Ailey's famous "Revelations" has the gospel hits, the chain gang, sinner man, the church ladies with their hats, King offers nature sounds, abstract video images, scratchy field recordings from the Library of Congress and shirtless men in skirtlike culottes. King seems to be not so much interested in African American culture, in a literal history, as in the essence of a time and place distilled into wildly original movement. Lines Ballet is the apotheosis of the trend to eliminate distinctions between modern dance and ballet -- the best of both worlds.”
November 08, 2004 · 12:36 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
on the cutting room floor
I reviewed the Bolshoi’s Raymonda for the Chronicle. I liked the performance quite a lot, especially after the dismal “Romeo and Juliet,” but not quite as much as the review, which was cut, might lead you to believe.
Here are the excised bits:
“Though this 1984 production was refurbished in 2003, the décor recalls the Grigorovich “Swan Lake” seen in Berkeley two years ago: He-Man wigs for the men, a brown and turquoise palette even Medieval courtiers would have found garish, lighting alternately bright as a grocery store and dim as a swamp.
But while the Grigorovich “Swan Lake” was also dampened by murky psychologizing, this “Raymonda” didn’t require an analyst. The trappings looked dated, the dancing timeless.”
The Bolshoi Ballet's "Raymonda"
Meanwhile, Allan Ulrich had a different take and made the most of the internet to compellingly support it. Not willing to write "Raymonda" off as a mere vehicle for dancing, he writes:
"The fact is, Raymonda has genuine possibilities as a moral tale. This, like Swan Lake, is a ballet about making choices. Raymonda (a Hungarian or French princess) is confronted with two suitors - the safe, noble de Brienne and the dangerously erotic Abderakhman. But for the story to make sense, the choreographer must take the original narrative seriously. It is possible to deconstruct the Bolshoi’s Raymonda and attribute sundry episodes to various choreographers, but that is a pedant’s game.
Rather, what we should ask is whether what one saw on the stage Friday (Nov. 5) added up to cogent storytelling. Not by any stretch of the imagination with this Raymonda. The narrative arc is seriously skewed. I doubt if Petipa would have followed up a public pas de deux for his protagonists with an intimate duet 20 minutes later; his sense of structure was better than that. I suspect Petipa would not have Raymonda fall asleep under a pillar. And I am sure he would not have portrayed Abderakhman’s retinue with the ludicrously bowing and scraping corps that Grigorovich puts on the stage. Act 3, which contains the best pages of the Alexander Glazunov score (much cannibalized by George Balanchine and others), is sheer divertissement and the most satisfying portion of the Bolshoi version.
Given the absence of physical allure, this Raymonda was a strange choice for an American tour."
This is a difficult review to excerpt; I really do recommend reading the entire thing.
November 08, 2004 · 12:29 PM · Dance · Comments (2)
Realism
As an antidote to the Columbia Journalism Review victim-fest on first-time authors which I wrote about recently, the current Poets & Writers magazine has an article by M.J. Rose on what new writers can actually do to help promote their books. It’s not available online, but here’s a quick quote:
“As authors, we can write and edit our own career scripts. We can choose to be optimists or pessimists, curmudgeons or spoiled brats. We can harbor huge expectations or no expectations. Perhaps the best choice is to be a realist.”
Sounds sensible to me, and far more helpful than shaking your fists at the publishing world.
November 07, 2004 · 10:24 PM · Books · Comments (0)
Mr. B in Cuba
In the U.S., ballet companies have to jump through strict hoops to dance Balanchine. In Cuba, as the New York Times reports from the Havanna International Festival of Ballet, the Nacional just copies the steps from pirated videos:
“Only one of the seven pieces performed this week is currently licensed by the George Balanchine Foundation. Two have expired licenses, and the rest were copied from videotapes.
The debate over the authenticity of these productions has emerged at a festival already hurt by the United States government's restrictions on travel to Cuba. Nine dancers from the New York City Ballet and one from the Dance Theater of Harlem were barred from attending, making this the first time in 30 years that an American has not performed at the festival.”
Several readers on Ballet Alert! have pointed out errors—which I haven’t double-checked myself—but I do know ballets are licensed by the Balanchine Trust, rather than the Foundation. Still, it’s an interesting story, and you have to wonder what Balanchine himself would have thought of the Nacional’s defense, as articulated by the company historian:
“ "Here it is considered that Balanchine's work belongs to humanity. These economic rules civilization has imposed against the spiritual enrichment of human beings, I am 100 percent against." ”
November 07, 2004 · 10:06 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
The Bolshoi's Bloodless "R&J"
I suspect the Chronicle may get some mail about my thoughts on the Bolshoi Ballet's "Romeo and Juliet":
"Let's be clear: The new "Romeo and Juliet" that Moscow's storied Bolshoi Ballet brought to Cal Performances on Wednesday night is not bad because it trades pointe shoes and tutus for tuxedos and negligees. It is not bloodless and unaffecting because it showcases a 228-year-old company of finely trained classicists -- scandal! -- doing the bump and grind.
And it was not the worst idea to tap noted British theater director Declan Donnellan to inject some contemporary daring into a troupe long isolated by the Iron Curtain and stagnated by a repertory too heavy on former leader Yuri Grigorovich's works."
This "R&J" isn't offensive, I go on to say--the choreography is simply too thin:
"Donnellan has been matched with a choreographer too inexperienced to do the job. Radu Poklitaru, a former Bolshoi dancer, aims for the fluency and frankness of European dance theater but comes up short. Think of the cartoonishness of Sweden's Mats Ek mixed with the limb-flailing aggression of France's Angelin Preljocaj -- but sans the structural sophistication."
But the audience, as I note in the review, offered a friendly ovation. I suspect last night's non-gala crowd might have responded differently.
Voice of Dance's Allan Ulrich had a strong reaction as well:
"Have Shakespeare’s doomed young lovers from Renaissance Verona ever found themselves trapped in a sillier framework than that imported by Moscow’s Bolshoi Ballet, which Wednesday evening (Nov. 3) brought a whiff of a new era to Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall, the opening of a five-day Cal Performances run? After Thursday, this modern-dress Romeo and Juliet vanishes from the boards here, to be replaced by the more conventional Raymonda, so this foolish, unmusical and often incoherent project may be soon a matter of ancient history."
And reminds Bay Area ballet lovers of a sad bit of casting news regarding Maria Alexandrova:
"Alexandrova did what was required and showed us sparks from an incendiary stage personality; this, alas, was her only scheduled performance during the Berkeley run."
November 05, 2004 · 11:13 AM · Dance · Comments (0)
Recommended this week
There’s so much good dance in the Bay Area this week that I can’t even get to it all. Something for everyone:
The Bolshoi Ballet returns to Berkeley tonight. I’ll have a review of the new, naturalistic and highly controversial “Romeo and Juliet” in the Chronicle on Friday. The 19th century classical ballet “Raymonda,” which is probably far more in line with the general ballet-goer’s expectations, opens Friday too. For details on the Bolshoi engagement, click here.
Ballet of a more postmodern, global stripe can be found in the fall engagement of Alonzo King’s LINES Ballet. The two-weekend run at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts opens Friday and includes the world premiere of “Before the Blues,” a collaboration with saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, and 1998’s “Who Dressed You Like a Foreigner,” with music by tabla master Zakir Hussain. For details, click here.
Leslie Seiters is a visual artist and emerging choreographer who creates exquisitely detailed sets and dance phrases of mystery and integrity. Her little known dance theater (that’s the company’s name, not my editorializing) continues a two-week run at 848 Community Space in “The Way to Disappear” tomorrow through Saturday. I’ll be checking out the show tomorrow. For details, click here and scroll down.
And finally (I said I had something for everyone), if you like classical Indian dance, the Chitresh Das Dance Company premieres Pandit Das’ “Sampurnam” tomorrow through Saturday at the Cowell Theater. This is a consistently impressive troupe of Kathak dancers, most of them American-born, handpicked and trained by Das. The live music alone is usually worth the price of admission. I’ll be seeing the show Saturday. For details, click here.
November 03, 2004 · 06:44 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
Dancing tall
The too-seldom seen Joan Acocella writes in the New Yorker about American Ballet Theatre's Herman Cornejo:
"Now, presumably inspired by Baryshnikov and Bocca, there is another short man at A.B.T. who dances tall: Herman Cornejo. He is five feet six and not unusually handsome. (He looks like a regular person, but with an overbite.) To my knowledge, he is the most technically accomplished male ballet dancer in the United States . . .
. . . But what is most remarkable about him is his clarity. Many young male dancers, particularly since Nureyev and Baryshnikov started the craze for male bravura, push the “show” steps as far as they possibly can; that is, until they are practically falling on the floor. Cornejo does not do this. He must certainly be pushing—he gets so far—but he never, ever sacrifices form. As a result, he gives you more steps, more ballet for the buck. This is true even when he is in the air, the hardest place to hold a shape, because gravity is working against you. You, but not him."
November 02, 2004 · 01:16 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
a master redeemed
I’m back, the polls are open, and the reviews are in for Mark Morris’s “Rock of Ages,” given its world premiere at UC Berkeley’s Cal Performances last Thursday.
Bucking consensus, first by admiring “Violet Cavern” and now by discounting the new work, the Chronicle’s Steve Winn writes:
“With "Rock of Ages," the evening's world premiere for four dancers, Morris is working in a smaller compass and a more muted, almost guarded way. It was not, on first viewing, an especially engaging effort.
Using Schubert's Piano Trio in E-Flat, D. 987, the single-movement "Notturno," as a score, Morris restricts most of the action to a focal point at center stage. There, paired off at first by twos and subsequently in different groupings, the dancers execute some slow, sweeping moves, then tuck their hands behind their backs and shoot quick glances up and away. They come and go separately, walking to and from the wings and darting more looks here and there. The music's stately lyricism and trilling undertow never gain much traction as the dancers leave off, peel away, reassemble and try again. In the end, enigmatically, the dancers pace across the stage, cross in the middle and depart, their gaits slowing as the lights fade.
Four women -- Amber Darragh, Rita Donahue, Julie Worden and Michelle Yard, costumed in deep blues, aquas and greens by Katherine McDowell -- performed on opening night. By programming two women and two men on Friday and four men tonight, Morris may be signaling the minimalist mutability of the piece. "Rock" will be whatever the dancers and audiences project on it. That seems a challengingly bare facade.”
Meanwhile, straight-talking Stephanie von Buchau (a Bay Area critic whose work really should be available online more frequently) found “Rock of Ages” redeeming:
“In this short work, excellently played from the left side of the stage by members of the Mark Morris Dance Group Ensemble (including pianist Benjamin Hochman coaxing "period" types noises out of an old Steinway), the four dancers are dressed in emerald and Prussian blue by designer Katherine McDowell. The movement is mostly soft and graceful, with the occasional cutting arm or stabbing foot. Some circular patterns are suggested -- I always wish I could witness Morris' dances simultaneously from above and the front -- but the most interesting aspect of a first viewing was watching the way the entrances and exits are achieved. We're always yapping about Morris' "musicality" (which is why the ear-shattering "Violet Cavern" came as such a disagreeable shock), and part of that musicality includes knowing when to stop and when to start. By trusting the composer, sensibly not slavishly, Morris makes a work like "Rock of Ages" seem as inevitable as Schubert's music. Just as a sequence seems to have worn itself out, another entrance refreshes the palate. The result is that -- even with the simplest of gestures -- the piece is over before you've begun to tire of it.”
And Allan Ulrich, making the most of the Internet’s lack of space limitations, gives a thorough explication of “Rock of Ages’s” craft:
“Before the curtain rose on the world premiere of Mark Morris’ Rock of Ages last Thursday (Oct. 28) at the University of California’s Zellerbach Hall, it was impossible to conceive of anyone making a legible dance from Schubert’s little-known Piano Trio in E-flat, D.897, a Notturno that is always overshadowed by this composer’s two formidable trios for the same instruments. At the end of the performance, it was impossible to imagine this score being choreographed by anyone else . . .
. . . The modest and entirely lovable Rock of Ages looks as if it had been conceived in a single burst of inspiration. The score’s structure, with the piano conveying the thematic substance for a heavenly Schubertian length before the violin and cello assume a more prominent role, exudes a kind of limpid drama. The modulation to E Major and the rising dynamic in the middle section, before the ensemble returns to its dreamy state, suggests an overflowing stream subsiding to its original proportions after a flash flood. Out of this, Morris has conceived a haunting little chamber piece for four dancers, who exemplify the yearning one finds constantly in this composer.”
I loved “Rock of Ages,” as I wrote earlier. It had a mood of gentle fortitude, almost a hominess about it—and my perception of it will always be colored by that all-women premiere cast. One element not mentioned in the reviews: about two-thirds through the work, during another of the reluctant exits to the four corners of the stage, the house lights slowly rose. Discomfort and confusion registered in abundant coughs and fidgeting. And then slowly as the dancers reentered, the house lights dimmed. It was almost certainly part of the choreography, and in its self-consciousness as an “effect,” it felt very un-Morris. If you have an interpretation of this house lights phenomenon, please do share it with me.
November 02, 2004 · 01:09 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
