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Pub Lit
San Francisco’s Edinburgh Castle Pub--for years now host to traditional fish and chips, stiff drinks, and some of the city’s sexiest writers-—has produced its first ever anthology. Saith the Chronicle:
"Generations of literary greats have spent many a late night drawing inspiration from the watering holes they frequented. James Joyce was a regular at Davy Byrnes Pub in Dublin, Ernest Hemingway loved Harry's Bar in Venice, Charles Bukowski would drag himself into any dive in Los Angeles that wouldn't throw him out.
So it only makes sense, as Alan Black says, to put the pub into publishing.
Black, the bar manager at the Edinburgh Castle Pub, has published -- with writer Luke James and former bartender Sean O'Melveny -- a book that was, in their words, "forged" at the pub in San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood. As they describe it on the first of its 174 pages, "Public House" is "an anthology of spoken word, short fiction, poetry, image, and rant." "
Among the notables included are Ivine Welsh, Po Bronson, Mary Roach, and my friend and former fellow writers group member Anne N. Marino, author of the novel “The Collapsible World.” Check it out.
December 22, 2004 · 04:05 PM · Books · Comments (0)
Sarah Van Patten comes of age
A wonderful cast at the new San Francisco Ballet “Nutcracker” last night. I went specifically to see soloist Sarah Van Patten debut in the grand pas de deux, and I was not disappointed. I was slow to warm to Van Patten when she joined SFB from the Royal Danish Ballet two seasons ago. She got trotted out in an odd assortment of parts (including, at one gala, Suzanne Farrell’s role in Balanchine’s “Diamonds”—a high-pressure way to make your first appearance with a new company). She’s a strikingly individual dancer, with a big pretty face and soft lines, but not until the Balanchine Festival last season was I convinced about her. She was gorgeous in “Serenade,” sweeping across the stage with her lush sense of musicality and her fluid, exaggerated épaulement. And she was the best of the Calliopes I saw in “Apollo.”
She can appear haughty and imperious (she was not at all, in retrospect, miscast in “Diamonds”), but last night in that grand pas de deux she was all warmth and wonder. Van Patten knows how to dance from character, as her Calliope proved, and last night she was fully the little girl transformed into a womanly princess. She made deliberate, intriguing choices in phrasing, freezing a high clear retire in her variation and yet giving every movement a velvety softness. She can hold a lovely high clear arabesque in promenade, and yet she has no sharp edges. This has drawbacks—she’s not notable for crisp footwork and she’s not a speedy turner. She ended the final piqué turns in her variation early, and pretty much plowed through the climactic turns with her partner. But she never blundered. She commands the stage and she dances like no one else. She’s one of my favorite women in the company right now, and she’s going to keep growing.
Sergio Torrado partnered her as the Nutcracker Prince. His dancing seems stagnated: He has muscle power but little gentility and almost no rebound. All the energy of his jumps thuds right back into the floor. The big bonus of last night’s cast was Tina LeBlanc as the Sugar Plum Fairy. Others have recognized her as of late as “peerless” and “one of the country’s leading ballerinas,” and the descriptions are not too gushing. Her absolute clarity in the part made Tomasson’s simple but effective choreography look its best.
December 22, 2004 · 03:46 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
Even the New York Times’ Anna Kisselgoff calls San Francisco Ballet’s new “Nutcracker” “visually smashing,” “elegant and beautiful,” and the company itself of “international rank.”
December 21, 2004 · 12:01 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
New "Nutcracker" Giddiness
I nearly broke my elbow Friday night. I’d recently polished my hardwood floors, and I came home so excited by the new San Francisco Ballet “Nutcracker” that I started slipping and sliding around and then decided to get a running start and then . . . whump! In case that testimonial is too wacky for you, check out my review in the San Francisco Chronicle, in which I can barely contain my enthusiasm:
"Waiting for San Francisco Ballet's new "Nutcracker" was a lot like staring at that gold-trimmed box under the Christmas tree.
After four years of promises for a new production, with a much touted $3. 5 million budget, could this glittering package live up to all our hopes?
The wrapping finally came off SFB's most ambitious "Nutcracker" ever Friday at the War Memorial Opera House, and the well-heeled gala crowd released a chorus of gasps. Artistic director Helgi Tomasson has delivered a spectacle to make even cynical adults gape like kids on Christmas morning.
Perhaps it's only fitting that SFB should now have one of the most sumptuous "Nutcrackers" in the world. The company gave the first American performance of the full ballet in 1944, with four updates following since.
Ballet fans accustomed to the wilting 1986 incarnation supervised by Tomasson shortly after he took the SFB helm might find themselves in pleasant shock. Designer Jose Varona's garish Willy Wonka-esque realm has been replaced by a glowing Edwardian fantasy. Or rather an Edwardian fantasy as dreamt by an adolescent girl circa 1915."
I returned for the matinee the very next day in order to get a second look at the choreography and a first look at Nutnaree Pipit-Suksun, the Thai Royal Ballet School grad hired straight in as a soloist. The opera house was filled to the brim with spit-shined children, quite a contrast to all the patrons in evening gowns the other night, but all the better to test whether this “Nutcracker’s” interest held up. (Another side benefit: it brought back vivid memories of my mother driving me from barren Fresno to see real ballet once a year.) The mice battle brought lots of fear-fueled tears, a good sign of sorts. The choreography I had a slightly dampened reaction to, and wished I had mentioned some of the charms of the old Lew Christensen choreography and tempered my giddiness just a tad. But for the most part it held up.
As for Nutnaree, it was hard to get a read. She’s medium-tall, wonderfully healthy of leg and limb, and an impressively plumb turner. She’s got all the chops, but stage presence flickered then dimmed. Maybe she found the kiddie crowd less than inspiring. Whatever the case, more viewings are needed for a verdict. Steven Legate partnered her ably. Vanessa Zahorian flitted through Sugar Plum’s part with ease. Joan Boada as the Nutcracker Prince brought into relief just how light, wonder-filled, and starry-eyed Gonzalo Garcia’s portrayal was. Kristin Long had a strange turning flub in the Grand Pas de Deux, then recovered with determination to whip through the rest with utter security.
For other takes on the new “Nutcracker,” check out Allan Ulrich, Mary Ellen Hunt, Paul Parish, and Ann Murphy.
December 20, 2004 · 12:59 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
Finally weighing in . . .
At long last, and just squeaking into the final weeks of the Balanchine centennial, my review of the two recent Balanchine biographies runs in the Chronicle. I should add that the year timeline on the Croce book is the official word from the publisher, and not a promise of punctuality seeing as deadlines can be surprisingly malleable things:
"As the opening chords of Tchaikovsky's "Serenade for Strings" swell, 17 women stand like a grove of trees in moonlight, one arm raised as though to shield their faces from the divine. George Balanchine created "Serenade" in 1934, just months after arriving in America, and 70 years later it still leaves dance lovers in meditative awe.
This vision of tulle skirts and spiritual yearning is just one manifestation of a genius capable of evoking the grandeur of imperial Russia, the jazzy athleticism of America and the romanticism of France -- sometimes all in the same ballet. But Balanchine's stylistic breadth doesn't even begin to tell the story of his stature. Balanchine made ballet a legitimate art in a country once hostile to the form. He made dances of such depth, musicality and startling modernism that leading painters and poets flocked to see them. In 2004, to mark what would have been his 100th birthday, at least 68 companies around the globe danced Balanchine ballets.
Now at the twilight of that centennial, two slim books have appeared to celebrate his life. Committed ballet fans will have to wait a year more for the long-promised study of Balanchine's work by Arlene Croce, the former New Yorker dance writer and his leading living critic. But readers could do worse than to bide their time with new biographies by Terry Teachout and Robert Gottlieb, both short, for the most part engagingly written and designed to appeal to the general arts fan just encountering Balanchine's legacy."
December 20, 2004 · 12:13 AM · Dance · Comments (0)
Stiefel comes to so cal
Surprise of the week for West Coast ballet lovers: Tiny, beleaguered, Orange County-based Ballet Pacifica has landed American Ballet Theatre mega-star Ethan Stiefel as its new artistic director. He’ll lead the troupe while maintaining his performing career, electing ABT alumni Amanda McKerrow and John Gardner co-directors in his absence, and re-igniting dreams of high-quality ballet finding a home in Southern California. Big changes are being conceived, according to Laura Bleiberg’s detailed coverage in the Orange County Register:
“While he will consider Ballet Pacifica's current dancers for positions with his group - their contracts expire in May - he would like to hold open auditions in New York, Southern California and in the middle of the country, possibly Chicago. The company would increase from its current nine dancers to 18 or 20 dancers for the first season, which tentatively would begin in January 2006.
Within three years, the company's operating budget will increase more than threefold from the current $1.7 million to $6.5 million, Gulick said. Stiefel's star power among potential donors will be especially important then, as the company needs to raise more money than it ever has.
Stiefel's salary is still being negotiated, but Gulick said his compensation is "within our working budget." Though salaries for artist directors vary, a company with a budget in the $6 million-$7 million range may pay $120,000 to $140,000 a year, said John Munger, director of information services for Dance/USA, a national service organization.”
What Bleiberg doesn’t fail to note is that Stiefel is untested as an AD, unless you count his touring ensemble “Stiefel and Stars.” Still it seems the big money in Orange County is talking, and the excitement is rolling . . .
Link via Ballet Alert!.
December 16, 2004 · 12:27 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
Dance in the Age of AIDS
I’m in the Chronicle today with a book review of David Gere’s How to Make Dances in an Epidemic: Tracking Choreography in the Age of AIDS”:
“In 1990, "one AIDS death" (the reality, not the performance) was occurring every 10 minutes, and HIV was taking a lasting toll on the dance world. As a gay man and as a former dance critic for this and many other Bay Area publications, Gere found himself in the midst of devastation and its artistic aftermath. The "choreographic response" as defined by Gere, now an associate professor at UCLA, took many guises: ACT UP demonstrations, AIDS quilt unfurlings, and yes, proscenium stage dances. Gere trains his sharp eye on all of these, and though his methodology is academic, his voice is personal, impassioned and sometimes pointedly provocative.
Gere takes a Brechtian stance on the line between art and politics, and his viewpoint is unabashedly activist. Dance critics, as his introduction explains, have been reluctant to analyze homosexual themes in dance. If Gere's own interpretations sometimes push this issue to a graphic and reductionist extreme, his descriptions are usually keen and engrossing.”
December 16, 2004 · 12:07 PM · Books · Comments (0)
More 'Nut'
The SF Chronicle’s Steven Winn also offers a glimpse of the mammoth new San Francisco Ballet “Nutcracker”:
“A visit to the company's warehouse scene shop conjured visions of what this "Nutcracker" aspires to be as a visual spectacle. Far more scenery has been built rather than painted for this production. Stacks of window panels cut in sweeping curves stood near an enormous, woozily tilted fireplace and the world's largest fireplace tools. Golden ornaments the size of basketballs adorned the lower branches of a Christmas tree. A pair of gigantic Spanish fans lolled behind a sheet of plywood. Picking her way through the sawdust and glitter, scenic supervisor Susan Tuohy called Yeargan's set designs "very detailed and very elaborate." A crew of 10 scenic artists and 10 carpenters started working on it in May.
" 'Sylvia' was a big show," Tuohy said of the set the company built for Mark Morris' production of that Delibes ballet earlier this year. "This one dwarfs it. There's as least twice as much scenery and far more complexity than there was in '86" for the "Nutcracker" production that's now been retired. Costume designer Pakledinaz, speaking by cell phone between courses of a dinner party in Manhattan, described a quest "to make something original yet classic. We wanted to make it personal to San Francisco but also fantastical." “
December 15, 2004 · 11:52 AM · Dance · Comments (0)
Ulrich back in the Ex
The recently tumultuous San Francisco Examiner (my old paper of employ) has scored a coup, luring Allan Ulrich back to their pages. Check out his coverage of the new $3.5 million San Francisco Ballet “Nutcracker”, sprinkled with production details:
“The fantastic temples and ziggurats created for the exhibition in the Marina District (of which the Palace of Fine Arts is the only surviving structure) will form a backdrop to Tomasson's "Nutcracker," set in one of The City's fabled Victorian homes, the Painted Ladies. The San Francisco Ballet is keeping many production details a secret (what else can you expect from a Christmas gift?). Yet, we know that Clara, the little girl whose dreams propel "Nutcracker," will become an adolescent and will be entrusted with more real dancing than in the old production. We know, also, that, in contrast to Christensen's staging, two different ballerinas will perform the Sugar Plum Fairy and the Act 2 Grand Pas de Deux, thus giving you more dancers for your dollars. The role of Uncle Drosselmeyer, the guide to Clara's dream, has been considerably rethought, and the part of Drosselmeyer's nephew has been eliminated altogether.”
December 14, 2004 · 03:57 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
Book Bites #7
The book review section of yesterday’s SF Chronicle was dedicated to the Best Books of 2004. It’s a looong and inclusive list, punctuated with some of my personal faves like Julian Barnes’s “The Lemon Table.” But my most recent discovery didn’t make it, apparently because it wasn’t reviewed by the Chronicle this year, nor in a lot of places it ought to have been, I suspect. I picked up Joy Williams’s “Honored Guest” because the Atlantic Monthly’s Benjamin Schwarz named it as one of the year’s best. Halfway through the first story it was clear that I should have already been acquainted with Williams’s work, but I plan to make up lost time post-haste with her novels, and for now “Honored Guest” is a great place to start.
I’ve read only five of the 12 stories so far, but I feel that rush of finding a writer you can return to for the rest of your life. The voice is quirky but deadpan: when Miriam, the main character of “Congress,” begins telepathically communicating with a lamp made of deer hooves, it’s treated utterly matter-of-factly. These are serious stories about mortality: a daughter who knows she will soon lose her mother; a mother who must host a funeral reception for the junk-head friends of her just deceased son. The characters—like an alcoholic who finds purpose visiting a mental hospital—are disconnected, befuddled by the absurdity of death. The symbolism in each story is just weird enough to give you pause, just curiously apt enough to strike a chord of realization. In terms of craft, the choices made in each story are so bold you can’t distill pat lessons from them, just marvel at their effect. These have to be freeing stories for anyone who’s sat through one too many writing workshops. I can’t wait to read the rest.
December 14, 2004 · 12:17 AM · Books · Comments (0)
Janie Taylor's glow
Last night away from home—or did I forget to mention that I had left? I spent the first four days of the week in Washington D.C., where I helped decide the merits of nearly 100 dance applications submitted to the National Endowment for the Arts. It’s the second time I’ve served as a panelist, and again I left in awe of my fellow application-readers’ knowledge, and thoroughly convinced that our NEA tax dollars are going to good use.
Yesterday I rode the train to Manhattan in order to rendezvous with my editor this afternoon. And tonight, purely for my own enjoyment, I bought a ticket to the New York City Ballet “Nutcracker.” Midway through the second act I was so glad I did. True, Madame Karinska’s costumes can’t be topped, and I can’t imagine a more satisfying “Waltz of the Flowers” exists in the world. But the clincher was Janie Taylor as Dewdrop, moving with such verve and elasticity that her legs seemed constructed of rubber bands rather than joints. For a tiny firefly of a girl, she emits a big glow.
Yvonne Borree danced Sugarplum, and though I would much rather have witnessed, say, Ashley Bouder’s debut in the role, the warmth of the ballet was hardly dampened. In fact, blame holiday cheer—or blame the folly of trying to judge a company you are only able to see on occasion—but I had a strikingly different reaction to City Ballet tonight than I did at the Orange County Performing Arts Center this fall. Tonight, watching Bouder dancing on such a thin edge, every step a feat of boldness and courage, it seemed miraculous that a New York City Ballet dancer would still move just as I imagined Balanchine would have wanted, more than 20 years after his death. A company that can nurture that performance must be doing something right. This is a superficial way of saying that even a critic’s assessment of a company is constantly shifting.
You might expect a dance critic to bemoan the yearly onslaught of “Nutcrackers,” but I rarely weary of the ballet. How can you with all those yards of gorgeous music? I’m looking forward to the opening of San Francisco Ballet’s all-new production next Friday. I’ll be reviewing for the Chronicle—look for the link here. In the meantime, I’m bound for home, with bells on.
December 11, 2004 · 12:17 AM · Dance · Comments (0)
Rest in peace, Dame Alicia Markova, distinguished ballerina of the 20th century: star of the Ballets Russes, originator of roles in the early ballets of Frederick Ashton, and "Giselle" interpreter nonpareil.
December 04, 2004 · 12:42 AM · Dance · Comments (0)
Ben Levy's promise
I reviewed the rising young company LEVYDance for Voice of Dance today:
"Rarely does a young dance company appear on the scene with the immediate appeal of LEVYDance. Founded in 2002 by UC Berkeley grad Benjamin Levy (and well stocked with fellow alumni who do that dance program proud), this fresh-faced group radiates commitment and ambition with every step they attack, every defiant stare they hold. The troupe’s latest home season at ODC Theater was a shrewdly focused affair: four works by Levy, one premiere, out the door by 9:30. But those intense 90 minutes left a compelling impression of why these dancers have placed so much faith in Levy’s talent.
At this point in Levy’s development, his gifts shine more in the aggregate rather than in the achievement of any one particular work. His movement is dense and distinctive, obsessed with the collapsing of joints, or the swing of a leg from its hip socket. Dancers often cluster together, cascading over each other in layers of dynamism. The dancers are forces acting against one another, each touch setting off an unstoppable chain of kinetic reactions, each potential embrace transmuted into confrontation. This choreographic style can look earthy, as in the intimate duet Falling After Too, or mechanical and menacingly futuristic, as in the trio Holding Pattern. Whichever the case, Levy smartly chooses music that lets him capture broad emotional shifts."
December 03, 2004 · 06:04 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
Nutty, not Nice
So I made it to the Matthew Bourne “Nutcracker!” at Berkeley’s Cal Performances the other night. This was the version that premiered at the 1992 Edinburgh Festival, years before Britain’s Bourne found fame with his all-male “Swan Lake.” That “Swan Lake” has never visited San Francisco, and this “Nutcracker!” is having a tough time building an audience in the Bay Area, as Tuesday’s turnout proved.
Reviewing for the Chronicle, Michael Wade Simpson passionately disliked the production, while the DanceView Times’ Rita Felciano was none too tickled. Appearing in the San Jose Mercury News, Mary Ellen Hunt’s reaction was more forgiving. The Oakland Tribune’s Chad Jones also warmed to it. And Voice of Dance's Allan Ulrich found it "one of the supreme joys of the season.
My own quick-and-dirty take is that this “Nutcracker!” is enjoyable despite serious flaws in dramatic logic. Here’s the low-down on Bourne’s twists: The first-act takes place in an Edward Gorey-esque orphanage run by the Drosses. Clara, played with hangdog sympathy by Kerry Biggin, has a crush on one of her fellow inmates, Philbert. After some grotesque dancing by the Drosses’ own chocolate-mouthed children, Clara discovers the Nutcracker doll. He comes to life in her dream, blonde plastic hair gleaming, cracks open the walls of the orphanage, and transforms into a Chippendale-worthy Philbert dressed in white trousers and suspenders.
And here’s where the heart of the story stops beating: Once arrived in Sweetieland, Clara’s prince falls for the Drosses’ witchy daughter, dolled up in pink a la the Sugarplum Fairy. And throughout the whole second act Clara tries, in vain, to win him back.
It gives her dramatic motivation, you might say, but it also violates the spirit of the music. Tchaikovsky’s grand pas de deux is such a surging, overwhelming statement of new love—but now it’s danced by the Prince and Sugar, whose alliance we’re rooting against. And the central joke of Sweetieland—that its inhabitants are lewd in their appetites for sex as well as candy—gets old fast.
The choreography ranged from rote to, especially in the pas de deux, fluent and rather better than competent. The ice-skating frolic that stood in for the usual snowflake scene had clever touches—the dancers shake their skirts while standing with one leg in attitude, foot flexed, as though they’re sailing through the wind. And of course the over-the-top stage designs by Anthony Ward were enough to keep my eye entertained. But this “Nutcracker!” is not about to supplant Mark Morris’s “The Hard Nut” in anybody’s heart, I wager.
December 02, 2004 · 11:48 AM · Dance · Comments (0)
