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Tolstoy with a twist

I've got a book review of a rather good novel in the Chron today:

"At a glance, Czech composer Leos Janácek's Kreutzer Sonata string quartet might seem merely another vehicle for the Dutch novelist Margriet de Moor's musical storytelling, much as the world of 18th century Italian opera inspired rhapsodic characters in her first book published in America, "The Virtuoso."

But "The Kreutzer Sonata" also refers to the Tolstoy novella that, with its tale of a coquettish wife and a murderous husband, inspired Janácek's tempestuous motifs. What does a moralizing classic of Russian literature have to tell us about modern sexual jealousy? Much, in de Moor's gifted hands, though the lessons remain as mysterious as music itself."

January 30, 2005  ·  06:59 PM   ·  Books   ·  Comments (0)

The Literary Impresario

It’s been a crazy busy week, packed with dance work. Fitting in daily blocks of time for fiction work (I finished the first draft of a new story) was a challenge, and my mind felt distracted with dance thoughts. So it made me feel re-balanced and reconnected to attend Sean Finney’s new literary series at Canteen Restaurant Tuesday night. Andrew Sean Greer (“The Confessions of Max Tivoli”) and Samina Ali (“Madras Rainy Days”) read, and our three courses of fine food and talk was every bit as fun as this Chronicle article would make you think.

January 29, 2005  ·  08:44 PM   ·  Books   ·  Comments (0)

Crossover Dance part III

John Rockwell faces off with Leigh Witchel on WYNC radio tomorrow (Sunday) at 2:30 eastern time.

To listen live, go here.

UPDATE: The segment was cancelled, sadly. However, Alexandra Tomalonis's new essay on the issue is now online at DanceView Times.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The Rockwell segment proceded, without Witchel. I won't even begin to explain all the twists and turns. If you want in on the intrique, go here.

January 29, 2005  ·  08:25 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

Gala Gaga

Allan Ulrich's take on the San Francisco Ballet gala offers an incisive portrait of Tomasson's newest work:

"For major news Wednesday, there was the premiere of Tomasson’s absorbing "Bagatelles," another of his occasional pieces, made for specific dancers, and one that we’re likely to see again. Jerome Robbins is the dominating influence in this moody chamber trio set to five of Béla Bartók’s Bagatelles for piano (handsomely dispatched by Roy Bogas). In various shades of blue, the performers, Moises Martin, Sarah Van Patten and Nutnaree Pipit-Suksun (the Ballet’s newest soloist - plucked from London’s Royal Ballet School) - are entrusted with solos, then duets and a passing trio that ache with submerged passion. Martin’s rangy technique serves him well for the back bends and sweeping arm trajectories. Van Patten digs valiantly into the music - rhapsodic lyricism fractured with almost barbaric rhythmic riffs - with an odd manipulation of limbs and Pipit-Suksun displayed her considerable understanding of legato phrasing. The ending - Pipit-Suksun’s rejection of the now febrile Martin -reassures us there’s no such thing as a true abstract ballet.

For other perspectives on the gala, check out Anita Amirrezvani, Stephanie von Buchau, and Mary Ellen Hunt.

January 29, 2005  ·  08:12 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

Black Choreographers Back on the Move

In the Sunday Chronicle, I talk to the founders of the new Black Choreographers Festival, which models itself on the Black Choreographers Moving Towards the 21st Century fest that died out about a decade ago:

“The year 1995 was a landmark for the Black Choreographers Moving Toward the 21st Century Festival, or BCM, as insiders know it. That year, the showcase -- which sparked a national dialogue in the African American dance world with its start in 1989 -- featured all Bay Area artists. A 27-year-old virtuoso named Robert Henry Johnson held the house in rapture, fluttering between ballet, hip-hop and jazz moves with the delicacy of a butterfly and the brashness of a boxer. Another still-young talent, Robert Moses, danced a solo wearing a collar and a face full of rage, provoking tears and exclamations.

Three women in particular were watching those performances with hope and excitement. Laura Elaine Ellis made her choreographic debut in that festival. Kendra Kimbrough Barnes and Shereel Washington were still students at San Francisco State. "It was life-changing for me," Ellis says one recent morning over coffee, her large eyes widening. "The synergy was just amazing."

Kimbrough Barnes nods her head full of braids toward the tall, stately Washington. "It was so thrilling for us to have a place to look forward to going when we finished with college. It was inspiring."

But the next year, the festival was gone."

January 29, 2005  ·  08:10 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

A toast to Helgi

The San Francisco Ballet gala Wednesday night was the company's most satisfying in years. I reviewed for the Chronicle:

"Galas are all about variety and delight, two qualities San Francisco Ballet arguably serves up with more ease than any other ballet company in America. But in between giddy whispers of "Paris Hilton is here!" and attendant heiress sightings Wednesday night, a mood of reverence filtered through the War Memorial Opera House as the San Francisco Ballet ushered in its 72nd season.

The country's oldest professional ballet company is nearing the three- quarter-century mark, but the magic number now is 20, which is how many years a soft-spoken, gallant Icelander named Helgi Tomasson has spent remaking the troupe from a regional player to an internationally respected powerhouse . . .

It was an evening of fresh maturity. Newly promoted soloist Elizabeth Miner brought gracious carriage and fluttery phrasing to "The Sleeping Beauty's" Bluebird pas de deux, perfectly paired with Guennadi Nedviguine's feathery beats. Boyish Gonzalo Garcia uncovered not just his chest, but new dramatic depths in Myriam Agar's anxious "Sin Regreso," a solo that might have looked silly in less committed hands. Vanessa Zahorian worked those hips and banged the tambourine in George Balanchine's galloping "Tarantella." Her partner Nicolas Blanc bounded with such gusto and unfailing rhythm that you had to wonder whether Edward Villella himself could have done it better."

The Chronicle went gangbusters with coverage. I'll spare you the Paris Hilton reportage, but offer a profile of principal Pascal Molat by Carolyne Zinko.

January 28, 2005  ·  12:10 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

More battling critics

Robert Gottlieb takes aim at the New York Times’ recently retired Anna Kisselgoff at the end of his latest New York City Ballet review:

“We’ve recently been told by Anna Kisselgoff, in one of her farewell columns in The New York Times, that "professional Balanchine mourners" should move on. But to what? To her beloved Boris Eifman? (Yes, she’s still defending the indefensible.) Believe me, Anna, we want to move on—to any large talent that presents itself. That’s why everybody hangs over Christopher Wheeldon, praying that he’ll be the one to lead us into new green pastures. What we won’t do is abandon the standards that George Balanchine established, both for his own ballets and for the dancers in what we still can’t help thinking of as "our" company. Far from wishing Peter Martins ill, people like me cherish everything positive that he does. But that doesn’t mean we have to tamely accept second-rate performances of Four T’s, Divertimento, Square Dance. The company has terrific dancers, but they’re not being refined and sharpened; too many of them fail to grow. It’s not only the Balanchine mourners who aren’t moving on."

January 27, 2005  ·  01:01 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

Helgi at the Helm

The opening of the 2005 San Francisco Ballet season is fast upon us with the gala kick-off this Wednesday. Ball gowns have been purchased, tuxes returned from the cleaners, and much more importantly, casting has been announced. Among the pleasures promised are Muriel Maffre dancing Forsythe’s “In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated,” Elizabeth Miner paired with Guennadi Nedviguine in the “Sleeping Beauty” Bluebird pas de deux, and Vanessa Zahorian and Nicholas Blanc in Balanchine’s “Tarantella.” And of course a world premiere from Helgi Tomasson, entering his 20th year as artistic director. Allan Ulrich offers a thorough profile in today’s Chronicle:

“This week, the former dancer from Iceland starts his 20th season as artistic director of the San Francisco Ballet, not revitalized as much as transformed over the past two decades. What was a likable American regional troupe linked indelibly with the pioneering Christensen brothers has emerged as a nationally acclaimed ballet company -- this country's third largest -- with immense appeal for both dancers and audiences all over the world.

How did two not-always-untroubled decades make such a difference? How did Tomasson accomplish one of the recent miracles of contemporary American dance? The answer, he will tell you, lies in his past -- two years at Copenhagen's Tivoli Ballet, two at the Joffrey Ballet, six at the Harkness and, until his retirement at 42 in 1985, 15 extraordinary years at George Balanchine's New York City Ballet, where his performing summoned superlatives for his profound understanding and projection of classical values.”

As a small bonus to Allan’s sweeping examination, you will find a quick run down of the season by yours truly. See you at the opera house!

January 23, 2005  ·  08:30 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

Rockwell's Riposte

So I’ve had a day to mull over John Rockwell’s reaction to the Ballet Talk crew. If you’re not a dance fanatic, let me get you up to speed. Rockwell, who in his long career has written about music and other arts, was recently appointed the new chief dance critic of the New York Times. His selection has caused anxiety among some dance lovers who worry he may not bring a breadth of dance knowledge befitting the country’s most important dance critic. To kick off his tenure two weeks ago, Rockwell wrote a column extolling (through somewhat hazy argumentation) the essential “unity” of dance. The boards at Ballet Talk lit up quickly. Alexandra Tomalonis, the site’s founder, and Leigh Witchel, one of its leaders, wrote letters to Rockwell expressing their concern over the trend toward modern choreographers creating works for ballet companies, or “crossover” dance. Rockwell responded in print—bitingly. An excerpt from his column is posted below.

My comments will be brief, in part because I’m swamped with work, in part because I’m not partial to creating tempests in teapots. But I have to say: Kudos to Rockwell for responding to the Ballet Talk criticisms in print and thereby providing a broader forum for debate. And kudos to Ballet Talk for sustaining a high level of critical discussion that deserves to be taken seriously by the Times’ chief critic.

For the record, I’ve found Rockwell’s initial reviews well written and more than adequately informed, and I think his appointment may prove healthy for the state of both dance and dance coverage in this country. American dance criticism has been backing itself into an ever more specialized corner for some time now, emphasizing insider knowledge at the expense of communicating the joy of dance to a broad public. Rockwell’s early ballet reviews have shown that he knows his dance history, or at the very least that he’s willing to do his homework. His prose and his arguments are engaging. He’s aesthetically open-minded. I’m hopeful about his tenure.

I’m also sympathetic to his forward-looking impulse, and his disdain toward fretting over the loss of ballet’s past glories. At the same time, I think he does Witchel’s and Tomalonis’s arguments injustice. Tomalonis is right that performing works by a modern dance choreographer does not maintain a company’s classical technique in the way that dancing “Paquita” or “Symphonic Variations” does. And Witchel is not arguing against innovation, but for the importance of innovation within tradition, which ballet companies could do more to foster and critics more to support.

Then there is the tone of Rockwell’s response—outright condescension—and a handful of perplexing digressions. One paragraph that’s repeatedly confounded me responds to Tomalonis’s assertion that ballet dancers do not perform modern dance choreography with the same sense of weight that modern dancers achieve:

“Well, where to begin? Presumably, by "weight" Ms. Tomalonis means the earth-centered movement of some modern dancers, as opposed to the airiness of ballet. She has a point. But movement and bulk are related. The disconcertingly thin model for ballerinas is relatively new. Look at pictures of dancers in the 19th century, and even into the 20th.”

This is outright wrong: that sense of weightedness so associated with modern dance has much less to do with bulk than physical impulse. Ballet dancers emphasize looking “pulled up” to create the illusion of defying gravity; modern dance embraces connection to the ground. Just as fleshier early 20th century dancers could look floating and ethereal, skinny modern dancers can look weighted—just check out the Mark Morris Dance Group’s Marjorie Folkman, a rather lank woman. It’s her technique, not her waist size, that makes her look rooted and strong.

There are other points to parse, as the posters at Ballet Talk already have. The tenor of the debate is still civil, and far from settling my views on the merits of “crossover” dance, the discussion instead makes me optimistic about the possibilities for serious debate about dance in the New York Times.

UPDATE: Alexandra Tomalonis has called for formal commentary on the "crossover" debate to be submitted to her at comments at danceviewtimes.com. Select entries will be published on the DanceView Times site. She asks that correspondents stick to the dance issues in play.

January 23, 2005  ·  08:01 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

Crossover: Curse or Cure?

The newly installed Times chief dance critic John Rockwell fires back at the online forum Ballet Talk and letters from the site's founder, Alexandra Tomalonis, and leader, Leigh Witchel:

“Funny how much fretting an innocent, optimistic essay I wrote two weeks ago, about the unity of dance and the helpful fructification of one dance form by another, has provoked. From letters I've received and chat-room exchanges on the Internet, it seems to me that certain ballet lovers are so profoundly anxious about the future of their art that they resist obvious solutions to the problems they decry . . .

There were two particularly thoughtful letters from critics associated with a quarterly magazine Dance View, and a linked Internet site, Ballet Alert (www. balletalert.com). The arguments of Alexandra Tomalonis, the editor, and Leigh Witchell were similar, clearly a result of shared beliefs and mutual consultation.

To paraphrase them in ways they will no doubt find distorted: ballet companies that engage modern-dance choreographers (thus, "crossover dance") are creating only throwaway novelties. They do so cynically, not to welcome important new ballets into the repertory but to achieve facile trendiness. (Take that, Serge Diaghilev, who struggled to remain au courant.) Ms. Tomalonis believes that "there hasn't been a first-rate classical ballet created in 25 years." (Take that, Christopher Wheeldon.)”

I'll post my thoughts on the debate tomorrow. In the meantime, the folks at Ballet Talk have plenty to say . . .

January 23, 2005  ·  02:58 AM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

Stuck in the Seventies?

The indefatigable Rita Felciano, who seems to see every dance performance within thirty miles of the Golden Gate Bridge, made it to the “. . . And Still Dancing” program that I was unable to catch at ODC Theater last weekend. Writing for the DanceView Times, she offers this report:

“The new year in San Francisco started with a new company though not new dancers. …And Still Dancing, the brain child of actor/dancer/writer Martin A. David, is an ensemble of dancers over forty, many of whose members are respected Bay Area teachers, but few of whom are still actively involved on the stage. At this point the concept for the group is better than the product they offer. The company debut, a decidedly mixed bag, amply illustrated that good dancers alone don’t make for a good program. And having a good time doing what you do—as these artists clearly did—is not enough of a reason for us to watch them.

Still there were things to be encouraged by. The dancers were professionals. Well trained, in good shape, they had presence, individuality and a disciplined approach to their craft. The weakest point was the repertoire, some of it reprised by Mr. David from his own works from the early 70’s.”

January 20, 2005  ·  05:38 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

At Home in the Sky

I checked out Zaccho Dance Theatre’s "Dances Around the House" for the Chronicle last Friday:

"More than 25 years ago, Remy Charlip -- septuagenarian dancer, writer and beloved illustrator of children's books -- began sending his "Air Mail Dances" to soloists and companies around the world.

The performer receives an 8 1/2-by-11-inch sheet of Charlip's whimsical figure drawings showing a sequence of daydream-like poses. It's up to the interpreter to supply the transitions, the music and perhaps the meaning. Charlip's "scores" have allowed dozens of choreographers to find imaginative freedom within restriction; in 2003, Oakland's Axis Dance Company memorably transformed his "Dance in an Armchair" into a vision of angelic tenderness.

But last weekend Charlip's sketches seemed tailor-made for the Exploratorium museum and the entrancing talents of Joanna Haigood at the premiere of "Dances Around the House."

Haigood, the artistic director of Zaccho Dance Theatre in Bayview, is an aerial dance artist as likely to be found scaling the Ferry Building's clock tower as swinging from a theater's rafters. She's also an artist-in-residence at the Exploratorium, and part of the fun at Friday's opening was walking through the museum's after-hours chill and playing with the science exhibitions en route to the main attraction."

January 19, 2005  ·  07:29 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

Book Bites #8

I’m loving these wacky stories by the young Israeli writer Etgar Keret. (Yes, I first heard his work on “Selected Shorts,” for anyone else out there that recently discovered him that way too.) The selections in “The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God” are about four pages long each, sometimes twisted, sometimes dirty-mouthed, sometimes sobering, always bizarre. In “Hole in the Wall” a boy gets a sidekick in the form of an angel who turns out to be a lying bum. In “Cocked and Locked” (double entendre intended) an Israeli soldier has a mutually degrading showdown with a Palestinian fighter. In “Shoes,” my favorite thus far, a kid’s misunderstanding about the Holocaust leads to an unexpected imaginary triumph for his dead grandfather. The tone throughout is disaffected and uppity. They’re the perfect bedtime reading for me, because so often at night I try to unwind with a book but just find myself taking notes on the writer’s craft and how I might apply it to my own work. But I’ll never be funny in the outrageous way Keret is, so I just sit back and enjoy.

January 18, 2005  ·  03:54 PM   ·  Books   ·  Comments (0)

The New York Times asks nine writers under forty which writers influenced them most. Jhumpa Lahiri chooses William Trevor, JT Leroy cites Breece D’J Pancake, and Maile Meloy opts for Geoffrey Wolff.

January 17, 2005  ·  12:55 PM   ·  Books   ·  Comments (0)

Diablo's Brothers Kabanaiev

My review of Diablo Ballet for the Chronicle is online this morning:

"It was a tale of two Russian siblings Saturday night as Diablo Ballet reprised recent works by its own Brothers Kabaniaev during the Walnut Creek-based company's annual one-night stand at UC Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall.

Nikolai Kabaniaev is the older brother and Diablo's co-artistic director. Viktor Kabaniaev, a former dancer with the chamber-size troupe, now serves as associate artistic director of Moving Arts Dance but returned as guest choreographer and performer for this program. Both are drawn to a contemporary European sensibility and to well-known (perhaps overexposed, for choreographic purposes) classical scores. But while Nikolai is the more experienced dancemaker, it was Viktor's work that, while still green, showed greater promise."

Toward the bottom of the article, due to a mysterious cut, Mats Ek is referred to as "The Ek." Perhaps he is good enough to deserve a definite article.

I also caught Joanna Haigood's "Dances Around the House" this weekend, and found it entrancing. That review will most likely run in the Chronicle tomorrow.

January 17, 2005  ·  12:25 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

Here’s a show I can’t make it to this weekend but wish I could. A group of forty-, fifty-, and sixty-something dancers have banded together to create the West Coast version of Nederlands Dans Theater III, trumpeting the benefits of wisdom under the banner “Still Dancing.” They include John LeFan, 57, founder of the seminal company Mangrove, and Theresa Dickinson, 62, a member of Twyla Tharp’s original company and founder of the Tumbleweed Collective. They’re calling their performances this Friday and Saturday at ODC Theater the debut of a company. Only time will tell if this is a one-off or the founding of something exciting like the now-disbanded New Shoes, Old Souls. In the meantime, I’d love to hear reports from those of you who are able to catch the show.

For info on “Still Dancing,” click here.

January 14, 2005  ·  02:34 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

Just about every booklover in the blogosphere knows of the Bookslut, but literate dance-goers may not. The Chicago Tribune offers a solid profile:

“Bookslut, recognized by Time magazine and The New York Times as a premiere Web destination for book lovers, celebrates a double anniversary this winter -- its third birthday and the first anniversary of its move to Chicago from Austin, Texas.

In a sea of competing Internet voices, Bookslut.com has distinguished itself through snarky, literate book reviews, thoughtful author interviews and a trend-tracking blog that attracts between 5,500 and 6,000 visitors daily . . .

. . . When writing about critic and novelist Dale Peck, Crispin called his work, "Not even bad enough to be trashy. I tried to read "The Law of Enclosures" until I noticed I was using the cover to try to saw through my wrist."

In response, during an interview with Gawker.com, Peck called Crispin "ditch-dirty stupid" -- a sign that Peck, notorious for writing savage book reviews, was either fading or that Crispin had arrived, pre-emptively beating a grandmaster of insults at his own game.

Still, Bookslut contains more raves then pans. It also exists to discover, extol and lavish superlatives on Crispin's favorite, often unsung books and graphic novels.”

Link via Arts Journal.

January 14, 2005  ·  11:39 AM   ·  Books   ·  Comments (0)

Ballet Alert! Alert

Alexandra Tomalonis--Washington Post freelancer, ballet biographer, DanceView Times editor, and critic’s mentor extraordinaire—is handing off leadership of her online forum Ballet Alert! in order to concentrate on teaching and writing and the myriad other things she does. If you’re a ballet lover and you haven’t checked out Ballet Alert! (the name derives from a satire published by Arlene Croce in the New Yorker), get thee to www.balletalert.com. It’s provided a continual education for me in aesthetics and ballet history. God knows how Alexandra found the time to post her thoughtful replies to ballet questions of all stripes, but she built that site into the conversational equivalent of a ballet encyclopedia. Rest assured it will continue—though rechristened www.ballettalk.com--under a smart new team led by the gracious and knowledgeable Leigh Witchel.

Congratulations to Alexandra on a well earned semi-retirement.

January 13, 2005  ·  03:26 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

Ole! Juaniere

I was fortunate to catch flamenco siren La Tania’s penultimate Bay Area performance in San Francisco Friday. Paul Parish saw her last farewell show the following night in Berkeley, and captured it masterfully for the DanceView Times:

“The hall at La Peña, a Latino cultural center in Berkeley, was filled way beyond capacity for the last of three farewell concerts given by la Tania. She is the West Coast's finest flamenco dancer. Born in Andalucia, she was an important dancer in Madrid at 17, dancing with Mario Maya and Paco Peña. She joined the Spanish community in the Bay area about 15 years ago and immediately entered the front ranks of flamenco performers here (and we have many good ones, foremost being Rosa Montoya, who had already moved to the US in Franco's days) . . .

The show was classic "cuadro flamenco"—three dancers (2 solos each), a guitarist, a singer/percussionist) on a small boxy stage: black curtains, stiff wooden chairs with straight backs set foursquare to us, and the first to come onstage is the guitarist, who played a moody solo all by his lonesome—in this case, the Gypsy virtuoso "Chuscales," whose first stormy flurries of sound contained so many discordant 7ths and minor 9ths the speakers nearly went out from the dissonance. It reminded me of the last cadence of the Matthew Passion, a groaning, throbbing sound, beyond melancholy—only active grieving sounds and feels like that. It set the keynote—and yet the show was really a festival of flamenco, a gift to Tania's fans, and its temper was full of wit and good feeling.

The performers were Tania, Carola Zertuche, Juanaire, the guitarist Jose Valle "Chuscales," and Yiyi Orozco, who sat on a box that he pounded with his hands and sang like a genius.”

Like me, Paul was struck dumb by the suave Juanaire, whose style Paul’s writing reveals with wonderful clarity. I have little to add, except to underline how damn appealing his stage persona is. He’s a slip of a thing, really, with a compact nimble posterior. His velvet sportscoat and rumpled button-down shirt makes him look like he’s headed out to grab a drink in the Mission District, but he holds his jacket away from his swelling chest with utter bravado. His footwork is indisputably spectacular—his final glide of zapateado was like walking on water. Picture above all this a big-eyed face not a little reminiscent of the British comedian Rowan Atkinson, and you’ve got a faintly campy sense of humor as the topper.

The other discovery of the night (besides the excellent musicians) was Carola Zertuche. Her youthful excitability can’t compete with La Tania’s glamour, but she did a damn elegant job and she’s well worth keeping an eye on. And as a matter of fact she has a show, titled “Verde," coming up at San Francisco’s Cowell Theater on February 25.

As for La Tania’s last local bow, check out Paul’s review and you’ll almost feel you were there.

January 11, 2005  ·  11:01 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

I was late to the genius of tap prodigy Savion Glover, first seeing him live last year at an SF Jazz-sponsored show I reviewed for Voice of Dance. As if that evening weren’t envelope-pushing enough, he’s moved on to classical music—specifically, Vivaldi, Bach, Bartók, and Mendelssohn—and according to Tobi Tobias’s view, this is crossover born of true curiosity, not gimmicky. Writing on “Classical Savion,” running through January 23 at New York’s Joyce, she reconsiders his famously defiant performance manner:

“Like his costume, his stage demeanor slowly and inexorably reverts to a state that seems natural to his identity. Glover used to be a glum, deeply introverted performer. His refusal to make eye contact with his audience looked, to viewers expecting an ingratiating entertainer, both neurotic and hostile. He’s lightened up some in the last couple of years. He’s learned to smile, and his smile is delicious if still somewhat surreptitious. A quarter of the way through the program, though, he begins to lose his apparent resolve to look his public in the face. Performing to an excerpt from Bach’s Brandenburg concerti, he dances largely with his back to the audience, as if he were directing his efforts to the harpsichordist positioned upstage, or in profile, eyes averted from the house. Maybe it’s time, I’m thinking, to quit asking him for something different. The fierce inward focus of his dancing suggests that he’s delving deep into himself to reach something beyond himself, and it’s not our love he’s after but the achievement of ecstasy. Let him be; after all, he does take us along with him.”

January 11, 2005  ·  04:59 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

John Rockwell debuted as the New York Times’ new lead dance critic yesterday with a plea for “unity” in dance, and a hint of his own dance-going philosophy:

“In my own case, a much fuller and deeper immersion in loft- and small-theater dance is in store. It will be fascinating to find out how much vitality is out there. There will be determined veterans who ply their craft in annual recitals, and downy postgraduates searching, no doubt mostly in vain, for their own choreographic voice. But maybe there's more.

Just how "scenes" evolve - a whole group of artists producing similar but individual work, reinforcing one another and building momentum that transcends any one of them - remains a tantalizing mystery. Virgil Thomson uncorked one of his spontaneous one-liners when asked why a scene of expatriate Americans flowered in Paris in the 1920's and 30's. "Real estate," said he, meaning cheap rents. The same could be said of SoHo 35 years ago, which helped lure the Judson Church dance experimenters, like Ms. Brown. But such excitement must also derive from the chance coming-together of brilliant and like-minded artists. Or from flames fanned by impassioned critics.

Even if such a scene in dance evolves, or already exists, that shouldn't lessen our faith in the unity of dance. Ballet will thrive, thrilling audiences with fresh young dancers and the 19th-century classics. The established modern companies, with or without their founders, will carry on. Companies of all kinds will visit us, and it would be nice to think that we will be properly perceptive yet open to what they have to tell us. As in music, dance traditions from all over the world will inspire us.”

I don’t have anything to say about the essay (I’m waiting to see the actual dance reviews), but the folks at Ballet Alert! are raising all kinds of interesting questions.

January 10, 2005  ·  12:57 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

New Beginnings?

It was more than business as usual in these year-end reflection columns from the New York Times’ Anna Kisselgoff and the New York Observer’s Robert Gottlieb. Yesterday’s column is something of a send-off for Kisselgoff, the lead dance critic at the Times since 1977, who now hands her post to John Rockwell.

Her analysis of the state of the dance world won’t shock many:

“[E]veryone knows that the dance boom has ended. It fell victim to drastic cuts in government and private financing that curtailed touring and put some companies out of business. The creative impetus of that exciting time, especially in the 60's and 70's, also petered out. Douglas Dunne no longer lies on a crate for hours. Ms. Tharp no longer investigates the limits of perception, daring audiences to follow her dancers from room to room or up and down staircases in museums.”

Still, she insists, this is no cause for pessimism, especially when it comes to the state of New York City Ballet:

“Old-timers will tell you, rightly, that dancers value technique over artistry today. But this is not true in all cases, as seen in the sensational male dancing at Ballet Theater, and in the way Balanchine works are danced 23 weeks a year at New York City Ballet, the only company in the world that can attract a public for that long in one city. Professional Balanchine mourners: move on. Doomsayers of the dance world: stand by; any art form is greater than a single individual, be it choreographer or superstar. We are in an interlude waiting for the next boom. In the end is the beginning.”

But Gottlieb performs a similar survey and reaches very different conclusions, especially (big surprise here) when it comes to NYCB:

“All very well, but in our town, the heart of Balanchine country, things were not so bright. The year-long celebration at New York City Ballet was trumpeted aloud in a blare of public relations, but onstage things were ragged (to put it kindly). There were stunning performances, particularly of Liebeslieder Waltzer, which has come to be cherished as one of Balanchine’s greatest masterpieces—in the early days, people would walk out halfway through. But a company deficient in real ballerinas and looking generally disheartened can only live up to Balanchine sporadically. Some ballets just vanished under the weight of his demands—the sublime Divertimento No. 15, created on five of his finest dancers, could hardly look like itself in the hands (or feet) of the low-level casting it was asked to endure. Concerto Barocco and Apollo were travesties. In Nutcracker, the children looked more animated and disciplined than the corps. Two telling notes: The Kirov/Maryinsky’s Diana Vishneva was far more brilliant in Rubies than any of the three girls City Ballet served up; and the company actually had to co-opt Angel Corella from A.B.T. to dance the demanding male lead in Theme and Variations. Perhaps it could borrow Gillian Murphy or Michelle Wiles next? The final straw, of course, was the disgusting Boris Eifman biographical "tribute" to Balanchine, Musagète. I can’t bring myself to discuss it again, but you’ll have a chance to avoid it at the State Theatre in the weeks to come.”

As for the death of the dance boom, he’s hard pressed to find signs of rebirth:

“Dance is everywhere, but it’s flattened out. Russia is scrambling to catch up; France is relentlessly nouvelle vague (and old hat); America is once again a melting pot—this time of dance styles, as ballet and modern and pop infiltrate each other’s realms. But when will a major talent come along to dominate and discipline this wild ride?”

January 07, 2005  ·  01:48 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

Farewell La Tania

Hot dance-going tip from Pam Hagen at the San Francisco Dance Center: The always fiery and elegant La Tania, my favorite flamenco dancer in the Bay Area, is moving permanently to Spain and giving her farewell performances this weekend.

Tonight (in Santa Cruz), tomorrow (in San Francisco), and Saturday (in Berkeley) are your last chances to see La Tania dance in the United States. I’ll be at Friday’s show, and I expect it to be emotional. Carola Zertuche and Juanaire will appear as guest dancers.

January 06, 2005  ·  12:11 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

Liz Rising

Dance lovers have been searching this site for San Francisco Ballet soloist Liz Miner in recent days. But if you want to read about Liz, you’ll have to look elsewhere—at your nearest newsstand, specifically, for the latest issue of Dance Magazine. I’ve got an “On the Rise” profile of the gracious Ms. Miner, accompanied by a shot of her in Mark Morris’s “Sylvia.” It also happens to be the annual “25 to Watch” issue, full of prescient picks and loads of great photos. I’ve got an item on ballet choreographer Amy Seiwert; Allan Ulrich sees good things happening for 848-mainstay Scott Wells; and Mary Ellen Hunt’s write-up on San Francisco Ballet’s Nutnaree Pipit-Suksun comes illustrated with young “Ommi” herself in a lovely arabesque.

It’s an all-around great issue, as others will attest. I was picking up a copy at a neighborhood magazine rack yesterday when a woman in line said “Ooh, Dance Magazine is good this month.” After some chatting, I learned the endorser was the mother of ballerina Elizabeth Loscavio. How’s that for a testimonial?

January 05, 2005  ·  03:48 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

Ballet en travesti

The New Yorker’s Joan Acocella checks out Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo:

“The Trocks’ business is comedy, and the basic joke, of course, is that men are dancing women’s roles. Just to see those size-10 point shoes, those yawning armpits, that chest hair peeping up over the bodices—I do not mention what greets you when the ballerina turns and her skirts fly up—is to laugh. Then, there are what you could call the vaudeville gags, excellent ones. (The cavalier and his lady, their dance completed, exit demurely; a moment later, you hear a crash and a scream from the wings.) At a higher level are the jokes specifically about ballet. Have you ever wondered, while watching Michel Fokine’s “Les Sylphides,” what those dainty, fingery, seeming-to-listen or seeming-to-whisper hand gestures are about? Well, so have the Trocks, and when, in their version of “Sylphides,” Margeaux Mundeyn (Yonny Manaure) goes into this business, the corps dancers look at her as if she were mad.”

I’m looking forward to seeing the Trocks at Cal Performances in May, but if you can’t wait that long for a good laugh, they’re also playing the Marin Center (if you click, scroll down till you see the men in tutus) on January 16th.

January 04, 2005  ·  02:10 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

The reluctant blogger

Back home and back to work: The copy-edited manuscript of my memoir greeted my first morning at the “office” (AKA my living room). I’ve spent the day checking over blue-penciled fixes by an anonymous reader with comfortingly bubbly handwriting. It’s not such an anxiety-inducing task. The marks are light—a comma here, a sharp-eyed catch of mistaken chronology there. Six years of journalism work might not make you a great writer, but they will make you a grammatically clean one.

Still the ways in which re-reading the manuscript does worry me have got me to contemplating the nature of autobiographical writing, and this website. You might think the copyediting process would rouse concerns over what I reveal in the book, about myself and others. “The Lost Night” is after all a true story about an unsolved murder, and friends and family will learn a smidge more than they ever cared to know about, for instance, my past sex life. (Disclaimer: It’s awfully tame, in case you’re titillated). But those hesitations only flicker across my mind. Far more persistent is the fear that I will forever miss the opportunity to axe a glaring cliché or cut a deadwood description, that the book will come out less than perfect (as, inevitably, it will). Mood colors everything: Some days I think I should rewrite the entire first half; on others I say to myself, “Go figure, this is good stuff.”

So I’m not hesitant to share unflattering details about myself, at least not in hardback. Yet posting on this website—so much less exposing—still feels like such an unnatural and worrisome process. I didn’t come to blogging freely; my husband, a political blog addict, insisted I should do it and found the designer for this site. The blog has proven useful: It aggregates my freelance work and gives me an online calling card. But I’ve never truly taken to it. Not for me the casually confidential working diary of a Terry Teachout or the biting, devil-may-care running commentary of an Old Hag. Every time I type an entry I have to think “Is this interesting to anyone but me? Does it tell too much about me? Too little?” and worst of all, “Why am I doing this?” And usually the true answer is because I think I should. As for why I think I should, I’ll leave the further psychologizing to the therapist’s office.

Why the reticence online when I’m so unguarded in my memoir? I blame the conversational nature of blogging. I’m not shy, but I’m not a chatty person. I can fake outgoingness at a party for about as long as it takes to greet the hostess, and by forty-five minutes I’m trying to nudge my husband toward the door. I detest talking about myself except with known friends, or even talking about my opinions, and if pressed to make small talk at a social gathering, I usually end up interviewing others. Writing has always been different. In writing a memoir or a novel, I’m not forcing myself upon anyone; no one has to nod along with fake interest. If I work hard enough on a page, someone may want to read it. If I fail to engage them, they can put it down. It’s true with dance criticism, too. I don’t force anyone to buy the Chronicle or finish my latest dance review.

Of course I don’t force anyone to read this website, but the presumption of conversation still hangs heavy. Blogging is like holding forth at a salon. The role does not come naturally to me, and so day after day I scan the other blogs (when my insecurity can withstand it), and wonder why I can’t sally onward with such entertaining confidence, and thank God that every other kind of writing still feels safe. The irony is that in contemplating why I’m reluctant to post to this website, I’ve done so at greater candor and length than ever. Is this a breakthrough to freer self-expression? A surrender to self-indulgence? All I know today is that the printed pages of my marked-up manuscript beckon me like a warm bed in wintertime.

January 04, 2005  ·  01:56 PM   ·  The Lost Night   ·  Comments (0)

Forward-looking retrospection

The New Year can be a disorienting time. For a week you’re told to reflect on the past. Then the ball drops and all eyes are trained on the future. But isn’t the distinction a bit arbitrary? It must have seemed so to Allan Ulrich, for he dispensed with the customary top ten list and peered both backwards and ahead in his year-end column for Voice of Dance. Among his provocations:

“With the exception of the Mondavi Center in Davis, I note a wave of caution verging on timidity sweeping over the presenting agencies in the Bay Area. They all seem far too concerned about booking sure things or companies canonized by the New York Times. Interesting to note that the rise in world dance troupes has proved a hit at the box office and we are seeing a lot more of it. But the list of companies who this year are playing nearby venues, while skipping the Bay Area, is large and substantial; I have been reading through the schedule of Portland’s White Bird and UCLA’s Arts Alive with considerable envy, but then, it is the nature of critics to want everything. The departure of Marty Wolleson from the Lively Arts at Stanford has brought a measure of blandness to that organization’s dance policies. And, after the Bolshoi’s faintly ludicrous modern dance version of Romeo and Juliet, one can only pray that presenters will exercise more control over what companies bring here (did anybody at Cal Performances actually see this production live before booking it?).”

January 03, 2005  ·  12:23 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

Fuzzy math

The Chronicle asked me to choose 10 dance events to look forward to in 2005. Using some experimental accounting, I managed to pack in at least twice that, depending on how you want to crunch the numbers. A cheat? Yes, but who can resist when there’s so much to anticipate.

January 02, 2005  ·  02:44 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)