« April 2005 | Main | June 2005 »

A quick technical note: The "comments" feature on this site is currently not functioning. But I am always excited to hear from readers. My email is rachel at rachelhoward dot com.

May 30, 2005  ·  03:43 PM   ·  Misc.   ·  Comments (0)

Memorial Day

My brother Emmet, an Army sniper stationed in Mosul, Iraq, has to be having his best Memorial Day ever. To begin with, the Santa Barbara News-Press has a front-page article today about the risky dive he took into the Tigris River a few months ago to recover insurgent weapons caches. On top of that, if you pick up the San Francisco Chronicle today, you'll find several pictures of my brother, and the first part of a personal essay I wrote about his visit back to California on 15 days' leave last February:

" My brother's job is to kill people. He's a sniper with the U.S. Army, an occupation that fills me with a mix of unease and admiration. But never have I felt more intensely conflicted than when he returned to California on 15 days' leave from Mosul, Iraq.

He was the same Emmet, only buffed. He zipped up the street on his tricked-out mountain bike, dismounting with unruly grace. He'd grown his hair well past Army-regulation length -- it was fuzzy on the sides, like a puppy's. Frayed cut-off corduroys stopped short of chiseled calves; a green T- shirt stretched across his muscled chest. He grinned with that brand of wry mischief that has always made my mother and me do whatever he pleased.

He hugged my mother, and she rubbed his head and said, "Your hair's getting awfully long." She was smiling -- with pride, and probably with relief that Emmet had raced over to see us.

Mom and I had already lost two days of his leave. Emmet chose to land in Santa Barbara, where he was staying with friends. My mother, Aleta, a night nurse in Merced, couldn't get out of work and I was living in San Francisco. The moment her shift ended, we'd hurried south together to my in-laws' house, our agenda simple: to fulfill Emmet's every whim, and hope that he would make time for us before heading back to a country where insurgents shot at him every day. "

When my editor Leba Hertz first asked if I'd like to write about Emmet's leave, I wasn't sure I could do it: It was too raw and overwhelming, and my emotions were too conflicted. I didn't want to write anything that would damage my brother's morale. But I had to be as honest about my unease as I was about my pride. It was a difficult piece to write. I was able to Instant Message with my brother this morning. He read the piece online over in Mosul and likes it.

To read the full essay, click here. Part two will run in the Chronicle's Datebook section tomorrow.

May 30, 2005  ·  11:50 AM   ·  Personal   ·  Comments (0)

Beach Reads

The San Francisco Chronicle Book Review listed my memoir The Lost Night: A Daughter's Search for the Truth of Her Father's Murder in its annual round-up of intriguing summer books, along with offerings from great San Francisco writers like Rebecca Solnit and Kim Addonizio. Click here for the full list.

May 30, 2005  ·  11:40 AM   ·  The Lost Night   ·  Comments (0)

Clogging Roots

The Chronicle asked me to profile a group appearing in the fast-approaching San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival. I chose the Barbary Coast Cloggers, an all-male company that performs Appalachian dance. The guys were so friendly and so enthusiastic about their dance form that the article pretty much wrote itself:

" "Foot-slap back, now do-si-do," says the mild-mannered man wearing the headset. The guys do as they're told, jingle taps clacking as they skim the tile floor, smiles widening as they jump and click their heels. Over the sound system, fiddles rev into overdrive. "Now look at your feet -- that's kind of cute if you want to do it, but look right back up."

This is not a square-dance convention, or a low-tech re-enactment of a Garth Brooks video. This is San Francisco's Jon Sims Center for the Performing Arts on a Thursday, where the Barbary Coast Cloggers rehearse late into the night. "Turn on those triples," leader Matt Ellinger says. "The footwork is awful there, and I think it's just nerves."

The guys in the room are white and Asian, potbellied and beanpole thin, dressed in baggy jeans and super-short '70s-style swim trunks. But the really remarkable thing is that they're all men.

Clogging, historically the province of manly Appalachian stompers, has in recent decades become more popular with little girls in sequined skirts. Around the globe, grade-schoolers with ponytails now hoof it up to the latest rap hit, vying for ribbons and trophies. The Barbary Coast Cloggers don't do the competition circuit, and they don't do Top 40 -- well, most of the time. "People are just so shocked to see us dance to Jennifer Lopez," Ellinger says. "But the only way that works for us is if it's the exception." "

Click here for the full story.

May 30, 2005  ·  11:30 AM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

Critical Mass

What a weekend it’s been, and I haven’t even hit Memorial Day. On Thursday, I drove down to Santa Barbara to sit on a panel about careers in writing at UCSB. On Friday, I kept trucking south on the 101 freeway to Los Angeles for the first ever National Critics Conference. More than 400 jazz, classical music, dance, and theater writers converged on the Omni Hotel (a swank venue whose amenities I did not have opportunity to fully appreciate, since I opted to sleep at my brother-in-law’s vintage 1970’s Airstream in Venice Beach).

The Los Angeles Times gave the gathering a humorous write-up, portraying the critic as professional crank. And it’s true that critics as a class have their quirks. But we also have a key role to play in the way the arts are received and disseminated and understood—a role that’s rapidly diminishing according to this earlier L.A. Times piece, and judging from general consensus among critics themselves. I’ve seen it at the Dance Critics Association conferences I’ve attended in recent years: Most critics today are disheartened and downright scared, as space for reviews is slashed and staff newspaper positions for their work are eliminated. And I’ll admit, the idea of an inter-disciplinary critics conference struck me as the journalistic equivalent of Custer’s Last Stand. But miraculously, by Saturday the mood at the conference became one of resolve rather than defeat. I’m not one to get swept up in group sentiment, but there was a sense of history being made.

That’s because on Saturday, after two days of attending panels about everything from ethical traps to the legacy of Bella Lewitsky (and after watching the crowd hiss at L.A. Times arts editor Lisa Fung because she has yet to hire a theater critic), we critics were asked to break into groups of 20 and brainstorm concrete steps we can take to improve the field of arts criticism. The discussions—and the proposed solutions—were absolutely inspiring. Some of the crucial recurring points:

--Critics need to move away from a top-down “opinion from on high” style of writing and strive instead to provoke dialogue and conversation.

--Critics need to think outside the old formulas of reviews and advances, and learn to develop stories that connect the arts to the lives of a larger audience.

--Critics need to get with the times and learn to use the Internet better to publish, to promote their work, and to connect with their readers.

--Critics need to stop bitching about their lot and take immediate action to rehabilitate the image of the critic in American society.

The list goes on, but that last point gets to the heart of things. And by the end of Saturday, we had actions to take. The leaders of the Dance Critics Association, the American Theater Critics Association, the Music Critics Association of North America, the International Association of Arts Critics/USA, and the Jazz Journalists Association announced that they had resolved to join forces for a conference again—possibly in New York in 2007. The groups also plan to immediately investigate forming a new umbrella organization to unite us. Once formed, this National Critics group hopes to start a National Critics website with training and mentoring resources for arts writers, and a description of professional standards—both in practice of the craft and in working conditions—to aspire to.

We all left energized and determined. And though I’m too dog tired to pitch in tonight, I plan to contribute in small ways over the next few weeks. For instance, I’ll post a quick guide on how critics can start their own blogs, a simple and crucial tool that seems to have flummoxed technology-averse arts writers. You haven’t heard the last from me about the National Critics Conference, and I’m sure you haven’t seen the last of the National Critics Conference either.

May 29, 2005  ·  10:59 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

Writing the War, and Beyond

London’s Financial Times recently ran an article on the National Endowment for the Arts’ new “Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience initiative. The program taps A-list writers to help teach returning soldiers how to mold all the raw and intense things they’ve seen and done in Iraq into narrative, and it caught my attention for two reasons. First, the workshop the Financial Times reporter covers is led by Tobias Wolff, a memoirist I (and just about anyone else working in the memoir genre) greatly admire. Second and most importantly, since my younger brother Emmet deployed to Iraq, I’ve seen how hungry the soldiers there are to read and write, and I can only hope Emmet gets to participate in this NEA program someday.

The FT article describes a typical class session:

“[Corporal Matthew Richards] . . . signed up, against his father’s wishes, to join the Marine Corps on his 18th birthday, 2001. He wanted to serve his country after the September 11 attacks. He describes talking with an old friend about their shared experiences in Iraq. “We talked about morality and the war, and he’s a bit more religious than I am and feels the need to find some place he can go to make up for things out there, missionary work or something. I won’t be doing that myself, but I do agree that I also need cleansing.”

Richards is 20,000 words into a novel - the main character is initially indifferent to events around him but slowly grows in moral understanding. But something is troubling Richards and he can’t write about it. Last August, his unit fought a battle against Moqtada al-Sadr’s militia in Najaf, the spiritual heart of the Shia world. It was intense urban combat, “something like D-Day, with tracer bullets flying and mortars exploding”. In a room next to him, he heard the shouts of “Shoot him! Shoot him!” The marines had flushed out a “militia guy” with a rocket-propelled grenade, who began running up the stairs. Richards saw his sergeant follow and draw his knife. What happened next still haunts him. All he remembers are the shrill screams as the enemy soldier was stabbed.

It was a dark moment. He wants to convey its essence in writing, but feels unable to. He wants to turn these events into fiction. If imagination and metaphor is the novelist’s domain, this kind of reality is either gold dust or poison. The last American generation to cover a big war produced some of the most disturbing books about combat and guerrilla warfare, such as Michael Herr’s Dispatches, Ron Kovic’s Born on the Fourth of July and Philip Caputo’s A Rumor of War.”

Everything in the article makes “Operation Homecoming” sound like a model program. But then towards the end, the tone turns bafflingly snarky. Intense experience, the writer says, doesn’t necessarily make for finely crafted literature. He entirely misses the point.

To begin with, “Operation Homecoming” may indeed produce some fine literature, and to express deep skepticism of this is to fall into the trap of stereotyping servicemen and women as uneducated and illiterate. Second, the program will boost the cause for literature in this country whether or not a book on the order of Tobias Wolff’s “In Pharoah’s Army” emerges.

There’s the therapeutic value, of course, which I’m sure many soldiers will find priceless. But this writing therapy doesn’t just benefit the individual soldier. In seeing how writing mines individual experience for deeper truths, in seeing how much skill and hard work is required in striking at those truths, these soldiers are bound to emerge with a heightened appreciation for the art of good writing, and a better eye for it. And solider by soldier, in the years to come, this is going to make for a more literate American society.

I’ve seen that the soldiers in Iraq are eager and receptive; their encounters with life-or-death situations leave them needful of a medium capable of more profundity than a video game or a Hollywood blockbuster. Since deploying to Mosul, my brother—always a capable wordsmith but never much of a bookworm—has read Graham Greene, George Orwell, Ernest Hemmingway, and the Wolff memoir, which I sent him. Just today he sent me an email saying he was so excited about Jonathan Safran Foer’s “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” that he wants to send me a copy.

He’s not the only soldier in his platoon excited about writing. Last month, I sent Emmet an advance galley copy of my memoir. (After all, he appears as a minor character in it, though his star moment comes at age four, when I accidentally vacuum his hand and he’s forced to wear a white sock over the broken bones, so that our neighbors dub him “Michael Jackson”.) The galley ended up circulating among the platoon members, a handful of whom wrote to me. One soldier said my memoir had inspired him to write—not about the war, but about his childhood. Another soldier wanted advice on a novel he’d been working on. They both have stories to tell. I hope they too are lucky enough to participate in the NEA’s “Operation Homecoming.”

May 25, 2005  ·  11:29 AM   ·  Books   ·  Comments (0)

A Peculiar "Petrushka"

I reviewed last weekend’s Diablo Ballet show for today’s San Francisco Chronicle. I genuinely like this company and admire the quality dancing they’re able to accomplish in the East Bay, so I was sorry to have found myself undeniably bored by Nikolai Kabaniaev’s peculiar new “Petrushka”:

“Diablo Ballet Co-Artistic Director Nikolai Kabaniaev is a Russian- trained choreographer with a flair for theatricality and a helpless attraction to big ideas. In recent years, he's made an audience-pleasing version of Massine's "La Boutique Fantasque" and taken an allegorical twist to "Carmen." But his "Petrushka," which premiered Friday at Walnut Creek's Dean Lesher Regional Center for the Arts, surely ranks among his odder creations for this East Bay troupe.

The original "Petrushka" is a Ballets Russes classic, with a powerful score by Stravinsky and a libretto the composer devised with famed scenic designer Alexandre Benois. Michel Fokine handled the choreography, bringing to life the story of a tortured, soulful puppet that has his last laugh in death. The title role provided a haunting vehicle for such greats as Vaslav Nijinsky, Rudolf Nureyev and Jerome Robbins.

The Stravinsky-Benois scenario can be read as a subtle rebuke of philosophical materialism, but Kabaniaev is not interested in subtlety. In his reworking, human souls -- including our hero Petrushka, played by Edward Stegge -- wait in heaven to be born into bodies. The imprisonment of the flesh is represented by white shirts, which the newly incarnated souls are forced to wear by the ringmaster Charlatan (David Fonnegra). In the work's most entertaining section, the Charlatan lectures on the Sisyphean banalities of life: wake, shower, coffee and work. But the souls find joyous escape in death. “

May 25, 2005  ·  09:39 AM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

Trans-Atlantic "Touch"

The San Francisco International Arts Festival is underway. The Chronicle’s Pink section asked me to talk with former Contraband member Jess Curtis, whose trans-Atlantic collaboration “Touched” is one of the festival’s banner events:

“The images in [Curtis’s previous work] "Fallen," which premiered just after Sept. 11, 2001, hit many viewers on a gut level. Chalk outlines of bodies, like those at a crime scene, were drawn on the stage. In one section, a man and a woman sparred over an egg, the violence escalating as their object of dispute perilously avoided dropping toward destruction.

In another moment, two men staged a finger-puppet show behind a table, their hands walking to the edge and tumbling down.
"I wanted to be really clear," Curtis says. "We're talking about falling in love. We're talking about falling asleep. My more arty Berlin friends say, 'You don't have to explain so much to me.' "

The images in "Touched" should prove just as potent. An early showing of the work included a scene in which a circus artist held a handstand as a man traced her body from one foot and across her scantily clad crotch to the other. Blindfolds were kept close at hand at rehearsals so that the dancers could hone their senses.

"It's been super-interesting looking at the question of what feelings are in the body," says Curtis, who despite his theoretical leanings has an endearing habit of using "super" and "for sure" as intensifiers. "If I touch you, there's a sensation. But when I'm touched by something just emotionally, it also creates a physical sensation in the body. Emotion is physical sensation as well. And we want to look at how being touched emotionally is as physical as having someone's skin on yours." “

May 23, 2005  ·  09:52 AM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

My review of Bill T. Jones's "Reading, Mercy and the Artificial Nigger" is in the Chronicle today:

"Jones has never hesitated to push buttons, but that titular "Nigger" is not his own invention. It comes from Flannery O'Connor's disturbingly ironic short story "The Artificial Nigger," which Jones has adapted faithfully and with arresting intensity.

This is not the kind of fragmented pastiche you might expected of a postmodernist like Jones; the story is not sliced and diced and rearranged into some kind of meta-text, but read aloud in a straightforward, smart abridgement by Jones himself and, on opening night, his sister Rhodessa . . .

Five pairs of dancers enact the narrative, their movements mimicking the rhythms of speech or suggesting dialogue, but never outright miming the action. But Jones' simple, profound twist in the staging is this: He has each of his dancers -- black, white, Asian, Latino, male and female -- portray Mr. Head and Nelson in turn, and trade off playing the secondary characters, too. "

In a very different vein, I was just as taken by the odd formal majesties of Jones's "There Were . . .", though I didn't have space to write about the piece. It's a great program. If you can get to the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts tonight or tomorrow, I recommend catching it.

May 21, 2005  ·  06:12 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

Dance shorts

A week later, I’m still slightly under the weather, though I think my husband will scream if I whine about it a minute longer. But this lingering cold hasn’t stopped me from writing, in large part because I’ve had so many deadlines to meet. There’ll be a flurry of articles by me in the Chronicle in the next two weeks, starting with a review of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company tomorrow. What’s kept me sane is that even a bit dizzy from Sudafed and facing down deadlines, I’ve managed to work on my fiction almost every day this week. The mild downside to that daily productivity is that I’m constantly reminded how much about writing I have yet to learn, and constantly craving more time to learn it.

So you’ll start seeing more postings of Chronicle articles starting tomorrow. Meanwhile, here are the major dance-related articles I made time to keep current with:

--James Kudelka is stepping down as artistic director of the National Ballet of Canada:

“The switch -- effective June 30 -- will allow Mr. Kudelka to spend more time creating ballet and less time administering the 60-member company.

Although several of his dance works have enhanced the National Ballet's international standing, Mr. Kudelka is not particularly known for his administrative or people-handling skills. It was under his tenure in 1999 that the National Ballet lost an ugly and expensive wrongful dismissal suit filed by former principal dancer Kimberley Glasco . . .

. . . Mr. Banks acknowledged the conflicting pressures on Mr. Kudelka. "It's unusual that somebody stays as long as James has stayed as artistic director, it's very demanding," he said.

"And you've got to ask yourself a question, if you are James Kudelka: 'How many great years of choreography do I have in me? And do I take my salad years and spend them doing performance appraisals or joining in funding calls or all the other ancillary things you have to do as artistic director?'" A source close to the National Ballet concurred that the decision was very likely Mr. Kudelka's alone.”

--The Los Angeles Times’s articles are at long last available online, which means we non-subscribers can read Lewis Segal’s survey of fresh efforts to create substantial ballet companies in Southern California, and the challenges sure to beset even superstar Ethan Stiefel:

“At age 32, in fact, Stiefel is about to assume the reins of Orange County's Ballet Pacifica, with a view to building it into a major classical institution. Envisioning what he calls "a company for the whole Southern California region," he plans to launch touring repertory performances in September 2006, followed by a "Nutcracker" in Orange County.

Moreover, Stiefel isn't the only ballet carpetbagger aiming for a future in the Southland. In Santa Monica, former Royal Danish Ballet artistic director Thordal Christensen and his wife, New York City Ballet alumna Colleen Neary, are forming a company under the aegis of the Westside Ballet, a school with a junior company that has sent many of its finest students to major troupes.

Meanwhile, former Kirov Ballet principal Eldar Aliev has proposed moving his Russian-style Ballet Internationale lock, stock and barrel-turns from Indianapolis to L.A. to become the resident company at the Music Center.

All of these new players on the local ballet scene exude noble intentions. But they don't know the territory: the specific, daunting problems that defeated many equally well-meaning predecessors. For starters, all of them come from environments where ballet is at the top of the dance food chain, and a whole other set of realities awaits them.”

--And the New York Times’ Jennifer Dunning distills Kennedy Center president Michael Kaiser’s lessons for selling dance:

“6. A PICTURE IS WORTH A LOT OF WORDS. "Dance companies do a very bad job of picking their images," Mr. Kaiser said. "They typically pick images that speak to their core audience and to themselves. If I see one more ballerina on point in arabesque, with a bun, it's going to kill me."

When he was working with American Ballet Theater, he recalled, the company chose a poster photo of Vladimir Malakhov almost bent over himself in midair. "I focus on people in the air," Mr. Kaiser said. "I typically focus on men, because women buy more tickets." Even better, he said slyly, if the men are not wearing much and have beautiful bodies.

"I'm not trying to cheat or fool the audience," he continued. "But there's so much excitement to dance. And we don't communicate that so well in our photography . . .” “

May 20, 2005  ·  04:50 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

The Boys of SFB

One word for yesterday: flu. Now I understand why Dick Cheney got that flu shot. This virus would have killed him.

I was in too wretched a state to crawl to the computer and post this new article in the Chronicle, about a day at the San Francsico Ballet School Student Showcase.

Truth be told, I'm not that pleased with it. Not for lack of interesting material: It was a privilege and a rich experience to spend 12 hours with the students, teachers, and parents of the San Francisco Ballet. I was so impressed by the way they're building not just technique, but character. If I have a child, and if that child shows a talent for ballet, I'm shipping that kid off to the San Francisco Ballet School.

I got home at 11 p.m. with enough notes and details to fill 3,000 words--but my word limit was just 800. And the story was due by 8 a.m. the next day. That's daily journalism for you, no use complaining.

The thing that most struck me was how many great boys the school has now, and how the stigma of studying ballet has lifted for them. I talked to quite a few teenage guys, and many credited broad-minded dads. Perhaps the culture of boys and ballet is finally changing in this country?

I'd love to write about that in more depth someday.

May 14, 2005  ·  02:01 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

Dance Shorts

Some dance tidbits I’ve been storing up to share:

--Valerie Gladstone travels to Spain to survey the grotesqueries of flamenco’s commercialization:

“The Pagés Company's "Songs Before a War" ("Canciones, Antes de una Guerra") showed clearly that commercial success is not necessarily a good thing. Ms. Pagés, who won a wide following in the flamenco segment of "Riverdance," was trying to use this soulful, ancient dance to convey an antiwar message. Supplanting the usual keening vocals and thrumming guitars with popular music associated with war, she kicked up her heels to Louis Armstrong's "When the Saints Go Marching In" and to African songs sung by Tsidii Le Loka. In the final moments, a curtain painted with a map of the world unfurled behind the performers as John Lennon's "Imagine" played over the sound system.

Ms. Pagés, who will take "Canciones" to the International Festival of Music and Dance in Granada in June, is sinuous and eloquent when dancing traditional flamenco, and she knows how to move dancers around the stage. But this show, with its corny, incongruous elements, proved simply labored.

And it is not alone.”

--Chronicle sports columnist CW Nevius takes notes on the similarities between soccer dads and ballet parents:

“OK, it isn't exactly like a soccer match where a coach socks a referee, but it can be close.

"Maybe the difference is that you don't have parents screaming at them during a performance," says Ossala. "But you do get parents going to teachers and wondering, why don't you promote little Johnny? He's so perfect." “

--On a belated Mother’s Day note, Montreal’s Kena Herod ponders the pas de deux from a maternal perspective:

“It had been ages since I last saw The Sleeping Beauty, and it was the first time since becoming a mother. The curse laid on Aurora and the horror of the princess’s parents took on a whole new meaning.

Later, my eyes filled with tears as I witnessed the “Rose Adagio” of the radiant sixteen-year-old beauty. For don’t all parents hope their daughters will turn out to be as gracious and loving as Aurora? Don’t we all hope, whatever our feminist beliefs, that our daughters will be beautiful too, or at least attractive? (Too much beauty can be a curse, as poet W. B. Yeats wrote in “A Prayer for my Daughter.”) Do we not wish for our children, girls or boys, partners who will—like the prince—do whatever it takes to prove themselves worthy of our precious offspring?”

--And in the New Yorker, Joan Acocella has a pair of articles, the first a quick jaunt through the disparate seasons of the Martha Graham Dance Company, the Mark Morris Group, and the Nrityagram Dance Ensemble:

“One thing that united all these performances was live music. The Graham company had an orchestra of twenty-eight; the Morris troupe, six instrumentalists and eight singers; Nrityagram, three instrumentalists and a vocalist. I don’t know how Nrityagram works out its finances, but the music bill for the Morris company’s four performances was thirty-five thousand dollars; the musicians for the Graham troupe’s two-week season cost a hundred and eighty-four thousand dollars. In these days of near-zero public funding for dance, one assumes that the companies more or less killed themselves to raise that money, and the result made all the difference in the world. Dance audiences, I believe, have now got used to taped music, and you can get used to it, the same way you can learn to eat Spam instead of ham, or breathe smog instead of air. Your life is just diminished, and you don’t realize it until you see concerts such as we saw last month.”

The second is a Talk of the Town profile on 66-year-old retiring Alvin Ailey dancer Dudley Williams:

“He always told the people he worked for that he didn’t want to do any partnering. This choice may have been partly practical—Williams weighs a hundred and thirty pounds—but he says it was a point of pride: “I don’t want to carry anybody around the stage. I want to dance. I want it to be me.” The refusal paid off, he believes. He got “special things,” solos. To his fans, probably the most special thing he ever danced was the “I Want to Be Ready” section of “Revelations.” In this number, set to a Negro spiritual about renouncing sin, a man in white struggles to rise from the floor. Williams’s specialty is contained emotion, and that was perfect for this soul-testing dance.”

Links via Arts Journal.

May 12, 2005  ·  08:51 AM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

I just received a fax from my editor at Dutton with a copy of the first review of my book. It's from Publishers Weekly, and it's wonderfully positive, calling The Lost Night "not an attempt at vengeance but rather a profoundly personal account of a California Central Valley childhood defined by chaotic family life" and "a poignant account of the lifelong effects violence and tragedy can have on an individual and a family."

You can see more about "The Lost Night" here, though the page is getting awfully cluttered. I hope to have a better site for the book up within a few weeks. For now, I'm happy to add a nice trio of positive "P" words--just think of the alliterative possibilities!--to the mix.

May 09, 2005  ·  02:14 PM   ·  The Lost Night   ·  Comments (0)

Odd Couple

The San Francisco International Arts Festival kicks off next week. The Chronicle's Sunday Pink section asked me to talk with Scott Wells and Stephen Pelton, who share a program at Dance Mission May 19-22:

"With his ruffled hair and schlumpy sweatshirt, Scott Wells looks like he's just lumbered in from the bedroom adjoining his Divisadero Street dance studio. He takes a sip of coffee and squints reflectively.

"Five or six years ago a famous choreographer was in town and a bunch of us dance people were invited to have lunch with him," he says.

"I ended up chatting with this famous guy by myself for a while, and at some point he said, 'I hate it. I get compared to Mark Morris, and I'm not as good as him.' And this guy has gigs all over the world. And that's when I thought, 'Oh. You can make it to the top and still be bitter.' That was my life lesson."

Across the table, Stephen Pelton gives a knowing laugh. In many ways, the two men could not be more different. Wells has a tousled charm; Pelton is impeccably groomed. Wells is straight; Pelton is gay. Wells makes daredevil works that send dancers hurling over furniture and slamming against walls; Pelton creates dances of tense emotions and careful musicality.

But both arrived on the San Francisco dance scene in an era when the idea of success for a choreographer here was radically changing. And the two will share a program as part of an ambitious new festival that hopes to keep talents like Wells and Pelton in San Francisco -- by helping them go abroad."

May 08, 2005  ·  08:32 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

Van Patten's Juliet

I returned to San Francisco Ballet last night to see Sarah Van Patten as Juliet. She danced opposite Pierre Francois-Vilanoba, and as much as I love Yuri Possokhov and Yuan Yuan Tan in other roles, Van Patten-Vilanoba was the cast to catch. They were so moving and believable, in fact, that I realized that some of the ballet’s shortcomings that I had originally blamed on Helgi Tomasson’s staging were actually due to Tan’s one-note performance. The balcony scene, for instance, such a gush of unabated prettiness on opening night, became an exhilarating mixture of terror and infatuation in Van Patten’s and Vilanoba’s hands. So the potential for emotional depth was already there, in the choreography—it was just waiting for the right interpreters.

When the curtain fell on that balcony scene, the patrons in front of me sighed, “Ah, raging teenage hormones!” Voice of Dance’s Allan Ulrich had it right: The problem with Tan is that she’s not a believable girl, whereas Van Patten was not afraid to look immature, even goofy. Her giggles with her girlfriends were not demure twitters but silly chest-heaving laughs. When she first met Romeo in the ballroom and pulled her hand away from his, teasing, you could see how ill-prepared this sheltered jokester was for a love of such intensity. In the balcony scene, she made her sudden series of pique arabesque look slightly awkward, like the tottering steps of a newborn foal. In the marriage scene, when she restrained herself from clinging to Romeo and then rushed at him again, her inability to control herself was so childlike that she actually provoked a big laugh from the audience.

Van Patten is a thoroughly naturalistic actress. When Tan made her first entrance during the scene with the nurse, bounding across the stage in that motif of ecstatic jumps, her audience-aware delivery said “Look at me! Aren’t I pretty and sweet?” When Van Patten did the same steps they looked like a spontaneous expression of her character’s joy, which we in the audience just happened to witness. Then, too, Van Patten brought out new contrasts in the choreography. In the ballroom scene, when the musical theme for her innocence recurred, her footwork was suddenly springy, her sprightly phrasing a perfect reflection of the pizzicato strings. At other moments in the ballet, she was all lushness, using her head and shoulders with passionate abandon.

Perhaps I should not have been surprised at Van Patten’s mastery as Juliet: I’m told she first portrayed the role at 16, with the Royal Danish Ballet. What I couldn’t have anticipated was her chemistry with Vilanoba, who kissed her tenderly even during the curtain calls. Vilanoba is not one of SF Ballet’s more virtuosic or exacting male technicians, but the choreography for Romeo did not expose that, and the constant concern radiating from his big eyes made it clear why Tomasson keeps him on the roster.

Pascal Molat stole the scene again as Mercutio; Hansuke Yamamoto was fine as Benvolio, and you know the villainy will be delicious when Damian Smith is playing Tybalt. Gary Sheldon conducted, and the music was rapturous. I left feeling much more appreciative of Tomasson’s production, though I doubt I will ever admire Jens-Jacob Worsaae’s speckled sets. It’s painful to have to change your mind so quickly, but great performances have a way of educating your critical eye.

May 06, 2005  ·  10:32 AM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

Coming Attractions

The Bay Area’s National Dance Week celebration went out with a bang Sunday night at the second annual Choreographers in Action showcase at ODC Theater. Titled “24 Views,” the evening gives two dozens dance makers (one extra squeaked in this year) two minutes each to show off their wares. Allan Ulrich, reviewing for Voice of Dance, gives the quality of the entrants pool lower marks than last year, and he’s right: Many of the performances this go ‘round were semi-professional at best. But the quality moments really popped: EmSpace Dance’s uproariously downtrodden antics, Janice Garret + Dancers’ vivid Baroque capers, Nina Haft & Company’s emotional rollercoaster of a duet. And anything is bearable for two minutes.

But what was more exciting than the discovery of any one talent—what should truly have crowds queuing around the street corner, as they did Sunday—was the invention of a fabulous new format for promoting dance. “24 Views’s” two-minute slices serve as trailers, accompanied by a flier telling you where you can see your favorite acts next. The busy lobby was buzzing at intermission with exclamations of “I really loved that company X!” and “I’m definitely going to see more of that company Y!” At last, audiences have a festive way to make informed decisions about which companies to catch in the months ahead.

Think about it: Movies have trailers, and you know by watching them, often with great accuracy, whether you might like a particular film. But what resources does a potential audience member have in choosing a dance performance? A picture in a newspaper ad? A review? No wonder attending dance performances is an insider’s game: Buying a ticket without a first-hand recommendation is just too risky.

The Choreographers in Action showcase changes that. Why not host “24 Views” twice a year: A fall season preview and a spring season preview? Charge $5 admission if you must, but offer a coupon to apply that investment towards a ticket to the company of the viewer’s choice.

Think of it as a lower-budget, shorter-attention-span version of City Center’s overwhelmingly popular “Fall for Dance Festival” in New York. I hope the Bay Area’s Choreographers in Action get back in action soon.

May 04, 2005  ·  10:54 AM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

Good-Enough "Romeo"

I reviewed San Francisco Ballet's "Romeo and Juliet" for the Chronicle today, and apparently I was the only critic less than enthralled by it. The review's headline encapuslates my reaction well: S.F. Ballet dancers rise above the flaws of middling version of 'Romeo and Juliet':

"San Francisco Ballet boasts several world-class story productions, but "Romeo and Juliet" is not one of them. Despite more than a decade of tinkering, artistic director Helgi Tomasson's 1994 version, which the Ballet performs through Sunday, remains a good-enough staging for an exceptional company.

Still, the Ballet's international-caliber dancers are wringing Tomasson's workmanlike adaptation of the Shakespearean tragedy for every ounce of pathos it's got. The casting alone makes this finale to the company's 72nd season well worth catching. "

The headstrong soloist Sarah Van Patten danced the Sunday matinee, and buzz about her performance is already swirling. She must have made quite an impression if search requests to this web site are any indication. I am looking forward to seeing her interpretation Thursday.

UPDATE: Reviews from Allan Ulrich, Tiger Hashimoto, and Mary Ellen Hunt.

May 02, 2005  ·  12:49 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

The Chronicle asked me to check out auditions for LINES Ballet’s new summer pre-professional program. Here’s what I came up with:

“The San Francisco Dance Center has a peculiar grandeur, though not the spit-shined kind you might expect of the West Coast's largest center for dance. It's housed in the former Odd Fellows Building near the rough-and- tumble corner of Market and Seventh streets. The order's thrones still stand in many of the studios; an insignia of three staring eyes adorns the mint- green walls. A fusty smell haunts the cranky elevator, and an outdated sign announces a meeting of the Grand Circle of Druids.

But nowadays, on a typical Saturday, the stamping of a beginning flamenco class echoes through the halls. And on the fourth floor, two dozen teenagers gather, warming muscles and choking down nerves.

They've come because the San Francisco Dance Center is the home of Alonzo King's Lines Ballet, and the Lines Ballet School is now one of the hottest summer programs for aspiring professional dancers in the United States. Eighteen-year-old Sarah Forman sits in a quiet corner, draping her torso over legs that turn out from the hips to lie flat, like the pages of a cracked book. On her feet are ratty blue socks, the kind a grandmother might wear. She's driven from her school, UC Santa Barbara, because she wants to get ahead of her classmates. King's company is a major selling point. "Their technique is so innovative," she says. "I just want to get as good as I can and see where it takes me." “

May 01, 2005  ·  09:38 AM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)