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Got word today that Corte Madera's Book Passage has chosen "The Lost Night" as one of owner Elaine Petrocelli's "Elaine's Picks" for July and August. This means that the book will be reviewed in Book Passage's popular newsletter and displayed nicely at both the Corte Madera and San Francisco Ferry Building stores, and in various Bank of Marin locations. Equally gratifying, it means that Elaine liked it.
I've also been stacking up some exciting media appearances for late July, but I don't want to jinx anything, so I'll stay mum . . . Check back next month and I'll keep you posted.
June 28, 2005 · 09:44 PM · The Lost Night · Comments (0)
Good Read
If you've still got the New Yorker's June 13 "Debut Fiction" issue sitting around your house, definitely pick it up and read Uwem Akpan's "An Ex-Mas Feast." It's the too-realistic-to-be-disbelieved story of a boy on the streets of Nairobi who is losing his beloved big sister to prostitution. His parents make him sniff glue to ward off hunger and have his siblings take shifts dangling the baby in front of tourists for change. It's beautifully written, and heartbreaking. One of the most moving short stories I've read in years.
June 24, 2005 · 09:23 AM · Books · Comments (1)
Dance Shorts
--Former Australian Ballet dancer and (briefly) Royal Ballet director Ross Stretton died last week, of melanoma. The obituaries have not been flattering. Ballet Talk’s Leigh Witchel poses the question whether such write-ups should be a bit gentler.
--The New York Times reports extensively on a new competitive hip-hop dance form: krumping.
--And former star ballerina Karen Kain has taken the helm of the National Ballet of Canada.
June 24, 2005 · 09:14 AM · Dance · Comments (0)
I got an email from my friend Anne yesterday saying “congrats on the review in San Francisco Magazine,” so naturally I hopped over to the newsstand to read it. I was in my usual writing-at-home-alone state—wrinkled T-shirt, battered jeans, muddy tennies, frizzy hair—when I opened the pages to find myself described as “an elegant-looking young dance critic.” But hey, I’ll take the compliment. It’s a great review from the straight-shooting Pamela Feinsilber, and it ends “By the conclusion, we’ve been so immersed in her tale, it feels like a resolution for all of us.” It’s not available online, but if you’re browsing the magazine racks, pick it up and take a look.
June 23, 2005 · 09:40 AM · The Lost Night · Comments (1)
George Balanchine’s 1965 “Don Quixote” will be resurrected on Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Center stage tonight. This is one I wish I could fly out for. For non-balletomanes out there, let me explain that this is not the “Don Q” whose whiz-bang pas de deux has become a staple at glitzy ballet galas. Rather, this is a very personal ballet made by Balanchine at one of his most intense phases of infatuation with New York City Ballet muse Suzanne Farrell, starring Farrell as “the ideal woman” and often, in its brief stage life, featuring Balanchine himself as the aging Don. Historical curiosity or living, breathing work that transcends the poignancy of its original casting? I’d love to be there to see.
Toni Bentley’s recent New York Times interview with Farrell, alas, now requires payment to read. But today NPR offers an interview about the revival. You can listen by clicking here.
June 22, 2005 · 11:01 AM · Dance · Comments (1)
New Prinicpals at SFB
San Francisco Ballet has announced promotions and two principal dancer hires, as David Wiegand reports in the Chronicle:
"Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson has promoted Frances Chung, Moises Martin and Hansuke Yamamoto from the corps de ballet to soloists.
Andrea McGinnis, Shannon Roberts, Lily Rogers and Danielle Santos have been promoted from apprentice positions to the corps. In addition, Tomasson has hired two new principal dancers, Tiit Helimets and Davit Karapetyan. Helimets is a native of Estonia who comes to SFB from the Birmingham Royal Ballet. Karapetyan is a native of Yerevan, Armenia, and comes to San Francisco from the Zurich Ballet."
June 22, 2005 · 10:21 AM · Dance · Comments (0)
Sex, Drugs, and the Ballet Boom
In the SF Chronicle today, I review Adrienne Sharp's new ballet novel, "First Love":
"Sharp, a former dance student of some seriousness, has depicted this world before, in her short-story collection "White Swan, Black Swan." This time she goes right for 20th century ballet's venerated giant, New York City Ballet founder George Balanchine. "First Love" is built on an audacious premise: What if Balanchine, who died in 1983, had found one last muse? Defenders of the Balanchine faith need not work themselves into a tizzy. "Mr. B," as he was known, comes off like a saint. It's the novel's main character, the naive woman plucked by Balanchine to star in his long-dreamed-of staging of "Sleeping Beauty," who steadily loses the reader's respect.
Here's the setup: It's 1981, and Sandra Ellis is 20 years old and languishing in the back row of the corps de ballet. Her boyfriend, Adam, is a rising sex symbol dancing across Lincoln Center Plaza with American Ballet Theatre. They've just consummated their love when Sandra catches Balanchine's eye, and the choreographer's attentions come at a price: Adam's jealousy . . .
No one would accuse Sharp of sanitizing the glamour days of ballet-mania, and she paints the scene with tantalizing true-life detail. Rudolf Nureyev and Suzanne Farrell flit through as minor characters, along with a "Who's Who" of other illustrious dancers. Balanchine is seen creating his masterpiece "Mozartiana" and rehearsing "Diamonds." And there is tantalizing of a different variety: Adam and Sandra are young and horny, and Sharp renders their adventurous erotic encounters in breathlessly naughty prose that may make some readers turn a bit warm and others laugh out loud.
She uses her conceit well. The story enters Balanchine's point of view (believably) just a few, judicious times. The plot zips along on Sharp's lyrical writing style, and emotionality rises like steam off the page. The metaphorical possibilities of "Sleeping Beauty" are artfully explored, an emblem of awakening, hope and every fairy tale's dark side. And yet even Aurora, asleep for 100 years, would seem to take more responsibility for her fate than our heroine, Sandra, does. "
Click here for the full review.
June 19, 2005 · 09:28 AM · Dance · Comments (0)
My friend Lindsey had just arrived early for our writers group last night when the UPS man rang my door. An eight-by-ten padded envelope, from Penguin Group, solid in my hands—I knew what was inside. I went to the kitchen and cut open the packaging, then handed the contents to my husband Bill as though it were junk mail to deposit in the trash. “What’s that?” Lindsey said.
“Oh, it’s my book.”
“Your book!”
I couldn’t stand to look at it yet. I go through the same routine when any article that I’ve worked especially hard on comes out in the newspaper. I pick up a copy, then let it sit on my desk for ten or twenty minutes, unopened. What if it has mistakes, misspellings, awkward syntax, unfortunate edits? What if, in cold hard print, it’s not nearly as good as I had hoped? Can I bear to see it? I still haven’t read the final printed version of the essay I wrote about my brother’s leave from Iraq—the story meant too much to me.
So I let Bill examine the book first, and then Lindsey, and when they had let out enough comforting oohs and ahs, I picked up the book myself.
There it was in my hand, not too heavy and not too slight, material, non-retractable, real. And beautifully printed. The page stock, the fonts, the cover colors—all lovely. No errors I could find. Beneath the jacket, an elegant ivory hardcover with classy black binding. I could bear to see it. And after my writers group left yesterday evening I kept picking it up and passing it from hand to hand, enjoying the weight of it, the slickness of the cover under my fingers.
I was so pleased that I stayed up a bit late to make minor tweaks to this site, assisted by trusty webmistress Stacy at Sekimori design. Now to your right, on the navigation bar, you’ll find not one but four pages related to “The Lost Night,” including a list of the readings I’ll be doing in August and September. The “Gallery” will have more photos related to the book soon. So explore and enjoy, and thanks for indulging my small moment of celebration
June 16, 2005 · 10:40 AM · The Lost Night · Comments (2)
Home for Goode
The Joe Goode Performance Group's current season at the YBCA is well worth catching, as I report in my review for the Chronicle today:
" In 2003, Joe Goode -- San Francisco's influential maven of dance theater -- announced that he was embarking on a trilogy "about the extraordinary dimensions of ordinary people."
The first installment, "Folk," was business as usual for the Joe Goode Performance Group: a linear story of rural disaffection and redemption, full of campy humor, lullaby melodies and a faint whiff of condescension toward its more unsophisticated characters, masked as reverence for their "simple" ways. It was funny and thoughtful; it was the Goode everyone already knows and loves.
Then came 2004's "Grace," a collaboration with composer Mikel Rouse. This music was unlike any heard at a Goode performance before: richly textured, overwhelmingly lovely, awash in pretty chord changes and lush layers. And it seemed to unlock a new expansiveness in Goode. Gone were the child's tunes, the ingratiating posturing.
At the work's core instead was a stunning poem about finding spiritual release in a sidewalk crack and a tender moment of love between strangers. "Grace" was about seeing a glimmer of deeper meaning, unbidden and unexpected, and coming in the middle of the trilogy, that's just how it struck the audience. Goode aimed for transcendence, and he hit it.
The final installment of the trilogy is here, unveiled Friday and running through Sunday at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater. "Hometown" teams Goode with clarinetist and composer Beth Custer, with whom he has previously created four other works. And perhaps as a result, it finds Goode working in a familiar, albeit inimitable way.
"Hometown" will make you laugh and make you think, but it won't make you cry. It's not the revelation that "Grace" was, but it is a wry, satisfying conclusion to Goode's series, and it shares the program with "Grace." Can't go wrong there. "
Click here for the full review.
June 13, 2005 · 08:52 AM · Dance · Comments (0)
Hoop Dreams
The Chronicle asked me to review Melissa King's memoir of pickup basketball, "She's Got Next":
"Melissa King's got guts. She wanders the streets of Chicago and Los Angeles looking for a good game of pickup basketball, playing with street- smart kids and lecherous men, 6-foot-5 dunkers and trash talkers. She's also got issues: insecurity, indirection and a wariness of the opposite sex, albeit that seems more warranted with every creepy specimen she introduces. The courts are her life classroom. A premise ripe for hokey wisdom? Yes, if the frankness of her voice didn't keep her memoir, "She's Got Next," so authentic.
"I've always tried to look like I have some game when I'm dribbling around trying to get in, but I never say too many cocky things like 'I got skills,' or 'Get that weak s -- outta here,' or 'Not in my house, baby,' or much of anything else, really," she writes with characteristic slouch. "Words can get squirrelly sometimes, and I know I'm just an average type of player."
It's easy to see why sections from the early chapters of the book, first printed in the Chicago Reader, got plucked for the anthology "Best American Sports Writing." The writing is not precise, but it's direct, displaying a teenager's disdain for dishonesty but leveled with an adult's maturity. And it can't be separated from the likable toughness of King's persona. This is an Arkansas-born woman who hates it when men try to pick her up and carry her, who chooses baggy shorts over spandex, who doesn't mind calling herself a "stubborn jackass." She's a woman who requires intimacy on her own guarded terms.
But the appeal of King's experience comes over better in short sections than as a book-length narrative. King's life on the courts is scattershot. So is the storytelling in this book."
Click here to read the full review.
June 12, 2005 · 11:57 AM · Books · Comments (1)
Invisible Improvements
I haven't posted much lately, but I've been working a bit on this site (or rather, having the ever-efficient and surprisingly affordable Stacy from Sekimori design do some work for me). Most of the changes you can't see. But--drumroll please--you can now leave comments again, thanks to a nifty spam-blocking program. So please, comment away on anything you see here.
June 09, 2005 · 09:25 PM · Misc. · Comments (0)
Dreaming of Denmark
If it seems quiet in the U.S., dance criticism-wise, that's because everyone's in Denmark for the Royal Danish Ballet's third Bournonville Festival. John Rockwell is covering it for the New York Times:
"COPENHAGEN, June 7 - In the ballet world the third Bournonville Festival here, from June 3 to 11, is a treasured occasion, all the more so for its infrequency. Countless international balletomanes, including more than 120 dance critics, are in attendance, all to see the extant Bournonville repertory in a style that can still claim a direct connection to the era of its creation.
And they have been amply rewarded, with ballets that retain their remarkable freshness and dancing that suggests renewed health for the Royal Danish Ballet.
August Bournonville (1805-79) shaped Danish ballet, creating more than 50 works. The company today is a direct descendant of his tenure as its director, and a beloved national institution. Queen Margrethe II has been in her box every night of the festival. "It feels as if the whole city is celebrating with us," said Frank Andersen, the ever-enthusiastic artistic director of the Royal Danish Ballet. "
But some of the best coverage is web-exclusive. I haven't had time to keep up with it all, but if you're dreaming of Denmark, check out Tobi Tobias's sharp-eyed reports on her blog, Seeing Things. And visit DanceView Times for Eva Kistrup's accounts.
June 08, 2005 · 09:42 AM · Dance · Comments (0)
Versatile New Zealanders
My review of the Royal New Zealand Ballet's U.S. debut appeared in the Chronicle today:
"It was a small but curious dance crowd that turned out Friday night for the U.S. debut of a likable, rather curious ballet company. The Royal New Zealand Ballet is a versatile troupe of 32 dancers who tirelessly tour their homeland with an eclectic repertoire of cutting-edge commissions and classic story ballets. But not a tutu was to be seen at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater, where the New Zealanders had a short run as part of the San Francisco International Arts Festival.
Festival founder Andrew Wood imported the company on the strength of two works by Venezuelan-born Javier de Frutos, the former bad boy of British dance who once bared his bum in angst-filled solos but now creates ensemble pieces of tight structuralism and striking theatricality. "
Click here for the full review.
June 08, 2005 · 09:33 AM · Dance · Comments (0)
Having a Ball
And now for something totally different. The Chronicle's Sunday Pink Section asked me to go behind the scenes with preparations for the San Francisco Symphony's Black and White Ball. I'm not a society kind of gal by any stretch, so I was relieved to find that ball chair Patricia Sprincin was not your stereotypical socialite:
"It seems to be a typical morning at the San Francisco Symphony's volunteer offices. Patricia Sprincin is dressed, as always, in crisp black and white.
"When do you envision beach balls?" she says, leaning across a map of Civic Center. To her right sits a giant martini glass holding a prototype of the inflatable party favor in question. But this is hardly a day at the beach.
We're talking 5,000 beach balls, designed to flood Polk Street this Saturday at the opening of the Symphony's biannual Black & White Ball. And deciding when to drop them is just the beginning. When do you blow them up? Where? How? Who?
Across the conference table, Mark Guelfi types a note on his laptop. He's president of Hartmann Studios, the Ball's producer, and an old hand at logistics. "We'll go to Costco and buy air mattress power pumps," he says. "We'll start blowing them up at 9 a.m."
Sprincin tucks a lock of her chic blond bob behind her ear. "How do we know they'll stay inflated?"
Guelfi looks stumped. "We'll have to test that," he says.
Add another item to the list. Planning a party for 10,000 people is all in the details -- and as chair of this year's Black & White Ball, Sprincin is responsible for them all. Tall and composed, she inspires confidence. Far from the stereotype of a poodle-toting socialite, she's a down-to-earth mother with a throaty laugh and blue eyes that twinkle when she pronounces "Stymie and the Pimp Jones Luv Orchestra," one of 27 music acts that will play at the Ball's five venues.
"With a name like that, I'm sure the tickets will sell," Sprincin says with a wink."
Click here for the full piece. As a tiny side note, my lead as I composed it read "It's a typical weekday morning at the San Francisco Symphony's volunteer offices, where Patricia Sprincin is dressed, as always, in crisp black and white." I'm still partial to it, though neither the original nor the edited version is spectacular, in my opinion.
June 05, 2005 · 04:42 PM · Misc. · Comments (0)
Less than Touching
Janice Berman reviewed Jess Curtis's "Touched," part of the San Francisco International Arts Festival, for today's Chronicle:
"When there's a swirl of old-fashioned clothespins on the floor and not a clothesline in sight, that's a pretty good sign of what a piece like "Touched: The Symptoms of Being Human" is up to. Soon and predictably, the clothespins pinch their way onto someone's face. Ouch. It's gripping, to be sure, but is it art?
"Touched" attempts to explore what we think about when we touch or are touched, be it by another person, the scent of another person, the memory of touch, the anticipation of touch. And there's another question: What can an audience derive from witnessing such an exploration? "
I too was at the opening Thursday night, and though I was a fan of Curtis's last work, "fallen," I couldn't agree with Janice more about this new piece. Somehow all those heady ideas Curtis stirred up did not make it onto the stage. For the full review, click here. And if you want to judge for yourself (always encouraged), the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts is offering a two-for-one ticket deal on the remainder of the run.
June 04, 2005 · 03:13 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
Here's the second half of my Chronicle essay about my brother.
I got to Instant Message with him the morning. He's been practicing photography, with some skill, I think, and he sent these photos:
He's been doing incredibly tough work lately. I'm proud of him. He also may be up for a medal for a difficult dive he took into the Tigris River a few months ago to recover some ammo caches. The Santa Barbara News-Press carried a great write-up about it on Monday with nice photos of him, but unfortunately the article isn't available online.
I first wrote about Emmet on this website last year, as my mother and I were preparing for his departure to Iraq. I thought it worth providing a link to that short essay, with photos, here.
June 01, 2005 · 03:18 PM · Personal · Comments (0)
