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Two great dance shows coming up this week that I'd hate to see get lost in the holiday bustle, both by relatively young San Francisco companies worth watching carefully.
Janice Garrett and Dancers' Heidi Schweiker
--I tend to think of Janice Garrett and Dancers as "old fashioned modern dance" in the best sense: musical, sculptural, deeply human. I've written this before, but the thing I find most compelling in her work is the vibrant sense of community, the way you can see the dancers fully present and responsive to each other. Garrett's tone ranges from the slap-stick to the spiritual, arranged in all cases with a mathematician's attention to structure. Last year her newer works struck me as pretty and solidly constructed but lacking trajectory; I can't wait to see what she comes up with for this third season, which features two world premieres and runs December 1 through 10 at the Cowell Theater. For details, click here.
--LEVYdance is the creation of Ben Levy, a preternaturally accomplished grad of UC Berkeley's dance program. His work is edgy and often futuristic (as in the returning hit, "Holding Pattern"), with dense layers of movement that isolate and torque the joints in mesmerizing ways. His captivatingly committed dancers have the envious strength and freshness of youth. They'll be performing three world premieres, including a Meet the Composer-funded dance set to a new score by Keeril Makan. One-weekend-only run starts Thursday at ODC Theater; click here for more info.
November 27, 2005 · 04:59 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
Nutcracker Season
In the Chronicle's Pink Section today, I talk to Ballet San Jose Silicon Valley artistic director Dennis Nahat, one of America's most colorful Drosselmeyers. Perhaps more importantly, as seasonal consumerism kicks in, I describe 10 Bay Area holiday dance performances.
Already at church today I've been asked to supply my personal recommendations (which I'm always happy to do). And as much as I'd like to avoid simply promoting the big guns, the answer is simple. For kids and adults alike, San Francisco Ballet's "Nutcracker"--a $3.5 million production unveiled last year--is absolutely gorgeous. The sets and costumes just glow, the dancers are stupdendous, and though Helgi Tomasson's choreography doesn't always rise to the feeling of the music, the storytelling works beautifully. As an added bonus for those with out-of-town visitors, this "Nutcracker" is set in Edwardian San Francisco, lending a touristy touch. Depending on casting, I'll probably attend at least three times.
For adults only (it won't offend kids, but they won't get the jokes), if you haven't yet seen Mark Morris's "The Hard Nut," you really should. Set in the 1960's, with set designs by cartoonist Charles Burns, it's hilarious--but being a Morris work, it also has heart. It's returning to UC Berkeley's Cal Performances this year.
November 27, 2005 · 04:42 PM · Dance · Comments (1)
The writing is going well. Lots of revising, lots of deepening, a little bit of pushing forward. So you won't be hearing from me much this week. Apologies.
November 21, 2005 · 10:16 AM · Misc. · Comments (0)
And I can't let another day pass without noting that Fernando Bujones, one of the superstar male ballet dancers of the 20th century, has died of skin cancer at 50. The Washington Post, Daily Telegraph, and New York Times all offer tributes. From the Telegraph:
"Fernando Bujones, who died on Thursday aged 50, was considered the greatest American male ballet dancer of the 1970s and 1980s; but he had the bad luck to make his sensational debut at 19 just as the Soviet star Mikhail Baryshnikov defected to the United States.
The rivalry that followed as the two men battled for the same roles inside the leading American international company, the American Ballet Theatre, took on a bitter personal note. "Baryshnikov has the publicity while I have the talent," declared Bujones, an unwise remark that came back to haunt him when the older Russian became his boss six years later.
Meanwhile, however, the duel for supremacy created unparalleled excitements for the public. Gelsey Kirkland, the ballet partner and girlfriend of both, reported that when the two had performances of Giselle on one day, Bujones deliberately danced Baryshnikov's personal variations in the matinée performance, forcing the Russian to spend a frantic hour inventing something even more spectacular for the evening show. "
November 15, 2005 · 02:38 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
The New Yorker's Joan Acocella writes about the new Baryshnikov Arts Center:
"More than anything, though, Mikhail Baryshnikov intends the center as a meeting place. “I wanted to bring people together in an informal way,” he says. “So many collaborations in the theatre, it’s just some producer thinks, Well, this guy had a nomination for Emmy, so, O.K., let’s have him. But it doesn’t have to be well-known choreographer. Could be fair chance given to a young person. I think better collaborative juices grow when people meet on free turf. You’re a poet; I’m a filmmaker. You’re a choreographer; I’m a playwright. People see each other’s work and exchange telephone numbers, and that’s how it starts.” "
Via Arts Journal and Ballet Talk.
November 15, 2005 · 09:06 AM · Dance · Comments (0)
I'm scaling back on dance blogging while working on fiction and other personal projects, but dance is finally blossoming in the blogosphere. My favorite new addition, just discovered, is the anonymous Downtown Dancer, who ruminates thought-provokingly on everything from the reduction in space for dance reviews at the Village Voice to Marie Chouinard's mass appeal to Terry Teachout's latest article on blogs and arts criticism in the Wall Street Journal.
Also new, or new to me,is Great Dance, a plainspoken and useful digest of the latest issues in dance. And Leigh Witchel is still blogging up a storm, writing today about what it's like to write a negative dance review having also been the recipient of such.
November 14, 2005 · 09:30 AM · Dance · Comments (1)
Also in the department of Catching Up on Stories I've Done for the Chron, I interviewed transgender choreographer Sean Dorsey for Sunday's Pink section:
"The hair is short. The makeup-free face is pretty by some angles but also handsome by others. You notice the small breasts, of course, but also the broad, low-slung pelvis. And the movement this long, rangy instrument produces is flowing and gentle, yet strong.
To watch Sean Dorsey in the studio is to surrender your urge to categorize.
"I don't feel my gender is fluid, or that I'm androgynous or at a place in between," Dorsey says after rehearsal, humid with the smell of sweat. "But there isn't a language yet, I don't think, to describe where I am."
So Dorsey doesn't use mere language. The 33-year-old choreographer, who was born female but now prefers the pronoun "he," uses movement and story, and the combination speaks more poignantly than any label.
In "Second Kiss," a duet with Mair Culbreth, the dancers tumble over one another as Dorsey's voice-over tells of a fourth-grader's flirtations with the class' most popular girl. In "Six Hours," the same duo's dynamic grows testy and tense as Dorsey's tale describes the lovers' visit home.
The twist in both cases? The protagonist is an anatomical female who also identifies as male."
Dorsey's first full evening of choreography runs Friday and Saturday at ODC Theater. Click here for full story.
November 14, 2005 · 09:23 AM · Comments (0)
A Chronicle assignment to preview the new Cirque du Soleil show provided a perfect opportunity to plug Grace Cathedral, where I am a member:
"Daniele Finzi Pasca has never been to Grace Cathedral, at the top of Nob Hill, but he knows one of its most resonant symbols well.
In the courtyard outside the church, and also replicated inside beneath the soaring arches of its main nave, is a circle that looks like a maze. The difference is, there are no wrong turns. You wind along the curving path, letting your mind settle as you turn; you reach the center and meditate; you follow the road back out, certain that it cannot lead you astray.
The circle is a labyrinth, an exact copy of one installed in France's Chartres Cathedral in the 13th century. And now, thanks to Pasca, it is the heart of Cirque du Soleil's newest show, "Corteo," which opens in San Francisco on Friday.
"It is important not to explain too much," said Pasca, who as the creator and director of Cirque's latest spectacle insisted that the labyrinth be reproduced faithfully beneath the big top. "You can have an outward structural form and an inward secret beauty. If someone wants to examine it up close, they'll look deeper."
The spiritual mystery of the labyrinth permeates "Corteo," which marks a striking departure for Montreal's successful cirque nouveau franchise. "Corteo" means "cortege," or "joyous procession," and the show tells the story of a dead clown who watches his own funeral parade through his imagination.
This is not the fantasyland of Cirque's 14 previous shows (four in residence in Las Vegas), but more like an intensified reality. Instead of the surreal, Technicolor forest of, say, Cirque's "Varekai," "Corteo" has the shabby-chic decor of an Anthropologie catalog. Instead of exotic lizards and nymphs, the characters are real people. "
The show got a good review today in the Chron. Click here to read my full piece.
November 14, 2005 · 09:18 AM · Misc. · Comments (1)
Headliners
It's not my best writing by a longshot, but I love the headline the Chronicle gave my article on Chitresh Das's latest production: "Bring in 'da noise, bring in 'da classical Indian dance." Here's the lead:
"One man was 23, the other 60. One wore tap shoes, the other four pounds of bells tied to each ankle. But when Kathak master Chitresh Das found himself backstage at the American Dance Festival with tap prodigy Jason Samuels Smith, he knew he had to seize his fate.
"I said, this is my chance, I have to get his attention," Das said recently, his aging but nimble body slick with sweat from his day's discipline. "So I started to dance and Jason says, 'How can you do that with your bare feet?' "
Smith, a rising star in the tap world best known as an alumnus of "Bring in Da Noise, Bring in Da Funk," was so enthralled by his first glimpse of North Indian classical dancing that Das' company members had to restrain him from following Das onto the stage. "It was like two lovers kept apart for centuries finally coming together," Das said, his theatrical eyes wide with passion. "The Divine put me in that hallway with Jason."
It might sound more like a star-crossed liaison: the elegance and mathematical precision of Kathak meets the slouchy streetwise virtuosity of contemporary tap. But when Das and Smith are in the same room, they're just two hoofers. Since that "Festival of the Feet" in 2004, Das and Smith have kept on jamming. The result is "India Jazz Suites," an East-meets-West collaboration premiering this weekend at the Cowell Theater. "
And here's the full story.
November 09, 2005 · 01:25 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
Cover Story
One thing you don't realize as a first-time author is how much of your time will be consumed in agony over the cover design of your book. It's total guess-work--on your part and on the publisher's--and for the last month I've been fretting over what the cover of the paperback of "The Lost Night," due out next summer, will look like.
Even best-selling authors aren't immune from the trials and tribulations of cover design. Po Bronson, a fixture here on the SF literary scene and the author of "What Should I Do With My Life?," is about to come out with a new book about family. He took the extraordinary step of polling more than 1,000 of his readers about possible cover designs, and then narrating the whole process here. I'm in awe of his tenacity, and feeling wearied just thinking about all the work he must have put into this. In the end I think he got the right design.
Now back to fretting about the paperback.
November 08, 2005 · 11:44 AM · Books · Comments (0)
Lines Hits a Groove
I reviewed Lines Ballet's new "Moroccan Project" for the SF Chronicle:
"The dancers of Lines Ballet are contorted, weirdly refined, alien creatures; it's not often you get to see them hit a groove. But the beat ruled Friday night at the Yerba Buena Center for Arts Theater during the unveiling of the company's "Moroccan Project." It may not be Artistic Director Alonzo King's most choreographically ambitious undertaking, but it is probably his most rhythmically infectious.
For more than 20 years now, one of the hallmarks of King's work has been the way he offers up his dancer's extreme extensions and jutting joints as a lingua franca capable of conversing with any culture's music, and it might seem like just a matter of time before he spun his globe and landed his finger on Morocco. In fact, he's worked with musicians Bouchaib Abdelhadi and Yassir Chadly in the orchestra pit several times. What's new is the addition of two female singers, Hafida Ghanim and Mouna Saadini, whose throaty cries and sharp warbles had the audience whooping in appreciative imitation come curtain fall.
King's visual response to their earthy soundscape is richly atmospheric. Two bronze columns of fabric hang stage right; a gray brick wall stands to the left. The dancers wear Colleen Quen and Robert Rossenwasser's now signature squiggly-hemmed culottes in vivid tangerine, and Axel Morgenthaler's lighting bathes them in a desert sun so warm you can almost taste the dust."
Click here for the whole review.
November 07, 2005 · 08:58 AM · Dance · Comments (0)
Ballets Russes
The new film "Ballets Russes," which just opened at San Francisco's Embarcadero Theaters, really is a delight for balletomanes and "dance dunces" (to borrow an Alex Ross coinage) alike. Among my favorite moments: Bejeweled, massively coiffed 86-year-old Mia Slavenska recounting her first Balanchine encounter ("Balanchine who?") and then saying "It's a pity I sent that message because with my looks, he would have fallen madly in love with me."
The Chronicle had me attend the film's gala screening at the Film Arts Festival Thursday night and play social reporter:
"Marc Platt could not have expected to still be receiving standing ovations at age 91, but there he was Thursday night at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco's Kanbar Hall, leaning unsteadily on his cane as an elevator platform lifted him to the stage. Minutes earlier, his image as a star dancer with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo had bounded across the silver screen, the picture of youthful vigor. And now, just as in times past, the audience was on its feet.
Flanking Platt were Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine, the filmmaking couple who made this ovation possible. "This is really the homecoming," Goldfine said to the capacity crowd at the Film Arts Festival of Independent Cinema's opening gala. "It brings us full circle because the first film we ever made, in 1988, was about Isadora Duncan. We swore up and down that we'd never make another dance film again."
An extraordinary opportunity persuaded them to break their oath. In 2000, the members of two once-warring companies, Leonide Massine's Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and Col. Vassili de Basil's original Ballets Russes, gathered in New Orleans for a reunion. Mostly white-haired and eccentrically dressed, many of the dancers had not seen each other in more than four decades. And between their vivid recollections and stunning archival footage, Geller and Goldfine found the makings for "Ballets Russes": a documentary that would speak not just to dance fans but also to anyone who appreciates the way the passions of youth persist for a lifetime."
Click here for the whole article.
And click here to visit the film's engaging website, with photos of the Ballet Russe stars in their glory days and now.
November 06, 2005 · 09:33 AM · Dance · Comments (0)
Dr. Gong's Memorial
Quite a few visitors coming to this site are looking for writing about Dr. Gong, and I hope they will scroll to the entry below and leave their own memories if they wish. For those who would like to attend his memorial, this is the information printed in today's Chronicle:
"A memorial for David Gong, a dentist who was shot to death last week near his office, will be held Thursday at 11 a.m. in San Francisco.
Dr. Gong, 56, was shot and killed at Jackson at Polk streets in San Francisco, a half block from his office, by a former patient who shot himself to death moments later.
The memorial will be held at Kelly's Mission Rock restaurant, 817 Terry Francois Blvd. in San Francisco.
Dr. Gong is survived by his wife of 20 years, Erika Delacorte, and by children Steven and Kate, all of San Francisco.
Memorial donations may be sent to the California Academy of Sciences, 875 Howard St., San Francisco, CA 94103."
November 02, 2005 · 09:20 AM · Misc. · Comments (0)
