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The Dance Year That Was
Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, auld lang syne, and here's to 2006. The Chronicle's Pink section will run my list of 10 dance events to look forward to next Sunday. First, the paper looks back at 2005, asking each critic to pony up a high, a low, a "most improved," and a "most vaulable player," plus a Top 10. Here's the run-down on my picks:
High: Oakland Ballet's return
Low: Lar Lubovitch's "smile with my heart" at San Francisco Ballet
Most Improved: San Francisco Ballet's Sarah Van Patten, though this is a cheat--I don't think she's improved so much as gradually revealed immense talent
MVP: Kara Davis, who dances with Janice Garrett & Dancers, Kunst-Stoff, and Margaret Jenkins Dance Company
Top 10:
--Chitresh Das and Jason Samuels Smith in "India Jazz Suites"
--Compagnie Jant-Bi
--SFB's Tina LeBlanc and Gonzalo Garcia
--Compagnie Marie Chouinard
--Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company
--Kunst-Stoff's "Les Sylphides"
--Choreographers in Action "24+ Views"
--The Kirov Ballet's Diana Vishneva
--Bay Area Rhythm Exchange
--David Dorfman Dance
For the rationale behind my choices, click here, and feel free to chime in with your personal highlights by leaving a comment.
December 25, 2005 · 08:50 PM · Dance · Comments (1)
"Even the worst true thing fills the consciousness with the light of its correctness."
--Laurie Colwin, "A Mythological Subject"
December 23, 2005 · 09:48 AM · Books · Comments (0)
Speaking of year-end lists, Bookslut's Jessa Crispin has a wonderfully prickly column in the Book Standard on what your personal best books of 2005 says about you:
"If the only women on your list are Mary Gaitskill and Joan Didion . . .
. . . or perhaps a token mention of Zadie Smith, whose On Beauty is not as good as everyone says it is, you need to be reprogrammed. This year, a survey was released saying men do not read books by women, especially not fiction. That, I suppose, explains why books like A.L. Kennedy's Paradise, Svetlana Alexievich's Voices from Chernobyl and Maureen McHugh's Mothers and Other Monsters have gotten almost no love. "
December 23, 2005 · 09:45 AM · Books · Comments (0)
It's time for year-end lists, and my memoir "The Lost Night" has thus far made two, named a best book of 2005 by the San Francisco Chronicle and the Rocky Mountain News.
In dance matters, my list of most memorable dance moments in 2005 will run in the Chronicle's pink section this Sunday. Meanwhile, Allan Ulrich offers his highlights at Voice of Dance.
December 21, 2005 · 04:56 PM · Misc. · Comments (0)
From Tere O'Connor's final thoughts over at Arts Journal's discussion on New York as the dance capital of the world:
"I am also an advocate for art as an area of existence that doesn’t have to be held up to the moral requirements that society maintains for an overall, non-chaotic, functionality. Indeed it should pound against these."
A Nietzschean view and one I'd subscribe to. To read the whole conversation, now closed, click here.
December 19, 2005 · 08:51 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
Spotted recently on the marquee of a Tenderloin porn shop:
INFLATABLE DOLL
LOVE SOMEONE WHO LOVES YOU BACK
There's a poem in there, if only I were a poet.
December 15, 2005 · 03:48 PM · Misc. · Comments (0)
Dance Capital of the World?
Over at Arts Journal, the debate about whether New York is still the capital of the dance world--and why or why not, and what this means for the future of dance--is just warming up. The site has brought together key players on the dance scene like former DTW director David White, UCLA Live's David Sefton, Dance Magazine's Wendy Perron, and the New York Times' John Rockwell for an online conversation sparked by Gia Kourlas's much-debated September commentary claiming New York is no longer the center of the dance universe. They're all chiming in thought-provokingly, along with commenters like Rita Felciano and Tobi Tobias, but I'm most taken thus far with the observations of choreographer Tere O'Connor, who sidesteps territorial chest-thumping altogether to instead advocate eloquently for the irreducible nature of meaning in dance:
"The desire to locate a particular capital of dance holds little interest for me as a maker. Talk of power centers is antithetical to the reasons one goes into dance as a life. One enters deeply into a willful state of marginalization the moment one commits to a mute, non-narrative form, one that leaves no product and is not (in the best hands) a translation of anything. It exists, by its nature, outside of the systems of capitalism foisted upon it in futile attempts to "market" it. Artists must fight to avoid being pulled into the land of the explanatory. In both Europe and America there are certain criteria one must answer, centered around the validation of dance through "understandable" terms. The present European penchant for dramaturgical assistance and lofty philosophical sources is not unlike the need here to have the much loved "multi media" or the importance of "collaboration" rule your making. It is a way of saying the form needs to be validated through pre-existing outside information. So whether you are doing this by co-opting the music of a master to enhance your work or using Lacanian thought to source from, you are answering a mandate and you are deeply invested in representation. Trying to make dances that represent ideas in their specificity is like saying "Here, hold this wind " Audiences feel this. The chasm between the explanatory, aggrandizing marketing of these works and the works themselves fosters disinterest."
That's just a taste--admittedly, a long one--of a far-reaching exchange that's just revving up. Click here to jump in.
December 13, 2005 · 10:43 AM · Dance · Comments (0)
I reviewed Janice Garrett & Dancers' 2005 season, closing tomorrow at the Cowell, for the Chronicle this week:
"Here was something rare for San Francisco: traditional American modern dance in the vein of Paul Taylor, dance that believes humankind speaks as eloquently through pure movement as through language. Here was a company that danced like a community. And here was a fully developed style: rapid bursts of crisp energy; complex gestures that use every body part -- shoulder, knee, rib, chin -- to create a sense of kinetic conversation; steps so richly suggestive you could see the lapping of water in the sweep of an arm, the flight of a bird in the raising of a leg.
All those ingredients come together to magical effect in "Ostinato," the 2002 work that opens the company's solid third-anniversary outing, seen last weekend and repeating through Saturday at Cowell Theater. And yet there's something more in "Ostinato" -- the spark of inspiration, the elusive quality that turns an expertly constructed series of steps into a soul-stirring statement. If that quality is missing from the three other Garrett dances now on display, this lushly performed concert still proves that the troupe belongs to the big leagues of Bay Area dance. "
Full review here.
December 10, 2005 · 05:00 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
Clemency
As the debate over Tookie Williams' death sentence has roiled, I've hesitated to publicly register my opinion. I've shied from the dangers of using my experience as the daughter of a murder victim as a moral trump card. And yet the classic hypothetical in the capital punishment debate is "What would you want if a member of your own family had been killed?"
Since childhood I've been able to answer this question without pause. I would not want whoever murdered my own father killed. I have chosen to find my own ways of reaching resolution and peace without calling for revenge. I believe threats to society should live out their days behind bars, and that horrifying crimes deserve just punishment. But I would never want blood on my hands.
I want to say this with absolute respect and caring for others who have lost family members and friends to murder. It is a harrowing experience those untouched by murder cannot fully understand. The daughter of one of Stanley Tookie Williams' victims, Albert Owens, has said she wants Williams executed. Her brother wants to see his father's murderer live, granted he continues to live in prison. These are deeply personal feelings to be accorded the utmost empathy. But capital punishment is not a personal decision; it defines not an individual's moral stance, but a society's. And as the execution date nears, I am in absolute agreement with this Los Angeles Times editorial, published in October:
"STANLEY "TOOKIE" WILLIAMS is a charismatic symbol of what's wrong with the death penalty — and of what's wrong with the debate about the death penalty. His story of sin and redemption powerfully illustrates the unfairness of capital punishment. But to argue that capital punishment is unjust for some defendants is to concede that it may be acceptable for others.
The reason to oppose capital punishment has to do with who we are, not who death row inmates are. The death penalty is inappropriate in all situations because it is unbefitting of a civilized society. Williams' case, though poignant, is irrelevant to this argument . . .
California, which has executed only 11 people since 1976, should give up on capital punishment altogether, like 12 U.S. states and most of what is often referred to as the "civilized world." Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger should cancel Williams' execution, scheduled for Dec. 13, and Williams should spend the rest of his days in jail. So should everyone else on death row — even those who haven't had their lives turned into a TV movie. "
UPDATE: It has been difficult for me to read the coverage of Stanley "Tookie" Williams's execution, not because I believe his life should have been spared--although, as a death penalty abolitionist, I do--but because I feel the full horror of the murders he committed has been lost in the hoopla over his purported redemption. It seems I read only of two camps: Those who want state-sanctioned vengeance, and those who believe he was a hero. I do not believe he was a hero. I can picture the reality of the murders he committed only too clearly. I wish the media would clear space in this debate for those remain unconvinced of Williams' redemption and yet oppose state execution. I believe the deepest argument against the death penalty acknowledges the full horror and pain of a murderer's actions--and yet still chooses not to kill in revenge.
December 08, 2005 · 04:14 PM · Personal · Comments (1)
How many other readers out there are discovering the astonishments of Laurie Colwin after that gorgeous reading of her story "The Lone Pilgrim" on Selected Shorts last week?
December 05, 2005 · 09:58 PM · Books · Comments (1)
Levy's Horror
I reviewed LEVYdance for yesterday's Chronicle:
"If you want to know what makes LEVYdance so sexy, it's all there in "Holding Pattern," the opener for the company's third-anniversary home season at ODC Theater. Hip electronic music, piercing stares, dewy-skinned dancers who stunt-dive over one another in tangles of whiplash limbs: This is modern dance for a technological generation, neatly encapsulated in a 15-minute trio.
Blessed with such an audience hit early in his career, young UC Berkeley grad Benjamin Levy could choose to spend the next decade making variations on it. Instead, he's pushed himself -- last year, to comedy; this year, to horror. "Violent Momentum," premiered Thursday and repeating through Sunday, is painful to watch for reasons both intentional and not. "
Click here for full review.
December 04, 2005 · 01:32 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
