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A Few More A-Z Entries
With more than 100 entries, the A-Z Dance Guide I wrote for the Chronicle was a mammoth project, and a few groups fell through the cracks. Please know that no group was intentionally excluded. A guide of this size could not possibly have been comprehensive. But I would like to acknowledge three omissions in particular that have come to my attention today.
The first is the website Voice of Dance. The site is chock full of photo galleries, event listings, discussion forums, advice columns for dancers, but the main reason I return week after week is to read the opinions of resident critic Allan Ulrich, in the face of whose expertise I am frequently humbled. Voice of Dance is also active in the Bay Area dance community, having partnered with Bay Area National Dance Week and the Isadora Duncan Dance Awards to create the Bay Area Dance Awards, which will be held this April at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.
The second omission is Ballet San Jose Silicon Valley, Dennis Nahat's lively 30-member company. BSJSV's next production is Nahat's staging of "Romeo and Juliet," opening in March.
Finally, a nod to Company Chaddick, the modern dance company led by choreographer and popular teacher Cheryl Chaddick. Company Chaddick marked its 20th season in San Francisco last year.
If I've overlooked your company or group, do drop me a line to make sure you're on my radar for the future. My email is rachel at rachelhoward dot com.
January 30, 2006 · 04:46 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
I reviewed San Francisco Ballet's opening night "Swan Lake" in today's Chronicle. Most memorable for me was Gonzalo Garcia's promising debut as Prince Siegfried:
"Four ballerinas are slated to tackle the dual role of the spellbound heroine Odette and her wicked impostor Odile, but Saturday Prince Siegfried reigned. Anyone familiar with Tina LeBlanc's crystalline technique and earnest acting would have expected her to turn in a commendable performance, but the command of Garcia's touching portrayal came as a surprise and a gift.
Garcia is that rare thing: a virtuoso who seems to dance simply for the unbridled joy of it. He's not out to prove anything to himself or to you. He seems propelled into bravura enchaînements by outbursts of uncontainable emotion, and even standing still he radiates bigheartedness. As Siegfried, his acting was initially cautious, but by Act 4 his throes of regret seemed so urgent and sincere that you half wanted to run to his side in consolation.
What tiny LeBlanc lacks in mystique as Odette she makes up for in empathy. Her natural aura of innocence made early encounters with the Prince look more like teenage puppy love than doomed romance, and her black swan is more flirty than bewitching. But during the final swells of music -- rendered grandly under conductor Martin West -- it was entirely believable that she would throw herself into the lake in despondency and that a distraught Garcia would follow. "
For the full review, click here.
January 30, 2006 · 02:58 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
Greetings
If you've alighted on this site thanks to my A-Z dance guide (and editor Joe Brown's generous plug) in the SF Chronicle, welcome! My website Footnotes went live in July 2004. I use this blog to fill out my coverage of the booming Bay Area dance scene, linking to my Chronicle reviews, writing about casts or performances I don't cover for the Chronicle, recommending upcoming shows, and pointing out provocative or especially well-written dance stories from other publications. If you like what I do for the Chronicle, you can find more of it, every week, on this site.
In my other life, I write fiction and memoir, and I use this site to shamelessly promote my first book, "The Lost Night: A Daughter's Search for the Truth of Her Father's Murder." You can check out the critical praise for "The Lost Night" here or read an excerpt here. I feel fortunate to live in a city with a busy dance scene and a lively literary world, and I also blog about books and the writing life.
Thanks for visiting. Feel free to leave a comment, or drop me a line at rachel at rachelhoward dot com. You can also join my mailing list by entering your email address in the "subscribe" box to the right.
January 29, 2006 · 12:07 PM · Misc. · Comments (0)
SFB Burning Bright
Ah, the San Francisco Ballet season is upon us! My review of the gala in the SF Chronicle:
"Absent a major milestone to fuel giddy whispers Wednesday at San Francisco Ballet's gala, the real celebration was in the dancing. Helgi Tomasson's 20th season at the helm passed last year; the company's 75th anniversary won't arrive until 2008. But why wait for a big number to toast when you're watching dancers of such overwhelming caliber?
After all, galas are for trotting out stars, and San Francisco Ballet is bursting at the seams with them. To say this was one of the company's most thrilling openers in recent memory would be disingenuous. But not to say that the current roster of dancers is one of the most compelling in the world would be remiss.
Lorena Feijoo proved that pungently in "Swan Lake's" Act 3 pas de deux, tossing effortless double pirouettes into the role's famous Cuisinart of fiendish fouetté turns. Her partner Davit Karapetyan's rocket-launched double cabrioles and stratospheric grand jetés were the sensation of the evening. True, she seemed a mite more intent on seducing the audience than enthralling her Prince Siegfried, and he -- although gifted with one of nature's most extraordinary jumps -- looked more good-humored than entranced. But if you want to score dramatic effectiveness, wait until this couple tackles the regular run of "Swan Lake" next week.
It's pyrotechnics that burn brightest at galas, and this pair was blazing. Yet the evening was not one of nonstop fireworks. Tomasson took a few risks in selecting showpieces for his favorite talents. Some offerings looked explosive as ever even ripped from context, but others lost their spark. "
Click here for the full review.
January 27, 2006 · 10:04 AM · Dance · Comments (0)
In Memoriam: Crystal Mann
It came as a shock last week to learn that Crystal Mann--dancer, teacher, force of will--has died, of a recently diagnosed cancer. Crystal began her dance life as a member of Welland Lathrop's company and went on to become a generous and popular teacher, but I did not know her until five years ago, when I joined the Isadora Duncan Dance Awards committee. Crystal stepped up as chair when no one else had the guts or masochism to. The awards were in an intense time of reorganization and finanical disarray, and Crystal seemed to realize that if she didn't keep the Izzies going, no one would. She believed in the importance of the awards as a source of celebration and artistic encouragement, and as a yearly rallying point for the Bay Area dance community. Crystal was a fine-boned, small woman with an outsized determination. If someone flaked she wasted no time on anger, but simply stepped in to get the job done. She slugged through paperwork, made crucial new relationships with the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and Bay Area National Dance Week, and paid bills out of pocket when she had to. It's no exagreration to say that without her, the Isadora Duncan Dance Awards would no longer exist.
I admired her work ethic and her altruism, but I also relished her company. We would ride-share to Izzies meetings. We'd talk about the latest dance shows we'd seen, but much more too: Crystal was incorrigibly literate and was always telling me about some commentary she'd read in the Times Literary Supplement or Harper's Magazine. I'll miss her shrewd, slightly ruddy face, her husky laugh, the sharp way she would raise her chin and narrow her huge eyes just before sharing an incisive point. She'll be missed by many in the Bay Area dance world.
It was typical of Crystal to work like a dog for the betterment of the community but shirk acknowledgement. According to her family she has requested that no service in her memory be held. We can't help but remember her anyway, and offer gratitude for all she gave.
January 24, 2006 · 05:40 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
I reviewed Melissa Holbrook Pierson's eloquent and exasperating "The Place You Love Is Gone" for the Chronicle book review:
"Pity the poor publicist assigned to "The Place You Love Is Gone." Not that the book is a bum product: Every paragraph Melissa Holbrook Pierson pens is filled with filigreed detail, stylized turns of phrase, piercing stabs of emotion. But how do you pitch this book, exactly? Is it a rallying cry for Wal-Mart haters or a cautionary tale for urban planners? Is it sociology, history, philosophy or memoir?
Like any rich work that cannot be reduced to a hook (and especially like the work of similarly ruminative writer Rebecca Solnit), "The Place You Love Is Gone" is none of these and more. Don't be fooled: Pierson's book is not an indictment of today's rapid pace of development. It's too emotionally complicated for that. Pierson mourns lost derelict warehouses as much as dairy farms, and strip malls are but a blip in her universe of grief. Her amorphous subject is not suburban sprawl or downtown regeneration but time itself, or, as she puts it, "the fundamental existential tragedy of more driveways, of what is lost and how it hurts to know that it will never come back." "
Click here for the full review.
January 23, 2006 · 10:26 AM · Books · Comments (0)
SFB's New Season
The San Francisco Ballet season--one of the biggest perks of my year as a critic--starts this Wednesday with the opening gala. "Swan Lake" begins on Saturday. The Chronicle asked me to give a run-down on all eight programs:
"Helgi Tomasson, entering his 21st year as artistic director, is serving up his usual eclectic mix of classic and contemporary works, starting with that bedrock of 19th century tradition, "Swan Lake," before offering the charm of Agnes de Mille's "Rodeo," the startling postmodernism of William Forsythe and a healthy dose of neoclassical Balanchine.
Those who love the emotional authenticity of Jerome Robbins will be pleased to see Tomasson's tribute with another all-Robbins evening. This spring is also the first chance to see the three world premieres commissioned for the Ballet's rain-soaked summer Paris tour in less soggy conditions. Tomasson himself has two new ballets to introduce, while Morris' full-evening ballet "Sylvia" returns by popular demand.
The company roster -- now standing at 70 dancers -- includes freshly recruited talent from Italy, Estonia and beyond."
Click here for my descriptions of each program.
January 23, 2006 · 10:20 AM · Dance · Comments (0)
Bill T's "Blind Date"
I had a bonanza of writing appear in the SF Chron over the last few days--I'll post the pieces separately. For starters, I reviewed Bill T. Jones's new "Blind Date" Saturday. I'm a big Bill T. Jones admirer--I'm constantly in awe of the sophistication of gesture in his choreography, the complexity and clarity of shape--but "Blind Date" was not one of my favorite Jones works:
"You know things are getting interesting in Bill T. Jones' new "Blind Date" when a man wearing a giant duck head walks onstage. His name, Jones tells us, is Richard, he works for a fictitious burger chain called "Quack a Dack," and he took the mascot job because his father thought wearing a uniform would give him pride and purpose. He marches about his duties with zeal, as sexy burger ads flash on the screen above.
But then Richard's drills turn more menacing; the TV begins a machine-gun assault of porn and war footage. Jones is left to boogie with an Army sergeant in camouflage dress, and the portrait of dystopia is complete. Are we prepared, Jones seems to be asking, to accept our culture's intimate dance with militarism?
Would that the question had arisen sooner and been pursued with a touch more rigor. "Blind Date," which premiered in September and stopped at UC Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall on Saturday during its national tour, is typical Jones: smart, confrontational, strangely elegant and sprawling. Its subject is nothing less than the terror of our times, and yet the two-part, two-hour work is not one of Jones' most provocative. It holds a mirror to our age. Perhaps it's a sad commentary on contemporary numbness to say the reflection seems only accurate, and neither revelatory nor startling. Then again, some editing is in order. "
Here's the full review.
January 23, 2006 · 10:14 AM · Dance · Comments (0)
Recommended this week
You've got to give Rob Bailis, director of ODC Theater, big points for curatorial initiative. Faced with a last-minute cancellation by a struggling dance company last year, he inaugurated an impromptu series for emerging choreographers, The Underserved. Faced with producing The Underserved again this year, he asked eleven talents to drop all pretentiousness and make five-minute dances to their favorite pop tunes. Alma Esperanza Cunningham will be choreographing to Jimi Hendrix, Rebecca Pappas to Weezer, Samantha Blanchard to Chumbawamba. The only catch is that I can't make it--I'll be in Berkeley tonight and tomorrow, for Bill T. Jones.
If you, like me, enjoy nothing more than dancing to your radio in your living room, this should be fun. Click here for details on The Underserved II, "POP!"
January 20, 2006 · 02:14 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
Finally among the flurry of commentaries on the James Frey scandal (and I've read most of them), someone writes a common-sensical story about the ethics of memoir writing. It's not a genre you should enter unless you're ready to search your conscience. From the Christian Science Monitor:
"Indeed, like novelists, many memoirists write pages of dialogue, even if the actual conversations took place decades earlier. They often create composite characters, collapse time, and fill scenes from long ago with lush detail.
"You're taking the highlights of your life. It's a work of art, it's selective, it's subject to memory," says memoirist Lili Wright, author of "Learning to Float" (2000). "A memoir is art, it's literature. It's not journalism, it's not a documentary."
For many memoirists, balancing reality with the art of writing is difficult.
"Every second of the process, you're confronting questions about ethics and the boundaries of what's true and not true," says Nancy McCabe, author of 2003's "After the Flashlight Man."
Some authors consult their journals and diaries. Others, like Ms. Karr, check with people featured in their memoirs and ask them to sign releases stating the books are accurate. This is a good idea, Karr says, not least because "most of the people in my family are armed."
In the larger picture, Karr says such consultations help keep her honest. "For me, the greatest pressure is to tell the truth to the best of my ability, knowing that it will be corrupt, and I'll forget things, and I'm self-serving."
In addition to fact-checking, some memoirists warn readers about the pitfalls of memory . . .
It's important to be clear and upfront with readers, says Patricia O'Toole, author of the 2005 biography "When Trumpets Call: Theodore Roosevelt After the White House." "You have to let the reader know what your game is. If you're telling the reader it's the way it really happened, it ought to be the way it really happened." "
I actually took a similar tack to Joe Loya, who's quoted at the beginning of this story: I left out a few details of my father's case that were complicated, unbelievable, and in my judgment not relevant to the heart of the story. I'm happy to say I fabricated nothing--and would never have considered doing so. I did recreate pages of dialogue from when I was 10 years old, and those pages, while true to my memory, are reconstructed and obviously not verbatim. Memoir writing is not journalism, but just as any journalist should be ready to wrangle with her conscience and come out clean, so should any memoir writer.
It's a hornet's nest of issues for working writers to debate--and if you're working on a memoir, or thinking about doing so, of just want to enter the tussle, take note: San Francisco's non-profit writing center 826 Valencia is holding an adult seminar 6 p.m. this Sunday on memoir writing. I'll be on the panel, as will Joe Loya, Julia Scheeres, and Michelle Tea, and Dave Eggers will be moderating. Click here for the details.
January 19, 2006 · 02:08 PM · Books · Comments (0)
I'm in the Chronicle today with a story on ODC's inviting new Dance Commons:
"The once-abandoned warehouse at 351 Shotwell St. teemed with life on a recent winter day, with amateur ballerinas springing onto pointe while down the hallway a professional modern company worked out the steps of a world premiere. A girl in red sweatpants lounged on a suede armchair, eating an apple. Up the gleaming maple staircase, gossiping teenage dancers sat splay-legged beneath vaulted skylights.
The scene was fresh to ODC/Dance artistic director Brenda Way, who'd just returned from a choreography residency in Florida.
"I really feel I've died and gone to heaven," she said in her corner office, bare toes brushing the nap of just-laid carpet. "I walk in and kids are having lunch in the hall, a dance company is meeting in the corner. I come upstairs and a class is warming up in the studio." She looked at ODC School director Kimi Okada, who raised her shoulders in giddy disbelief. "It's totally working. It almost brings me to tears," said Way.
Way and Okada, along with fellow ODC co-founder KT Nelson, are in the midst of a high-emotion housewarming. What dance company wouldn't be if its new home were a $9.5 million rebuilt 23,000-square-foot warehouse in the Mission? But the ODC Dance Commons isn't just for ODC. With lobby galleries, a convertible low-tech performance space, a Pilates center, a Healthy Dancers Wellness Clinic and -- most important to Way -- a Town Hall space for mingling, the ODC Dance Commons is meant to be a home for artists of all kinds and dancers of all ages."
Click here for the full story.
January 16, 2006 · 10:44 AM · Dance · Comments (0)
I came down with a nasty flu Wednesday, am still suffering it today, hope to be well by Monday, and am sure glad I finished several Chronicle assignments well before deadline last week, though I've now lost two days I had hoped would be devoted entirely to my fiction writing.
January 13, 2006 · 11:13 PM · Misc. · Comments (0)
Recommended This Week
The dance calendar springs back into action over the next few weeks with Bill T. Jones in Berkeley, the opening of the San Francisco Ballet season, and the official unveiling of ODC/Dance's new building (and consequently my frequency of appearance in the SF Chronicle is about to spike too).
But lest you think the scene dormant in the meantime, be advised that the sixth annual Women on the Way Festival kicks off tonight at Dance Mission Theatre. Of the eight offerings on the programs (each night mixes and matches for a different combo), I can personally recommend Sean Dorsey's tender transgender short-story in movement, "Six Hours," and I'm curious to see the latest works by Alma Esperanza Cunningham Movement and Funsch Dance Experience. The festival rungs through January 29; for the schedule and more info, click here.
January 11, 2006 · 12:20 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
The New Yorker recently ran a "Talk of the Town" item on the woman who would not rest until Rod Stewart had his Walk of Fame star:
"In October, when Rod Stewart made an appearance on Hollywood Boulevard to unveil his star on the Walk of Fame, perhaps no one was prouder than Marcy Braunstein, a fifty-two-year-old woman from Pittsburgh. Braunstein is the ultimate Rod Stewart fan. This becomes evident to anyone who visits her house and stumbles upon her Rod Room—a cramped space that contains more memorabilia than one might find in a modest Presidential library. These mementos include a framed dress shirt that Rod once wore and a water glass that Rod sipped from on the set of “Oprah.”
“I like to joke that if my husband and I ever had kids my Rod Room would be a nursery,” Braunstein said recently. “But it’s not. It’s a Rod Room instead.” "
My dad, a fellow Rod Stewart fanatic, would have been pleased.
January 10, 2006 · 10:29 AM · Misc. · Comments (1)
The Chronicle's Heidi Benson follows up on the San Francisco reaction to JT LeRoy's unmasking. Stephen Beachy--who first alleged that LeRoy was Laura Albert's creation in a New York magazine piece--says "The hoax needed to be revealed in order for us to ask the really important questions -- about what we want to believe and why, what we project onto 'outsiders,' and the magical aura we grant celebrities."
Dave Eggers says the LeRoy stories are well-written no matter who penned them, Armistead Maupin is incensed by the idea of someone using a fiction of AIDS and childhood abuse for sympathy, and Daniel Handler aka Lemony Snicket is "bemused," as is his delightful wont: "The only question is, did the person who wrote these things have as colorful a history as some people seem to believe?" Handler asked. "That's a question you could ask about Jack London."
January 10, 2006 · 10:18 AM · Books · Comments (1)
Grotto co-founder Po Bronson's website has up-to-the-minute pages on the wonderful new office I'm fortunate to share with these folks. Click here to read about what the Grotto does and see pics of the new digs.
January 09, 2006 · 07:53 PM · Books · Comments (0)
True Fiction?
Sunday was a big day for literary scandals: First the New York Times unmasked the public face of former-child-prostitute-turned-novelist J.T. LeRoy and asked whether the writer wasn't a whole-cloth fabrication of his supposed adopted parents. If you're unfamiliar with LeRoy's work, he's a favorite of celebrities like Tatum O'Neal and Courtney Love, and he's gotten a leg up from many wonderful writers, like Tobias Wolff. He writes a column in 7X7 magazine, and his work is often read at SF literary events by stand-ins for the "shy" author. I haven't had any brushes with him, and don't have anything to add, but even if you're not on the SF lit scene this is a crazy story, following on the long investigation that ran in New York magazine a few months ago.
Then, just when Oprah thought it was safe to tap contemporary writers again for her book club, The Smoking Gun goes sniffing around "A Million Little Pieces" author James Frey. The findings are lengthy, but the bottom line allegations are that he seriously embellished the circumstances of his numerous arrests, and invented a relationship with a girl sadly killed in a train crash.
The core issue of both scandals, of course, is that although Leroy was working in fiction and Frey in memoir, both depended on the authenticity of their tales to shore up the poignancy of their works.
As for the Frey case, we all know that memoir as a genre depends upon a degree of memory reconstruction and that storytelling demands a certain streamlining of events. Even William Zinsser's collection of interviews with memoir writers is called "Inventing the Truth." In my book, I stuck to what I knew to be the facts, never willingly inventing incidents, but often conjuring scenes from memory--which obliged me to always be mindful that my memories were strongly influenced by what I wanted to believe. The ethical delicacy of this became a theme of the book.
My brother in-law Dave insists I committed a grave crime of ommission by reducing his wedding toast--a rousing sing-along involving re-tooled lyrics to the tune of Camp Town Races--to the words "the best man spoke." But apparently, Neal Pollack has more serious liberties to fess up to.
Pollack link via Bookslut.
January 09, 2006 · 02:26 PM · Books · Comments (0)
An Office of My Own
I’ve started the new year off with a new space by joining the SF Writers Grotto. It’s a collective of all kinds of freelance writers—journalists, novelists, poets, screenwriters—who rent office space together in order to counterbalance the solitary nature of writing, build community, and offer each other moral support. They also throw some kick-ass readings and parties, which—if you’re familiar with the group—you may have attended at their former Civic Center digs in a converted Cat and Dog Hospital.
The Grotto lost that space late last year and has just moved to a second floor suite at Bryant and 2nd, just outside South Park. The new environs are not as quaint, but they’re awfully accommodating, with individual offices for 32 writers, a full kitchen, and a palatial conference room where the Grotto plans to hold events and classes. I’ve taken a smallish room with a window, and painted the walls a fretfully chosen blue-green that reminds me of a baby blanket in some moods, and a convalescent hospital in others. I’ve got a bookcase full of my old journals and favorite books, a bulletin board soon to be covered in dance posters, and a couch for cat naps.
I’m hoping it will be a productive place for me to not only knock out my dance freelancing, but plunge ahead with my fiction. I’ve been here three days now, during which I’ve completed one assignment for the Chronicle and nearly finished a second draft of a short story. I like the sound of distant voices in the halls, the friendly visits from other procrastinating writers, the solitude of closing my door and getting down to business. I like knowing that no matter what happens, I have a place to write. Virginia Woolf would surely approve.
To visit the Grotto’s website (in need of updating), click here.
January 03, 2006 · 02:10 PM · Misc. · Comments (2)
Looking Forward
I'll be spending a lot of time at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in 2006, and if you're a San Francisco dance fan you should, too. Not only is it the venue of choice for many of the city's major companies and for San Francisco Performances' top-notch programming, but YBCA executive director Ken Foster is importing several of this spring's most intriguing offerings. Among the shows I'll be seeing there, from my list of dance events worth looking forward to in yesterday's SF Chronicle:
--Ron K. Brown/Evidence
--Kunst-Stoff
--ODC Dance
--Paul Taylor Dance Company
--Doug Varone and Dancers
--Lines Ballet
--Nrityagram Dance Ensemble
--Margaret Jenkins Dance Company
For my other picks, and the when and where on each, read the full story here.
January 02, 2006 · 11:58 AM · Dance · Comments (0)
