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The San Francisco literary festival Litquake has just announced their fall 2006 lineup. I'll be reading on the "Crime and Consequences" evening on Friday October 13 alongside Joe Loya, Margo Perin, and some other great Bay Area authors. Yes, that's October 13, as in more than a month from now, but Litquake is so overstuffed with amazing readings (350 authors over 9 days) that it's never too early to start looking over the lineup. The opening night is going to feature music producer Dan the Automator introducing Bay Area musicians who will read from the literature that's inspired them. And definitely don't miss the hugely popular Literary Pub Crawl through the Mission.

For the details, click here.

August 29, 2006  ·  11:32 AM   ·  The Lost Night   ·  Comments (0)

Fall Dance Preview

Here's the online version of my fall dance preview for the Chronicle. The dance season looks a bit slower than usual this year, sadly; No blockbuster ballet companies at Cal Performances, and the Oakland Ballet, which folded in January, is especially missed. I'm most looking forward to Taiwan's Cloud Gate Dance Theater at Cal Performances, and Batsheva Dance Company at San Francisco Performances. Locally, I've got hopes for the young choreographer Erin Mei-Ling Stuart, and I know that Jo Kreiter's live billboard project for Flyaway Productions will surely be a spectacle.

August 28, 2006  ·  09:09 AM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

Today is the birthday of Jean Rhys, possibly my favorite writer of all time. I've read "Voyage in the Dark" at least six times and every time I can't imagine a more perfect novel. Public radio's "Writers Almanac" erroneously attributes the plot of "Voyage in the Dark" to "Good Morning, Midnight," but otherwise gets the basics right:

"It's the birthday of writer Jean Rhys, born Ella Gwendoline Rees Williams in Roseau, Dominica, West Indies (1890). She was a depressed alcoholic who called herself "a doormat in a world of boots," . . .

Rhys wrote throughout the 1920s and '30s, and then dropped out of public view for about twenty years when she went off to live in a cottage in the English countryside. She started to write again at the end of the '50s, and wrote short stories that were published in British magazines. In 1960 , she came out with her most famous novel, Wide Sargasso Sea, about the relationship between a powerful European man and a poor West Indian woman."

I'm reading Joan Didion's "Play It as It Lays" right now and finding it so strikingly stylistically similar . . .

August 24, 2006  ·  10:52 AM   ·  Books   ·  Comments (0)

Is the Lewis Segal "I hate ballet" fuss still brewing? In the end, I was in too overwhelmed a moment in life to organize my own arguments or follow the blow-by-blows. But Allan Ulrich has summarized the issues most astutely at Voice of Dance:

"Segal, I know, gets around a lot. But he is primarily addressing a local readership that may have sat through more than one lackluster Romeo and Juliet or droopy Swan Lake than is good for the health or soul of any ballet public. It must sometimes be dispiriting for a dance critic to ply his craft in one of the few major world cities that ballet forgot. Still, you need to have the ballet company at hand before you demand innovation or relevance from it. If Segal’s polemic can arouse his city to produce the kind of company that meets his high and not unreasonable standards, it will have fulfilled its mission."

It's a balanced response that studies Segal's argumentation carefully instead of devolving into insider cat-fights, and for that, I recommend it.

August 20, 2006  ·  09:46 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

I'm just back from Phoenix, where I led a writing workshop at the Parents of Murdered Children Conference. The conference is a place for those who have lost someone to murder to gather with others who understand how isolating and stigmatizing a murder in the family can feel, who know that "closure" in the face of a violent and sudden death is a ludicrous concept, who don't ask "aren't you over that already?" The workshop turned out to be an amazing experience. I had no idea those of you who came would be so brave and open in putting your stories on the page, and sharing them aloud. I hope you found some release in the writing we did in class, and that you'll continue with it. Within the next two weeks, I'll be putting together a worksheet covering everything we went over in workshop, as many of you requested; if you'd like to receive it, be sure to send me an email at rachel at rachel howard dot com. You can also write to me there just to keep in touch and let me know how your writing progresses. I was thoroughly inspired by everyone's courage, and I'd love to hear from you.

This was the first time I'd attempted teaching a writing workshop for murder survivors; I proceeded only with the knowledge of how much writing had helped me and a gut certainty that it would do the same for others. I was blown away to watch many of your breakthroughs in class, and to hear afterwards that the workshop helped you channel the shock and grief of murder onto the page, so that it no longer has to feel so raw in your own mind. I'm so encouraged by your responses that I know I'll have to teach this workshop again, at another POMC conference or elsewhere. I wish you all a lot of peace.

August 14, 2006  ·  10:44 AM   ·  Misc.   ·  Comments (0)

Flatulent, Trivial Ballet

I've been so busy working on stories for the Chronicle and elsewhere, pushing forward on a novel, moving, and preparing to lead a writing workshop at the Parents of Murdered Children conference that I entirely missed Lewis Segal's jaundiced wholesale disparagement of ballet in the L.A. Times:

"Ballet has given us visions of limitless human potential and a sense of grace as profound as anything we have ever thought, felt or believed. But all too often, it now commandeers a disproportionate amount of money and attention in the dance world and returns only an increasingly self-satisfied triviality.

Yes, Miami City Ballet looked mighty fine in two Music Center programs a month ago. But significantly, the only work created since the dancers' infancy was borrowed from the world of modern dance. In this country, ballet simply will not address the realities of the moment, and its reliance on flatulent nostalgia makes it hard to defend as a living art."

Here's the full rant.

And here's the New York Times' John Rockwell's reasoned response:

"Despite the absence of major ballet company in the Los Angeles basin, Mr. Segal has seen a lot of ballet over the decades. He surely knows that ballet is indeed trying to adjust to the modern world, to find new thematic and choreographic relevance without abandoning its technique and traditions, however shallow and distorted in Mr. Segal’s view. He could have made the same arguments about traditional ballet’s failings in a context supportive of contemporary ballet. Perhaps he has been soured by the hackneyed touring programs the big ballet companies take into Los Angeles.

“Does any star these days lobby artistic directors for better choreography or dare to say, ‘I just don’t want to be seen in that ‘Swan Lake’ ”? Well, yes. Carlos Acosta, the Royal Ballet and American Ballet Theater star, is only the latest to call for modernization and for a de-emphasis on 19th century story ballets. Sylvie Guillem has done the same.

Dancers in Europe (as with the Kirov Ballet’s William Forsythe program) and the United States yearn for exciting new choreography, and artistic directors do their best to provide it. Mikhail Baryshnikov stands as a one-man symbol of ballet’s (and dance’s) quest for renewal. When it comes to new work (as opposed to fancily modernized new productions of old work), ballet is far more contemporary than opera. Ballet masters and administrators spend half their time searching for the new. Which is not to say that all new ballet is good ballet, but they try."

Though he finds Segal's disdain "salutary," Rockwell's ultimate outlook is one of appreciation for ballet's enduring beauties, and optimism.

I have my own thoughts, of course: That I wouldn’t argue with Segal's targets, only with the caustic way he's chosen his examples. That it’s the form of ballet that makes it timeless, not its pedigree, which is what makes his argument about Shakespeare et. al. predating ballet absurd. That the ethnic stereotypes and soap opera plot of “La Bayadere” may not, thankfully, endure, but does the formal beauty of that third act lay a claim to transcendence? Absolutely.

I see the same signs of decline that he does, but I also see such hope in the lush emotionality of dancers like Sarah Van Patten, the depth of coaching in Suzanne Farrell’s efforts. Ballet will go through ups and downs just as opera and classical music will, but the worth at its core will persist.

And I agree that naming promising choreographers is harder than naming promising dancers, but it only took one Petipa and one Balanchine. Haven’t audiences been just as conned by pretentious modern or post-modern dance performances, swallowed just as much “cutting edge,” “progressive” dance that was nothing but political ranting or obscure physical noodling in the name of edification? What’s worthwhile in any genre can be hard to find. I’d say Segal's job should lie in helping his readers find it, instead of digging up his most egregious examples to turn them off the art form altogether.

I should add that Lewis Segal has seen more ballet and absorbed more encylopedic knowledge about it than I could ever hope to. Perhaps my position is one of youthful naivete. I prefer that to a reactionary denouncement of a form of art that has filled my life with inspiration and often awe.

I'd like to organize my thoughts into more of a through-written argument, but I think I'll collapse from overwork first.

UPDATE: Leigh Witchel rebutts both Segal and Rockwell. Scroll down beyond a wonderful picture of the Balanchine ballerina Melissa Hayden, who died yesterday, and notes from a past interview with her. Incidentally, this obituary from Anna Kisselgoff has a stunning photo of Hayden in an uconventional retire, looking both commanding and glamorous.

SOME FURTHER DISORGANIZED THOUGHTS: The more I think about Segal's rabble-rousing approach, the more I warm to it. I would like to see a dramatically cohesive "Swan Lake" in my lifetime, instead of cobbling together favorite bits from different productions in my head. I do prefer to watch the third act of "La Bayadere" on its own rather than suffer through hours of empty pageantry.

I'd say it's a shame that Segal made his points in such hyperbolic style, but he has suceeded in the one thing he surely aimed for above all: kicking up a fuss. (Whether such a fuss will actually have an impact on the direction of ballet, I wonder. I think back to all that ink and fury expended over the Krissy Keefer "body image" debate, another expert provocation. After all that arguing, did the standards for thinness change much, or the unhealthy pressures placed on many dancers ease? I doubt it.) The ultimate weakness in most of Segal's arguments is that they could be applied to most other art forms. "When other forms of concert dance — not to mention movies, TV or the theater — are this empty and useless, it's easy to openly dislike or even despise them" he admits, then cites ballet's "intimidation factor" as deserving the extra ire. But the only real reason he's singled out ballet, of course, is because he loves it.

I hear whispers that Mr. Allan Ulrich may soon jump into the fray. I certainly hope so.

August 08, 2006  ·  02:25 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (3)

The Carol Sund/Carrington Memorial Reward Foundation announced yesterday that they're offering a $5,000 reward for information that could lead to closing the unsolved murder of my father, Stan Howard. The 20th anniversary of his stabbing in Merced passed this June 22. My family and I are very grateful for the Foundation's generosity.

You can read the local news report here.

August 03, 2006  ·  11:49 AM   ·  The Lost Night   ·  Comments (0)

Summerdance at 10

Summerdance Santa Barbara
Aszure and Artists
Center Stage Theater, Santa Barbara
July 27, 2006

A decade ago, I cut my teeth as an upstart dance critic writing about a new festival called Summerdance Santa Barbara. (Thankfully, those were the days before the Santa Barbara Independent started archiving their stories online.) The company inaugurating the festival was Doug Varone and Dancers, and they arrived like a welcome shot of sophistication upon Santa Barbara’s red-tiled tourist haven downtown. I’ve attended the festival most years since, in part for an excuse to visit the city I consider my second home, in part out of nostalgia, and in large part because my taste agrees with that of Summerdance executive director Dianne Vapnek. She’s made forays into flamenco and tap, and even imported a boot-clad dance theater troupe from the Netherlands, but mostly she likes New York modern dance companies with a bit of edge and a dash of sexiness, and she has a good eye for them. Her past choices include such mischievous talents as Doug Elkins, former Mark Dendy dancer Larry Keigwin (whose work struck me as green but promising), and Streb-alum Brian Brooks, whose campy minimalism is one of the freshest things I’ve laid eyes on.

For Summerdance’s 10th anniversary, Vapnek’s marquee attraction was the work of Aszure Barton, the young Canadian-born choreographer whose dances were recently featured on the program Baryshnikov put together to tout the fruits of his new Baryshnikov Arts Center, where Barton is one of the first artists in residence. I arrived in Santa Barbara during the festival’s busiest week: Doug Varone was creating a commissioned piece at lightning pace (16 minutes finished in five days); Robert Battle was setting one of his earliest works, the hard-driving “Rush Hour,” on the local State Street Ballet, whose choreography-starved dancers were taking to it with grateful commitment; and Brian Brooks was leading the Summerdance Kids Connection, wherein Santa Barbara dance students mingle with kids from the less affluent Orange County city of Santa Ana for a week of all-day dancing. All of this came together rather movingly for Friday’s Choreographers Showcase, where Varone, Battle, and Brooks unveiled what they’d accomplished. But I’d really come to see more of Barton, and her program proved worth it.

It started with “Come/Over,” the disaffected-hipster-romance romp I’d seen weeks earlier on the Baryshnikov slate, but a second viewing did not diminish its potency. I was still bowled over by sudden spasms of heartbreak; by the almost casually clever touches, like the guy standing on his head in the corner for no discernible reason; by the exquisite moment of tension when Barton stood on Doug Letheren as he executed a push-up, the eerie masochism of her wickedly smiling face heightened by the very real tenuousness of maintaining her balance. But now I was able to inventory more factors of how her choreography works. The vocabulary is fabulous, for starters. Barton trained at the National Ballet of Canada, and moments of ballet precision (a quicksilver arabesque penchee; a tidy rond de jambe executed with perfect clarity) punctuate her movement like sudden fireworks. Outrageously flexible backs and shoulders roll and roll like rivers; hands claw the air or suddenly reach for crotches; and faces melt from cruel laughter to despondency in a matter of well-calibrated moments. (Barton’s dancers, as you may have now surmised, are all wonders of fluidity and plastique.) But this only begins to explain what keeps Barton’s dances so unexpected. In the way she builds phrases and structures her dances, she is a trickster and a tease. She knows how to insert a dancey rhythmic passage here, a non-sequitur pause there, giving you just enough breathing space to be totally caught off-guard by what happens next.

Barton and Letheren in "Come/Over." Photo by David Bazemore.

The extent to which she draws on every structural resource at her disposal became even clearer in two movement from 2006’s “Short-Lived” that sent Letheren, Todd McQuade, William Briscoe, and the virtuosic Jonathan Alsberry prowling like panthers to tango-esque music. Their very walk was very simple but very specific: rolling down from the toes, hips sashaying in a way that looked absolutely sensuous but never campy. Certain solos toward the front of the stage went on too long, but just when you’d had enough, Barton would rearrange the space in off-kilter ways. Why, for instance, do two men do simultaneous solos with their backs to one another, facing separate wings? The space between them seems perfectly measured to upset any expectations of how these men relate to each other. And yet throughout the piece the men do pair up, one lifting another with his hands held in prayer around his lovers’ slick chest. So many contemporary choreographers are trying on tango these days, but usually in winking, undangerous ways. The sensuality in “Short-Lived” had spiritual, morbid undertones. I loved it.

But I loved that same sense of morbidity less in 2005’s “Lascilo Perdere,” where it veered on portentousness. “Lascilo Perdere” is a long piece, set to Vivaldi arias, stitched together with some gorgeous Gothic film by Kevin Freeman. The theme is loss, but it quickly gets played out: In an early section, chairs are placed across the stage, and Briscoe moves among them as a spotlight dawns on empty seats, moving from absence to absence; the point is quickly grasped and the musical chairs goes on and on without development. The many sections, some much more successful than others, feel as though they could have been rearranged in any other order.

But the final section is something I will never forget. Letheren dances to stage right, parts his mouth with wild pain, and sticks his tongue out; Ariel Freedman, Barton’s most spectacular dancer, makes her way to him and puts her mouth over his. You think they’re going to kiss—compelling enough—but then instead, Freedman clamps her teeth on Letheren’s tongue and uses it like a lever to draw him to the floor. She twists him into odd embraces and drags him across the room; the dynamic shifts and suddenly he is leading her, still connected by that tongue, into Baroque arrangements of limbs. It probably goes on for about three minutes, but the tension is so unrelenting that it feels like ten, and by about one minute in, that flagrantly pink wet tongue takes on very phallic overtones and the whole exchange becomes the most pornographic dance moment you have ever seen. When finally Freedman and Letheren separated, a thick string of saliva stretched between them, and that felt right. What such a brilliant theatrical device had to do with loss I never divined, but I was absolutely riveted, and felt that one duet had made the drive to Santa Barbara well spent.

Letheren and Freedman in “Lascilo Perdere.” Photo by David Bazemore.

Apparently I am one of few out-of-towners to undertake that drive; though Summerdance now has a ten-year track record of tapping intriguing companies, not much interest seems to extend beyond the Santa Barbara county line, and I have a few thoughts on this. Summerdance does much more then import companies from New York; the festival holds master classes, gives choreographers space and time to create new dances, and hosts open rehearsals and lecture-demonstrations. But to the outsider, Summerdance may look like just another presenter taking a few risks on interesting companies, and dance audiences in L.A. and San Francisco most likely would rather chance whatever UCLA or Cal Performances choose to bring in the fall than drive to Santa Barbara for a few isolated performances.

As it stands, the Summerdance calendar is not packed enough for a dance fan to make a week of it. As for the festival’s reputation, I think they’ve limited the word-of-mouth by commissioning only New York choreographers; one wonders if anyone in New York beyond the companies that directly benefit know what Summerdance Santa Barbara is. The festival has never brought in a West Coast-based company, and that should be remedied. The possibilities for artistic cross-pollination between artists on the two coasts would be well worth reporting on, and Summerdance could build more of a West Coast platform for itself rather than getting lost in the national picture. As it stands, Summerdance is a boon to the handful of choreographers it commissions and to the dance-curious residents of idyllic Santa Barbara. If it tapped both East and West Coast talent, it could be much more, and much more (I wager) well-known. Dianne Vapnek has spent ten years building an energizing, eye-opening festival, and God knows she’s not one to lose ambition. Who knows what the next ten years of Summerdance could bring.

August 02, 2006  ·  10:26 AM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)