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Apollinaire Scherr, one-time Bay Area dance-watcher and now a feistily individualistic (and sometimes controversial) dance writer for Newsday, has just started a blog at the invaluable Arts Journal.
Among the topics her first post poses for exploration:
"--Do I have to leave my brain at the door? Some definitions of "stupid" in dance, and why people don't need to tolerate it
--Blackface in ballet: some definitions of "offensive" in ballet, and why people don't need to make excuses for it
--Civility in criticism: what would that be and what's it worth?
--The complaints about New York City Ballet's Peter Martins, and why he's not listening
--The trend in modern dance of using untrained dancers, and the trial it puts us through
--The contempt some modern-dance choreographers have for critics: do we deserve it?"
San Francisco's own Paul Parish has already jumped in. Go here to check it out.
September 28, 2006 · 10:56 AM · Dance · Comments (0)
My review of "Classical Savion" appeared in yesterday's Chronicle:
" "Can you get rid of that?" Savion Glover called to a harried stagehand at UC Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall on Friday night. And then, after the speaker's hum persisted, "Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to do this next number ex-amplification."
No one worried. Just 10 minutes into Glover's latest touring show, "Classical Savion," it was clear the onetime "Bring in 'Da Noise, Bring in 'Da Funk" prodigy doesn't need mikes. In fact, it takes a while to adjust to the thunderous boom of Glover's taps on a hollow wood stage as behind him a nine-piece string ensemble plays everything from Mendelssohn to Shostakovich. But even when Glover's rhythms were as light and crisp as castanets, the crowd was rapt .
It's hardly news that you can put a fresh beat under Bach and come up with something swinging, and "Classical Savion" is no longer so novel. The show played Marin Veterans' Memorial Auditorium in November before coming to Cal Performances for this one-night stand. But to hear the way Glover absolutely infiltrates Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" -- sliding a sunny Latin rhythm beneath the last flutters of "Spring," letting the lull in "Winter" sway before hitting eighth notes like a sudden storm -- is to witness deep musicianship, not gimmickry. This show has reportedly been retooled since its January 2005 unveiling; whatever the past failings, Glover can now keep a vast auditorium spellbound for the better part of two hours without an intermission."
Click here for the full review.
September 26, 2006 · 01:17 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
Kathak at the Crossroads
Dozens of Kathak gurus and disciples straight from India are about to take over the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts for a major international conference. I wrote about the man behind the gathering, San Francisco's own Chitresh Das, for today's New York Times:
"IN most classical dance forms, effortlessness is an illusion, but in Indian Kathak it’s a force of will. That seemed the only way to explain the strained, determined smiles of a dozen women as they stamped and spun, tunics soaked with sweat and feet laden with five pounds of bells. At the front of the room Chitresh Das, the wild-eyed man who styles himself the George Balanchine of Kathak, slapped the tabla. “Taka dimi, taka dimi,” he shouted, chanting the beat. “Come on, I’m not hearing you. Louder!”
The rhythms rushed to an ecstatic explosion, and as the climax faded, Mr. Das’s face softened from the stern authority of Shiva to the mischievous confidence of Krishna, two Hindu deities he has portrayed countless times in six decades devoted to his ancient art.
“This is a recent thing in Kathak history,” he said, nodding proudly at the panting women in the cultural center where he gives his classes. “You see, because our form is classical doesn’t mean it doesn’t evolve.”
He was talking about his proudest achievement, Kathak Yoga: not the latest exercise craze, but rather a practice of movement meditation that updates one of India’s eight official classical dance forms, as deemed by the Sangeet Natak Akademi, India’s rough equivalent to the National Endowment for the the Arts.
Traditionally Kathak has been passed on through intensive study with a single teacher and performed in long solo improvisations that can last for hours at a stretch. But this more modern form features dancers continually reciting the basic rhythm while embellishing upon it with their feet.
Kathak, a northern Indian dance tradition and the country’s only classical dance form with both Muslim and Hindu influences, has undergone many evolutions in the last 20 years. These include Martha Graham-like abstractions, Bollywood-esque spectacles, even a lavish Kathak “Romeo and Juliet.” Akram Khan, who melds Kathak and contemporary dance, is one of the hottest choreographers in Britain, and fusion is a buzzword among Kathak practitioners in India.
That’s a far cry from the intimate performances of kathakas (the word literally means storytellers) who delighted 17th- and 18th-century Mughal rulers by acting out Hindu tales and riffing with virtuoso tabla players."
Click here for the full story.
September 24, 2006 · 05:26 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
I was at the Savion Glover show at Cal Performances last night and found it--no surprise--mostly brilliant; the review will be in Monday's Chronicle. In the meantime, just a reminder that David Dorfman Dance is also at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts this weekend; I'll be there Sunday. Dorfman's rare visit to San Francisco in 2005 was one of the highlights of that dance year for me; He achieves a real interplay between text and movement that many "talky" choreographers don't, and he's challenging and funny all at once. The subject of his latest, "Underground" sounds a little dicey to me--it uses the 1969 activists the Weathermen as a launching point for exploring the line between political agitation and terrorism. But it's hard to imagine Dorfman getting preachy or heavy-handed, so I'll happily take my chances. Unfortunately, the Chronicle's not covering the show, but Allan Ulrich should soon have a review up on Voice of Dance.
September 23, 2006 · 09:34 AM · Dance · Comments (1)
To those who like to keep up with me, I'm sorry things have been slow on this site as of late. The good news is that my personal life is resettling (I am now happily ensconced on the north shore of Oakland's Lake Merritt) and that I've actually been getting a lot of writing done. The catch is that you can't see any of it yet. I've finished four short stories lately, and embarked on a longer project which I refuse to jinx by speaking much about, but which seems to have tremendous emotional energy. The important thing is that I see my writing improving hugely--and perhaps I'll be able to share some of what I've been working on someday.
In the meantime, the dance season is finally lurching ahead, and people are beginning to ask me for recommendations. I haven't seen anything spectacular in dance yet (you'll be seeing plenty of my dance reviews in the Chronicle over the coming months), but during this lull I was absolutely astonished by the Kronos Quartet's latest program at the Herbst Theater last Monday. My astute companion Allan Ulrich reviewed it for Britain's Financial Times:
"Five years to the day after the US first confronted its own vulnerability, the Kronos Quartet has begun its new season with a unique remembrance of that horrifying moment. Music, we already knew, stirs the memory, comforts and transcends the mundane. It can also express the inexpressible. Now this perennially daring artistic organisation has asked us to consider through the string quartet medium the world as a single community, riven by shared anxieties.
Awakening: A Musical Meditation on the Fifth Anniversary of 9/11 ingeniously weaves 13 works from 12 countries into an unbroken, 100- minute sequence that alarms, terrifies, soothes and ultimately proposes a measure of hope. The Kronos journeys from traditional Muslim prayer calls (adroitly transcribed) to the solace of Aulis Sallinen’s Winter Was Hard (assisted by an ethereal children’s choir) and the premiere of a rescoring for strings of Vladimir Martynov’s spiritually drenched Beatitudes."
Unfortunately you have to be a subscriber to read the full review, and my non-music-critic report is far less sophisticated than Allan's: In short, the Martynov moved me to tears.
Also unfortunately, Michael Gordon's "The Sad Park," the piece I liked the least, is the one work from this program Kronos seems to be taking on the road. But for what it's worth, Martynov's music has also cropped up recently in the work of Canadian choreographer Aszure Barton, in the elegiac closing piece she created for the Baryshnikov Arts Center tour. His music--and Barton's dance--are both gorgeous.
Stay tuned for dance reviews in the Chronicle--and some dance writing elsewhere--beginning next week.
September 14, 2006 · 09:38 PM · Misc. · Comments (0)
I loved Mark Haddon's "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time" as much as the next person, so I was genuinely disappointed to find that his new novel, "A Spot of Bother," is rather lightweight stuff. From my review in yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle:
"It must be the best kind of curse, writing a first novel that becomes a smash best-seller and also happens to be a fine book. Or maybe Britain's Mark Haddon never worried about what fans of "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" might expect from his follow-up.
The 2003 first novel that sent legions of book club members to their local bookstores asking, "Do you have that one about the dog and the night?" boasted a great hook: An autistic boy investigates the death of a neighbor's dog and accidentally uncovers the secrets of his parents' split. But it wasn't any mere gimmick that had readers pushing "Curious Incident" into friends' hands, and it wasn't simply the mesmerizing believability with which Haddon entered the autistic mind. There were high stakes in "Curious Incident," and heartbreak.
Haddon's new novel, "A Spot of Bother," doesn't have that kind of power, and it's not likely to win ardent admirers. It's a pleasant comic caper, the literary equivalent of a night spent watching a romantic comedy. There's nothing wrong with it, but nothing hugely memorable, either.
It takes place in a quaint English village and revolves, as so many romantic comedies do, around a wedding. Katie Hall, a well-educated single mom, is about to marry Ray, a goodhearted working-class lug. The problem is, she can hardly force herself to tell him, "I love you," and frets that she's using him for free child care and housing. Meanwhile, brother Jamie loses love-of-his life Tony when he selfishly declines to invite Tony to the nuptials. Mother Jean, by the way, is having an affair with her husband's former co-worker. And the final trouble that makes this all collapse? George Hall, the family's sweetly unhinged patriarch, has just discovered a patch of eczema he feels certain is cancer."
Click here for the full review.
September 04, 2006 · 08:46 AM · Books · Comments (0)
