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the dance year that was

I recap the Bay Area's year in dance for today's Chronicle:

"HIGH: ODC Dance Commons ODC/Dance opened a gleaming 23,000-square-foot, $9.5 million center for dance in the Mission. With classes for young and old, rehearsal space for up-and-coming San Francisco companies, a physical therapy clinic, community lounge and -- every dancer's ultimate dream -- clean showers, this bustling hub is a boost to the entire dance community.

LOW: Oakland Ballet Just months after a 40th anniversary comeback, the company announced in January that it would dissolve after floundering under Artistic Director Karen Brown. But then in December, Oakland Ballet's beloved 70-year-old founder, Ronn Guidi, brought his "Nutcracker" back to the Paramount Theatre -- a move he hopes is prelude to starting a new ballet troupe in Oakland.

MOST IMPROVED: Erika Shuch. Her intuitive style of dance theater is tender, hip and unafraid to ask big, childlike questions. Her talent announced itself early -- but then the growing pains came. Intersection for the Arts let her keep exploring, even when the immediate results were distanced and diffuse. Then in July she unveiled "Orbit" -- sweet, silly and serious all at once, and her best work yet.

MOST VALUABLE PLAYER: Yuri Possokhov. The San Francisco Ballet principal dancer retired from dancing, but not before being named resident choreographer. This dramatic Bolshoi alumnus has too much talent for the company to let him get away."

A list of top 10 performances follows, and I'm rather pleased with it. My personal seared-into-memory favorites: Kathak master Birju Maharaj, San Francisco Ballet in Forsythe's "Artifact Suite," and the kinesthetic superheroes of Batsheva Dance Company.

I deliberated long and hard about the rest of the field because it was, locally, a better-than-average year for dance. Just six years ago the San Francisco dance scene was in crisis, forced out of its real estate by the dot com boom, angry, and panicked. Now Margaret Jenkins has her own space again--and one of her best works in years, "A Slipping Glimpse," soon to embark on national tour. Brenda Way at ODC has given us a light-filled dance center, home to the come-as-you-are classes of Rhythm and Motion, to local companies, and indeed to the whole dance commuity.

Over on Market and 7th, the San Francisco Dance Center is filled not just with professional dancers but also the students of LINES Ballet's new BFA program--and artistic director Alonzo King has just won a prestigious new USA Artists grant. Rob Bailis is now at the helm of ODC Theater, bringing us smartly curated programs of Bay Area and national talents alike. San Francisco Ballet is dancing better than ever, and gearing up for a 75th anniversary season in 2008.

Could we be entering another Bay Area dance boom? 2007 is looking awfully good. I'll have a list of 10 dance performances to look forward to in next Sunday's Datebook. The obvious picks are there--San Francisco Ballet, Alvin Ailey, Paul Taylor--but so are several lower-flying San Francisco-based talents I've had my eye on. Watch out for the link here next Sunday, and in the meantime let me know your own highlights from 2006.

Here's to much more great dancing in 2007. Happy New Year.

December 31, 2006  ·  12:03 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

Happy Birthday, Emmet

My brother Emmet, an Army sniper currently on his second tour to Iraq, turns 25 today.

Happy birthday, Emmet! Six months to go--can't wait to have you home.

December 16, 2006  ·  02:55 PM   ·  Personal   ·  Comments (0)

the "Nutcracker" cure

I was in an utterly foul mood before I entered the Opera House Thursday night, and within twenty minutes of San Francisco Ballet's "Nutcracker," all felt right with the world. Here's my review in the Chronicle:

"Everyone loves unwrapping shiny new things at Christmastime, but the true test of a "Nutcracker" is how it ages. San Francisco Ballet's $3.5 million production looked dazzling when it premiered two years ago. It looked even better Thursday, when the company gave it an opening-night performance full of spirit and warmth.

To say that Martin Pakledinaz's elegant costumes still sparkle and Michael Yeargan's stunning Edwardian-era sets look freshly minted is to miss this "Nutcracker's" deeper satisfactions. Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson placed a shrewd bet on civic pride when he set his "Nutcracker" in San Francisco circa the 1915 World's Fair -- but he did so much more right besides.

It's easy, and common, to transpose the action embedded in Tchaikovsky's eternal score to a novel time and place, but far more rare to make such emotional and storytelling sense of it. I can only imagine Tomasson's excitement when he hit upon the device -- too clever to reveal here -- that allows a grown-up ballerina to dance, as Clara, with her Nutcracker Prince. The moment lifts this "Nutcracker" from mere fantasy to a richer plane, the sweet tale of a not-so-little girl's first brush with maturity. The whole production, already bathed in lighting designer James F. Ingalls' luminous pastels, glows more brightly because of it."

And you have to click through to see this photo of the snow scene by Chronicle photographer Katy Raddatz. Beautiful.

December 16, 2006  ·  10:30 AM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

This is fun . . . and sort of treacherous. Time Out New York lets the New York dance community review the New York dance critics. The Village Voice's Deborah Jowitt comes out on top, followed by the Wall Street Journal's Robert Greskovic, the Times' Jennifer Dunning, and the New Yorker's Joan Acocella. Newsday's relative newcomer Apollinaire Scherr makes a strong showing, and Time Out's own Gia Kourlas gets good marks but also draws commentary nastier than anything ever printed in her controversial reviews. (What were the editors thinking when they printed that bit about her being a "fashionista and a bitch"? That they didn't want to be seen as going soft on their own?)

Over on her blog, Apollinaire leaps on the list and deems it a potentially serviceable undertaking. I share her issues with the methodology, and I too wondered, where is Tobi Tobias?

I'm not brave enough to call for a similar ranking of West Coast critics.

December 07, 2006  ·  06:12 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

Memo to the Bay Area Dance Community

I'm putting together a list of ten dance performances to look forward to in 2007. My deadline is December 20. If you'd like to be considered, please email information about your performance to rachel at rachel howard dot com no later than December 13.

Many thanks!

December 07, 2006  ·  10:11 AM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

I reviewed Ivory Coast troupe Compagnie TcheTche for today's Chronicle:

"Pain has probably never displayed itself so authentically as on the faces of Compagnie TchéTché, a quartet of female dancers from Ivory Coast. Suffering was inescapable Friday night at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Forum as the 9-year-old troupe made its Bay Area debut, throwing themselves into each other's arms, clutching their throats as though strangled and then offering their hands to the sky in desperate, disintegrating prayer.

The real drama, though, was in the eyes: tense, watery, constantly on the verge of tears. At the end of the hourlong "Dimi" -- which translates roughly to "sorrow" -- the women broke down into audible sobs, and their mournful expressions at curtain call suggested this was no Herculean feat of acting.

Rarely, though, did the power of their feeling come across in movement. In one of the more effective episodes, Nina Kipre flies backward across the floor as though shot, clutches her hands to her crotch, then removes her corduroy blazer and rolls it so tightly against her stomach you almost feel it's a baby she might crush out of a sheer desire to shield it. It's chilling when she then saunters off, hand swinging as though to an imaginary beat.

But, mostly, founder Béatrice Kombé's choreography comes off as a series of disconnected studio exercises, lacking through-line and structure."

Click here for the full review.

December 04, 2006  ·  02:48 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (1)

I was surprised and saddened yesterday to receive a press release announcing that Summerdance Santa Barbara, the fantastically smart and provocative festival of contemporary dance founded by Dianne Vapnek, is suspending operations after ten years. I followed this festival from its start, when I was a twenty-year-old would-be dance critic writing for the Santa Barbara Independent and Vapnek brought out Doug Varone and Dancers, the first company of real sophistication I'd ever had a chance to watch in rehearsal and lecture demonstrations. From the beginning, the festival’s biggest asset was Vapnek’s good taste, which leaned toward the brainy and slightly naughty: Doug Elkins, Larry Keigwin, and Aszure Barton, for instance, with forays into flamenco and tap. The festival’s other major asset, of course, was setting: There is nothing quite like watching the Brian Brooks Moving Company dance on the lawn of the Santa Barbara Mission with the view stretching towards mountains on one side and the ocean on the other on a balmy July day.

Vapnek didn’t just import companies: She gave them time and space to work, and commissioned new dances. She also brought kids from the impoverished Orange County town of Santa Ana to take class with world-class teachers. At last July’s festival, everything looked full-tilt: Mikhail Baryshnikov stopped with his Hell’s Kitchen Dances program as part of Summerdance, Robert Battle set a work on local company State Street Ballet, Doug Varone and Dancers began a new piece, and Aszure and Artists danced sold out shows.

The festival was a labor of love for Vapnek, who invested so much of her own money in it. Perhaps she needed a rest, and she deserves it. No doubt she’ll continue feeding the national dance scene in myriad behind-the-scenes ways. The festival never got the wider attention I felt it deserved, perhaps because L.A. didn’t have a substantial enough dance scene for Summerdance Santa Barbara to become a satellite to. But it helped change Santa Barbara from a sleepy resort town into a destination for truly sophisticated art, and it gave me and thousands of other audience members some of the most charmed dance experiences of our lives. I’ll be in mourning come next July.

December 01, 2006  ·  03:08 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)