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The Paul Taylor Dance Company is in San Francisco through Sunday. My review in today's Chronicle:
"The Paul Taylor Dance Company's annual San Francisco Performances engagement is one of the happier harbingers of spring, but this year the troupe's visit to the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts arrives with twinges of sadness. For one thing, after this week's three programs close, the Taylor dancers won't come our way until 2009, so see them while you can. For another, it's impossible to watch Taylor's newest work and not be moved to mourning. "Lines of Loss," the centerpiece of Tuesday's opening program, is gut-wrenching, and gorgeous. It leaves a weight in the heart. And it leaves no doubt that, at 76, Taylor is far from coasting.
Like many of the best Taylor works, the subject of "Lines of Loss" seems so evanescent, and the staging is so deceptively simple that you wonder how the dance can seem so distinct from all the other wonderful Taylor dances that have preceded it. The answer is the music -- an assemblage of elegiac selections by Alfred Schnittke, Arvo Part, John Cage and others, all on a recording by the Kronos Quartet -- and Taylor's responsiveness to it. Santo Loquasto contributed the white costumes and striking set, a backdrop of charcoal lines that evoke water, or striations of stone; Jennifer Tipton created the shadowed lighting. As usual, they considerably enhance the whole. But the emotional depth is in the movement.
It is sometimes monklike, as the 11 dancers pace the stage with meditatively folded hands, and sometimes ragged. Lisa Viola's hinges into deep backbends become swifter and lower until, upon rising, she is clutching her abdomen as though stabbed. Michael Trusnovec's solo is the beating heart of the piece, as he stretches his arms like a mole groping through darkness."
Click here for the full review.
March 29, 2007 · 09:49 AM · Dance · Comments (0)
Apparently San Francisco Ballet artistic director Helgi Tomasson agreed with my assessment of Sarah Van Patten in "Carousel (A Dance)" and "The Fifth Season," because she and Rachel Viselli have just been promoted to principal. Thanks to the sharp-eyed balletomanes at Ballet Alert for the tip-off.
Here's Van Patten in "The Fifth Season," opposite Pierre-Francois Vilanaoba:
And in "Carousel," also with Vilanoba:
Of course neither image really gives you any idea of the originality of her dancing.
Both photos by Erik Tomasson, courtesy SF Ballet.
March 24, 2007 · 04:42 PM · Dance · Comments (1)
My review of San Francisco Ballet's program five in today's Chronicle:
"On paper, the big news for San Francisco Ballet's Program 5 on Thursday was the company premiere of "Fancy Free," the charming 1944 ballet that launched Jerome Robbins' career, and indeed it looked delightful. But delight was in abundant supply well before this sweet tale of sailors on shore leave arrived to cap the evening. There are three other ballets on the bill, all of them mighty fine, and finely danced. A pleasanter time could not be had at the Opera House.
Part of the gratification is sheer variety. Mark Morris' "Pacific," the opener, is windswept and magisterial; Christopher Wheeldon's "Carousel (A Dance)" (like "Fancy Free," a company premiere) is romance and glee. The return of Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson's elegantly brooding "The Fifth Season" lends the program a melancholy gravitas. It was also a big night for the passionate young soloist Sarah Van Patten, who ought to be given a chance to steal the spotlight more often.
She was the lovely girl in yellow at the center of Wheeldon's "Carousel," a distillation of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical set to a suite orchestrated by William David Brohn. Whether you know the show's plot makes no difference, as Wheeldon captures not its action but its essential feeling -- and does so with remarkable imagination. A large corps whirls round the stage, the women even riding high on their partners' shoulders and holding poles to bring the carousel image to full life.
The ensemble work is full of whimsy -- cartwheels that look like Ferris wheels, and of course lots of carousel waltzing. But the heart of the ballet is a long, lush duet for Van Patten and Pierre-François Vilanoba as a carnival barker.
Van Patten is an unusual dancer who has been slow to receive her full due here. Two years ago, she danced a startlingly realistic "Romeo and Juliet" opposite Vilanoba, but it was third or fourth cast; "Carousel" is the first role to showcase her talent so fully since. She is at her core an actress who works through pure movement, and every step she took in "Carousel" was suffused with emotional motivation, from her tottering, ambivalent run away from Vilanoba's embrace to the woozy loll of her head as she swooned in his arms."
Click here for more of my thoughts on Van Patten, as well as a terrific first cast for "Fancy Free."
March 17, 2007 · 03:01 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
My review of San Francisco Ballet's program four in today's Chronicle:
"If you want to know where the San Francisco Ballet is headed, talk to the younger dancers. For months, they've been buzzing about "Eden/Eden," the futuristic work by British choreographer Wayne McGregor that had its U.S. premiere on the company's Program 4 Tuesday night. Such bizarre, crazy movement! Like nothing we've ever danced! And indeed they danced it with obvious relish.
But what may feel cutting-edge and exciting to dancers brought up in the relatively artistically isolated world of ballet is not always a thrill for the audience. "Eden/Eden" is relentless. It's designed to be. It's about cloning, and it uses music by the minimalist composer Steve Reich -- fast repeating xylophone rhythms intercut with robotic voices, and audio clips of scientists talking about genetic engineering. The nine dancers start out in flesh-colored underwear and bald caps, looking like eerie mannequins; Ursula Bombshell's costumes really do succeed at making them look identical. Later, apparently as they begin to take over the human race, they put on clothes; there's also a tree hovering in the background, and it disappears along with our last shred of humanity. Think Philip K. Dick for the Opera House stage.
The movement would indeed be novel for a ballet dancer. Limbs hyperextend; arms look as if they want to pop out of their joints. Much of it is quite inventive: hips and ribs shimmying upward from deep grand plies; a leg extended with a flexed foot rocking side to side, boom-boom-boom. Muriel Maffre is the high priestess of this kind of style, but the whole cast -- including corps members Dana Genshaft and Hayley Farr -- clearly take to it, and the young soloist Jaime Garcia Castilla has a whip-crack solo that may be his finest moment yet.
So why then does it all grow so tiresome?"
For my best answer to that final question, and the rest of the review, click here.
March 15, 2007 · 10:52 AM · Comments (0)
Catching up on dance reviews I wrote for the Chronicle over the weekend: ODC program two and Janice Garrett & Dancers, both of which repeat this coming weekend.
Here's ODC:
"The members of ODC/Dance looked a little wide-eyed and taken aback by the vigorous ovation at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater on Friday, but they really shouldn't be so surprised. They're performing with such clarity and abandon that's it hard to decide which game is more fun: watching how the ensemble feeds off the intoxicating group energy or picking favorites. To see these 12 dancers slash through co-Artistic Director KT Nelson's "Stomp a Waltz" like the detritus of some renegade tornado is to understand why ODC deserves its status as San Francisco's most established modern dance company. And if there's one thing this 36th anniversary home season will be remembered for in years to come, it's the fierce fineness of the dancing.
It would be nice to say this season will also be remembered for its choreography, but while the performing is top-notch, the premieres are not. There are two new works on Program 2, which repeats this weekend. Nelson's is ambitious, earnest and unintentionally silly; Artistic Director Brenda Way's is modest, pleasant but less than potent. Lest all the glory go to the dancers, it's worth remembering that great companies do not assemble themselves -- directors do. And you can hardly fault those directors for occasionally coasting or taking big risks.
The latter is what Nelson has done in "The Water Project," which is clearly a labor of love, and intended -- you knew the pun was coming -- to make a splash. The visual design, by Kim Turos, hangs coiling tendrils, hoses and sheets of plastic from the rafters. Linda Bouchard's sound collage juxtaposes dripping noises with interludes of clanking industrial calamity, usually without interesting effect."
Click here for the full review.
And here's Janice Garrett:
"Janice Garrett seemed to burst onto the San Francisco dance scene fully formed, sprung from the brow of Zeus. That's because Garrett, who is now in her 50s, danced in the Bay Area in her youth before leaving for New York and then cutting her teeth as a freelance choreographer throughout Europe. She spent more than a decade in this peripatetic way, and when she finally resettled on our shore, in 2001, her "Ostinato" was revelatory: a lush, sculpturally gorgeous, thoroughly accomplished modern dance.
Garrett founded Janice Garrett & Dancers the following year. It's been one of San Francisco's finest companies from its first performances, and its fifth season, which opened Friday at the Cowell Theater and repeats this weekend, proves again why. Few choreographers can match the rich beauty of Garrett's movement, her unerring gift for flowing, complex line. Every step Garrett sets -- and there are lots of them -- arranges her dancers' joints and muscles into the kind of loveliness one could only learn from studying, say, Michelangelo. There is nothing static about her physicality -- it just pours on and on.
But as it pours onward, it raises issues. The truth is, none of Garrett's subsequent works, for all their loveliness, has matched the singular spirit, the heart, the raison d'etre, of "Ostinato." Garrett tends to choreograph by the yard, with sufficient formal ideas but few dramatic ones, and the result is that within those two camps -- comic and lyrical -- all of her dances tend to feel the same. So the question is this: Can a choreographer at this mature stage of development break out of her ways enough to lend her dances meaning, not just prettiness?
Garrett seems to be trying this in "10 Studies on the Vicissitudes of Grief," one of two premieres, and the results are encouraging. "
Click here for the full review.
More readers have been writing in lately to debate my take on things--I love this. Possibly the most important purpose of a review is to spark dialogue--so good or bad (but please not ugly), keep the letters coming. Here's the official info:
"Send letters to Daily Datebook, The San Francisco Chronicle, 901 Mission St., San Francisco, CA 94103, or e-mail to datebookletters@sfchronicle.com. Include your name and city for verification. Letters may be edited for length and clarity."
March 13, 2007 · 12:25 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
My review of the opening of ODC/Dance's home season in yesterday's Chronicle:
"Brenda Way is a choreographer with no shortage of smart ideas. The trouble comes when she tries to throw them all into one dance.
"A Pleasant Looking Woman in Sensible Clothes," her latest, has a clear and timely subject: the political terrorization of ordinary people in their own homes. It also has a lot of accoutrements: video by the Japanese artist Hiraki Sawa, '50s suburban costumes by Cassandra Carpenter, chairs for dancing on as part of Alexander V. Nichols' evocative stage design and a hodgepodge recorded score by David Lang. There are men in suits representing the intrusion of government surveillance into our private lives, a rolling steel door to symbolize our imprisonment within fear, and a generous helping of movement invention. The one thing the dance doesn't have is an emotional arc.
Don't let that keep you from catching ODC/Dance's Program 1, unveiled Thursday during the gala opening of this 36th annual home season, at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. The troupe, full of young talent, has probably never danced better -- both in Artistic Director Way's new piece and in the two very fine dances that flank it. Co-Artistic Director KT Nelson's new "Scramble," set to Bach, is a baroque delight, while Way's 1999 "Investigating Grace," also to Bach, showcases performances worthy of its serene beauty. In fact, the exquisite clarity of these bookends sets the conceptual clutter of "A Pleasant Looking Woman" in stark relief."
Click here for the full review.
March 04, 2007 · 03:01 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
I took my mother and grandmother along to Alvin Ailey Wednesday night. It was my grandmother's first encounter with modern dance, and I thought I couldn't go wrong starting her on "Revelations." She loved it, but then, who doesn't?
My review of program A in today's Chronicle:
"What makes one dance dated and another a delightful reflection of its times? "The Golden Section," the all-dance finale to Twyla Tharp's otherwise problematic dance-drama "The Catherine Wheel," screams '80s. "Solid Gold," roller rinks, Jazzercise: It's all there, in the "Wonder Woman" costumes, in the dazzling turns that burst into shimmying shoulders, in the leaps that stop on a dime before a sprint of "Flashdance"-style running. "The Golden Section" is a time capsule in the best sense, because it doesn't reflect its era so much as reveal Tharp's culturally omnivorous ability to capture it. Or maybe it just seems that way because the members of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater perform it with such infectious playfulness.
Ailey is back at Cal Performances all week with three programs, two of which close with the eternally soul-stirring "Revelations." That classic is reason enough to rush to see them, but as added incentive, Program A, which opened Wednesday and repeats Saturday and Sunday, is one of the stronger Ailey offerings to visit the Bay Area in years -- and "The Golden Section" is a hoot."
Click here for the full review.
A note on the writing: I've been experimenting with these long, more essay-like or narrative-leaning ledes lately--check out the huge block of text that constitutes the first paragraph of this review--and the Chronicle editors have been going for them. Does the approach work? You tell me, but I've been having fun with it.
March 02, 2007 · 07:26 AM · Dance · Comments (0)
