« March 2007 | Main | May 2007 »
My review of SF Ballet's "Don Quixote" in today's Chronicle:
"Committed San Francisco Ballet fans will want to know this first: Lorena Feijoo and Joan Boada aren't performing in the current run of "Don Quixote," which closes the 2007 season this week. Boada, our happiest Basilio, is out injured, and Feijoo, the company's iconic Kitri, has understandably opted not to learn the role with a different partner.
But discoveries are made through just such casting deprivations.
Saturday, in their absence, two things were clear: The Ballet's "Don Quixote," though far from perfect, is a lively and lighthearted spectacle, satisfying in its own right. And Vanessa Zahorian has the role of her career in it. She was dazzling as Kitri, and not just because she possesses the perfect technical arsenal: freeze-frame balances, pirouettes so joyful and secure that she can't help tossing doubles and even triples into the famous Act III fouettés.
Often polished but distant in other ballets, she was full-blooded here, sashaying through every step with sensuality in her shoulders and a vivacious energy in her smile. "Don Quixote's" Kitri, when not performing great physical feats, must be a wily teenager, walking in that loose-limbed adolescent way. Zahorian made the dance steps the natural expression of Kitri's nondancing confidence and mischievousness."
Click here for the full review.
Usually my reviews aren't trimmed much, but this one got cut a lot. Here's what I originally wrote:
"Committed San Francisco Ballet fans will want to know this first: Lorena Feijoo and Joan Boada aren’t performing in the current run of “Don Quixote,” which closes the 2007 season this week. Boada, our happiest Basilio, is out injured, and Feijoo, the company’s iconic Kitri, has understandably opted not to learn the role with a different partner.
But through such casting deprivations discoveries are made. Feijoo and Boada, both born and trained in Cuba, were the real story when SF Ballet unveiled its first “Don Q” in 2003. They were made to dance this ballet, and dance it together, and their American debuts in it provided high drama: just before the premiere, the company announced it would not renew the oft-injured Boada’s contract; he lit up the stage and the decision was promptly reversed. Feijoo and Boada’s performances that night were so charged that they have seemed to own the ballet here ever since, continuing to constitute its local raison d’etre even as other fine dancers blossomed during the ballet’s return in 2004. But Saturday, in their absence, two things were clear: SF Ballet’s “Don Q,” though far from perfect, is a lively and light-hearted spectacle, satisfying in its own right. And Vanessa Zahorian has the role of her career in it.
She was dazzling as Kitri, and not just because she possesses the perfect technical arsenal: freeze-frame balances, pirouettes so joyful and secure that she can’t help tossing doubles and even triples into the famous Act III fouettés. Often polished but distant in other ballets, she was full blooded here, sashaying through every step with sensuality in her shoulders and a vivacious energy in her smile. The key in a story ballet is consistency: in the same way that “Sleeping Beauty’s” Aurora must be a princess, walking pristinely on half-toe between every dance passage, “Don Q’s” Kitri must be a wily teenager, walking in that loose-limbed blasé way of teenagers when not performing great physical feats. Zahorian made the dance steps the natural expression of Kitri’s non-dancing confidence and mischievousness. And that made “Don Q” not just a collection of ballet tricks, but real theater."
April 30, 2007 · 08:02 AM · Dance · Comments (2)
I'm already receiving quite a few emails from SF Ballet fans about last night's "Don Quixote." The disappointment is that Lorena Feijoo and Joan Boada won't be dancing the leads in this run--for reasons which I reveal in the first paragraph of my review set to appear in tomorrow's Chronicle. Unsurprisingly, the Cubans have developed a passionate following here. Check out the paper tomorrow to see what I thought of the replacement first cast.
And please, keep the emails to me coming--but if you have time, please CC the folks at the Chronicle, too. It lets them know that you care about dance and value reading about it in the paper, and it's important that the management know that during these difficult times for newspapers. Whether you wholeheartedly agree with me or think I've lost my head, let the paper know you're reading.
The official contact info, in case you feel so inclined:
"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."
April 29, 2007 · 06:26 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
Last week was subsumed by the sudden death of Michael Smuin. A populist and popular choreographer, former co-director of the San Francisco Ballet, and founder of his wildly successful chamber troupe Smuin Ballets, Smuin was teaching company class on Monday when he collapsed in heart failure. Steven Winn wrote a thorough and excellent obituary for the Chronicle, which you can read here; I contributed some reporting, but in truth not much. The next day the Chronicle had me round up appreciations of Smuin, which resulted in this article; I'm told it turned out well, but I wouldn't know. Chronicle classical music critic Joshua Kosman ended up reporting from the Smuin studios, and most of the material in the story, I suspect, is his, as I assume the byline rightly should be too. Because of guilt over this, I suppose, I haven't been able to bring myself to read it.
There is probably another reason I haven't read it, which is that my participation in any tributes to Smuin is awkward. Six or seven years ago, still very immature as a critic, I thought it good sport to savage Smuin's crowd-pleasing razzle-dazzle; my reviews started out mildly disappointed and confounded by his audience's ardor, and became increasingly and unnecessarily mean-spirited. Growing up and seeing the useless ugliness of sneering, I stopped going to his shows altogether. I figured I'd seen what he was about and didn't care for it; if I found it pandering and vulgar, I didn't need to keep harassing the company with that opinion. Recently, realizing what an unfair target I'd made of Smuin and embarrassed by my past penchant for snobbishness, I'd begun to think I should take in another Smuin Ballet performance to see how my reactions to his unabashedly showy dances had evolved. I wish I'd done this during his lifetime. His dances delighted hundreds of thousands of people. Perhaps if I had not been so bent on proving my own rarified taste, I would have seen why.
I was very sorry to hear of his death. I know the 16 members of his company are in tremendous grief and shock. I hope the Smuin Ballet will continue, and wonder if it might not be turned over to associate director Celia Fushille-Burke, perhaps with the young choreographer Amy Seiwert, whose creative talents Smuin so enthusiastically supported, as resident choreographer.
Smuin was many things--flashy, fun, drawn to theatrical spectacle and over-the-top glitz. But he was never a snob, and for that and much more I admire him, and make my own belated apology.
April 29, 2007 · 02:25 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
I think this is the first author website that actually led me to buy the book.
April 18, 2007 · 05:56 PM · Books · Comments (2)
I've got a review in the Chronicle today:
"For those who don't know, it's worth stating plainly: Alonzo King is the real deal as a choreographer, one of the few bona fide visionaries in the ballet world today, and we are fortunate to have him and his Lines Ballet in San Francisco.
It's especially worth stating lest the deeper wonders of his latest project, which opened Friday at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, be overshadowed by sheer novelty. For this 25th anniversary spring season, King has engaged seven Buddhist monks from China's Shaolin Temple. Renowned for their martial arts, they have lived in San Francisco since 2004 under the auspices of their monastery, and they are spectacular. The older monks flow through Wushu lunges with feline grace, then throw their legs into the air with explosive power; the youngest -- two of three 10-year-old triplets -- toss themselves into backflips that land them on their heads. In another move, they kick their shins to their eyeballs in full splits and then the twins drop -- whap! -- to the floor, like a plank.
Amazing feats, to be sure, but perhaps only King could have merged them with ballet in such a way that illuminates the honor and dignity of both forms, instead of engaging in cheap pageantry. He can do this because he's spent more than two decades stripping ballet of aristocratic veneer and presentational haughtiness, twisting its elemental geometries into a strangely recognizable, strangely alien language that converses with any culture -- and speaks earnest, sometimes overly earnest, truths about the human heart."
King's collaboration with the Shaolin monks is not without a significant flaw. To find out what, read the full review here.
April 16, 2007 · 11:09 AM · Dance · Comments (0)
Don't you love it when your not-so-clever lead gets mangled into something absolutely stupid? The second sentence of my review of San Francisco Ballet's program seven used to read: "a name as unknown in these parts as it is unpronounceable." Ah, well:
"San Francisco Ballet Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson attracts a roster of international choreographers to rival any company in the world, but he's always ready to take a chance on young talent. His latest pick is Matjash Mrozewski, a name that is unknown in these parts and not easy to pronounce either.
He's 31, a former dancer with the National Ballet of Canada, and from the looks of "Concordia," which premiered Wednesday on the Ballet's Program 7, he still has a lot of growing to do. But there is no shame in producing a modestly scaled ballet that teaches you new lessons while keeping your audience reasonably engaged. And there is certainly no shame in being upstaged by a rousing performance of an ebullient masterpiece like George Balanchine's "Symphony in C," which closed the evening on a note of triumph.
"Concordia" has the aura of a "learning ballet" rather than an artistic statement. Kristin Long and Gennadi Nedvigin play the classical couple parading through stately promenades and ports de bras, she in a tutu; Muriel Maffre and Pierre-François Vilanoba are the contemporary couple, limbs melting like hot wax or contorting like the branches of some gnarled old oak."
Click here for the full review.
April 13, 2007 · 01:30 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
My short story "Bolero" is now out in the spring issue of ZYZZYVA, available in a bookstore near you, and online. I'm quite excited about it, but I've hesitated to post it here for two reasons: First, it's very different from the dance writing I do for the Chronicle, which attracts the bulk of my traffic here; second, it's about sex. It's not meant to be titillating, and I believe it to be instead rather tender and sad, but it is explicit.
If that offends you, please don't read it; if it doesn't, click here, or better yet, support the culture of literary magazines and buy a copy of ZYZZYVA from your neighborhood independent bookseller. And come to the San Francisco Main Library May 17th, which brings me to the reason I've finally posted this: I'll be reading that Thursday, alongside other spring issue contributors, at 6:30 p.m. in the Book Bay just off Grove and Larkin Streets. Admission is free.
April 10, 2007 · 03:27 PM · Books · Comments (1)
And here's my profile of Mira Shelub, as it appeared in today's Chronicle:
"German police murdered Mira Shelub's mother during World War II; Mira, as a youth, lived two years in the Polish forest, fending off cold and lice and typhus and hunger until liberation by the Russians in 1945. These are not happy memories, and yet when Mira welcomes a visitor to her Stonestown neighborhood home to talk about them, she is bubbling with excitement.
Her face, with its tasteful eyeliner and fuchsia lipstick, remains squeezed in a bright smile; she strokes her interviewer's hand, calls her "dear" as they enter her immaculate living room with its shag carpet. Mira sits in a chartreuse armchair, her tiny 5-foot-1 frame leaning forward with eagerness. She looks like she can hardly keep from rising.
"I like to talk about my story, because it's the only time I can talk about my husband," she says in her exuberant accent, with its richly rolling r's and crisp t's. "And besides, I am proud of our story. Because we did not go to death without doing anything. We fought the Nazis for a better tomorrow. We were young and brave, and we put up a fight."
To Mira, her years with the Jewish partisan fighters are as much a tale of romance as a tale of survival and revenge. Mira met her future husband, Norman, a partisan leader who blew up trains and attacked German police stations, in the forest. They found a will to live, and to fight back, in each other.
It is not the kind of Harlequin novel love story young Mira Rostov would have imagined for herself when, in 1941, the Russian-German nonaggression pact collapsed. Mira's home in the small northeast Polish town of Zdczieciol (now part of Belarus) was located in the newly formed Jewish ghetto.
Mira's family had been six people living in four rooms; now four other families, 40 people, crowded in. By day, they and Mira were sent to work, for a while hauling rocks, then in a milk factory. Rumors of the Germans liquidating Jews in nearby towns began to circulate. "We told ourselves, 'All right, that is just over there because they don't work as hard as we do, but it could never happen here,' " Mira says. And yet her family built two hiding places, one behind a double wall in a chicken house. That's where Shelub and her younger sister fled one night when shots began to ring out."
Click here for the full story.
April 10, 2007 · 02:43 PM · Misc. · Comments (1)
And now for something very different . . . With Yom Hashoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day, approaching this weekend, the Chronicle asked me to profile Holocaust survivors. We found two extraordinary Bay Area women to interview through the San Francisco-based Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation. Both Sonia Orbuch and Mira Shelub fought alongside armed resistance fighters, or partisans, in the forests of Poland during World War II. Today Sonia's story appeared; tomorrow Mira's will run. Here's Sonia:
"Sonia Orbuch does not like weakness. But today, safe in her Corte Madera townhouse with its swag curtains in soothing shades of peach, Sonia is getting teary.
You might expect tears, given the story she's telling: how 16-year-old Sonia Shainwald fled impending slaughter in the Jewish ghetto of Luboml, Poland, and finally arrived in the forests to join the Soviet anti-German resistance. There she served as a doctor's assistant, treating the injuries of partisan fighters who embarked on regular missions to blow up Nazi trains and disrupt communications. The amputations were horrific. Her uncle was killed. But the partisan leaders imparted one key lesson: You are not allowed to cry.
And today, Sonia insists, she would not be crying were it not for her arm, recently broken in a fall and held in a sling. Sonia, 82, is dressed down in a brown velveteen tracksuit, her weight supported by a cane and her eyes less alert than usual.
"I'm a little more emotional now because of the pain medication," she says matter-of-factly in her faint Polish accent. She gestures to a box of See's candy. "Have a chocolate."
She wears her amber hair well coiffed and holds her regal nose high, and even with her eyes damp there's no mistaking the inborn strength that must have sustained her through those war years. Sonia was always one to face hard realities. When a teenager, hiding in a crawl space from the Germans for two days with 16 other Jews, Sonia realized that her mother would not live much longer, and matter-of-factly told her father that they would have to run, as Germans were beginning to liquidate the ghetto."
Click here for the full story, photos, and links to video clips at the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation web site.
April 09, 2007 · 12:24 PM · Misc. · Comments (0)
Catching up . . . My interview with SF Ballet soloist Rory Hohenstein in the Chronicle yesterday:
"Rory Hohenstein sets down his coffee and raises his arms, and suddenly it's as if he's a different person.
"It's weird internal movement all the time," he says, describing the steps in the ballet "Eden/Eden," stretching his chest wide and undulating his shoulders to demonstrate. His pale face, with its dusting of freckles, no longer looks so boyish; his slight 5-foot-10 frame becomes larger than life.
"I don't know how to explain it," he says, his brown eyes excited. "Some ballets your body just goes crazy for."
Hohenstein looks transformed -- and it is a transformation that San Francisco Ballet audiences have been seeing a lot of lately. Six years ago, as an 18-year-old corps newbie, Hohenstein had an onstage persona more like his presence in real life: friendly, sweet, a little shy. But when Hohenstein steps out in the Opera House these days, he is something else: impassioned, unabashed and possessed of leading-man intensity. Choreographers have taken note.
"Christopher Wheeldon, Mark Morris, William Forsythe -- everyone has singled him out," says company ballet master Ashley Wheater. "Whenever a choreographer new to the company watches rehearsal, they always say, 'Who's that boy in the corner?' And, inevitably, it's Rory."
No surprise, then, that Hohenstein is suddenly all over the place, dancing everything from a charming Frenchman in "Aunis" to one of the lusty sailors in Jerome Robbins' "Fancy Free." Currently he's stealing scenes as the head roper in Agnes de Mille's "Rodeo." This week he reprises his go-for-broke solo as the Red Man in Lar Lubovitch's "Elemental Brubeck."
It's the Red Man solo that launched Hohenstein toward his promotion to soloist in 2006 -- and not just because its razzle-dazzle steps drew on his childhood love of jazz and all things hammy. Exposed and all-out, the role pushed this normally reserved native of small-town Maryland past any last traces of bashfulness."
Click here for the full story--and to learn how Hohenstein got SF Ballet artistic director Helgi Tomasson to rush backstage after a Jeune Ballet de France performance and offer the 18-year-old a contract on the spot.
April 09, 2007 · 11:16 AM · Dance · Comments (0)
I've got an on-the-scene little ditty in the Chronicle today:
"Forget the Big Game. A new rivalry was raging in San Francisco on Thursday night, and you could hear bloodlust and trash talk in the air. Dance, dance, baby. You know, you know, came the rallying cry. Dance, dance, baby. We told you so.
Throughout the Concourse Exhibition Hall, a well-heeled but revved-up mob sipped "Gatortinis" and munched mini corn dogs. They had paid $125 apiece to support ODC Dance Commons, the $9.5 million, 23,000-square-foot dance center opened by ODC/Dance, the city's most established modern dance company, in the heart of the Mission District last year. But the crowd also came looking for a showdown.
For years, millionaire investment banker Warren Hellman -- whose wife, Chris, is a former chair of the San Francisco Ballet board -- wanted to test the question: Who are the better athletes -- sports stars or dancers? The fantasy matchup sprang to mind after taking too many under-appreciative visitors to his box at the Ballet. As Hellman told the audience Thursday: "My wife and I would usually take another couple, and the man would usually be an overweight businessman. During the intermission, I'd ask him, 'So what do you think?' and I got so tired of hearing their responses -- 'It's so effete.' I'd say, 'You focus on one male dancer for five minutes, and you tell me if you've ever been able to do a single thing that they're doing in your life.' "
So with a worthy cause in hand, Hellman approached Sandy Barbour, UC Berkeley's director of athletics, who volunteered her student athletes for "Toe to Toe," a night of intense competition. Cal versus Stanford or UCLA or Southern Cal this was not, but a thirst for victory was clear. The Golden Bears brought out their Straw Hat marching band and cheerleaders decked out in blue and gold; ODC's "coaches" dressed their competitors in silk red and black robes, "Rocky"-style, and assembled their own, markedly funkier, spirit squad. "Work it out!" Corey Brady shouted to fellow dancer Yukie Fujimoto pregame, punching the air as she downed bottled water."
For the full story, and to find out who won--by a landslide--click here.
April 07, 2007 · 02:40 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
Bad news about San Francisco Ballet's program six. My review in today's Chronicle:
"Apparently even the San Francisco Ballet isn't immune from the midseason slump. Granted, program five's crowd-pleasing extravaganza made a hard act to follow, but the sixth repertory slate that opened Wednesday is a bona fide dud. There's a pleasant-enough encore airing of Agnes de Mille's "Rodeo" and a warmed-over revival of Julia Adam's "Night." But what should have been the meat of the program is a world premiere by Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson. I'm sorry to report that "On Common Ground" is the worst ballet by him I've yet seen.
It's a shame because when Tomasson makes intimate ballets tailored to showcase the strengths of favored dancers, the results can be elegant, and sometimes stirring. And in this case, Tomasson began with talent worth exploring. On the veteran side, Tina LeBlanc and Lorena Feijoo share a duet, while Joan Boada and Davit Karapetyan get space-devouring solos. On the emerging side, the slinkily musical soloist Rory Hohenstein shares some teasing interludes with glamour girl Elana Altman and with Jennifer Stahl, a first-year corps member graced by striking long lines and a cool confidence.
Alas, Tomasson seems never to have discovered what he would like to say with this stellar bunch, for rarely has such an inharmonious confusion of theatrical elements appeared on the Opera House stage. The music for "On Common Ground" is by Ned Rorem: swelling, ominous strings, competent but forgettable. Or perhaps you never get a chance to fully hear the score, so quickly are you distracted by Sandra Woodall's visual design.
A layer of giant white gingko leaves, or so I'm told they are, floats high above the stage; they look suspiciously similar to the hovering lotus leaves seen last fall in the butoh troupe Sankai Juku's "Kagemi." The costumes Woodall has paired with this vista are truly flummoxing: black-and-neon leotard dresses that resemble bicycling jerseys for the women; burgundy-and-neon leotards for the men."
Click here for the full review.
April 06, 2007 · 07:43 AM · Dance · Comments (0)
I'd heard whispers of this for weeks, but the San Francisco Ballet just made it official. Gonzalo Garcia--the company's big-hearted Spanish principal, and truly its main male star--is leaving the company. I'd figured the company was awaiting confirmation of his next endeavor before announcing his departure, but the press release states only that Garcia will guest with Christopher Wheeldon's new pick-up company Morphoses this summer and fall. The press release also makes no mention of why Garcia is leaving.
To say his departure is a surprise is an understatement--and it is also a major loss. Garcia rose up through the San Francisco Ballet school and became a clear protege of artistic director Helgi Tomasson. As a student he won the gold medal at the Prix de Lausanne--the youngest dancer ever to do so--but he was so fastidious that when Tomasson first offered him a contract, he deferred in order to train an extra year. His early performances had puppyish excitement --I'll never forget the sweat spraying from his brow like a sprinkler head in the whiz-bang finale of Tomasson's "Prism." From the start he had an incredible jump and clear technical prowress coupled with a wild, almost ragged energy. But what really endeared him to the audience was his obvious, irrepressible joy in dancing. Few dancers give so much of themselves so exuberantly onstage.
I'll never forget his performances as the Brown Boy in Robbins' "Dances at a Gathering," or in Balanchine's "Rubies." I always especially loved his hands, which were big, more like paws, so natural and without artifice. I won't speculate on why he's leaving. I just know we'll all miss his presence so much.
April 03, 2007 · 07:08 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
