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Ballet etiquette makes it to Craigslist. Via Criticaldance.
It's June, the deadest dance time of the year, and though I'm off to Joe Goode's latest tonight and Mary Carbonara Dances next week, I'm mostly seizing the downtime for my non-dance writing--nine pages yesterday, five thus far today. I'm not talking much about what I'm working on these days, and I'm trying not to fret about the nosedive my income will take without the freelance pay coming in. Wish me luck, faith, and momentum, and you'll hear more from me on dance later this month.
May 31, 2007 · 03:13 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
Catching up on this week's dance writing for the San Francisco Chronicle. First, Diablo Ballet:
"The case for survival was in the dancing Saturday.
Diablo Ballet needs half a million dollars by July 1 to carry on; the chamber-size East Bay company, which for 13 years has been heavily funded by Ashraf Habibullah, the founder of an engineering company called Computers and Structures Inc., recently lost most of his sponsorship. So far $100,000 has come in, and the troupe is resolute, according to co-Artistic Director Nikolai Kabaniaev, who took the stage between ballets at Walnut Creek's Lesher Center for the Arts. "It's going to be a difficult road, but we're confident and determined," he said. "We're here to stay."
That looked like good news indeed during a revival of KT Nelson's hip 2000 work "It's Not What You Think," to the pop music of Björk. I've long thought that Nelson's flirty, high-voltage commissions count among the things Diablo does best, along with respectable stagings of Balanchine and certain family-friendly one-act story ballets of Kabaniaev."
With the good comes the ugly, further down:
"It was an up-and-down night at a crucial crossroads for the company, for if "It's Not What You Think" is Diablo at its best, Kabaniaev's 2005 "The Legend of Taj Mahal" is Diablo at its worst. Forget the silly necrophiliac story -- dying Shah dances with long-dead wife -- forget the PG-rated sex, the pastiche soundtrack. The real sin here is the absolute absence of choreographic interest, the vapid, paint-by-numbers phrases. And the only real redemption was the steely dancing and chiseled torso of Bohnstedt."
Click here for the full review.
Next up, the debut of a new collective by two stars of SF modern dance:
"As up-and-coming choreographers, Bliss Kohlmyer Dowman and Kara Davis enjoy more advantages than most. Unlike so many would-be dancemakers who graduate from college and blithely put on a show, Dowman and Davis have spent years of apprenticeship as stars of the San Francisco scene: Dowman in the companies of Janice Garrett and Robert Moses, Davis dancing with Margaret Jenkins, Kunst-Stoff, Garrett and -- well, just about everyone else.
Both women are riveting presences, and they count among their willing friends many of the Bay Area's finest dance performers. This made Friday's opening for their newly formed Project Agora at Dance Mission Theater far more rewarding than most debuts.
"Agora" means "a public forum" in Greek, and this self-described curatorial organization comes with a grandly stated ambition: to "promote creative dialogue between artists." Grammar sticklers might want to correct that preposition to read "among artists" (as in, three or more) but perhaps "between" is really correct since, at this point, Agora counts only two.
Sure, there was also a dance film from Greta Jorgensen, but it was dull and felt like filler. The meat was that Dowman and Davis each had a premiere, and Dowman reprised a work from last year.
It's too early in their careers to crown one of these women the real talent, but Davis stole the evening with her "Second Infinity." It had the best music of the program -- a doleful score by Sarah Jo Zaharako, performed live on violin, bass and cello, then augmented with feedback and electronic distortion -- but, more important, for a fledgling choreographer, "Second Infinity" had keen structure and mounting tension."
Click here for more.
And finally, a feature on a ballet teacher who actually got my butt back into class for the first time in four years last week--a humbling but gratifying experience:
"Sally Streets opens her arms into an elegant second position, her face with its crown of spiky hair raised nobly to the mirror. "One, two, three," she counts, feet moving in tidy tendus as her students watch carefully. "Five, six, and a seven and ... what happened?"
She marks the steps with narrowed eyes, catches the missing piece of logic, smiles grandly. "I made a mess. That's part of the experience."
Looking spry in purple leggings at 73, Streets has a rich trove of ballet experience, but she rarely makes a mess. Her classes are so concise and clear that flop-footed hobbyists and polished retired professional dancers alike flock to them, making their way from a quiet, leafy stretch of Berkeley's College Avenue to a studio tucked in the back of the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts.
This morning, Streets' devotees include former Diablo Ballet dancer Erika Johnson and past Oakland Ballet star and choreographer Michael Lowe. But by far, Streets' most famous onetime student is her daughter, New York City Ballet principal Kyra Nichols, who retires next month after an astonishing 33 years as one of that company's most beloved ballerinas.
It's not the only milestone on Streets' mind: Last month the school she founded, Berkeley Ballet Theater, celebrated its 25th anniversary. Once a neighborhood operation, BBT now counts 275 enrolled children and sends alumni to prestigious programs like Juilliard and SUNY Purchase. And though Streets is artistic director emerita, she shows no signs of slowing, teaching five days a week and demonstrating combinations -- even thigh-busting développés -- full out."
Click here to read on.
May 24, 2007 · 04:13 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
Another show worth seeing during a busy dance week--my review in today's Chronicle:
"Those who think postmodern dance sounds about as fun as a root canal need to get themselves to ODC Theater tonight to see the final performance of David Gordon's "Dancing Henry Five." Yes, those Judson Church rebels of 1960s New York could be an ascetic, left-brained bunch ("No to spectacle!" Yvonne Rainer famously railed), but Gordon was always one of their wittiest members, and his delight in the simple magic of theater is fresh as ever. "Henry Five" was an instant hit in Manhattan three years ago, and it was both a pleasure and a provocation Thursday, when it stopped on national tour as the anchor of ODC's newly reenergized presenting program.
Watching this hourlong reduction of "Henry V," you remember how much of what we consider "postmodern" -- the reflexive calling to awareness of how a work of art is working -- is latent in Shakespeare, and appreciate how Gordon has run with it. After all, Gordon's narrator (and wife), Valda Setterfield, is only quoting the Bard's own prologue when she beseeches the audience to use their imaginations, then adds that in this production "we have only seven dancers, three dummies and me."
The fun is in watching this cast -- clad in rugby gear -- bring the story to life using only a ladder, folding chairs and cardboard-looking placards. Their soundtrack is William Walton's cinematic score, interspersed with dialogue from the Laurence Olivier movie version, and Gordon's own text. "We're going to have to move this along pretty fast," the grand matron Setterfield says, providing cues like "Here follows a short court rubber ball dance" in appropriately Shakespearean intonation."
Click here for the full review.
May 19, 2007 · 04:42 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
Worth a trip to the airport: My latest review in today's Chronicle:
"A few years ago, Joanna Haigood named one of her entrancing installations "Ghost Architecture." The title could easily describe her entire body of work. A Haigood piece is not so much a dance as it is a haunting, plumbing the spectral traces of a location's past through meticulous research. True, there's spectacle -- Haigood's use of aerial rigging sends performers scaling the sides of old granaries or crawling along the Ferry Building's clock tower. But the shock of airborne acrobatics wears off quickly as you watch dancers float ghostlike toward the earth, and the lulling effect is intentional: Haigood's work is all about calmly contemplating what has come before.
You might wonder whether she could find much to contemplate in a space as spit-shined and modern as the San Francisco International Airport's International Terminal, where her Zaccho Dance Theatre continues to perform "Departure and Arrival" through Saturday. But instead of looking back, Haigood has looked up -- to the hull-like structures that loom high above the vast lobby. These reminded Haigood of ship hulls that once carried slaves to the Americas. It's a perfect conceptual fit with the theme of this year's San Francisco International Arts Festival, "The Truth in Knowing/Now: A Conversation Across the African Diaspora." And "Departure and Arrival" made a perfectly thoughtful and thought-provoking way to kick off the festival's jam-packed 11 days on Wednesday night.
Among the large crowd, dozens of tired travelers stopped to gaze at the rafters, where a rope-harnessed Haigood slowly tumbled down toward the most striking element of Wayne Campbell's rigging design, three steel structures shaped like house frames. Below her, an all-African American cast danced on three platforms, Shereel Washington and Raissa Simpson in African-like stampings and hip rolls, Maurya Kerr and Robert Henry Johnson in a molten duet that soon had Johnson pushing her into doglike submission."
Click here to read the rest.
May 18, 2007 · 01:54 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
My Chronicle report on the newly unveiled plans for San Francisco Ballet's 75th season:
"San Francisco Ballet will crown its 75th anniversary season with a New Works Festival of 10 world premieres in 2008, as well as an international tribute to the company with visits by the New York City Ballet, the National Ballet of Canada and Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo, the Ballet announced Wednesday.
The season, which also includes a tribute to Jerome Robbins and the return of the classic story ballet "Giselle," will run Jan. 29 to May 6. San Francisco Ballet will then embark on a four-city national tour in September, including engagements at New York's City Center and Washington D.C.'s Kennedy Center.
It's a strikingly forward-looking celebration for the country's oldest professional ballet company, the one nod to history being a revival of former Artistic Director Lew Christensen's 1938 piece of Americana, "Filling Station." Instead of staging a retrospective, Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson is looking to the company's future with fresh choreography by an eclectic clutch of dancemakers both luminary and emerging.
Some New Works Festival participants, like Julia Adam, Val Caniparoli and Yuri Possokhov, are homegrown talents; others, including Paul Taylor, Stanton Welch, James Kudelka and Christopher Wheeldon, are international figures with long ties to the Ballet under Tomasson's 22-year tenure. One, Jorma Elo, is new to San Francisco. Mark Morris, always news-making, will use a new score by famed minimalist composer John Adams, co-commissioned by Stanford Lively Arts and Carnegie Hall. Also creating a work on the company is local modern dance great Margaret Jenkins."
Click here for more.
May 11, 2007 · 09:17 AM · Dance · Comments (0)
Muriel Maffre's adieu at SF Ballet--my review in today's Chronicle:
"Muriel Maffre raised her impossibly long arms toward the War Memorial Opera House ceiling Sunday night, then let them drop -- clunk -- hopelessly into her shoulder joints like the limbs of an abandoned marionette. The image was famous -- Anna Pavlova's "Dying Swan" -- and yet in one keenly considered movement, Maffre had made us see it anew. The standing ovation came instantly: This was a charged evening at the San Francisco Ballet, a farewell gala for a dancer of international singularity.
Some ballerinas are especially loved for their charisma, some for their musicality, some for their technical prowess. During her 17 years at the Ballet, Maffre has been something else. A majestic presence at more than 6 feet tall en pointe, she has neither fought her height nor relied on the length of her legs for sheer spectacle, though they certainly provide that. Instead, she has rallied her formidable intelligence to investigate every mechanical possibility of her unorthodox physicality. Each role she tackled in her parting sampling of short showpieces offered a stunning study in kinesthetic logic."
Click here for the full review, and scroll down for this bit about Saturday's momentous "Don Q" performance, which I happened to catch:
"It wasn't the only dramatic bow of the weekend: On Saturday, Gonzalo Garcia graced the Opera House a final time in "Don Quixote." When his partner, Tina LeBlanc, injured her knee in the first act Garcia carried her off. Molly Smolen and Helimets rushed over to dance the second act and so Garcia could have his last dance, Vanessa Zahorian was called in to partner him in the third. At curtain LeBlanc was back, but in a knee brace, bearing flowers that Garcia accepted before again carrying her across the stage."
May 08, 2007 · 10:58 AM · Dance · Comments (0)
Gonzalo Garcia gives his last performance in San Francisco with SF Ballet this Saturday. I interviewed him for the Chronicle:
"Gonzalo Garcia rises on tiptoe, brown eyes wide, chest reaching. He opens his arms for his ballerina, Tina LeBlanc, and she melts inside them, giggling.
It's the same swooning reaction legions of ballet fans have to Garcia's Spanish good looks and bighearted dancing, but there's an undercurrent of regret this afternoon in one of San Francisco Ballet's studios. The "Don Quixote" performances LeBlanc and Garcia are rehearsing for, with their final show scheduled for Saturday evening, will mark Garcia's last dance in San Francisco.
"I'm losing my favorite partner!" LeBlanc laments as they rewind the tape to run their romantic pas de deux once more. "We really feel each other," she explains.
"We breathe together," Garcia interjects in his sibilant Castilian accent.
"I wouldn't say we're one entity, but it's the closest I've come to that," LeBlanc says.
LeBlanc, the company's most sparkling veteran ballerina, knows just what she's losing. So do the Ballet's audiences. Garcia, 27, is a special case in San Francisco Ballet history, a joyful boy who grew up in the company's school to become a personal protege of Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson. His jumps are soaring, his musicality engrossing, his puppyish enthusiasm irresistible. But most all, his pure love of dancing is magnetic.
"Some people in the audience say, I feel like I own you," Garcia says during a rehearsal break, in a conference room with sunny views of the Civic Center. "And they do. They see things in my dancing I can't see. And I'm so happy they stuck with me from beginning to end."
But with familiarity comes fierce attachment, and small wonder fans were shocked and crestfallen at the announcement, a month ago, that Garcia would leave at the end of this season. The news came just as Garcia was hitting a high point of his career, secure as the company's leading male dancer in roles as iconic as Balanchine's "Apollo" and "Giselle's" Prince Albrecht.
His plans weren't revealed, except for a summer stint with Morphoses, star choreographer Christopher Wheeldon's new pick-up venture. And no reasons were given, prompting gossip and incredulous speculation. Had there been a falling-out with Tomasson? With other dancers in the company? After Garcia's wildly successful guest appearance with New York City Ballet in 2004, was he finally jumping ship for that troupe?"
Click here for the full story.
May 02, 2007 · 02:39 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
