« June 2007 | Main | August 2007 »

Oakland Ballet founder Ronn Guidi is back full tilt. My report in the Chronicle today:

"Ronn Guidi rises from the restaurant table, leg suddenly stretching into full développé as he recounts a rehearsal with the famous choreographer Leonide Massine.

"You see, half the dancers were doing this," Guidi demonstrates with a sweeping arm, nearly knocking into the next table. "And half were doing this. And I said to Massine, 'Which is it?' And he turned to me and said, 'Ronn, it's not the steps. It's the integrity behind the movement.' "

Guidi is somewhere between 70 and 73 years old - he says he's lost track - but with his spry frame, wiry black hair and thick beard, he could pass for someone in his 50s. His face is wild-eyed and puckish, as it always is when he talks about the glory days of the Oakland Ballet, but today he looks especially excited. He's about to attempt a remarkable resurrection. Forty-two years after founding the Oakland Ballet, 20 years after raising it to unlikely international repute, nine years after suddenly retiring, and seven years after watching his beloved creation begin a steady slide toward death, Guidi is bringing the Oakland Ballet back.

The resuscitation started cautiously, with four performances of his "Nutcracker" last year, danced by a swiftly assembled ensemble of Oakland Ballet alumni and other freelance dancers. But with those shows well attended and cash-flow positive, Guidi says he's ready to go full tilt. The new Oakland Ballet Company will give its inaugural performance at the Paramount Theatre on Oct. 20, under the auspices of the Ronn Guidi Foundation for the Performing Arts.

The program will include a reconstruction of Vaslav Nijinksy's 1912 watershed "Afternoon of a Faun," Marc Wilde's "Bolero" and Guidi's own "Trois Gymnopedies" and "Carnaval d'Aix." Then, in December, "Nutcracker" will return for six performances before touring to Lake Tahoe. All shows will feature live music from the Oakland East Bay Symphony. Rehearsals will be at the Oakland Ballet Academy, where Guidi still teaches 13 classes a week.

Twelve dancers have been hired, and further auditions will soon be announced. Chevron and Target have signed as major sponsors. The city of Oakland's Cultural Funding Program has also pitched in on the $80,000 currently secured toward a $350,000 fundraising goal.

"I want to work in the black, no deficit spending," Guidi says. With that caveat, he's looking further into the future. "Nutcracker" dates have been reserved at the Paramount for 2008. Guidi plans to program smaller March shows to begin rebuilding a subscription base. His most cherished goal is a 2009 festival marking the 100th anniversary of Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, the groundbreaking company whose masterpieces Guidi so lovingly brought back to life."

Click here for the full story.

July 28, 2007  ·  04:58 PM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

The new and improved West Wave Dance Festival is underway. My review of Week One in the Chronicle:

"The standing ovation for Amy Seiwert's ballet troupe Im'ij-re had a movie-moment sense of triumph Sunday. More than a handful of noted choreographers and star dancers sat among the sold-out audience, fans who have become Seiwert believers during the six years since she started making strikingly of-the-moment, thrillingly inventive ballets in San Francisco.

She's fielded commissions for companies from Oakland to New Jersey, and found a regular outlet for her work with Smuin Ballet, the company in which she dances. But until Sunday, Seiwert had never presented an entire evening of her own ballets. That changed at Project Artaud Theater, in an urgently danced program boasting two world premieres. It was a major accomplishment.

It was also a major turnaround for the West Wave Dance Festival, rebounding from a 2006 season so amateurish and dreary that you had to wonder if even the dead summer months would be better off without it. But Executive Director Joan Lazarus believed in her mission: giving emerging choreographers a chance to show their work without shouldering crushing production costs. So she took a hard line on high quality and a hard look at the festival's format. Gone is the random programming. Instead, the festival's second week, launching Thursday, groups choreographers into stylistic slates: ballet, modern dance, "world forms" and dance theater.

Lazarus' boldest reform, though, was kicking off with "4 X 4," a series giving four choreographers each a night of their own work. Of the four - all except Seiwert, notably, based in New York - only one, Christopher K. Morgan, was an overearnest dud. Bay Area transplant Kate Weare opened the festival with an impressively mature style - rangy, primal, often crouched like a tiger - and one dance to make you sigh with feeling, a sweet duet of sorority with the fabulously dramatic redhead Leslie Kraus. On Saturday, Monica Bill Barnes proved herself also the real deal - a space-devouring mover who works in an absurdist, smartly detailed, often Chaplin-esque mode. But "4 X 4" was really an opportunity tailor-made for Seiwert, who ran with it."

Click here for the full review.

July 25, 2007  ·  11:42 AM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

memo to the Bay Area Dance Community

My deadline for the San Francisco Chronicle's Fall Arts Preview is August 8. If you'd like your show to be included, please email information to rachel at rachelhoward dot com by August 1. Thanks!

July 19, 2007  ·  10:38 AM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

I'm just back from ten days at Warren Wilson College in North Carolina, where I've started the low-residency Master of Fine Arts program in writing. The program requires at least 25 hours a week, which means I won't be writing much on this site from here out, though I will continue to post my newest articles and reviews in the Chronicle. Speaking of, I previewed the revamped West Wave Dance Festival for the pink section last week in this piece. The festival's much-needed new format will give the very talented ballet choreographer Amy Seiwert her first full-evening show, this Sunday. I'll be attending that, and the festival's launch with a full evening of work by Kate Weare tonight. Look for the review early next week.

July 19, 2007  ·  10:27 AM   ·  Dance   ·  Comments (0)

July Fourth

While we're having our barbecues, our soldiers are on the streets of Baghdad. My brother Emmet Cullen, a sniper with the Army's Stryker Brigade, tells me via email that he's doing night patrol today. He'll finish his second tour of duty this September after having his year-long deployment extended three months under the "troop surge" strategy. He's an aspiring photojournalist and is trying to capture what he sees in Iraq.

Here's Emmet:

And here are some of his recent photos. You can see more of his work here.

All images copyright Emmet Cullen.

I doubt anyone still needs the reminder, but remember our soldiers, and the people of Iraq, today.

July 04, 2007  ·  11:29 AM   ·  Personal   ·  Comments (0)