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I've been interviewed by Ira Glass for the radio show This American Life. The theme for the week is "How to Rest in Peace," and Ira talked with me about living with the fact of my father's unsolved murder, which I wrote about in my book The Lost Night. The show airs November 2--click here to hear the 30-second promo with my voice (is it really that low in real life?).
UPDATE: One of the show's gracious producers has informed me that the episode is indeed airing this weekend. To hear it tomorrow at 1 p.m. Pacific time on San Francisco's KALW 91.7 FM, click here.
October 29, 2007 · 07:35 PM · The Lost Night · Comments (0)
Miami City Ballet: Much More Than Balanchine
I was mightily impressed by Miami City Ballet at Cal Performances:
"There's long been plenty of buzz about Miami City Ballet, but usually it follows a certain story line. The company's artistic director, Edward Villella, is a dance icon replete with a famous, stereotype-busting life tale: scrappy Brooklyn boxer becomes George Balanchine's greatest male star, known for his athleticism and - as his own program bio now puts it - "virility."
Then in 1985, two years after Balanchine's death, Villella goes to Florida and starts building a new company. At a time when many of the leading interpreters of Balanchine's masterpieces are becoming persona non grata at Balanchine's own New York City Ballet, Villella brings in those shunned greats, like Suzanne Farrell, to maintain the flame by coaching in Miami. Thus a reputation is born: Though Miami City Ballet might not be quite a world-class company, it's the place to see Balanchine done with rare spirit.
Turns out this is only half the story. It was no surprise Friday to see the Miamians deliver Balanchine's stunning milestone of modernism, "Agon," with verve and bite. Perhaps it should have also been no surprise to discover that the troupe's verve extends well beyond Balanchine.
The bookends of this program were two hugely contrasting Twyla Tharp ballets, part of the Cal Performances salute to Tharp that continues next week with a visit from American Ballet Theatre, also at UC Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall. Tharp's relentless invention is thrill enough, but the real spectacle was the Miami City Ballet's nonstop energy and unfailing clarity. If this isn't world-class dancing, I don't know what is."
The rest of the review is here.
October 28, 2007 · 09:41 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
Lines Ballet's Silver Anniversary
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Alonzo King's Lines Ballet is turning 25. My story for this Sunday's Chronicle:
"Alonzo King motions to the pianist to cut the music, then steps to the center of a musty Market Street studio.
"I am not limited," he says in a soft but strident voice. "Get that in your head! I am not a victim of habit."
Two dozen sweaty dancers stare as King gathers the fingers of his right hand and draws them in front of his face, down his broad, thick chest, toward his heart.
"You're not living in the moment," he says. "How do you make new what you are going to do with the rest of your life? This is huge!"
The room is motionless.
"If any of you are in relationships, which you are - with yourself, with your art ..."
King's enormous, curly-lashed eyes flutter wide.
"You want to be what?"
Heads nod, and King throws his long arms open.
"A galaxy!"
Is this a ballet class or a spiritual-improvement seminar?
Technically, this is daily practice for the students of the Lines Ballet Ensemble and Training Program, a school for serious teenagers drawn to King and his demanding teaching style as well as to the sleek, sculpted beauty of his company, Lines Ballet.
But as always with King, the physical is the vehicle to the transcendent.
"Line, circle, cross," he says after class, pausing in the middle of a hasty lunch of a ham sandwich and some chocolate truffles to make classical ballet shapes with his arms. "That means horizon, sun, crucifix."
He takes the fifth position en bas, arms rounded low.
"This has to be the sun. It's radiance from that inner world. Not fake, not playing at ballet."
He sits in his office on the third floor of Lines' bustling San Francisco Dance Center at Seventh and Market streets in San Francisco, where his nine-member troupe rehearses, and where every month more than 800 students take classes in everything from hip-hop to flamenco. On King's desk sits a framed portrait of Paramahansa Yogananda, whose "Autobiography of a Yogi" serves as King's constant inspiration. On the other side of a locked door are the administrative offices of Lines Ballet, the company King founded, along with two die-hard believers in his artistic gifts, 25 years ago.
The changes that quarter century have brought are astonishing: Lines is now internationally renowned, touring Europe yearly, dancing two home seasons annually at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and offering a bachelor of fine arts degree through Dominican University of California in San Rafael.
King's style, so nascent 25 years ago, is now fully formed and instantly recognizable: classical, yet tangled and twisted, exquisitely weird shapes melting into vulnerable human gestures. He's worked with a dazzling list of musical collaborators, from saxophone master Pharoah Sanders to a tribe of Pygmies from the African rain forest, and has created works for such companies as the Frankfurt Ballet, Dance Theatre of Harlem and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. His troupe is one of the great successes of the San Francisco dance scene, and one of its greatest anchors.
But King doesn't dwell on all that, except to say that "those 25 years passed like a blink of the eye" and "the work has just gotten deeper."
He doesn't have time to revel in past glories.
Lines' silver anniversary season, opening Friday, will present two new King ballets - one set to Baroque music and featuring live musicians from the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, the other to a new score by Zakir Hussain, to be played by the tabla master."
Click here for the full story.
October 26, 2007 · 12:01 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
Oakland Ballet Reborn
My review in today's Chronicle:
" "Welcome back, Oakland Ballet!" a man called during the standing ovation at the Paramount Theatre on Saturday. Onstage stood the city's native son, Ronn Guidi, 72 years old, beaming after an unlikely resurrection. It was hard to know what was more heartwarming: that ballet was back in Oakland, or that Oakland Ballet was back in the world.
Guidi tested the waters for a comeback with performances of his "Nutcracker" last year, but Saturday's two shows marked the inauguration of his reborn Oakland Ballet Company, and the first repertory program staged under his direction since his sudden retirement in 1998. This was a well-chosen, eagerly danced selection showcasing the warmth and humanity that brought Oakland Ballet such unlikely international repute in the 1980s and '90s, when Guidi hit his stride reviving rare Ballets Russes masterpieces and Americana classics. The show also drove home how much was lost while the old Oakland Ballet - which shut its doors in 2005 - foundered under Guidi's successor, Karen Brown.
Saturday's matinee was class all the way, from the live music by the Oakland East Bay Orchestra to the thoughtful program notes. And the most encouraging sign was that these 23 dancers clearly knew what - and whom - they were dancing for.
Take Vaslav Nijinsky's 1912 "Afternoon of a Faun," one of those lost masterpieces with which Guidi built the Oakland Ballet's name. It was good to see the curtain rise on Leon Bakst's lush, gorgeous backdrop (repainted by Ron Steger) and Greek-inspired costumes. It was even better to see Ethan White as the Faun and Jenna McClintock as the Nymph invest the revolutionarily spare choreography with its full eroticism, saying so much with a stare or a tilt of the chin while the Debussy score swirled and swelled. When White returned to his Faun's nest with the Nymph's scarf, the clarity of his arching back and gasping mouth left little doubt just what kind of climax (ahem) Nijinsky meant to suggest.
White, moonlighting from Smuin Ballet, has never danced better, and his performances say much about what Guidi does best. Under him, the Oakland Ballet found its niche not through technical virtuosity, but through theatricality, passion and heart."
Click here for the full review.
October 22, 2007 · 12:56 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
My review of Bill T. Jones' "Chapel/Chapter" for the Chronicle:
" "I have to get out of here," a man said as he fled Bill T. Jones' "Chapel/Chapter" at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on Thursday. Soon, another person slipped out, then another. "It's too disturbing," a woman whispered to her friend.
There are things we don't want to see, but ought to. The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company's YBCA engagement, running through Sunday, is one of them. An icon of American dance since the 1980s, Jones is no stranger to walkouts, but Thursday's were different.
There is no political provocation in "Chapel/Chapter," no tackling the alarmist issue of the day, as Jones has done with everything from AIDS to the Iraq war. "Chapel/Chapter" is about murder, about death both natural and unnatural, or whether the distinction even exists, about the evil and the need for redemption within us. It is not about the prison system or justice - its concerns are dark ones from the deepest corners of the soul.
Proximity is part of its horror. Created for a small Harlem performance space last December, "Chapel/Chapter" is staged in the YBCA's Forum. Blood red curtains frame a square filled with a shape like a cathedral window. (The set design is by Bjorn G. Amelan.) Pews sit on one end, and the audience on all sides.
As it begins to tour nationally, "Chapel/Chapter" is also being adapted for proscenium stages, but up close is the way to see it, though this will not be pleasant. It brings you face-to-face with the murder of a family: mother, father, children; tied, strangled, asphyxiated. This is re-enacted by the dancers (and nimble Erick Montes as the family dog) in two ways. First, brutally, with the murderer describing his actions to an interrogator in a cool, collected tone. Later the murder is replayed more like a series of biblical tableaux, with Alicia Hall Moran singing that same gruesome account in a piercing clear chant, like a High Catholic mass."
Later in the review, I could not help but mention that "Chapel/Chapter" struck me particularly hard:
"Violent crime and incarceration are things Jones must know about intimately through his sister Rhodessa, who leads the Medea Project, which stages theater by imprisoned women. In full critical disclosure, murder is something I also know intimately, having woken up one night at age 10 to find my father slain in an unsolved crime nearly as grisly as those in "Chapel/Chapter." Whoever the murderer is, I would wish transcendence and redemption for that person as much as any other.
"Chapel/Chapter" made me think on this, but in a new way, because of its refusal to offer anything remotely redeeming or humanizing about the murderers. It left me with the awful feeling of having become the murderer, and it left me feeling the holy had become dark rather than the dark holy. It left me with questions only a second viewing could help answer, and that is certainly one sign of art worth wrangling with, whether or not you finally embrace the answers you find."
Click here for the full review.
October 19, 2007 · 10:12 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
Catching up: I reviewed LEVYdance for Tuesday's Chronicle:
"LEVYdance has the appeal of youth: fresh-faced, chiseled dancers with the urban cool of club kids, sexiness infused with smarts and a young choreographer, Benjamin Levy, worth getting excited about.
His style makes a drama out of anatomical chain reactions, energy zipping from joint to joint like an electrical current. And he knows how to create an emotional arc. In his 2002 duet, "Falling After Too," two men manipulate each other's knees, shoulders and hips with relentlessly deflective intimacy. When at last they knock chests but their arms flail past each other, unable to hug, you feel the oomph of that tragedy like a statement of the human condition.
Small wonder, then, that Bay Area dance watchers have been waiting for Levy to break out in a big way. His company's fifth annual home performances on Friday and Saturday seemed designed to do it. The crowning premiere "Bone Lines" had all the trappings of the next big step: a bigger-than-usual venue at the Jewish Community Center's Kanbar Hall, costumes by haute couture designer Colleen Quen, set by sculptor Rick Lee and a commissioned score by Keeril Makan recorded by the Kronos Quartet.
But this proved a case of getting too much too fast. Levy's solemn dance for four looked overwhelmed by all these elements, with movement serving merely as glue to keep it all together."
Click here for the full review.
October 19, 2007 · 09:53 AM · Dance · Comments (0)
My review of Julie Kavanagh's new Nureyev biography, appearing this Sunday in the SF Chronicle's book review:
"Ballet biographies are getting raunchy: Meredith Daneman's insightful 2004 portrait of that bastion of British dignity, Margot Fonteyn, taught me more than I ever expected to learn about the great dancer's Kegel muscles, and Julie Kavanagh's 1997 study of choreographer Frederick Ashton hardly shied from exploring his more profane inspirations. Now Kavanagh is back with a revealing 782-page tome on that most mega of ballet stars, Rudolph Nureyev. But one can hardly blush at its sexual descriptiveness. It was, after all, not only technical feats but ballet as a channel for that wild, amorphous sensuality that fueled Rudimania for decades after his headline-making 1961 defection, that had women and men alike sleeping on sidewalks for tickets to his performances, that enthralled everyone from Jackie Kennedy to Mick Jagger. And Nureyev himself never hesitated to boast about his exploits, claiming (probably falsely) to have impregnated several ballerinas. You can imagine Nureyev looking on from the afterlife with that mischievous smirk of his as you read Kavanagh's dishy, detailed treatment, for he emerges as a prodigious and insatiable lover.
But there is much more than bedroom gossip to smile about, because Kavanagh, trained from childhood in ballet, knows the art. "Nureyev: The Life" earns the definitive article of its subtitle, weaving deftly together, for instance, the difference between the Vaganova and Bournonville schools of ballet training, and the torrid passion between Nureyev and the famed Danish star Erik Bruhn. From the age of 7, when his mother smuggled him into a ballet performance in their provincial Bashkirian town of Ufa, Nureyev knew dancing was his life; after his exhausting dramas with Bruhn, he even swore off committed relationships in servitude to his career. That didn't end his offstage adventures, from being arrested at a Haight-Ashbury weed party in the 1960s to trashing film director Franco Zeffirelli's mansion in the 1980s. But in Kavanagh's hands what happened behind the curtain becomes illumination for the mesmerizing spectacle that Nureyev created in front of it."
Skipping down, the best quality of the biography is this:
"If Nureyev was later widely known to pick up hustlers, he made love with mostly one person, and that was himself. He emerges on these pages as a raging narcissist, shamelessly using fans and friends and casting them aside if they make any emotional demands in return, living only for the glory of performing and therefore dancing embarrassingly beyond his prime. But narcissists are often supremely charming and charismatic, and that is certainly the case with Nureyev in Kavanagh's portrayal. She not only tells us about the many admirers who became Nureyev's surrogate families after his defection left him homeless and motherless; she also makes us see why they loved him, because you can feel in her prose that she loves him, too."
Click here for the rest of the review.
October 12, 2007 · 12:38 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
I reviewed the Smuin Ballet for today's Chronicle:
"Death privileges the living. Had Michael Smuin survived the heart attack that felled him during company class in April, he would be incensed to see me reviewing the latest Smuin Ballet show. Never a darling with the critics, Smuin was happy to return the disdain, but he and I were a special case. As a young dance writer itching for a nemesis, I was only too pleased to sneer at his populism. I hope if he could read these words he would also take satisfaction in seeing me apologize for my tone.
I hope too that he'd be happy to know the Smuin Ballet program that opened Friday and continues this week at the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre may be an ideal representation of his legacy. It proves why thousands of fans sell out his company's engagements, and why reviewers routinely harped on his unsubtle ways. It also proves that to fault Smuin's choreography for lacking nuance and sophistication is to miss the point."
Click here for the full review.
October 09, 2007 · 10:00 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
I wish I could say I was more excited about the Joffrey Ballet program that repeats today at Cal Performances. My review in today's Chronicle:
"It's less than two weeks since the news hit, and there in the program Thursday night was his name: Ashley Wheater, artistic director, Joffrey Ballet. A visit from the Joffrey is always notable - the Chicago troupe is rarely seen in the Bay Area, and hasn't played UC Berkeley's Cal Performances in decades - but the fresh appointment of Wheater, ballet master and assistant to the artistic director at San Francisco Ballet, made it something more.
This was a chance to check out what he'd be inheriting: an energetic and spunky 51-year-old company known for its richly diverse repertory and a penchant for breaking rules. Unfortunately, the rules being broken in the program continuing tonight are circa 1973. And although rule breaking can be timeless - think Balanchine's 1928 "Apollo," as fresh now as the day he made it - everything on view at Zellerbach Hall looks dated and stale.
That's not these capable dancers' fault. With American Ballet Theatre and Miami City Ballet also visiting soon, and all dancing Twyla Tharp, Cal Performances decided to build something of a festival around her work. Alas, "Deuce Coupe" is one Tharp dance I'd rather read about in the history books than see.
A sensation in the '70s, it was the first "crossover" ballet by a modern dance choreographer, setting its 15 dancers in little halter dresses and "Saturday Night Fever"-issue pants shimmying to a Beach Boys medley with typical Tharpian attention deficit.
To underscore its then-eyebrow-raising street cred, there's a backdrop of spray-painted graffiti.
There's also a lone soloist (Heather Aagard) in silver dancing classroom ballet steps, a prissy visitor from the other side of that modern dance/ballet Berlin Wall. Perhaps this could all come off as winking good fun (as Tharp's "The Golden Section" does when Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater performs it). But the Joffrey dancers don't seem to have their heart in this. The delectable wit of Tharpian phrasing is missing, along with the slouchily virtuosic insouciance. Only Valerie Robin in her sultry "Got to Know the Woman" solo gets in the spirit."
Click here for the full review.
October 06, 2007 · 10:22 AM · Dance · Comments (0)
Litquake!
San Franciso's Litquake Festival kicks off Saturday--and I'm on the opening day "Off the Richter Scale" lineup. I'll be reading a BRAND NEW short story, and I'll be in great company with Kim Addonizio, Kate Braverman, Michelle Richmond and others from 2-3 pm at the San Francisco Main Library's Koret Auditorium. The readings keep rolling all day Saturday and Sunday at the library, and the festival rolls on all week long, with more than 300 authors. I'm planning to make Wednesday's special Litquake-edition Porchlight, and of course the famous Lit Crawl finale up and down Valencia and Mission streets. Everything you need to know is here. Hope to see you this Saturday.
October 04, 2007 · 03:19 PM · Books · Comments (0)
My latest dance review, in today's Chronicle:
"f you've never heard of the North Indian classical dance form Kathak, San Francisco's Pandit Chitresh Das has one word for you: rhythm. As in, bring-the-house-down, feel-it-in-your-bones rhythm.
Two years ago, on his never-ending quest to take Kathak to the American masses, the 62-year-old Das teamed with tap dance phenom Jason Samuels Smith for a cross-cultural conversation. In "India Jazz Progressions," unveiled Friday at the Cowell Theater before a national tour, he's brought more voices along for the ride. Watch out, Savion Glover; you may have "Da Funk," but you don't have Chitresh Das.
No matter that one form uses five pounds of ankle bells and the other metal taps; no matter that one evolved centuries ago in the Mughal palaces, the other much more recently on the streets of New York. Das brings East and West together and lets them talk straight. At stage left stands the jazz ensemble - drums, bass, piano. At stage right, the Indian musicians - tabla, sitar, sarangi. When their voices first begin to mix, it is strange talk indeed.
But then Das' leading disciple, Charlotte Moraga, comes whirling on, stamping out ear-teasing percussive patterns in that vigorous, upright Kathak way. She calls out the tal - or rhythmic cycle, which in Kathak can be anything from your standard eight-count phrase to more mind-bending variations, like nine and a half beats - and she chants her variations - taka di, taka di, da, da. When tapper Chloe Arnold comes hoofing on, she's doing a very different thing, arms flying, hips swinging, feet sliding and hitting. But they have an instant rapport, and they're trading riffs in no time.
The solos and duets that follow are an embarrassment of riches."
Click here to read the rest.
October 02, 2007 · 10:20 AM · Dance · Comments (0)
