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November 20, 2007

Pina, Sean Dorsey, and Hip Hop

The Chronicle had me experiment with a new form over the weekend, writing three reviews in one. One unfortunate consequence is the story's generic headline, and perhaps there are others--I'd like to hear what you think of this approach. Doing three-in-one was the only way I could get the paper to fit a Pina Bausch review into its pages, believe it or not. My relentless advocacy and my admission to less than absolute knowledge of the Bausch ouevre did not win favor with this indignant Chronicle reader. Nevertheless, thoughts on Bausch:

"To hear the buzz, you might have thought the messiah was returning to UC Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall on Friday, and, to her followers, that may not be too exalted a description for Pina Bausch, whose Tanztheater Wuppertal made its first Cal Performances appearance in eight years. Bausch is a choreographer so iconic that people in the dance world tend to forget that other reasonably culturally educated people may not know who she is. And for more than 25 years she's been a choreographer so influential that to see her work is also to recognize the legions of emulators and imitators she's spawned.

"This is just absurd!" cried the woman behind me as dancer Helena Pikon announced, "This is a bear, I am naked, we are in the forest, and it's a little dark," then threw a fur rug over a hunched man and rode off on his back. Um, yes. Absurdity, surrealism, existential non sequiturs - Bausch didn't introduce these elements to dance, but she combined them in her patented way.

I am not a longtime member of the cult of Bausch; I can't tell you how "Ten Chi," created in 2004, stacks up to her mud-heaped "Rite of Spring" (though I did enjoy it less than her carnation-carpeted "Nelken"). I can tell you that "Ten Chi," supported by a consortium of Japanese cultural organizations, is part of a series of dances inspired by place, and that the Japanese references come in the middle: Nazareth Panadero turning a compendium of words like "Fuji" and "sushi" into baby babble; Azusa Seyama running around snapping pictures like a Japanese tourist; two men taking fierce samurai stances only to sit when chairs are placed beneath them.

Whether this captures any essence of Japan is dubious. It all seems raw material rather than subject matter. If there is a staple subject, it's Bausch's usual - love and sexual manipulation - often rendered unforgettably."

(More if you click here.)

And on Sean Dorsey:

"Sometimes deeply transgressive material is most powerful when it's channeled into non-transgressive, almost conventional form, and that's the case with San Francisco's Sean Dorsey. Dorsey is gender-ambiguous, tilting toward male, and uses the pronoun "he." His dances are usually about the female-to-male transgender experience, as were the two premieres on "Lost/Found" Saturday at Dance Mission Theater, rounded out with storytelling by writers Kirk Read and Max Wolf Valerio.

Dorsey tells stories too, in a plainspoken, warmhearted style. He then records them and lays them over a collage of sweet, warm-hearted music. His further brilliance is to bring these stories to life with an uncanny knack for matching movement to the rhythms of speech and planting simple but pungent gestures that have the innocent charm of a parent reading to you at bedtime."

Again, more if you click.

And finally the SF Hip Hop Dance Fest:

"Meanwhile, across town, bass was pounding through the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre, and the San Francisco Hip Hop Dance Fest was pumping. Hot tip for 2008's 10th anniversary edition, which founder and inspired producer Micaya is already cooking: The earlier you arrive, the more you get to watch of the opening freestyle, and the more you realize that the soul of hip-hop is wit.

Every group on Program A had its distinctive style: from the Chicago FootworKINGz with its mad, fast steps to Oakland's Neopolitan convincingly merging Afro-Caribbean forms with funk. New York's Mop Top staged a "Wizard of Oz" with master of popping Buddha Stretch as the Tin Man, and Colorado's Elements of Motion won my vote for overall excellence, marrying unreal B-boy head spins to consummate theatricality."

(Yet again, a smidge more if you click.)

And I've just noticed that the editing cut off my last sentence and added some random text below. Chalk it up to attempting an awkward solution to that ever-worsening problem of finding column inches for dance.

Please, if you'd like to comment--I've had to disable comments on this site to avert spam. But you can comment away on the Chronicle link. Good or bad, go for it.

Posted by Rachel at November 20, 2007 02:29 PM

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