« January 2008 | Main | March 2008 »
Catching up on shows that continue this weekend. My review of Ballet San Jose's "Swan Lake":
"Turns out that during recent seasons of dancing mostly silly spectacles, a crop of credible classical dancers at Ballet San Jose must have been yearning to show us their true chops. On Friday at the San Jose Center for the Performing Arts, the 44-member company took "Swan Lake" - that warhorse that can be sublime in the right hands or self-parody in the wrong ones - and made it a nonstop showcase of movement artistry. Rarely have so many talents in the San Jose roster shone to such advantage. And, in Karen Gabay, they had a Swan Queen to inspire them to yet greater heights.
It can't have hurt that Cynthia Gregory, one of the finest Black Swans of all time, coached this revival of Artistic Director Dennis Nahat's 1987 production, continuing through Sunday. From the moment the four princesses delivered their first-act variations, everyone looked galvanized by Gregory's influence: Beth Ann Namey shaping her small hops with extra lilt, Yui Yonezawa stretching confidently into long arabesques and whirling through clean turns, Catherine Grow giving everything flirtatious grace. Even the large corps of ensemble men jumped with extra power and finesse.
But it wasn't technical skill that powered this performance, though Nahat's choreography doesn't skimp on real McCoy steps. Where "Swan Lake" soars or falters is in the company's musical sensitivity to Tchaikovsky's monumental score, delivered dependably, though with tuning troubles, by Symphony Silicon Valley under Dwight Oltman's baton. These 20 swans breathed as one, led by Haley Henderson and Harriet McMeekin as the tall Swan Princesses.
Three Swan Queens are cast for this run, but the standard was set on opening night by Ballet San Jose's de facto prima, Gabay. She has beguiling facial proportions for the darker side of the duo White Swan/Black Swan role, her huge triangle of a smile projecting devious delight as Odile, the impostor who tricks Prince Siegfried into pledging his love."
Click here for the full review.
And my review of Robert Moses' Kin:
"Robert Moses' choreography, like his talking, tends to come out in blurts. So many ideas, so rapid fire - it's as if Moses can't contain what's on the tip of his tongue. In the 13 years since he founded Robert Moses' Kin, he's given San Francisco audiences a lot to chew on: movement that combines punchy street energy with unexpected eloquence and socially aware dances taking on everything from James Baldwin to youth violence. His concerts have often had an enviable problem: It's all too much.
So it was a surprise to show up at Robert Moses' Kin's latest home season, repeating next weekend at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco's Kanbar Hall, and find such simplicity of programming. Four dances - two brand new, one new to San Francisco and one a work in progress - 60 minutes, no intermission.
It seemed a deliberate paring back, and in a post-show talk Sunday, Moses professed that he's been restraining himself in other ways. After five years working on "The President's Daughter" - which used Thomas Jefferson's slave affairs as a prism to view race, sex and hypocrisy - Moses wanted to get away from "content-driven" dances, he said. These new dances are an effort to work more simply with pure movement and music.
The best is "Approaching Thought," a six-person showdown that serves as a capsule of the inimitable vocabulary that's propelled Robert Moses' Kin to national attention in recent years: hard-hitting, jiving, deliberately ungainly one moment and lyrical the next. The music is by Moses himself, and it's good: fast rhythms and a gung-ho Wild West guitar melody. One by one, the dancers cross from the stage corners to meet in the middle, trading rapid-fire gestures. Katherine Wells, a beguiling combination of grace and grit, has the last word.
But the middle dances suggest that Moses might be thinking about his paring back in hamstrung ways. The way I see a Moses dance, it's not the content that needs weeding but the movement itself. His density of surprising steps is both his strength and his Achilles' heel, and in the middle dances, "Hush" and "Rose," I wish he'd let the movement breathe, and the content hidden inside its overwhelming rush emerge."
Click here for full review.
February 22, 2008 · 11:13 AM · Dance · Comments (0)
Maria Kochetkova did not disappoint in San Francisco Ballet's "Giselle" last night. Yes, she is tiny, porcelain-skinned, and feather light, but the key to her interpretation was this: You could see how much trust she was putting in her Albrecht, and just how dangerous and exhilarating that trust was. When Albrecht sat on the bench next to her, when she counted out the "he-loves-me-he-loves-me-not" flower petals--none of this happened with a coy flutter of lashes, but instead with swallows of fear. Even little passages like the series of piques where she kisses her fingers and they touch hands became not mere flirtations, but tests--can I trust you?--followed by not just romantic elation, but relief. Her Albrecht Joan Boada nuzzled her like a kitten he'd taken in from the cold, while in his rakish excitement we saw the mounting danger, that he did not realize the magnitude of sin he was committing in toying with such a delicate soul.
The first act was pure drama, and rightly so, Kochetkova's technique unostentatious--even her fleet jumps seemed an expression of Giselle's irrepressible joy in dancing, not feats for their own sake. Surprisingly, Kochetkova does not have a huge arabesque penchee to dazzle us with, but in the second act, she called on that buoyant jump again, a benevolent wisp in the air on that series of changements with one foot in coupe. Meanwhile, Boada was in good form with beautiful feet and a stretch that reaches well beyond his small proportions. He was an extravagantly penitent Albrecht, replacing the fluttering beaten jumps that so pierced the heart in Tiit Helimets' interpretation with an odd run of frenzied brisees.
The final moments were telling. In Yuan Yuan Tan's performance, as Giselle sunk back into the grave, Tan lolled her head as though to protest leaving him, almost like Odette in the second act of "Swan Lake." In Kochetkova's final moments, she gazed upon Albrecht lovingly, but she did not shake in protest of their separation. She accepted it--and everything: his betrayal of her, his penitence. This was not a tragic final parting, but a bittersweet one. It seemed to me perfectly in character. And it made this performance of "Giselle" one I will never forget.
Kochetkova and Boada will dance "Giselle" again Saturday evening. I'll be back at the opera house on Friday to see Vanessa Zahorian and Ruben Martin.
February 20, 2008 · 11:21 AM · Dance · Comments (0)
My review of San Francisco Ballet's opening night "Giselle" in today's Chronicle:
"Yuan Yuan Tan has dominated the start of San Francisco Ballet's 75th anniversary season, which should be no surprise. With her liquid limbs and cool glamour, she is a wonder of the ballet world. Yet Saturday, at the opening of the company's "Giselle," Tan's first-cast prominence began to smell a little fishy.
Yuan Yuan Tan and Tiit Helimets in "Giselle," photo credit Erik Tomasson.
In physicality and temperament, Tan is hardly a dancer you'd typecast as the title role's rustic peasant girl - her arms are so long, they practically can't help unfurling in aristocratic flourishes, her natural demeanor so elegant, it seemed she'd be right at home in the courts of Albrecht, the deceptive prince who breaks Giselle's heart.
But the bigger problem was that Giselle must be a flesh-and-blood character, and Tan didn't seem to have thought out who, beyond a pretty flirt, her Giselle was. And so Saturday, with the corps women in top form as the ghost maiden Wilis of Act 2, this revival of Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson's 1999 production - the best of his many story ballet stagings - remained a finely danced vessel awaiting a worthy heroine to reveal its full pathos."
Click herefor the full review.
Yuan Yuan Tan and Tiit Helimets in "Giselle," photo credit Erik Tomasson.
February 18, 2008 · 02:34 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
Catching up after a run of four review assignments in four days (reviews of Ballet San Jose's "Swan Lake" and Robert Moses' Kin should appear tomorrow and the next day). I checked out the Georgia State Ballet for the Chronicle on Thursday:
"But if Thursday's opening did not deliver, thankfully, an "Ananiashvili and Friends" pony show, we got something more interesting: a troupe being rebuilt lovingly by hand. Ananiashvili, like the titanic 20th century choreographer George Balanchine, hails from the former Soviet state of Georgia, and in 2004 her now-independent homeland summoned her to direct its national company, long established but also, because of civil hardship, long dormant.
Her choices for this opening mixed-repertory program pointed to her range of artistic interest as a dancer, but also to her acumen in feeding developing dancers what they need. There were two Balanchine ballets (the company now has at least 10) and two U.S. premieres by names in the news: Alexei Ratmansky, the soon-to-step-down artistic director of the Bolshoi, who recently declined New York City Ballet's offer of choreographer-in-residence; and Yuri Possokhov, who happily accepted San Francisco Ballet's offer for the same post in 2006 and will contribute to the company's ambitious New Works Festival in April. The results were often overreaching - but only in the most heartening of ways.
Balanchine's "Chaconne" is no modest undertaking. A first intimate, then grand vision of heaven that floats atop Gluck's ballet music for "Orfeo ed Euridice," "Chaconne" requires fleetness, clarity and confidence. The Georgians had handicaps - murky lighting that plagued the entire evening, and lugubrious tempi from the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra, provided under Robert Cole's baton presumably at the company's request. But what these dancers need most is authority, gumption."
Click here for the full review.
February 18, 2008 · 02:30 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
My review of the Black Choreographers Festival opening in today's SF Chronicle:
"For the past three years, it's been good to have the Black Choreographers Festival on the scene, but it hasn't been clear whom the festival's performances are for. Was BCF, picking up where the defunct Black Choreographers Moving Toward the 21st Century left off, trying to stimulate another national dialogue on race in dance? Instilling local pride? Pitching itself to aspiring African American dancemakers or to a more general dance audience? If the latter, why were the performances so frustratingly uneven?
At Friday's opening of the festival's fourth annual installment, BCF's purpose seemed to crystallize in a word co-founders Laura Elaine Ellis and Kendra Kimbrough Barnes use a lot: community. And BCF has built a wide and wonderful community indeed. Opening at Oakland's Laney College Theater, the festival moves on to second and third weekends at San Francisco's Project Artaud Theater and Dance Mission Theater, which - along with ODC Theater - are all sponsors. There'll be symposia, family matinees, an art exhibition and a master class with sensational tap dancer Jason Samuels Smith, out from New York.
All of this is tremendous for the community. For the average dancegoer at one of BCF's concerts, though, it means a huge range in quality. The bad news is you'll have to sit through sub-par work to get to the good stuff, like Smith's appearance Friday and Saturday, when the festival moves to Project Artaud (look forward, too, to the roof-raising West African stampings of Oakland troupe Diamano Coura). The upside is the chance to find standout choreographers whose work should be seen far more often. And at Friday's opening, the clear winner in that category was Reginald Ray-Savage (commonly known as Reginald Savage).
Savage has led his Savage Jazz Dance Company in Oakland since 1992, but it's never broken out much beyond a cash-strapped local season. That should change. Not only is Savage a master teacher, producing taut, controlled dancers as well trained as any on the Bay Area modern dance scene. But he's also a fine choreographer.
He proved this in two pieces that broke from his usual mission statement - "Not jazz dance. Dances to jazz music." - to take on intense classical scores. This being Savage, though, the look was sexy, from the sculpted sultry postures and teasing deep plies to the women's V-neck leotards."
Click here for the full review.
February 11, 2008 · 06:10 PM · Dance · Comments (2)
"Dance is like Israel: You don't just live there, you have to support it."
--Joan Acocella on writing about a low-status art form during her Stanford University critic-in-residence lecture Wednesday
February 08, 2008 · 02:17 PM · Dance · Comments (0)
Site Sponsor
Vividseats.com is your one-stop source for all Concert Tickets, Theater Tickets, and Ballet and Dance Tickets. Use Redemption Code RACHEL and get 5% off all tickets, including Dirty Dancing Tickets, Romeo And Juliet Tickets, Lord Of The Dance Tickets, and Wicked Tickets!
Balletomanes are raving about Sarah Van Patten's debut in "Diamonds" Sunday, and I can't help but add my voice to the chorus. This is the cast I wish the NY Times' Alastair Macaulay had seen. I wasn't in New York (or born yet) to see Suzanne Farrell in the 1960's, but in my imagination Van Patten has Farrell's spirit freshly incarnated. She gave "Diamonds" an air of tragedy in everything from the regretful, slightly petulant tilt of her head (more Farrell comparisons, anyone?) to the sudden stab into that "Swan Lake"-like attitude with piercing arm at the music's climax. Everything became an expression of longing, even the necessary push-pull tension in the connection between her arms and partner Tiit Helimets' as he steadied her in the arabesque penchee in which he lowers to one knee. Both were utterly in the music. Van Patten is no technician, and probably never will be--that circle of little hops to a small side extension that pull up into pirouette remained decidedly un-crisp. She has no technique for its own sake, but only in service to her musicality--but this to me is fine, even preferred to emotion-less automatons. And Van Patten acquires more technical assuredness every day. In the past, on an off day, she could fall to pieces--I've seen her fight through a second movement of "Symphony in C" and a performance of the Sugar Plum Fairy in "Nutcracker" so nerve-rattled and rushed I half-wondered if she'd taken too much Sudafed. But there was no hint of uncertainty in "Diamonds" Sunday, only luxurious command.
Six years ago, when Van Patten first arrived at San Francisco Ballet, Helgi Tomasson tossed her into the finale of "Diamonds" to top off the season-opening gala. She was young, in a new company, out of her depth; she looked preening. But the potential was there, and Tomasson saw it--and nurtured it through the unevenness of her early seasons here. I've spoken of Van Patten "coming of age" before--in her "Romeo and Juliet," in the grand pas of Tomasson's "Nutcracker." She just keeps on growing. She's the kind of ballerina who makes following a company closely so worthwhile.
February 05, 2008 · 09:54 AM · Dance · Comments (0)
Site Sponsor
Vividseats.com is your one-stop source for all Concert Tickets, Theater Tickets, and Ballet and Dance Tickets. Use Redemption Code RACHEL and get 5% off all tickets, including Dirty Dancing Tickets, Romeo And Juliet Tickets, Lord Of The Dance Tickets, and Wicked Tickets!
My SF Chronicle review of San Francisco Ballet's program two is now online. I have no idea why the headline says it's the season's first program, when "program 2" is right there in the lede. I'm also not sure why "the Bay Area's only major troupe" got changed to "the Bay Area's dominant troupe." Still, here's the top:
"Thursday at the opening of San Francisco Ballet's Program 2, the East Coast critics were in the aisles, curious on the occasion of the company's 75th birthday to see how far Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson has taken this once-regional troupe. Meanwhile, some of the company's most sparkling classicists were onstage, dancing not as though they had something to prove but as though they had much they wanted to show. The New York critics will see San Francisco Ballet through their lens, colored by regular exposure to American Ballet Theatre and New York City Ballet. And a local critic can only see the company through hers, colored by the fact that San Francisco Ballet is the Bay Area's dominant troupe, which lends a certain element of civic pride. But anyone who follows the company would have seen this: San Francisco Ballet was at its finest Thursday. These dancers showed the world their best.
They did so in a slate that showcases one of Tomasson's special strengths: assembling a diverse, something-to-please-everyone repertory. You could hardly arrange a greater contrast than the forthright, modern-dance-ethos-meets-ballet-steps hybridism of Mark Morris' "Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes" juxtaposed with the goofy theatrical flair of Yuri Possokhov's "Firebird." But the ballet that matters to serious ballet lovers, the ballet that tests not just the company's technical mettle but also its poetic gravitas, is George Balanchine's "Divertimento No. 15."
Vanessa Zahorian (L) and Kristin Long in "Divertimento No. 15," photo credit Erik Tomasson.
With its civilized manner and bedecked tutus (more fetching now that the Ballet has ditched its purple togs for muted yellows and blues after Karinska's original designs), "Divertimento No. 15" may look like a stereotype of ballet. But pity the viewer who shrugs it off as pretty. As with everything Balanchine, the meaning is in the music - the sublime spiritual serenity of Mozart, conducted by Martin West - but the steps are not just gloss on the music. When done with depth of understanding, they bring the unsayable in that music, that stirring harmoniousness, to flesh-and-blood life.
That was the case Thursday. Each soloist offered a wealth of musically sensitive details - Rachel Viselli's hovering rubato as she lowered her arabesque leg, Frances Chung's zesty spring en pointe, Vanessa Zahorian's lush stretch through her chest as she stepped forward as though through water. These details aren't ornaments; they're the soul of the dance, celebrating a way of living that makes every moment beautiful, even in small ways."
Click here for the rest.
More photos:
Mark Morris' "Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes," photo credit Erik Tomasson.
Yuan Yuan Tan in "Firebird," photo credit Erik Tomasson.
February 01, 2008 · 05:07 PM · Dance · Comments (1)
