My review of Shen Wei Dance Arts will actually run in the Chronicle tomorrow. And Thursday I?ll be checking out the National Ballet of Canada at Cal Performances, with a review appearing in the Chronicle on Saturday. In the meantime, Allan Ulrich has a very different (and as always, passionate) reaction to Shen Wei up on Voice of Dance:

?Sooner or later, shooting stars are destined to come to ground somewhere in the universe. The time may come sooner, rather than later for Shen Wei Dance Arts, which made its Northern California debut last weekend at the University of California, Berkeley?s Zellerbach Hall, a presentation of Cal Performances, and one that drew a smallish house at the final performance Sunday (Sept. 26). Talk about fame and its caprices. On the basis of a couple of programs, a smattering of festival dates and a handful of reviews (including what might be construed as an anointing from The New York Times), the company has been launched, inexplicably, on the national and international circuit.

Truth to tell, there was much less than met the eye and much less that pleased the ear in Shen?s vaunted The Rite of Spring (2003), and possibly more than one might have expected in the more opulent and less publicized Folding, the work on the second half of the program. Why all this interest in a dancer-choreographer who, three years ago, was scarcely a blip on any dance fan?s radar? Flavor of the decade, perhaps??

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