WestWave Dance Festival
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
San Francisco, CA
August 16-21. 2008
by Rita Felciano
Copyright © by Rita Felciano
In its seventeenth year, the 2008 WestWave Dance Festival resurrected itself from the ashes of a valiantly produced but long struggling yearly showcase of local dance. Ironically, last season’s single choreographer evenings—Amy Seiwert’s and Kate Weare’s among them—had held out hopes for a more consistent curatorial vision. It was not to be. Now in the hands of Dancers Group, in conjunction with YBCA and DanceArt, on paper WestWave’s rebirth did not hold out much promise. Three programs of twelve artists in five-minute pieces looked too much like dance for the sound bite generation. In fact, the evenings offered some gleaming jewels, a number of decent pieces but also amateurish work. Whether anything can be built on this foundation remains to be seen. The question remains the same. Can inclusiveness and quality coexist?
Maybe best in this year’s WestWave was the sense of this being a community celebrating itself. In that way it felt like the annual Bay Area Dance Awards, the one time when dancers from many different disciplines spend an evening together. Such inward looking events may have the danger of becoming self-congratulatory but dancers, and their audiences, also walk away from them with renewed energy and a fresh commitment to the art.
Since the presenters invited choreographers from across the spectrum, the Festival also became something of an acknowledgment of the many-colored hues of Bay Area dance. The opportunity to perform—however short a piece--at Yerba Buena, the Bay Area’s prime venue for dance, must have looked enticing for some of the more marginal ensembles. It was not a surprise that not all of them were up to the challenge. The five minutes for Dandelion Dance Theater, Erika Tsimbrovsky, Mary Sano and her Duncan Dancers, Facing East Dance and Music, and Guru Shrada’s students seemed long indeed.
The best choreographers shaped the five-minute format into concise, clearly articulated little gems. With one clean swipe Alex Ketley broke a longstanding taboo. His shockingly ferocious “To Color Me Different” wiped off the table Pollyannish ideas about able bodied and disabled people always getting along just fine. In this duet for Axis Dance Company’s Rodney Bell and Shonsherée Giles, the dancers hit the stage in the middle of a knockout fight. They yanked, dragged and threw each other. If anything, the battle only heated up when the powerfully built Bell flipped the small-boned Giles over his wheelchair, and she rammed her head into his groin. The confrontation left both of them shaking with exhaustion. Whatever the source of this conflict was, they fought it out as equals.
Rasika Kumar is a tall, long-limbed Bharatanatyam dancer with legs that she plants like pillars. In “Gandhari’s Lament” she fashioned a story from the Mahabharata into a universal lament of mothers who have lost their children to war. Lunging from side to side, her long arms outstretched like eagle wings, spasms of pain racked her torso. But this was no weeping Niobe. Adding some of her own poetry, Kumar looked at the myth from a modern woman’s perspective. Gandhari tore off her voluntary blind-fold and turned her tears into curses of Krishna. Though formally rooted in the tradition, “Lament” was as incisive and impressive a piece of contemporary choreography as was seen on this Festival.
Amy Seiwert’s beautifully crafted “Air,” to a sparkling harp piece by Jean-Baptiste Krumpholtz, paired ballet dancers Jay Goodlett and Tricia Sundbeck. Both performed in lush full-length and open to the front garments (by Mario Alonzo), perhaps inspired by pannier skirts. In its emphasis on the arms, this charming, musically astute duet was steeped in the 18th century, yet it looked also so very fresh. Goodlett’s bulkiness nicely set off Sundbeck’s tendril-like dancing. The inventive, light as butterflies port de bras with which they twirled and fluttered around each other put them on common ground.
The other ballet choreographers made less of an impression. Veteran Robert Sund’s gentle trio “Our Steps Will Always Rhyme” was deftly danced though bland. Liss Fain’s astringent “Looking, Looking” appeared lost in the details of the excerpts from Bartok’s Viola Concerto.
Artists working in traditional forms brought that sense of the celebratory which seems their birthright. While the exquisite Charya Burt’s Cambodian perspective on “The Glass Menagerie’s” Laura may not have been all that evident, as a dancer she is a paragon of classicism. She danced with clarity, restraint and refinement. In “Marinera”, Peru’s national dance, Luis Valverde’s intricately rhythmic hops and slides outshone Eleana Coll’s softer barefoot performing. Aguacero is a young, Puerto Rican Bomba ensemble. But only one of its dancers, Shefhali Shah, who apparently knows who to compartmentalize herself since she is also an Odissi practitioner, had enough control of the quicksilvery scurrying steps and skirt and hip-swinging maneuvers to compete with the musicians.
Female empowerment fuelled the elegant lines of the all-women Tango Con*Fusión which included former Mark Morris dancer Pier Voulkos. Witty choreography for Zoos company’s “En Route” took good advantage of the staggered heights of its three Belly dancers while their sister ensemble, FatChanceBellyDance, regaled the audience with Tribal Style Belly Dance—group performances in richly textured full-bodied dresses. Brittany Ceres Brown’s severely formal, and slightly dry “Shade” appeared to get its impetus from a central axis from which dancers pealed off as if showing different aspects of themselves. Striking was the disconnect between William Berry’s loose soundscape and Brown’s highly controlled choreography.
Humor and dance do not easily cohabit. Choreographer Amy Lewis packed the stage with games as if its thirty-so players were on a crowded Labor Day beach. This might have been fun to participate in though watching it for more than a minutes was a lot less. Arch iconoclast Fellow Travelers Performance Group premiered the deadpan “Cocktail Hour.” Martini swilling partygoers repeatedly ducked to avoid being mowed down by a giant wheel, carving its circular grooves by means of a belt attached to a dancer’s waist. Noel Coward would have loved this recycled prop, here put to new metaphoric implications.
In Chris Black’s ingeniously unpretentious “Headlines”, a quintet of dancers streamed onto the stage from the house. Each had an individual sob story to sing, dance and act out until this ragtag ensemble coalesced into a grand operatic finale. Once again, Black’s finely attuned sense of timing served these excellently dancer/actors well.
Jenny McAllister has been tickling our funny bone for over ten years. She loves to tear down facades to reveal the trash underneath, whether they involve trailer park beauties or those from fairy tales. For the madcap “Snap” she created a paparazzi-mad, text-message controlled wedding that disintegrated into chaos the more its participants tried to save the disaster. As it is, “Snap” is a vignette. It just might evolve into something funnier and darker at the same time.
The 2008 WestWave Dance Festival also included a half-hour outdoor installation piece, ”The Shifting Cornerstone” by Joanna Haigood and an evening of dance for the camera by local choreographers.
AXIS Dance Company: Sonsherée Giles and Rodney Bell
Photo: Brian Rdzak-Martin
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