Jim Farley, who directs the Marin Center's cultural and performing arts series, explains that Russian ballet finds a big audience in his theater. Indeed, the 2,000 seat theater was just about sold out for the one night appearance of the Russian National Ballet Theatre's production of "Sleeping Beauty" for which no choreographic or directorial credit was given beyond Petipa. "Russian" and "story ballet" clearly have lost little of their popular appeal and not just among the Bay Area's large Russian community. What the enthusiastic audience received was a generally well danced, truncated and stripped down version of a beloved classic. Still several times my theater companion, who danced with the Marquis de Cuevas company and who was surely familiar with the exigencies of traveling and performing in constricted circumstances, couldn't help but shudder.
San Francisco Ballet's second program offered two masterpieces of high style and a premiere that aimed for such but came up short. Much anticipated as Yuri Possokhov's "RAkU" was, the thirty-five minute dance drama ultimately tumbled into histrionics though it provided a thankful vehicle for dancer actress Yuan Yuan Tan. What elicited admiration was Possokhov's dramatic movement language that is strongly expressionistic yet embedded within constraints similar to those seen in Japanese No and Kabuki Theater. He seemed to be pushing against classical demands quite unlike Ballet's but just as stringent. I just wish that the piece had convinced more.
One of the great joys of returning to the classics derives from the discovery of details and perspectives you may have forgotten or never noticed in the first place. The experience proves particularly acute in dance which provides the pleasure of surprise -- well prepared for to be sure -- because instability is inherent in the medium and, therefore, provides breathing space for artists to fill as they see fit. But fairly or not, familiarity with a work also imposes a baseline of expectations against which artists are inevitably measured. The pleasure (and frustration) of San Francisco Ballet's latest "Giselle" -- the production dates from 1999, the first complete version the company ever performed -- arose more from individual performances than from the thrust of conviction that a theatrically unified approach imposes on material.
On Thursday night cameras flashed and holiday lights twinkled as little girls in their best finery -- though UGG's competed with patent leather shoes this year -- could barely stand still to have their picture taken. One more time the staid Opera House Lobby had become "Nutcracker" land. For those of us who have seen more of this evergreen than probably any other single work, the buzz was understandable but not necessarily shared. Until the conductor lowered his baton, and the magic returned.
After his slyly teasing introduction to Norwegian painter Odd Nerdrum, who inspired inkBoat and Axis Dance Company's collaborative journey into the shadowy realm beyond ordinary perception, choreographer Shinichi Iova-Koga leapt high and landed on his back, keeping his head and limbs suspended in the air. He looked like Kafka's Gregor Samsa. It was this spectacular athletic feat that opened a 75-minute piece in which Butoh met integrated dance for a work of shimmering delicacy and rock-solid physicality. ODC Theater commissioned the work for the inaugural season of its reconstructed theater.
"Full Moon Syndrome," "Me No You," "So You See," "Et," "Columbia Chasing" Westwave Dance Festival Cowell Theater San Francisco, CA November 8, 2010
by Rita Felciano Copyright Rita Felciano, 2010
For its nineteenth season the San Francisco's Westwave Dance festival moved its performances from July weekends to a once-month Monday nights during the fall. Programming still emphasizes new work by local artists; the most recent concert offered five world-premieres. Presenting only freshly minted choreographies presupposes either a thorough knowledge of the artists you are choosing or something like blind faith and a willingness to take chances on a hunch. With one exception, producer Joan Lazarus' choices proved to be right on. This was a well-paced, well balanced evening of new dance.
Ralph Lemon's "How Can You Stay in the House All Day and Not Go Anywhere?" is a tour de force that explodes theatrical conventions about structure, time, space and -- not incidentally -- says something about the human condition. The work's very ambition seems to doom it to failure. The fact that it didn't reveals a goodly amount about Lemon as a thinker and crafter of a set of interlocking pieces whose totality may make you dive into a part of your being into which most of us rarely rarely dare to go.
Four years ago, Kathak Master Chitresh Das presented "Kathak at the Crossroads: Innovation Within Tradition", an international gathering of scholars, teachers and dancers of different generations and styles of North Indian dance and music. The success of that three-day event -- and Das' passion to see Indian dance and music thrive in India and the Diaspora -- prompted him to expand the format to the whole spectrum Classical dance and music: Bharata Natyam, Kathak, Odissi, Kuchipudi, Manipuri, Kathakali and newcomer Guariya Nritya. This festival focused exclusively on dance practitioners--student and professional performers and their guru/teachers.
The latest appearance by Bayanihan, the Philippines' long-established major folkloric company, left me torn exactly the way it did four years ago: delighted at the visual spectacle and charmed by some of the dancers. It also beautifully suggested sheer richness of indigenous dance genres, leaving the impression that just about every little town or region had its own festival or way of celebrating its uniqueness. Yet the paucity of choreographic imagination or arranging of these dances left a lot to be desired. It should be pointed out that the audience primarily consisted of Filipinos and Filipino Americans who seemed to thoroughly enjoy the show.
This year, dancers from American Ballet Theater, Bolshoi Ballet, New York City Ballet and San Francisco Ballet joined the five year-old Festival del Sole's line up of classical music, fine dining and - given the location - Napa Valley wines. A balanced program - former Cal Performances Director was Festival Advisor - offered a good mix of quality choreography and some fine performances. Perhaps, most satisfying was the variety of male/female partnering seen at one time. The audience in the recently renovated 1,200 seast Lincoln Theater had a grand time watching nine so very different pas de deux's.
