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Whither Are You Heading EDF?

San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival
June 1-29, 2008
Program Four
Palace of Fine Arts
San Francisco, California

by Rita Felciano
copyright @ Rita Felciano, 2008

By most measurements, the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival, celebrating its 30th anniversary this season, has been a success. It has built a reputation for well-produced, evenhanded shows. Every January a changing set of panelists selects individual artists and companies from open-to-the public auditions. EDF has spun off a well-respected educational series, “People Like Me.” A documentary film is in the making. Touring has become a possibility. Most encouragingly, the music component has been vastly improved; much of it is being performed live. These days EDF is almost as much a world music as a world dance festival. (A grant this year brought in guest musicians from around the globe). The commissioning program—to foster re-thinking of traditions—is another positive trend. Ticket sales prove that audiences love their EDF; the shows this year were, apparently, 99% sold out. So what if anything is wrong with this picture?

Dancers’ Choice

Dancers’ Choice: A Benefit Performance for the Dancers’ Emergency Fund
New York City Ballet
New York State Theater
New York, NY
June 27, 2008

by Leigh Witchel
copyright © 2008 by Leigh Witchel

New York City Ballet revived its Dancers’ Emergency Fund benefit with a twist; it’s now “Dancers’ Choice,” a night when the dancers get to pick the repertory and casting, showing us what they love to do and what they wish they were doing.  Peter Martins put the project in the hands of principal dancer Jonathan Stafford, who turned to the other dancers for assistance.  Together they handled most aspects of production, including the great idea of popular pricing (top price for a ticket was $45.) It was a long but rewarding evening – marked by numerous debuts, but made longer as Stafford hasn’t made enough curtain speeches yet to know to keep them brief.  At Martins’ suggestion Stafford programmed from NYCB’s repertory rather than outside of it, and included ballets works by Martins and Christopher Wheeldon that haven’t been seen in recent years as well as repertory staples by Balanchine and Robbins.

Thus Spake Foofwa

Benjamin de Bouillis
Foofwa d’Imobilite
Baryshnikov Arts Center, New York
June 26, 2008

By Tom Phillips
Copyright 2008 by Tom Phillips

This regional platter, benjamin of bouillis, with a spolish olive to middlepoint its zaynith, was marrying itself (porkograso!)..
James Joyce, Finnegans Wake


Benjamin de Bouillis, like most or all of the millions of names that pop up in Joyce’s final opus, is not a character at all, just an ephemeral bit of language with the power to hang around in the reader’s consciousness, taking on forms like a magician or a mime. Likewise, Foofwa d’Imobilite is just the made-up name of a Swiss dancer/choreographer/mime/clown. And his “Benjamin de Bouillis” uses dance the same way Joyce uses language – as material for a grand illusion, a tour de force of signs and symbols, pointing ultimately at itself, or nothing at all. It’s brilliant.

Looking Back Forward

San Francisco International Arts Festival
May 21-June 8, 2008
Various Venues
San Francisco, California

by Rita Felciano
copyright @ Rita Felciano, 2008

Travels and computer crashes delayed this look backward on one of the braver attempts to pull San Francisco out of what sometimes justifiably has been described “smug self-satisfaction.” In its fifth incarnation the San Francisco International Arts Festival was still struggling to reach a broader audience than its key constituency of local artists. The more the pity it is for the rest of the theater going public since this Festival is one of few opportunities to see work from abroad by performers who have not yet—and some who perhaps never will—attract the attention of the area’s major presenters. The program—heavy on dance this year— at the very least opened windows into where young dancers in places as disparate as Israel, Croatia, Germany and Brazil are investing their energy.

Robbins: The Later Years

Bach to Glass: A Musical Odyssey II
"2 & 3 Part Inventions," "A Suite of Dances," "In Memory of ...," "Glass Pieces"
New York City Ballet
New York State Theater
New York, NY
June 17, 2008

by Susan Reiter
copyright © 2008 Susan Reiter

The Robbins Celebration continued with this program that could have been titled Late Robbins, since all the ballets date from the final 15 years of his life. Performed on this occasion in reverse chronological order -- begining with the sprightly, pristine and endlessly inventive "2 & 3 Part Inventions," which was created for the 1994 School of American Ballet Workshop, and concluding with the 1983 "Glass Pieces," which has become a repertory staple and reliable program-closer over the past quarter-century. From the expansive and varied range he pursued during the 1980s -- a prolific decade for him, though not all of the works proved to have staying power -- he returned to ballet, following the triumph of "Jerome Robbins' Broadway" to focus his creative energies on Bach in the '90s.

Makarova's Gift

"La Bayadère"
American Ballet Theatre
Metropolitan Opera House
New York, NY
June 23, 2006

by Mary Cargill
copyright © 2008 by Mary Cargill

The audience at the opening night of ABT's "La Bayadère", as it stood and cheered, probably wasn't thinking about Natalia Makarova, but her production is one of the most valuable gifts ABT has ever received.  Over the years, it has become richer and more layered, but she put the basic structure in place.  It is strongly based on her memories of the Russian production, but she streamlined the more grandiose scenes, and brought the drama front and center.  The original libretto has been translated by  Roland John Wiley, and Makarova's follows it almost to the letter.  (Though the original makes it clear that the High Brahmin is told about the poison snake trick, and that is why he has the antidote on hand, rather than appearing, as in this production, to be a South Asian boy scout, prepared for any emergency.) 

The Art of Saying Goodbye

“Fancy Free,” “Rubies,” “Prodigal Son”
New York City Ballet
New York State Theater
New York, NY
June 18, 2008

by Leigh Witchel
copyright © 2008 by Leigh Witchel

Even though they were good, Wednesday night wasn’t about the performances.  The audience at New York City Ballet was packed with fans, partners and other well-wishers who had all come to see Damian Woetzel’s farewell.  The applause started on his first entrance and rarely let up; the excitement in the audience was magical.

Woetzel entered the company in 1985 and rocketed up the ranks, spending less than a year as a soloist and being named principal in 1989.  He was a natural dancer; his technique marked by easy unforced virtuosity.  He had a wide repertory that ranged from pyrotechnical roles to the contemplative parts he created in Robbins’ “Quiet City” and Eliot Feld’s “The Unanswered Question.”  He danced the few princes in the company’s repertory, but his métier was sunny, showy dancing done with an American accent.  He was at his best in outgoing roles such as “Stars and Stripes,” and with his personality could get away with things we might not have forgiven another dancer – improvised endings from jumps, even jumps where one swore that he decided what to do in midair.  With careers of similar duration, he and Peter Boal were doppelgangers – the extrovert and the introvert, perhaps even the Bad Boy and the Good Boy.  Often cast in the same role, a ballet took on completely different shadings depending on which of them danced. 

Half Awake

"The Sleeping Beauty"
American Ballet Theatre
Metropolitan Opera House
New York, NY
June 19, 2008

by Mary Cargill
copyright 2008 Mary Cargill

Once upon a time, in far away Russia, there were three brilliant men who loved France and devised a wonderful world based on French ideals of harmony and reason, set in historical periods of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.   To make the world more real, the composer used melodies and harmonies from those periods, the costume designer based his designs on the same periods, and the choreographer came up with some of the most beautiful configurations ever seen, as a visual metaphor of the power of beauty.  But that, as they say, was then.  Other lesser men came along through the years with silly ideas, few sillier than the production that ABT offered last year.  Many of the more egregious changes have been excised, but until the sublime architecture of Petipa is back (ABT for some reason based its choreography on the 1952 Konstantin Sergeyev mish mash), it is just reupholstering the chairs on the Titanic.

The Rite, According to Maalem

"Le Sacre du Printemps"
Compagnie Heddy Maalem
Joyce Theater
New York, NY
June 12, 2008

by Susan Reiter
copyright © 2008 Susan Reiter

Another week, another "Sacre." Last week it was Michael Clark, with the score live on two pianos. This week, it's French-Algerian choreographer Heddy Maalem's interpretation, with taped music (a viscerally powerful 1969 Cleveland Orchestra recording conducted by Pierre Boulez). This one has the (dubious) distinction of interrupting the score in between its two parts, for an interlude of video, sound effects and some dimly visible posturing on the darkened stage. Two such interludes also opened and closed the hour-long evening. They seemed to place this particular rite within the context of a journey from purity within the natural world towards the increasingly brutalizing, impersonal existence of contemporary civilization.

Ballet Across America

Ballet Across America
performances by Ballet West, Boston Ballet, Houston Ballet
The Joffrey Ballet, Kansas City Ballet, Oregon Ballet Theatre,
Pacific Northwest Ballet, Pennsylvania Ballet, The Washington Ballet
John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Washington, DC
June 10-15, 2008

by Alexandra Tomalonis
copyright 2008 by Alexandra Tomalonis

Eight years ago, the Kennedy Center's Balanchine Celebration presented a variety of American ballet companies dancing Balanchine's ballets in a variety of accents, though all true to the works' spirit and style. There was a wonderful potluck supper feel to the festival -- companies brought whatever they had in repertory that season, and served up a feast. One came away from the week feeling not only that Balanchine was in good hands and feet, but also that the neoclassical ballets he had planted in the American soil had taken root. This week, the Center has been presenting a different kind of festival, again a range of American companies, this time a wide variety of ballets. It's not only a wonderful opportunity to see nine companies in a single week, but to ask the question, what is American ballet in 2008?