Liss Fain Dance
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
San Francisco, CA
August 27, 2009
by Rita Felciano
Copyright © Rita Felciano, 2009
There is a lot of be said to for watching Liss Fain’s choreography though hers is anything but
a protean imagination. Fain’s palette is restricted, grays and blacks, etchings
not paintings. Her dancers move beautifully but if they move us at all, they do
so from a distance. Almost always the choreography proceeds at an even pace
with little sense of urgency or hesitation. You watch these dances with your
brain but your heart never skips a beat. Still to see acute intelligence at
work and so consistently realized has its own rewards, particularly if it is
placed into Matthew Antaky’s elegant visual and lighting designs.