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All’s Well That Ends Well

“Midsummer Night’s Dream”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      San Francisco Ballet                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 January 28, 2021                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     Streamed 
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     by Rita Felciano
copyright © Rita Felciano 2021

If you have to watch streamed full-length ballets, you probably could do not much better than San Francisco’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream” (available until February 10). This jewel received a single on-stage performance last April, the night before the SF Opera House closed. With a different cast, recorded last summer, it will have to do until sometime after the Company returns live. Yet Frank Zamacona’s superb direction for the screen lets the camera be our eyes without distracting editing. The only note of sadness -- besides those inevitable in the medium -- is the second act where all, of a sudden, the dancers look so shrunken.

Miracles of Dance at LaMama

LaMama Moves/Online
Tamar Rogoff with Merri Milwe
"Wonder About Merri" 
Kevin Augustine/Lone Wolf Tribe 
"Body Concert"
Tamar Rogoff with Mei Yamanaka
"The Yamanakas at Home"
January 27, 2021

by Tom Phillips
 Copyright 2021 by Tom Phillips 

 

It's not that often that three disparate dance pieces fit together so well that they seem to be subtly referring and comment- ing on each other -- but last night's trio of experiments from LaMama seemed to have been made with each other in mind.  The bookends were two short pieces by Tamar Rogoff --  one set in downtown Manhattan, the other in a residential neighborhood of Tokyo -- with entirely different characters and themes, but a single groove -- a Motown beat that gets you on your feet, and won't let you do anything but dance. 

The Yamanakas at Home -- Photo by Mei Yamanaka

The Grand Union

“The Grand Union: Accidental Anarchists of Downtown Dance: 1970-1976”
Wesleyan, 2020
by Wendy Perron

by Gay Morris
copyright 2021 by Gay Morris

The Grand Union existed for a mere six years, from 1970 to 1976. Yet its performances were legendary, in good part because a number of its members were among the brightest lights of postmodern dance. Would we still be interested in the Grand Union if it had not included Yvonne Rainer, Steve Paxton, David Gordon, Tricia Brown, Doug Dunn, and Barbara Dilly? I suspect not.

On We Struggle

“Leap into the New Year”                                                                                                                                                             San Francisco Ballet                                                                                                                                                                  Streaming                                                                                                                                                                                                                     January 14,2021
                                                                                                                                                                                by Rita Felciano
copyright © Rita Felciano 2021

Rarely has the life-giving part of live performances, whether music, theater or dance, been more clearly demonstrated than San Francisco Ballet’s on-line Gala “Leap Into the New Year” on January 14, 2021.  Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson, who will retire in June 2022, assembled an intriguing program with excerpts from four upcoming world premieres, two duets from the repertoire, and three Pas de Deux from the classics. Well balanced, well performed, with the help San Francisco’s fine SFBallet Orchestra, thankfully still under the baton of Martin West, it should have been a glorious evening instead it turned out to be an honest leap into the new season.

LaMama Moves Online

LaMama Moves/Online 
Annabella Lenzu & Kari Hoaas 
January 20, 2021

By Tom Phillips 
Copyright 2021 by Tom Phillips 

Inauguration Day and the Pandemic both played into the hands of artists at LaMama's annual festival of dance, this year on video instead of downtown in New York.  Norwegian choreographer Kari Hoaas and Argentine-American Annabella Lenzu had to adapt work originally meant for LaMama's theater space.  And while their creative solutions narrowed the scope of their pieces, they may also have sharpened their focus. 

                    Ida Haugen in "Rise" -- Photo: Marius Hauge 

The Unbearable Weight of Impermanence

Margaret Jenkins Dance Company
"Breathing at the Boundaries"
December 29, 2020
on YouTube

by Rita Felciano
copyright © 2020 by Rita Felciano                                                                                                                                                                                   

The last few months, looking at one more piece of choreography on screen made me wonder whether it might not be preferable to wait till the dancers could come back for live audiences. With few exceptions, despite honest efforts, the screen had offered few encouraging examples of vivid imaginations getting a handle on dance on screen. With “Cooped” Jamar Roberts created one of those outliers. That short solo communicated power and fragmentation but stirred the soul. But just before the end of the depressing 2020, on December 26, the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company defied the odds with an original full evening, multi-cast screen dance. Its truth resonated way beyond its fifty-five minutes.