96 Hours: Home Depot's Kids Workshops: safety, skill

On Saturday morning, you might notice a brigade of shorter-than-usual do-it-yourselfers heading through the aisles of Home Depot. Follow the sound of chattering voices and pounding hammers and you'll find dozens of youngsters sitting on upturned buckets and making projects at the Home Depot's Kids Workshops.

Read more at SFChronicle.com

Rest of post here.

Read more...

Check it off: Dining outdoors

Another feature from the Check it off column in the SF Chronicle.

As the warmer weather kicks in, thoughts turn to dining in the great outdoors. Whether you're firing up the grill for Father's Day, planning a fancy al fresco buffet or just relaxing out in your garden on a weekend, here are a few things that can make your next outdoor gathering a bit more pleasant.

- Sun tea jar. An easy, cheerful addition to any outdoor party is a tall glass of sun tea. Make it in a large glass jar. Just fill the container with cold water, add three or four tea bags and set it in the sunlight for three to four hours. Pour the tea over ice and serve. Solar power never tasted so good.

- Frozen fruit. If you don't care for watered-down drinks, consider freezing some fruit the night before for use in your beverages the next day. Slices of lemon, grapes, chunks of pineapple, pieces of mango or raspberries can be a refreshing addition to iced tea, lemonade or a simple glass of fizzy water.

Read more at the SF Chronicle website.

Read more...

96 Hours: San Ramon's Art and Wind Festival

Sled kites, diamond kites, delta kites - whatever your favorite style might be, for a high-flying time, consider dusting off your old kite and taking it out for a spin with the kids at the San Ramon Art and Wind Festival, which takes place on Sunday and Monday in San Ramon Central Park.

In addition to the regular arts, crafts and food booths, rock-climbing wall, face painting and inflatable bouncy houses that make any outdoor festival fun, kids can learn all about the ways of the wind in free kite-making workshops (10 a.m.-12:30 p.m. and 1:30-4 p.m.) in the community center, where they can also make wind socks, wind bonnets and wind wands.

Read more at the San Francisco Chronicle site.

Read more...

USF dance teacher made great leaps

There's something about Kathileen Gallagher that immediately makes even a new acquaintance feel like an old friend.

Lively and informal, Gallagher - the architect of the University of San Francisco's dance program - bustles with cheerful energy and doesn't look at all like someone who will be retiring this year after 41 years at the university. As the associate professor passes students in the hallways of the Koret Health and Recreation Center on her way to her office - which looks into the newly named Kathileen A. Gallagher Dance Studio - she has a solicitous greeting for everyone and seems to remember, in a maternal way, little things about each student.

Read more at the SF Chronicle website.

Read more...

She's moved on, but ballet is in Bramer's blood

An edited version of this story first appeared in the SF Chronicle.

Hidden talent has always graced San Francisco Ballet’s corps de ballet, and in her nine years with the company, former dancer Dalene Bramer gave many a luminous and memorable performance in roles small and large. A Santa Rosa native who started dancing when she was three, Bramer arrived at the San Francisco Ballet School at the age of eight, and in 1996 was named an apprentice before joining the corps in 1997. Bramer attracted notice for her warmth and grace in roles as different as “The Pennsylvania Polka” in Paul Taylor’s “Company B” and the White Cat in “Sleeping Beauty.” She could dance a contemporary lead in Hans van Manen’s “Grosse Fuge” and give Balanchine a brilliant glow as a soloist in “Diamonds.” Now finishing her degree at USF’s School of Law, Bramer has turned her ballet-honed professionalism and prodigious intelligence to a new career, but she stays connected to the institution where she grew up by serving on the San Francisco Ballet Board’s School Committee.

As a student, what is it like in the days leading up to the showcase?
It was so exciting, especially as an advanced student, because you prepared all year long for that one performance. The teachers really coached you and helped you develop as an artist into the role that you were dancing. Irina Jacobson and Lola de Avila were my mentors at the school and Irina coached me in the lead in “La Sylphide” when I was 15. We would have rehearsals for a couple of hours a day at least and she would explain who the character was, the emotion behind what you were trying to portray, as well as technical aspects, like, “Put your heel forward more here. Turn out!” She broke it down so that each step was as perfect as it could be. The day-to-day class and exercises give you the foundation so that you have the base to support whatever is demanded of you. When you’re being coached, you’re finally able to bring yourself to the next level as an artist, rather than just doing the steps. It enables you to become an individual.

Did that experience being coached help you when you went into the company?
When I got into the company it was a little bit shocking. It had been a really nurturing environment in the ballet school and I had so many people who were really looking out for me. But once you get into the company, it’s a whole different set of people that are supervising you and teaching you the choreography and you really don’t know them very well. You’re no longer being coached or scrutinized as you were before—you have to do it for yourself. You have the tools and you know what you need, but you have to shift your mindset and be able to correct yourself with having someone constantly telling you what to do.

How did you find out that you’d gotten into San Francisco Ballet?
About three weeks before my last Student Showcase, I broke my fifth metatarsal. I was on crutches, which was somewhat devastating, because Helgi [Tomasson] had created a ballet for the school called “Simple Symphony,” and he had choreographed my part for me, which was an amazing experience for a student. My roommate was my understudy, so when I broke my foot, I started teaching her my part from the couch. I came to all the rehearsals on crutches, trying to encourage my friends and just be there. Well, right after the showcase I got a call from Helgi to meet with him, and he offered me a contract. He said he had had the opportunity to see before I broke my foot but then also in rehearsals for the role that I was supposed to perform and decided that it was worth giving me the chance. I think that it makes a difference, showing that you have a positive attitude--that you’re willing to be a team player and not be negative about the circumstances that you’re in.

Can you tell me about being in St. Mary’s LEAP program and how you came to pursue law?
It’s a tremendous opportunity for dancers, which meant that I was able to get an education and receive an undergraduate degree while I was still dancing. You know, dancers are going six days a week—you get Monday off and that’s it. So it’s hard to pursue an education because there’s just no time. At LEAP, they structured the program so we could have classes on Sunday evenings, even after performances. It was really fun to discuss philosophy and get your mind on something else, so that you’re not completely hyper-focused on dancing.

My last year dancing I knew I wanted to get a master’s degree, but I still wasn’t sure in what. St. Mary’s offered a para-legal program, which I thought that might be a good field for me, but I wanted to make sure. As it turned out, I really loved the research and writing class and I decided law was a good fit for me There’s a lot of artistry in law, in crafting an argument and delivering something that’s persuasive. It takes a lot of planning, just like choreography.

What are some of the things you hope to accomplish by being on the School Committee?
My role, I feel, is to help the school keep moving forward and to try to give it a young perspective. I think one of its most important functions is to develop young dancers into successful people. Of course, not every dancer who goes to the ballet school ends up becoming a professional--usually only one or two get into a company. But the skills that you learn from ballet—dedication, hard work, focus and determination, the knowing that if you put everything you have into it you’ll really see results—that inner strength can really carry you through your whole life wherever you go. In law school I’ve found a lot of those skills transfer. Having composure, grace and also the ability to perform under pressure is really useful when everyone is looking at you and expecting you to perform.

There was a matinee of “Diamonds” in which you danced one of the soloists--you hit a wonderful arabesque that stayed there, it seemed like, forever.
[Bramer laughs.] I remember that like it was yesterday! That was one of the magical moments when everything just comes together. I appreciate your remembering that. You know, it’s hard as a dancer not seeing the audience or their appreciation of you. You can feel them and their energy as you’re dancing, but you don’t necessarily know when people notice you. But the few moments when things just work perfectly—well, those always stay with you.

San Francisco Ballet School 2009 Student Showcase: “Allegro Brillante,” Stars and Stripes.” Wed-Fri, May 20-22, Novellus Theater at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 700 Howard Street at Third St. All tickets $32. For more information, sfballet.org or (415) 865-2000.

Read more...

Goldrush adds a fresh twirl to square dancing

It's warm in the low-ceilinged, wood-paneled hall at the Cordelia Fire District, but the doors are open, letting an evening breeze in to cool the ring of young dancers who are walking their paces with good-humored grace.

"Turn and deal ... Ferris Wheel!" calls Scot Byars, an affable, energetic man dressed in white pants and a cheerful red shirt. He is working with the young square dancers of Goldrush, an exhibition group that Byars, 49, and his wife, Erin, 53, founded in 2007.

Read more at the SF Chronicle website.

Read more...

Dance review: Smuin Ballet opens spring season

Something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue seems to be the theme of Smuin Ballet’s spring season, which opened at the Novellus Theater at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on Friday, and which continues through May 17.

In the new/borrowed category is Trey McIntyre’s flirtatious “The Naughty Boy!” which opens the program. Sporting a red furry mohawk of a cap, a pert Jessica Touchet plays a Cupid-like interloper romping through the amorous interludes of four couples. Danced to a recording of Mozart’s Violin Concerto in G, McIntyre’s contemporary speediness is likable, if not ground-breaking, and he maps out his steps with a precision that utilizes deft pointe work and pinpoint accuracy in the partnering to entertaining and sometimes dazzling effect, particularly from the spicy-sweet Jean Michelle Sayeg. But he also misses a few opportunities to steer “The Naughty Boy!” into more unusual territory. When Touchet inserts herself into Erin Yarbrough-Stewart and Aaron Thayer’s romantic pas de deux, for instance, the twining, interlocking trio looks like a promising conceit. But just as things get interesting, Cupid exits, leaving behind a very lovely and sentimental, but garden-variety, duet.

If the praise sounds a mite lukewarm, the problem is that Michael Smuin at his best and most inventive sets a high bar that’s hard to match. Immediately following McIntyre’s ballet on the program is Smuin’s miniature gem “Bouquet,” made for San Francisco Ballet in 1981 and a work that captures the best impulses of the imaginative, evocative ballet choreography of the 1970s. There are nods to the classics in quotations from “Sleeping Beauty’s” famous Rose Adagio and Balanchine’s “Apollo” in the opening quartet, in which a delicate, playful Yarbrough drifts into the sphere of three romantic suitors, but Smuin’s inclination here is toward an unabashed modern romanticism that admirably captures the disquieting ache of Dmitri Shostakovich’s music.

For those more familiar with Smuin’s late period razzle-dazzle, the company also premiered a suite of dances from his last story ballet, “St Louis Woman: A Blues Ballet,” which he choreographed in 2003 for Dance Theatre of Harlem to songs and musical interludes out of Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer’s 1946 musical of the same title.

The company has edited the original ballet down to suite of dances that sketch the rivalry between jockey Little Augie--played on opening night by the a jazzy, swaggering Ryan Camou--and the owner of Rocking Horse Club, Biglow Brown, danced by Matthew Linzer, both of whom are in love with the same woman, Robin Cornwell’s glamorous Della Green. The results are mixed. On the one hand, we lose bizarre, confusing plot elements like the Death character and the perplexing multiple finale numbers, but on the other, the drama of the races, the shooting and its aftermath are also gone and what remains still doesn’t make a lot of sense. Key numbers like “Come Rain or Come Shine” and “It’s a Woman’s Prerogative”--danced with winning charm by Terez Dean and Shannon Hurlburt-- are still there, as is Tony Walton’s colorful, Matisse-like backdrop. But despite the high-kicking spirit and Broadway jollity, the bits and pieces just doesn’t seem to hang together, although to be fair, neither did the complete original ballet.

An edited version of this review first appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Read more...

Tina LeBlanc retires from San Francisco Ballet

An edited version of this appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle.
(photo: Erik Tomasson)
Whenever a favorite dancer gives a retirement gala there’s a bittersweet mood in the audience and Saturday night was no exception as San Francisco Ballet bid farewell to Tina LeBlanc, who retired from the stage after dancing ten years with the Joffrey Ballet and 17 years as a principal with SFB.

Never a diva, but always a star, LeBlanc is the quintessential American ballerina--a dancer of can-do amiability with brains, pragmatism and a remarkably unpretentious freshness onstage and off. Even the ticket stubs for the gala occasion on Saturday night at the War Memorial Opera House said simply and without formality, “Tina’s Farewell.”

“You know, it’s funny, it actually feels like a family gathering,” remarked Rory Hohenstein, a former soloist with SFB who has guested with the company for the last few programs of their 2009 season. “But I saw dress rehearsal and already we were getting a little…” he wiped at his eyes.

Bill Repp, the doorman who enthusiastically greets patrons at the Grove Street entrance to the War Memorial Opera House—commiserated for a moment, “I’ve seen of course lots of dancers retire through the years, but this, this is one of the hardest,” he said shaking his head, “Tina is such a lady. She just commands so much respect from everyone.”

Devotees waiting for the doors to open so they could stake a spot in standing room reflected on LeBlanc’s qualities.

“When she first came to San Francisco Ballet, I had the impression she was a very technical dancer,” recalls Paul Dana, “But she proved to be so much deeper of a dancer than that.”

“I’ve seen many Auroras, and she was the first one since Margot Fonteyn to make me cry,” adds Tab Buckner. “Every gesture, the way she captured the mood of the music, in everything she did there was such logic in the way it unfolded. She is unique.”

Asked which of the many partnerships of Tina’s stands out in their memories, the crowd returns an unhesitating chorus. “Gonzalo!”

LeBlanc’s tremendous generosity onstage has never warmed a partnership so well as the one she shared with former SFB principal Gonzalo Garcia, who returned as a guest artist from New York City Ballet to present her in Balanchine’s “Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux” with just the kind of tenderness, nobility and abandon that she inspired in him in so many roles. Long-beloved as he rose through the ranks, Garcia’s partnership with LeBlanc was one of the magical events at San Francisco Ballet and from the roar that went up from the audience at their first steps onto the stage, clearly no one at the Opera House had forgotten.

Garcia’s beats were as lofty as we remembered--his exuberance still thrilling, but when LeBlanc looked at him meltingly, he turned his eyes to the audience for an instant as if to say, “Am I lucky or what?”

His gallantry was the perfect frame for LeBlanc, who even in this last performance took risks, playfully pushing the musicians and conductor Martin West with her crystalline phrasing, nailing a series of turns with a flourish and sailing—even floating—into Garcia’s arms in the coda.

Interspersed throughout the evening were video clips from LeBlanc’s long career, mixed in with tributes from her colleagues. Predictably much of the video, assembled by Austin Forbord, featured her astonishingly brilliant technical moments, breathtaking turns and virtuoso pointe work. But while most interviewees are inclined to mention her technique first, they almost always end by talking about how moving and engaging her dancing became, and there was no better place to see that sensitive and intelligent artistry than in Lar Lubovitch’s “My Funny Valentine,” which she performed on Saturday with Griff Braun, of Lubovitch’s company.

During intermission, LeBlanc’s early ballet teacher, Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet’s Marcia Dale Weary, recalled her young student. “She was so sweet, but so focused-- I knew right from the start that she would be a ballerina,” remembered Weary, “She still looks like the same little girl to me,” she added wistfully.

LeBlanc has always been best at playing real women, not airy-fairy types. While other dancers can look like unfamiliar, otherworldly creatures when you see them off stage, LeBlanc is always strikingly real—the same person you see onstage is the person you meet offstage. Even in dreamy roles like the Adagio from Helgi Tomasson’s 1995 “Sonata,” which LeBlanc danced with Ruben Martin in the second half of the program to the accompaniment of David Kadarauch on cello and Nataly’a Feygina on piano, she manages to compress a womanly earthiness into the expressiveness of an arching back or extended limbs.

“As a tall partner, I thought there would never be a possibility for me to work with this woman who made everything look easy,” said former SFB principal Benjamin Pierce, whose duet with LeBlanc in 2000 in Julia Adam’s “Night” remains etched in the memories of those who saw it. “I admired Tina so much but she was like a forbidden fruit, so ‘Night’ was like a gift. She had a reverence for the duality of two people working together and of her place in a big, beautiful company.”

Often hailed as the company’s premier technician, and admired by colleagues and audiences alike for her sunny vivacity, LeBlanc’s very presence in a ballet could immediately ground an entire cast. For her finale, LeBlanc shifted to Balanchine classicism with the pas de deux and polonaise from “Theme and Variations.” Partnered attentively by Davit Karapetyan, LeBlanc navigated the hair-raising choreography with extraordinary nerve and grace.

No matter whom the partner, when LeBlanc looks at him, there is a particular tilt of his head as he looks back at her and the warmth of her smile as she balanced steadily on one stretched pointe seemed to inspire Karapetyan, who walked around her gazing admiringly.

At the curtain call, as tears streamed down LeBlanc’s face, Helgi Tomasson led a parade of dancers--including Nicolas Blanc, Pascal Molat, Gennadi Nedvigin, fellow ballet moms Katita Waldo and Kristin Long, Joan Boada on crutches and LeBlanc’s former partners David Palmer and Parrish Maynard—who paid one more tribute to her. Garcia fell, only part-comically, to both knees before her, but perhaps no men affected her more than her two young sons Marinko and Sasha, whose pride in their mom’s evening was clear.

At the end, LeBlanc took one last bow, mouthing to the audience, “I’ll miss you” as the curtain fell.

Read more...

96 Hours: Koret Museum Days

The Koret Foundation marks Mother's Day, as well as its 30th anniversary, Sunday by sponsoring free admission at 17 Bay Area museums and science centers. Participating museums are the Asian Art Museum, Bay Area Discovery Museum, Chabot Space & Science Center, Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose, Contemporary Jewish Museum, Exploratorium, Judah L. Magnes Museum, Lawrence Hall of Science, Legion of Honor, de Young Museum, Museum of the African Diaspora, Oakland Museum of California, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco Zoo, San Jose Museum of Art, Tech Museum of Innovation and Zeum.

Koret Museum Day: Free admission at 17 sites: "

Read more...

Dance review: Eifman Ballet's 'Onegin'

It would be hard to overstate just how beloved Alexander Pushkin's 19th century poem 'Eugene Onegin' is to the Russian people. It has inspired Tchaikovsky's famous opera and John Cranko's 1965 ballet, and its translation alone has sparked endless controversies. So there's a whiff of hubris surrounding Boris Eifman's re-envisioning of this classic romantic story, which received its West Coast premiere when Cal Performances presented Eifman Ballet of St. Petersburg in Zellerbach Hall over the weekend.

It would be hard to overstate just how beloved Alexander Pushkin's 19th century poem "Eugene Onegin" is to the Russian people. It has inspired Tchaikovsky's famous opera and John Cranko's 1965 ballet, and its translation alone has sparked endless controversies. So there's a whiff of hubris surrounding Boris Eifman's re-envisioning of this classic romantic story, which received its West Coast premiere when Cal Performances presented Eifman Ballet of St. Petersburg in Zellerbach Hall over the weekend.

By the same token, though, it would be hard to overstate the popularity of the Eifman Ballet, an intense and dramatically gifted troupe of 55 dancers, founded by artistic director and choreographer Boris Eifman in the 1970s.

If you're looking for the lyricism of Cranko's choreography, however, the romanticism of Tchaikovsky's opera, or really anything resembling Pushkin's czarist-era tale, this is probably not your ballet. True, a naive young Tatiana still falls in love with the cynical and feckless Onegin, and he needlessly kills her sister's fiance, Lensky. Tatiana still marries a blind colonel and rejects Onegin's advances in the end, but that's about all that's left of the original.

Once you let your preconceptions go and decide not to worry about details of the story line, you can sit back and simply enjoy the stream of bizarre dream episodes, the high-flying acrobatic pas de deux and the seductively mesmerizing rock concert panache.

Set to a recorded pastiche of greatest hits from Tchaikovsky interspersed with screaming rock guitar solos by Alexander Sitkovetsky, this "Onegin" unfolds in a turbulent post-Soviet milieu, a reasonable parallel to the nihilism of 19th century Russia.

As the dewy-eyed, bookish Tatiana, Maria Abashova is charmingly gawky and coltish, though the sheer muscle behind her textbook pitch turns would make a Martha Graham dancer blanch. Abashova pairs well, interestingly enough, with the engaging Natalia Povoroznyuk, who plays her sister, Olga. By turns louche and anguished, Oleg Gabyshev's handsome Onegin overshadows Dmitry Fisher's Lensky, but it's Sergei Volobuev who seems to have the most fun - in unrelieved black, from his beret and shades to his shiny jacket, except for a thick gold chain around his neck - as the blind colonel.

It would be too simplistic to dismiss Eifman's style as all flash and shameless eroticism. His attempts to take a venerated Russian story and place it in the context of the New Russia may be audacious, but they also reveal not just an undeniably appealing streak of wild romanticism, but a keenly observed parable about the self-questioning doubt that dogs the modern Russian character - and the destructive yearning for the unattainable hearts' desire that dogs us all.

This review first appeared on SFGate.com.

Read more...

Clogging falls in step across America

Afternoon sunlight pours through the windows of ODC's Shotwell studios as Ian Enriquez's clogging class thunders away in the first-floor studio.

Sweating and intently focused, the dozen or so dancers track his moves and repeat them. Any misstep will be plainly heard, but the class - which is peppered with students from all age groups - pounds gamely away at the wooden floor to the not-exactly bluegrass strains of 'Let's Hear It for the Boy.'

Read more at the SF Chronicle website.

Read more...

Albany Middle School teacher puts on the hits

There's an earnest cluster of middle school kids up on the stage singing, but it sounds as if the volume is low.

"Exit signs!" booms a voice from the back of the theater. Everyone lifts their chins, and the voices project to the green exit signs at the back of Albany High School's Little Theater as a great bear of a man dressed in jeans and a black Lahaina Divers T-shirt strides up the aisle.

It's the first dress rehearsal of Albany Middle School's annual musical, and veteran drama teacher Tom Gamba is steering the 90-plus-student cast of his latest, "The Directors," toward Thursday's opening night.

Read more at the SF Chronicle website.

Read more...

Dance Review: Lerman's solemn, moving 'Dances' grips audience

'Try that word out loud - genocide,' says dancer Benjamin Wegman during Sunday night's performance of Liz Lerman Dance Exchange's 'Small Dances About Big Ideas' at the Jewish Community Center in San Francisco. 'It's a lot for one person to take in,' he concedes.

Tackling difficult issues - mass killings, bodies exhumed and identified, rape, torture - Lerman and her 11 dancers trace stories from the Holocaust to the mass killings in Bosnia and Rwanda. They're told often through specific histories, not only of victims, but also of those who sought justice, a "bone woman" who traces the graves of victims of the Rwandan genocide, the Polish activist Raphael Lemkin, who first used the term "genocide" and three Fates, led by the regal Martha Wittman, who interweave among the victims and the judges.

Read more at SF Chronicle.com.

Read more...

Ditching your lawn? Plan replacement carefully

Estimates vary, but those lush, green turf grass lawns can account for 50 to 80 percent of a household's yearly water usage - adding up to thousands of gallons of water per acre of lawn."

Conserving the copious amounts of water that thirsty lawns suck up has become such a priority that counties from Marin to Santa Clara are offering homeowners rebates for removing their lawns. Even small businesses are offering incentives, such as the Ploughshares Nursery's "Tear Out Your Lawn" challenge in which customers can get 20 percent off drought-tolerant plants through May 31 if they remove 40 percent of their lawns.

Read more at the SF Chronicle website.

Read more...

Jelly Belly Stickerpalooza: Fun that sticks

Move over, Willy Wonka. The Chocolate Factory might be fun, but for a truly scrumdiddlyumptious outing mixed in with a bit of sticker creativity, check out the Jelly Belly Factory's Stickerpalooza, which started on Wednesday and runs through Friday at the factory's Fairfield (Solano County) location.

Although the factory tour is a memorable and fun trip for the family, lines for it can be long during spring break. But if you have an intrepid member of your party who's willing to wait in the tour line, the rest of your group can have fun with Stickerpalooza, says Barbara Marino, a spokesperson for Mrs. Grossman's. The beloved Petaluma sticker company, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, is bringing a bit of sticker fun to the candy factory. It certainly beats staring at the jelly-bean portrait of Ronald Reagan for half an hour.

Read more at Jelly Belly Stickerpalooza: Fun that sticks.

Read more...

Mudflat Festival: Learn about Richardson Bay

If you have a hankering to get down and dirty, head off to the Richardson Bay Audubon Center & Sanctuary's second annual Mudflat Festival. Timed to coincide with the reopening of Richardson Bay sanctuary's 900 acres to boats and public access, the event on Saturday will feature wildflower walks, a compost demo, plus art and poetry exhibits featuring works by kids from all over the Bay Area. The centerpiece, though, will be the opening of the beach area for kids to play in the mudflats and the tide pools.

Read more at SFGate.

Read more...

The critic gets criticized

Interesting letter to the Chronicle today criticizing my criticism:

Editor - Having read the dance reviews of newly adopted dance critic Mary Ellen Hunt over the past couple months, I am dismayed at the improper and outdated direction in which The Chronicle is channeling its dance criticism. Hunt's articles offer little more than eloquent narratives of the works she is 'reviewing.'

When you look beyond the veil of her elaborate use of long descriptive words that she strings together in a poetic phrases you can see that there is almost no actual reviewing involved in her writings. In the past several decades much literature on the nature and purpose of dance criticism has been published, yet it seems that only a few dance critics and no newspaper editor outside of New York City have stumbled upon it.

Dance criticism has evolved to a much greater level than dealing with summaries and description as is characteristic of Hunt's writings. It has now been shown that it's possible to add a level of intelligent analysis to a review! If a dance review doesn't address the values of a piece of art (why was it made, why is it deserving of a review, how it adds to or advances the art form, how it challenges convention, how it directs culture) the review offers little contribution and is nearly pointless.

By only offering description and summaries of works in your dance reviews you are not cultivating an audience of intelligent viewers who will be inspired to engage in seeing dance or even continue reading your articles, you are only cultivating an audience who knows how to appreciate a well-worded summary. Having been a professional dancer and pursuing academic dance research, I am constantly frustrated at how rarely the general public approaches dance with intelligent thought.

- Elliot Gordon Mercer

Mercer, who danced with Company C, seems to have a very particular idea of what critics writing for a daily newspaper should be doing. So what do you think out there?

Read more at the SF Chronicle site.

Read more...

Deer Hollow Farm: Chance to pet animals on tours

With spring in the air, there's no better time to visit Deer Hollow Farm, which welcomes new lambs and kids - the goat-y kind - to their charming menagerie of pigs, chickens, rabbits, ducks and geese with spring farm tours.

Read more at the SF Chronicle website.

Read more...

Miller-McCune | Article | Fine Arts Journalism Faces Bleak Future with Entrepreneurial Verve

With newspaper vanishing, Tom Jacobs wonders where the critics will go. (I know some people will have their own tart response to that question!)

"A former staff writer with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (the industry's most recent print casualty, which became an online-only product as of March 17) and Seattle Weekly, McLennan also heads the scaled-back National Arts Journalism Program, and in that capacity he has been tracking some disturbing figures. He estimates that in 2005, there were approximately 5,000 staff positions on American newspapers that involved writing about the arts. These include critics, feature writers, reporters who cover cultural news — and the many journalists who juggle all three of those roles."

Today, he estimates that due to layoffs, cutbacks and the closure of several prominent papers (including, another recent victim, Denver's Rocky Mountain News), that number is down to 2,500. That's a 50 percent decline in only four years — a disproportionate loss even for an industry in decline. (Advertising Age recently estimated that one newspaper job in four has been lost since 1990.) Sean Means, film critic of the Salt Lake City Tribune, is independently keeping a running tally of colleagues who have been laid off over the past three years. The total is up to 49.

Most newspapers continue to cover the world of culture using freelancers and (in the case of film and television) wire-service copy to supplement the remaining staff. A few, including the Los Angeles Times, have inaugurated blogs on their Web sites to get arts news out more quickly."

Read more at Miller-McCune.

Read more...

Dance Review: Los Farruco at the Palace of Fine Arts

Los Farruco's stunning one-night-only show at the Festival of Flamenco Arts and Traditions at the Palace of Fine Arts Theater on March 6 had to have been one of the Bay Area flamenco community's most highly anticipated performances. So I was surprised in the week after to find out that so few people outside of the flamenco circles even knew that the family Farruco was even performing -- how did it not register on the mainstream dance community's radar?

Even so, pesented by the Bay Area Flamenco Partnership, Los Farruco easily sold the Palace of Fine Arts theater out. The lobby was jammed, and even a last minute snafu with the online ticketing service didn't deter patrons, who waited forty-five minutes for the show to start under chaotic circumstances to say the least. But then, we are talking about one of the world's leading exponents of flamenco puro, and a family of artists descended from the legendary El Farruco, whose grandson Farruquito seared his presence onto the stage at the Flamenco Festival USA with Juana Amaya back in 2003.

Perhaps anticipation of the family's tour was fanned by the release of the 2005 film "Bodas de Gloria," which chronicles the lives of a gypsy clan, in a sort of retort to the violent panache of "Blood Wedding." Farruquito--Juan Manuel Fernandez Montoya, who did not appear on this tour, but apparently helped to produce it-- stars in the drama which was filmed back in 1996, but of equal note were the appearances by El Farruco's daughters, Rosario Montoya "La Farruca" (Farruquito's mother) and Pilar Montoya "La Faraona" and the debut of young Antonio Fernandez Montoya, Farruquito's younger brother, who would take on the name "El Farruco" after his grandfather's death in 1997. These three, La Farruca, La Faraona and El Farruco the younger were joined by La Faraona's son "El Barullo," for an electrifying evening.

If all of that seems confusing, perhaps it's enough to understand that this was a family affair, and that for a few hours, it felt as though you'd been invited into the Farruco family for a glimpse of what life looks like in the eye of the surging storm that their intensity whips up. The show is still a show--this is entertainment of the first-order, but beyond that, it feels personal. These musicains and dancers have something to say--to each other, to us, to a higher power. They have the tools to put that conversation across, and nothing is so satisfying as being a part of that, whether you're onstage or not.

A smoky air hangs over the stage when the curtain finally goes up to reveal guitarist Antonio Rey Navas alone on the stage, playing in cascading ebbs and flows to a theater so silent and rapt that under the strains of a solo you could hear him taking breaths.

But it isn't long before the guys, Barullo and Farruco burst onto stage, roiling with youthful vigor. Clad in simple black pants, a white shirt and red scarf at the throat, they face off, attacking the ground, attacking the music, and you think to yourself, ah the energy of youth. Then La Farruca arrives.

For a moment, the boys look as though they're daring her to take them on... poor mama. Then she unleashes an unsuspected fury...poor boys. La Farruca has a wild feral quality, a tempestuousness, that takes her fearlessly off balance, and yet which she completely controls. In about two minutes her hair is out of a neat chignon and the energy coursing from the singers to the dancers and back is palpable, like an electric current -- you can't take your finger out of the socket.

With the audience still breathing hard after that last encounter, Rey returns, this time accompanying the singers (Antonio Zuniga, Simon de Malaga, Mara Rey and Pedro el Granaino), and the rasp of brings back to me the images of a singer in Granada leaning off an iron balcony above a crowd of hundreds, singing to the Virgin during Holy Week.

The terrifically commanding Mara Rey leads the entrance of a rotund woman with a capacious bosom covered in red silk for the bulerias. Faraona is a force to be reckoned with, even with a bandage on her hand and the audience goes crazy as though we're imploring her to dance, literally shrieking for her to continue.

As Barullo returns, in a rust-colored suit with a long jacket that he flourishes like a shawl, for his Seguiriya, the shouts begin anew. He turns so impossibly off balance that it nearly looks like acrobatics, but from the audience, a woman shouts in Spanish, and the only word I make out is "duende." In response, a faint smile turns up the corner of Barrullo's lips as he rips off the jacket and gets busy charging into ridiculously complex rhythms.

Mercurially, the mood changes again for Farruco's solea and he enters upstage like a shadowy ghost behind the cantaor. Tall and slender, he takes his time, hands capturing the air, moving slowly with sturm und drang washing all around him. Then suddenly, he is like a man unleashed on life, with lustiness and perhap even petulance coming out in lightning blasts of zapateado.

La Farruca returns for the romanza, cutting a stunning silhouette in a long dark dress. With just the hands curled into fists, and her long hair continually escaping its bounds, she looks possessed. She gets all up into the singers' grille, inspires extra energy from them and in a display of dictatorial pique, stomps the ground with a force that conveys a temperament that is at once inexorable and inextinguishable.

As the jaleos draw to a close, the family Farruco takes their bows but fromthe mood of the crowd on its feet and stomping themselves, it can't be over. For an encore, the musicians, singers and dancers all come out onto the apron of the stage and Farruco rips a chair free from its microphone wires and sets it downstage for guitarists Rey and El Tuto to lean on. Now is the time for everyone to dance, even their lighting designer comes out in sneakers and takes a turn with them. Nobody leaves without dancing.

Read more...

Dance review: ODC's 'Grassland,' 'Forest'

Questing and discovery loosely tied together two very different premieres at the ODC/Dance Downtown 2009 season, which opened with a gala performance Thursday evening, and which continues at the Novellus Theater in Yerba Buena Center through March 29.

At the heart of KT Nelson's "Grassland" - a new work set to a commissioned score by Marcelo Zarvos, and accompanied by Zarvos on piano along with a live string quartet under the direction of René Mandel - is a herd of wild things, pulsing with life.

Read more at the SF Chronicle site.

Read more...

Dance review: David Rousseve's 'Saudade'

There are many words whose finer nuances escape exact translation into English, and yet there remains the sense that you can grasp the essence through the lens of experience, stories or analogies. Saudade is translated from the Portuguese variously as nostalgia or bittersweet longing, and David Rouss�ve's thoughtfully constructed dance-theater work 'Saudade' - a co-commission from the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts that opened at the Novellus Theater on Thursday night - attempts to get to the heart of the word with tales that reflect intermingling sadness and joy.

Read more at the SF Chronicle website.

Read more...

'Invasion of the Land Animals': March program

Known for its mesmerizing walk-through tunnel-tanks that show off elegant swirls of sardines, lazing rockfish, giant sea bass and a dizzying variety of rays and sharks, the Aquarium of the Bay has long appealed to young oceanographers-in-training. Dedicated to educating the public about conservation issues, the Aquarium is now expanding its sights to include land-dwellers such as the Pacific tree frog and the western toad, which kids can see up close during a special preview on Sunday.

Frogs and toads, long considered barometers of the planet's ecological health, are among the creatures most sensitive to changes in climate patterns. The aquarium's Invasion of the Land Animals programs, which take place each weekend in March, lead up to the opening on April 4 of the PG&E Bay Lab, an interactive exhibition on climate change as well as exhibits on the giant Pacific octopus and moon jellies. Aquarium organizers hope that the new lab will help introduce kids to conservation issues and put a face on the victims of global warming.

Read more at The SF Chronicle Website.

Read more...

Ailey's humanistic vision touches the world

Although Alvin Ailey died in 1989, people who work at Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater tend to speak about the company's founder in the present tense: 'The most important thing to Mr. Ailey is that we be grounded human beings'; 'Alvin has always been a man of big dreams.'

That he remains a living presence to the people of the Alvin Ailey company is not only striking, but it also seems to be the singular reason for the extraordinary growth and longevity of the organization that he founded, which celebrates its 50th anniversary with three Cal Performances programs this week at UC Berkeley.

Keep reading at the SF Chronicle website.

Read more...

Ballet review: San Jose troupe a revelation

The title of Ballet San Jose's 'Hidden Talents' program, which opened Thursday night at the San Jose Performing Arts Center, would appear to refer to the five young choreographers, all members or former members of the company, but it could just as well describe the dancers - many of them from the corps - who got the chance to step into the spotlight in an entertaining evening.

Read more at the SF Chronicle website.

Read more...