Arts Review

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Dance review: Savage Jazz Dance's jazzy 'Agon'

2010-01-25T12:27:00.000-08:00

It's always tricky when you mess with a ballet that many consider iconic, and it takes a steady hand to tackle the complexities of Igor Stravinsky, as the Savage Jazz Dance Company did with its premiere of 'Agon,' in the Laney College Theater on Thursday night.

Director and choreographer Reginald Ray-Savage has long been candid in his admiration of Balanchine. But though he slips in a few choreographic quotations from the original for the fans - Alison Hurley's pinwheeling arms reflect the pinwheeling legs of Balanchine's original, and cascading canons for Genna Beattie and Melissa Schumann recall his playful gaillard dance - he heads in his own direction here, with mixed results...

World on Stage: Zimbabwe troupe at museum

2010-01-25T12:21:00.000-08:00

"In Zimbabwe, music and dance are a part of everyday life.

On Saturday, the Chinyakare Ensemble of Oakland will bring the infectious enthusiasm that comes with traditional dance, music and storytelling from the southern African country to new audiences at the Bay Area Discovery Museum, part of the museum's World on Stage ethnic performance series."

Read more of World on Stage: Zimbabwe troupe at museum

Santa Cruz Fungus Fair: Mushroom fun

2010-01-08T10:32:00.000-08:00

Santa Cruz Fungus Fair: Mushroom fun:

Glistening with an olive-gold allure, the Amanita phalloides has a disturbing appeal when viewed close up. Not isolated under glass or plastic - so close you could put your nose right on it accidentally, the death cap, as it is more commonly known, nestles innocently enough in its basket, surrounded by baskets of other poisonous cousins - none of them quite as alluring as this most deadly of toadstools.

But that whiff of danger is just one of the things that makes a visit to the Santa Cruz Fungus Fair - now in its 36th year - not only educational but also entertaining.

'Bright River': Barsky revisits 2004 musical

2010-01-08T10:31:00.000-08:00

'Bright River': Barsky revisits 2004 musical:

Love. Death. War. Life. Transit. That's how Tim Barsky describes his underground beat-boxing musical hit, 'The Bright River.'

It's been more than five years since "The Bright River" made its debut on the Ashby Stage in the East Bay. But since the beat-boxing flutist presented his initial run in Berkeley, and then later at the Traveling Jewish Theatre in December 2004, this mystical journey through the land of the dead has gathered a grassroots momentum and now returns for a monthlong run at the Brava Theater Center with a fresh staging and new sets and costume designs.

Read more at the SF Chronicle site.

'Yes Sweet Can': Circus arts-based theater

2010-01-08T10:18:00.000-08:00

'Yes Sweet Can': Circus arts-based theater:

Intimate, surprising and humorous, Sweet Can Productions offers more than the average circus - and 'Yes Sweet Can' promises not just to entertain, but also to help dispel the doom-and-gloom of modern life with some magical thinking.

Featuring a quartet of talented performers - Beth Clarke, Natasha Kaluza, Kerri Kresinski and Matt White - "Yes Sweet Can" takes inspiration from Barack Obama's 2008 campaign slogan. Director Joanna Haigood, who founded the aerial Zaccho Dance Theater, says she's thrilled to be a part of it.

Read more at the SF Chronicle site.

Lorraine Hansberry's 'Black Nativity' uplifting

2010-01-08T10:16:00.000-08:00

Lorraine Hansberry's 'Black Nativity' uplifting:

Around this time of year, it's easy to feel grumpy about the seasonal stress, especially as harried shoppers careen zombie-like against you on your way through Union Square, but if you can make it a few blocks up the hill to the Marines Memorial Theatre, a couple of hours with the gospel inspiration of the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre's annual 'Black Nativity,' directed by Stanley E. Williams, can not only warm, but even uplift.

Narrated with unbridled preacherly resonance by Michael Leroy Brown, the show comes in two parts - a Christmas pageant-style re-enactment of the Nativity story, and a second act set in a modern-day church and delivered with all the gusto of a Baptist revival. There's a lot that has to fit onstage and this year's setting - Jedd de Lucia's vaulted Gothic interior -manages to accommodate a choir, soloists, dancers, plus a three-man band - the superbly reliable Kenneth Little, James "Booyah" Richard and Omar Maxwell under the musical direction of Arvis Strickling Jones.

Read more at the SF Chronicle site.

Two S.F. dancers to graduate from Bolshoi

2010-01-08T10:09:00.000-08:00

Two S.F. dancers to graduate from Bolshoi:

In a roomful of gazelle-like young dancers in City Ballet School's South of Market studios, Jeraldine Mendoza has wedged herself in the narrow space between the ballet barre and the wall and is pushing one leg, extended against the wall, very nearly to her ear as she casually chats with Emma Powers, who stretches with offhanded ease on the floor.

Even more remarkable than this show of flexibility is that in April both Mendoza and Powers will graduate from the Bolshoi Ballet Academy in Moscow - the first American women so honored in the Bolshoi academy's more than 200-year history. Even over the holidays, as they visited their families in the Bay Area, the two girls couldn't resist the impulse to go back to City Ballet to take classes with Galina Alexandrova and Yuri Zhukov, the teachers who gave them their foundations in the Russian style of ballet.

Read more at the SF Chronicle site.

Review: Keith Hennessy's 'Saliva'

2009-12-15T11:07:00.000-08:00

Only a hand-scrawled sign with the word 'Saliva' on an orange-and-white-striped construction barrier on Clementina Street hinted that there might be any kind of event going on Sunday night under the freeway.

But despite the chill, scores of people congregated under the graceful curving Fremont Street off-ramps, where performer and choreographer Keith Hennessy reprised his groundbreaking 1988 solo 'Saliva,' an inchoate mass of impulses, ideas, rage, humor and participatory episodes designed to elicit a response in the viscera.

San Francisco has a proud history of guerrilla art, and in the grand tradition, the police came by earlier in the day with a warning - lending a legitimizing whiff of the illegal to the proceedings. But with the air of a champion of public art in public places, Hennessy was characteristically unbowed.

Read more at SFGate.com.

Reworked 'Carol' a bit less inspired

2009-12-11T11:05:00.000-08:00

A faint scent of spiced cider lurked in the air at the opening night of the American Conservatory Theater's "A Christmas Carol," the company's peppy seasonal favorite, calculated to dispense cheer and dispel the chilly midwinter gloom.

There would no doubt be a lump of coal in the stocking of anyone who'd grouse about a production that wears its merriment so prominently, and director Domenique Lozano keeps Charles Dickens' evergreen tale of Christmas redemption - adapted by Carey Perloff and Paul Walsh, with music by Karl Lundeberg and musical direction by Laura Burton - zipping along, without dwelling too much on any particular episode.

Read more at SFGate.com.

'SenseScape': Chinese dance tradition updated

2009-12-10T11:06:00.000-08:00

'SenseScape': Chinese dance tradition updated:

Traditional, classical Chinese dance gets a fresh flourish of energy in Lily Cai's newest creation, 'SenseScape.'

The Shanghai-born Cai is known for her blend of modern dance and Chinese influences, but whatever dance idiom she chooses, Cai's trademark is to give each work a unique texture. Cai - who founded her troupe in 1988 - credits the initial impetus of 'SenseScape' to composer Gang Situ, her longtime collaborative partner, who has created a partly original, partly sampled score for the work.

"It's about the human senses and the chi," Cai says, referencing the concept of energy and flow of life forces. "My technique itself is about the chi. In the past when I've choreographed, always I see an image first, but this time, I worked from the inside. I keep telling my dancers that the movement is just the result, like when you laugh or cry, you sense the sadness or happiness, then you start the action."

Read more at SFGate.com.

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Left Coast Leaning Festival dazzling, dizzying

2009-12-05T08:36:00.000-08:00

Before the curtain went up on Thursday night's opening of the Left Coast Leaning Festival, curator Marc Bamuthi Joseph noted that not only was the three-day event designed to highlight the work of artists from Pacific states, but he hoped that it would define a left coast aesthetic.

Set in the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts flexible Forum space, with no proscenium and the vast, floor-to-ceiling backdrop only a few yards from the audience, the first challenge for the festival, co-presented by YBCA and Youth Speaks, was the limitations of, and possibilities afforded by, the space. The effect of video projected onto the backdrop was similar to sitting too close to an IMAX screen - exciting, even thrilling, but also a little nausea inducing.

Filmmaker trains camera on Paris Opera Ballet

2009-12-03T10:57:00.000-08:00

Filmmaker trains camera on Paris Opera Ballet:

Real life is the script for Frederick Wiseman, the documentary filmmaker, who turns his lens onto one of France's grandest institutions, the Paris Opera Ballet, in his latest film 'La Danse,' which opens Friday. Taking the viewer into the nooks and crannies of the Opera's venerable Palais Garnier and Opera Bastille, Wiseman observes the company in a 'fly on the wall' fashion - dancers in rehearsal, at rest, meeting with administrators, costumers dying swaths of fabric and meticulously beading elaborate costumes - uncovering stories large and small in the process.

Shrinking 'Nutcracker' to child size

2009-11-28T11:21:00.000-08:00

Shrinking 'Nutcracker' to child size:

Like most people in the ballet world, the soft-spoken Mark Foehringer has had long experience with 'Nutcracker.' But with his latest production - which the Mark Foehringer Dance Project|SF will perform twice a day at the Zeum from next Sunday to Dec. 20 - he's hoping to capture the interest of young audiences with a child-scaled ballet that he describes as more like 'danced storytelling.'

Q: Did the Zeum come to you with the idea of a "Nutcracker"?

A: Actually it worked the other way. We were putting together a long-term plan for the company, and one of the pieces of that plan was that we would do a show to help develop young audiences. Usually our shows are contemporary or abstract - more grown-up things, but we wanted to open up our work to kids.

One of the things I liked was that the theater at the Zeum was not in constant use. I think it was originally built as a teaching theater, and there have been workshops and some productions in it, but they hadn't had a lot that brought the theatergoing experience to that age range of 2 to 4 years old.

'The King's Only Daughter'

2009-11-28T11:19:00.000-08:00

'The King's Only Daughter':

A thrilling energy blended with traditional storytelling is the heart of every performance by Oakland's Diamano Coura West African Dance Company. Colorful, ebullient and rich with infectious rhythms, Diamano Coura's latest show promises to be no exception as the company presents the U.S. debut of Nimely Napla's 'The King's Only Daughter.

In many West African communities, dance, music and theater blend not just with each other but also with daily life - an idea reflected in "The King's Only Daughter," which, Napla says, "is a dance drama, with music, song, everything together."

Diablo Ballet opens on solid ground

2009-11-28T11:18:00.000-08:00

Diablo Ballet opens on solid ground:

With plucky reliability, Diablo Ballet opened its 16th season at the Lesher Center for the Arts over the weekend, performing three very different works that showcased the nine-member company's dependable energy and unflagging enthusiasm.

Central to the success of the program was George Balanchine's "Apollo," a great classic of 20th century ballet, which elevated matters to a level worthy of this sturdy company. As the Greek god of the title, Jekyns Pelaez is refreshingly naturalistic and playful, rather than stylized. More formal - if a trifle stern at times - was Tina Kay Bohnstedt's Terpsichore, whose softness and delicacy in a duet with Pelaez was one of the evening's highlights. If there's a complaint, it's that the tempos of the recorded music by Igor Stravinsky seemed to drag, particularly in the duet for Mayo Sugano and Jenna McClintock as the muses Calliope and Polyhymnia respectively.

Hip-hop dancers heat up the night

2009-11-23T10:48:00.000-08:00

Hip-hop dancers heat up the night: It might have been a cold damp November night, but things were hot inside the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre as the 11th Annual S.F. Hip Hop DanceFest got under way Friday with the first of two weekend programs.

As the audience walked in, the mood was already enthusiastic as hip-hoppers from around the world messed around onstage and competed genially with each other. Of course, messing around in this case meant showing off acrobatic twisting turns in the air and sweeping balances on one hand.

Founded in 1999 by Micaya, the three-day festival now attracts some of the best hip-hop crews in the world, but what's been the most impressive is to track the perceptible rise in level of groups who've long been part of it, such as Loose Change and the irrepressible New Style Motherlode.

In fact, the evening got off to a screaming hot start with New Style Motherlode's "Invasion Involved," a futuristic alien incursion - a sort of "Terminator - Rise of the Machines" tinged with bling. The Oakland company encompasses youth-oriented dance teams as well as an adult troupe, and for this effort multiple groups took the stage pulsating with an almost freakish energy. With densely interlocking choreography by, among others, co-directors Corey Action and Teela Shine-Ross, the ensemble's bag of tricks included tightly wound group work, a little bit of skateboarding and a stellar turn by martial artists James Solis and Richard Ines, who swiped through the air and tossed off corkscrewing double flips and 540-degree turns as if they were nothing.

Rest of post here.

Gary Masters gives ballet a modern spin

2009-11-23T10:44:00.000-08:00

Gary Masters gives ballet a modern spin: "Veteran choreographer Gary Masters is perhaps best known for his modern dance work, but ballet is the idiom of choice for his latest, 'Fete for Three,' his third work for Diablo Ballet, which kicks off its 16th season at Walnut Creek's Lesher Center for the Arts this weekend.

Masters - who is on the faculty at San Jose State University and also directs his own company, sjDANCEco - has deep connections to modern dance giant Jose Limon, who inspired him to found the Limon West Dance Project of San Jose, the West Coast ensemble of the Limon Company."

Tree Frog Treks at Paxton Gate: Get curious

2009-11-23T10:43:00.000-08:00

Tree Frog Treks at Paxton Gate: Get curious: "Piquing natural curiosity is right there in the name of Paxton Gate's Curiosities for Kids, a magic toy shop tucked away on San Francisco's Valencia Street, between 18th and 19th streets. Amid twisted branches and vines and whimsical mounted stuffed animal heads, science kits, games, knitted octopuses, giant eyeballs and other provoking tchotchkes share the shelves with natural specimens."

An interview with DV8 Physical Theatre's Lloyd Newson

2009-11-16T23:10:00.000-08:00

Lloyd Newson talks about "To Be Straight with You" on KALW Radio

I haven't done radio for a while, but I got the chance to interview Lloyd Newson last week on KALW's New America Now program.

DV8's Newson discusses S.F. production

2009-11-12T10:33:00.000-08:00

DV8's Newson discusses S.F. production: "Founded in 1986 by Australian-born Lloyd Newson - who studied psychology in Melbourne before joining New Zealand Ballet - DV8 Physical Theatre's unnerving and often raw work blends movement with text - sometimes provocative and unafraid to dive headlong into touchy topics like racism and religious intolerance."

Dance review: Strong beats from 'L7,' Fauxnique

2009-11-11T10:19:00.000-08:00

Dance review: Strong beats from 'L7,' Fauxnique: "What makes rhythmic repetition so compelling in some instances and yet monotonous in others? This past weekend it was possible to spend each day visiting vastly different dance performances - at the Cowell Theater, at CounterPulse, at ODC - delivering a veritable blur of styles: modern, hip-hop, kathak, folklorico, flamenco, voguing. What sticks in the brain, though, are those moments when mere beats somehow crescendoed into a tidal wave, when rhythm not only reflected an individual pulse but also took on the force of a gestalt grouping."

'The Walworth Farce'

2009-11-08T12:02:00.000-08:00

'The Walworth Farce':

Everyone seems to agree that the main thing to know about Enda Walsh's critically acclaimed 'The Walworth Farce,' which the Druid Ireland theater company brings to the Cal Performances stage next week, is that it's OK to be lost and confused, right up through the intermission, maybe even into the second act.

"It's pure genius - it's everything you could want from a piece of theater," says director Mikel Murfi, with the sort of rapid-fire delivery that one imagines is embedded in the play itself. "It's hilarious at times, confusing at times, it's energetic, it's about what we are as people. It's explosive, tragic, incredible stuff. As a book, it was un-put-downable, although I have to say, the first time I read it, I was very, very confused as to what was going on."

Read more at SFGate.com.

Saturday stargazing at Lawrence Hall of Science

2009-11-05T10:03:00.000-08:00

Saturday stargazing at Lawrence Hall of Science: "It's been 400 years since Galileo first pointed his telescope to the sky to look at the stars, and what better way to celebrate this International Year of Astronomy than by having a look at Jupiter, the planet that so mesmerized the great Italian astronomer.

The hills above UC Berkeley offer a fine vantage point for stargazing, and every first and third Saturday of the month, the Lawrence Hall of Science turns down the lights on the main plaza and sets up telescopes so astronomers amateur or professional can enjoy the heavenly show - a terrific opportunity to introduce kids to navigating the night sky and basic constellations."

Isadora Duncan Awards

2009-11-03T10:20:00.000-08:00

Isadora Duncan Awards: "Dohee Lee and Jo Kreiter will be honored for outstanding achievement by the 24th annual Isadora Duncan Awards, which recognize contributions to Bay Area dance between Sept. 1, 2008, and Aug. 31, 2009.

Lee will be honored for 'Flux,' an interdisciplinary piece commissioned by the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and Kreiter for 'The Ballad of Polly Ann,' a tribute to the women who built the Bay Area's bridges.

The Izzies also will pay homage to dancer Marc Platt, known as Marc Platoff during his years with the Ballets Russes, for sustained achievement. The Ashkenaz Music and Dance Center in Berkeley and pianist Roy Bogas, whose sensitive playing has enlivened many a San Francisco Ballet performance, will be recognized for their contributions to the Bay Area dance scene."