Dance critics are such a difficult lot.
We’re constantly clamoring for new work, and then when we see it, we criticize it for being not as good as the old classics. We want to see performers break out of the mold, to tread fresh ground, and yet when they do, we gripe about how pretentious they are. We grouse about taped music instead of live, expect world-class performances on a shoestring budget and demand imaginative new methods of presentation every year.
But in our defense, I feel that what we-- like many of our fellow travelers out there in audience-land-- keep hoping for is that rush that we get when we see a performance that surprises us. As a gripe-y critic, I can say that the number of performances this past season that elicited that certain delighted grin can be counted on the fingers of one hand. But when it happens, there’s an unmistakable, gleeful tickle in the part of my brain that processes serendipity.
It’s not always about the lavishness of the production, or the international cachet of someone’s name, or even the sheer novelty of a work. It’s happened in small intimate settings as well as in the opera house – but always there’s a pervasive sense that the audience and artists were partners together in a kind of fearless adventure.
“Astonish me,” the impresario Serge Diaghilev once famously said when asked by artist Jean Cocteau what he should do in the theater. The period of their collaboration marked one of the dance world’s most adventurous eras, and not just within the confines of the Ballets Russes itself, but throughout modern dance, music, theater and art.
“Tact in audacity lies in knowing how far to go too far,” Cocteau would write later.
Sometimes the critic in me wonders what happened to all that spirit of exploration.
Regularly, my inbox is flooded with press releases for new dance works, ones about social justice, about loving and losing, explorations of the human conundrum. There’s modern dance coming up, world dance, eco-dance, dance to new music, dance to old music, dance to no music. I just hope that in some way or another there’s something in there to astonish.
Still, as I scan the list there’s a twinge of anticipation, an underlying hope that maybe, just maybe, this show might hold one of those wonderful “too far” moments. That’s why the announcement that this year’s WestWave Dance Festival presents not just a handful but a tantalizing full schedule of world premiere works, perks my interest.
Will there be half-formed, forgettable works? Probably. Will some of them land far short of the mark? Almost assuredly. But then there’s the promise of those pleasant discoveries that are guaranteed to stick in your mind. And better yet, there’s a golden opportunity to see if anyone is willing to step out audaciously and surprise us.
Now in its 16th season, the West Wave festival has already proven itself to be a worthy outlet for experimentation. I can still picture scenes from last season-- Kerry Mehling’s comic lounge-lizard video duet, Brittany Brown Ceres’ simultaneous solos for five women or Kate Weare’s pithy duet “Drop Down.”
The first week showcases singular choreographers – among them, Weare (July 19), Christopher K. Morgan (July 20), Monica Bill Barnes (July 21), and Amy Seiwert (July 22) -- each one presenting a program brand-new works on a different night. Mixed programs that highlight various genres of dance -- and feature five or six artists on each night --make up the second week’s schedule. Diablo Ballet’s Viktor Kabaniaev will present his latest work “Episodes of…” on the “ballet” evening (July 26) for instance, while you can catch Ceres and Mehling on the “dance theater” night (July 28).
It doesn’t have to cost a lot to see these works either. Tickets to the West Wave Dance Festival are $20 each – less, if you subscribe to a four, or the whole eight, performance series. In my view that not only makes the festival accessible to a wider audience, it also takes some of the pressure off of the choreographers.
Freed from the stress of self-producing and unburdened by audiences keen to get their money’s worth, and charged with giving us something brand new, there’s no need to present those surefire, ticket-selling, but mostly bland pieces.
Go ahead, astonish us.
And Summerfest Dance’s West Wave Dance Festival runs over two weeks from July 19-29 at San Francisco’s Project Artaud Theater, 450 Florida Street between l7th & Mariposa Streets (415-863-9834, www.odctheater.org)
This article first appeared in the Contra Costa Times.
