Summer festivals are a great time to see what dance makers have in the pot, and a worthy entrant into the flurry of such local events is the Oakland Dance Festival, organized and presented by Charles Anderson’s Company C Contemporary Ballet. Now in its fourth year, this two weekend event at the Malonga Casquelourd Center now has all the earmarks of a regular and welcome tradition.Joined this year by ODC/Dance as well as Flyaway Productions, Company C offered an evening-length program of six works that was a not-always-successful mixed bag. But then, what really makes festivals like this one important is that they offer a broader mix of companies – a tantalizing taste which can introduce each troupe to a varied audience of people who might not be familiar with their works.
The action got underway with Charles Anderson’s new work, “Egyptian Two Step,” which, in a bit of a reversal, put the audience members, not in their seats, but standing on the stage itself.
From off to the side, the stage manager intoned, “Dancers, places please,” and after a moment the curtain parted to reveal the fourteen members of Company C strategically scattered throughout the auditorium, on seats, in aisles. Chugging back and forth to the music of Arthur Jarvinen, they performed a jaunty little number that elicited a few chuckles from our side of the curtain.
What Anderson referred to as his amuse-bouche however, elicited an ambivalent reaction. “Egyptian Two Step,” though mildly amusing, was constrained by how many steps could be performed on stairs or over the back of a seat. Then too, it didn’t exactly turn the audience-performer relationship on its head or break down barriers in the way that, say, the audience involvement pieces of the 1960s New York downtown theater scene used to. On completion, the audience dutifully flowed up the aisles into its more usual position and awaited the next piece, making one wonder what all of that was about.
We were still grappling with that question when the curtain went up on Flyaway Productions in Jo Kreiter’s “The Grim Arithmetic of Water.” Kreiter’s work, which has included some interesting site-specific pieces, can exemplify the pleasant surprises of finding art and audience in a new locality, but in that regard, “Grim Arithmetic” is one of her more conventional “we’re on the stage, audience is in seats” sort of pieces.
With only an excerpt of the full work offered without much in the way of context or notes, the subject of the 2004 “Grim Arithmetic” is more than a bit opaque and it seems unfair to overly criticize the content. Visually, Kreiter’s aerial maneuvers have the potential to create lasting images – an illusion of weightlessness that can seem time-stopping. In “Grim Arithmetic” however, the portentous rituals, the nearly nude woman splashing and slumping in a pool in the center, the pairs of dancers swinging from water-carrying yokes looked contrived and oddly limited as dance choreography. Best were the simplest moments, in which a dancer spun through space dangling from a suspended bucket of water, as if parched and struggling towards a life-giving force.
Encompassing the middle portion of the evening were two pieces from ODC/Dance: “Scramble,” a recent premiere by KT Nelson, and Brenda Way’s witty 1994 “Scissor Paper Stone.” Perhaps because it’s a newer work, “Scramble” – a quartet for the powerful Anne Zivolich, Elizabeth Farotte, Daniel Santos and Justin Flores -- looks less polished than “Scissor Paper Stone,” which enjoys the double advantage of a winking, cinematic love triangle and Private Freeman’s wiseacre attitude. Nevertheless, that trademark ODC energy and flair punctuated both works.
Company C closed out the program with Alexandre Proia’s romance for two couples, “Rhapsody in Blue,” and Anderson’s “Bolero,” set to the famous Ravel work and newly commissioned by the Mendocino Music Festival.
The company now boasts a more solid core of dancers than ever before, although the stage at the Casquelourd Center seemed to rob the women especially of their usual attack. Pointe work looked particularly careful, rather than freewheeling or bluesy in the Gershwin “Rhapsody,” but then overall, Proia’s choreography is an awkward assemblage.
The nine dancers of “Bolero” looked far more at ease, although smooth transitions in the partnering work still elude the men. Nevertheless, if this “Bolero” was less about the driving inevitability of fate and more a Spanish-spiced fiesta, it was brought into focus by the eye-catching Beth Kaczmarek, whose beautiful lines and carriage of her back lent credibility to her every step.
This review first appeared in the Contra Costa Times.
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