'Was It a Dream I Loved': Dancers reimagine 'Faun'

Faun or fawn, man or woman, human or other - ambiguity is at the heart of Sonsheree Giles' "Was It a Dream I Loved," which the Oakland artist collective This Sweet Nothing performs this weekend at the Fox Theater.

The idea has been percolating, Giles says, for about five years and began with her attraction to the famous ballet "L'Apres-midi d'un Faune," choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky to the Debussy symphonic poem - a ballet that, as it happens, debuted almost exactly 100 years ago.

The original story - of a faun whose afternoon lounging is interrupted by a band of nymphs - has served as a point of departure for her work, Giles says, although her 45-minute piece has a completely original score by co-collaborator Caroline Penwarden and designs by visual artist Heike Liss.

"Part of my attraction to it has to do with the formalism, the stoicism and elegance of it, and yet the rejection of formalism, too," she says. "It's about how Nijinsky took all of his classical training and subverted it - threw it out the window when it came to choreographing his own work. I'm attracted to how it can be so elegant and simple and yet have this controversial underlying sexual content."

'Was It a Dream I Loved': Dancers reimagine 'Faun'