Even dance critics love a surprise (or two)

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.

Oakland Dance Festival 2007: Company C, ODC/SF & Jo Kreiter

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.

KQED Profile: Ballet Afsaneh

"Whether in a major theater, a cultural festival, museum or middle school, we are presenting this work, seeking to remind audiences and ourselves, that there is still beauty in this world that sometimes seems to have fallen in love with war."

--Sharlyn Sawyer, Ballet Afsaneh

From Uzbekistan to India, Turkey to Afghanistan, the Ballet Afsaneh Art and Culture Society brings to the stage the vibrant sights and sounds of the ancient route through Asia known as the Silk Road.

A crossroads of trade in ideas as well as goods, the 7000 mile-long Silk Road connected the empires of Byzantium, the Ottomans, of India, Persia and Mongolia with Western Europe for over 2000 years. Combining music, poetry and dance, Ballet Afsaneh's performances offer a richly textured perspective on cultures that originate in modern day Iran, Tajikstan, Uzbekhistan and Afghanistan -- an alternative to the usual news about political upheaval and war in this region.


Read more on the KQED Spark website.