Bill T. Jones finds inspiration in Lincoln

The historiography and legacy of the Abraham Lincoln phenomenon is at the heart of Bill T. Jones' latest work, "Fondly Do We Hope ... Fervently Do We Pray," which his company performs at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts beginning Thursday. More than two years in the making, the work is a commission, by Illinois' Ravinia Festival for the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth, but it's also a project that has grown close to Jones' heart.

Q: You've talked about the struggle between the vision of Lincoln you had as a 5-year-old versus that of your older, more cynical self. How did that factor into "Fondly"?

A: Initially, I thought the approach was going to be prosecutorial, to challenge the theory of history. Let's challenge this great man, whom modern scholarship has revealed to be definitely just a man of his era and a politician to boot. I thought it was going to be about finding the person that I loved as a child, through what I now know about him as a man. And I found ultimately - after reading and working and thinking quite a bit - that he deserves my respect and, I would say in a more emotional way, he deserves my heart.

Read more on the SF Chronicle website.
Photo: Todd Heisler / NYT

Dance Review: Margaret Jenkins Dance Company in "Other Suns"

At the heart of "Other Suns (A Trilogy)," the thoroughly engrossing work which the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company and China's Guangdong Modern Dance Company premiered at Yerba Buena Center's Novellus Theater on Thursday night, is the exploration of what it means to be "different" or the "same."

Far from being a mere cultural odyssey, or superficial pasting together of disparate items, Jenkins' work - set to a peripatetic original score by Paul Dresher, who led his musical ensemble in the pit - seeks something larger and more profound.

Part one - a section of the work that Jenkins showed to San Francisco audiences in 2007 - opens with designer Alexander V. Nichols' stunning visual space: Banks of lights across the upper and lower reaches of the stage frame dozens of bare lamps suspended like raindrops overhead, without the watery set piece seen in the 2007 showing.

Under the canopy of light, bodies thrust forward, push and pull against each other, evoking longing, daring, missed opportunities and chance encounters. Dancers off on their own suddenly and satisfyingly interlock in skillfully distributed groups. When Emily Hite launches herself off the feet of another dancer, her brief assisted flight is exhilarating.

Read more at the SF Chronicle site.

Margaret Jenkins, Guangdong troupe pair up

Veteran choreographer Margaret Jenkins and her dancers join forces with China's Guangdong Modern Dance Company for "Other Suns," an intersection of cultures and ideas, which premieres Thursday at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

For Jenkins, it has been a process of more than two years that has taken her company of eight dancers to Guangzhou, China, in 2008 and back home as they worked on the tripartite work, which encompasses a section created by each company and a collaborative finale. As she prepared for the Chinese dancers' arrival in San Francisco, a moment in the quiet studios on Eighth and Folsom streets found her in a characteristically reflective mood.

Read more at the SF Chronicle site.

Reality star Payne dances her way to 'Fame'

Bubbly and unpretentious, Kherington Payne comes across as exactly the same fresh-faced girl who charmed fans of the reality show "So You Think You Can Dance" with her exhilarating Viennese waltz, spitfire krumping and, of course, the impassioned Mia Michaels number with Stephen "Twitch" Boss known as the "bed routine."

Growing up in Southern California, Payne took to competition, in the dance studio and on the sports field. A dancer since age 2, Payne got most of her early training at the Dance Precisions studio in Yorba Linda (Orange County), but she was also an avid soccer player in school.

"It's so weird to say that I loved both so much, because how you do both? But dance and soccer were just equally important to me," she says. "I would go to soccer practice and then run to dance in my soccer clothes and, sometimes, even dance in my soccer clothes. I loved both so much that I was willing to run from soccer games to dance competitions all weekend. I was just a girl without a social life."

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Mark Morris Dance Group's ethereal 'Visitation'

In a world of dizzying and doubt-inducing complexity, there's something refreshing about the kind of direct and lovely simplicity that marks "Visitation," which the Mark Morris Dance Group performed to open the Cal Performances season at Zellerbach Hall on Thursday night.

Seemingly suspended in a state of expectancy, "Visitation" (set to Beethoven's sonata No. 4 for cello (Wolfram Koessel) and piano (Colin Fowler) is suffused with a kind of intimate anticipation. Groups break into pairs, dancers shift partners, intermingling duets for Joe Bowie, Noah Vinson, Michelle Yard and Rita Donahue pulse between sharp and soft, but throughout there's an ecstatic impulse in repeated arched backs and faces upturned toward the heavens as if hunting for salvation. And at the heart of the piece is a pensive Maile Okamura - a kind of outlier, though not an outsider to the group of nine dancers. Okamura invests the Beethoven score with a delicate yet passionate touch and it's infectiously delightful to watch her take to the air, hair flying across her face.

Read more at the SF Chronicle site.

Day of the Dead workshops

Although the Day of the Dead is not until Nov. 1, the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts is already working on elaborate decorations and altars that mark the celebrations of the colorful Mexican holiday. Joining forces with the San Francisco Symphony, which continues an annual tradition of a family concert on the Day of the Dead, the Mission Cultural Center is playing host to a series of hands-on workshops over the next few weeks that give kids the chance to work on large-scale community art projects, which will be exhibited in the lobby of Davies Symphony Hall in the weeks leading up to the holiday.

One of the three workshops has kids and their parents making giant animal sculptures inspired by the creatures that appear in Camille Saint-Saëns' "The Carnival of the Animals," which will also be on the program for the Nov 1. concert at Davies Symphony Hall. Workshop instructor Colette Crutcher, a local artist whose own exuberant mosaic mural "Tonantsin Renace" graces a wall at 16th and Sanchez streets, already has a menagerie going strong in the Mission Cultural Center studios.

Read more at the SF Chronicle site.

S.F. Ballet preps for takeoff to China

"Here! Here!" shouts Lola de Avila, as the flock of swans runs a tight circle around Vanessa Zahorian and Ruben Martin Cintas in the studios of San Francisco Ballet. "Run to here!"

The swans head for the studio's double doors, and soloist Anthony Spaulding, who's playing von Rothbart, helpfully warns, "They're coming out this way. I wouldn't want you to get trampled!"

Dancer after dancer streams out into the hallway, with de Avila - the associate director of the Ballet School - hot on the heels of the last one.

"Better!" she says warmly. "I'm still screaming, but that was much better."

Breathing hard, the dancers head back into the studio, where the artistic team is already in action, dispensing corrections. Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson is giving Spaulding notes on how to make his brooding Rothbart more owlish, ballet master Betsy Erickson is working with the little cygnets, and Bruce Sansom - a newly appointed assistant to the artistic director - is coaching more loft into Zahorian's jumps.

Read more at the SF Chronicle site.

Dance center celebrates 20 years in S.F.

Worlds collide at the corner of Seventh and Market streets. Across the United Nations Plaza is a weekly farmers' market. Up the street is the futuristic Federal Building. On the corner there's a check-cashing joint and a Chinese takeout place. Above it all, behind the ornate terra-cotta decorations on the 1909 Odd Fellows Building, is the Alonzo King Lines Dance Center, home to thousands of dancers and this year celebrating its 20th anniversary.

Founded in February 1989, the then San Francisco Dance Center - which moved into the upper floors of the Odd Fellows Grand Lodge in 2002 - quickly became one of the busiest locations for dancers and choreographers on the West Coast.

A walk down the slightly grim, fluorescent-lit corridor takes you past an extended frieze of dancers stretching as the echoes of piano accompaniment drift through the halls. But step into any studio and you're suddenly drenched in natural light that pours into abundantly airy spaces from the high, arched windows.

Read more at the SF Chronicle site.

Scottish Highland Gathering and Games

Men tossing tree trunks, hurling 16-pound hammers, sheepdogs a-leaping, Scottish dancers dancing, bagpipers piping, drummers drumming - no, it's not the 12 days of Christmas, it's the two days of the 144th Scottish Highland Gathering and Games, which takes place this Labor Day weekend at the Alameda County Fairgrounds in Pleasanton.

"There is literally going to be something for everyone," says Floyd Busby, spokesman for the Caledonian Club of San Francisco, which has organized this annual event since 1866.

Read more at the SF Chronicle site.