Shanghai Ballet: 'Butterfly Lovers' combines ballet, Chinese dance

Photo courtesy of CAMI

A woman disguised as a boy falls in love with a man she can never have - it's the stuff of romantic tragedies from Shakespeare to "Yentl" and beyond. In ancient China, a similar legend took on fame as the tale of "The Butterfly Lovers" and this weekend, the Shanghai Ballet will bring this classic story of star-crossed love to Cal Performances at Zellerbach Hall on the UC Berkeley campus.

"There are four great legendary tales in Chinese culture and 'The Butterfly Lovers' is one of them," says choreographer and company director Xin Lili by e-mail. "I was drawn to it because it is a beautiful love story - it expresses universal emotions."

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'Being Raymond Chandler' premieres this weekend

Photo by Pak Han

"Dead men are heavier than broken hearts," writes Raymond Chandler in "The Big Sleep." And, as in the best hard-boiled crime novels, murder and heartache with a touch of black humor are the driving forces in Thirteenth Floor Dance Theater's "Being Raymond Chandler," which premieres at the ODC Dance Commons this weekend.

A case of writer's block haunts the titular novelist, whose stylish detective tales introduced us to the world of private eyes like Philip Marlowe. Choreographer Jenny McAllister, who also directs Thirteenth Floor, has been a fan of Chandler's books since she was a child, she says.

Read more: 'Being Raymond Chandler' premieres this weekend

Dance review: Island tales inspire Palace of Fine Arts hula show

Photo by Lin Cariffe

Long before the Internet, the highly literate Hawaiians of the mid-19th and early 20th centuries tracked, recorded and celebrated Hawaiian life in hundreds of native-language newspapers.

Poems by kings, serialized epics about gods and goddesses, political essays - all this and more inspired Patrick Makuakane's latest evening-length hula show, "Ka Leo Kanaka" or "The Voice of the People," which Na Lei Hulu I Ka Wekiu premiered on Saturday night at the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre.

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Grand National Rodeo at the Cow Palace

Photo by Phil Doyle

Dust off your Stetson and pull on your cowboy boots: The Wild West comes back to the big city this weekend when the annual Grand National Rodeo, Horse Show and Livestock Show starts at the Cow Palace.

Two jam-packed weekends include not only a livestock exhibition but also equestrian competitions, stock dog trials, a daily Western marketplace, nightly barbecues, swing dance music and the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association show Friday and Saturday evenings.

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Dance troupe to display its handiwork

Photo by RJ Muna

What dance troupe wouldn't want to capture new audiences, enticing viewers who might never have experienced a dance performance before? Reaching out to a broad spectrum of people in a striking and unusual way was foremost on the minds of Janice Garrett and Charles Moulton, co-directors of Garrett Moulton, when they decided to mount their latest work "A Show of Hands," which opens this week in the atrium in the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco.

By design, the shows take place at various times in the afternoon each day. Garrett and Moulton loved the idea that there might be after-school programs for kids, or an elder lunch program, or just people coming to exercise, all going on around the same time as the performances. That would allow the company to reach different audiences every day.

Read more: Dance troupe to display its handiwork

Dance Review: 'Yulan' dance review: Art, circus intersect

'Yulan' dance review: Art, circus intersect

Photo by John Gerbetz

Art and circus meet with a cosmic clash in Dennis Nahat's eye-catching and flamboyant "Yulan," which had its U.S. premiere at the California Theatre in San Jose on Thursday night.

Performed by some four dozen members of the venerable Dalian Acrobatic Troupe from China, "Yulan" is the first of two cross-Pacific collaborations that Nahat's new production company, Theatre Ventures International, and United Star Performing Arts Corp. will host in San Jose this year. In December, the Dalian troupe will return with Nahat's "Terracotta Prince," and if it's anything like this cirque nouveau spectacular, it will be worth a holiday outing.

Nahat directs "Yulan" and shares choreographic credits with Song Xiaoxue and Zhang Hongfei, but the real reasons to see the show are the jaw-dropping performers, who seem to defy laws of physics and anatomy at every turn.

A theme of creation and destruction on the path to perfection runs throughout the night, but mainly that's a pretext for showing off impressive acrobatic skills. Ultimately, it's best not to strain too hard to fit a narrative to the 12 scenes, which take us from galaxy formation to frozen tundras and bubbling springs to the flowering of the yulan, or magnolia, of the title.

Why the spinning diabolo act in the Metamorphosis scene? What is the thorny macrophage creature meant to represent? Or the roller-skating butterflies throwing four-winged boomerangs? You should just stop asking questions, because even if in one minute you're thinking how cheese-ball all this is, in the next moment you'll be slack-jawed with amazement at the remarkable Tang Xuezhi spinning in tight orbits inside a Cyr wheel or Tong Jia and Wang Qiaoling balanced delicately in a gut-crunching planche from aerial silks.

Xie Yuxi's fluid lighting design admirably integrates with Xu Zeng's wild costumes and the monumental, spacey video projections by Jin Xin and Zhao Yu, while the original score by Paul Chihara, former composer-in-residence for the San Francisco Ballet, runs between urgent Sturm und Drang and sweetly contemplative interludes. The music, which was recorded for the show, is also helpful in the transitions between scenes, which in the second act were occasionally less than smooth.

Circus skills are naturally the forte for the Dalian troupe, so the interpretive balletic sections are arguably the least compelling elements of the spectacle. Nevertheless, Li Huitong and Zhang Lei are polished in a sinuously icy duet, and the leggy Li Siyi is both elegant and expressive in a visually striking balancing act set behind a projection of green tendrils.

Perhaps what makes the whole thing so much fun is that whether contorting in pretzels or gyroscoping in hoops, the Dalian performers are delightfully warm and engaging. The evening culminates with Lu Mingyue foot-juggling eight umbrellas painted with pink magnolias and Wang Chengyu balanced deftly en pointe on top of Hui Yutao's head as the company floods onto stage around them. You hardly know where to look, but you won't want to look away.

Smuin Ballet at the Palace of Fine Arts: Chasing the high

Right in the middle of the show--it felt like almost exactly halfway-- a frisson ran up my spine and I thought, "There it is."

When I used to perform, I felt like I was always chasing the high I'd get from the perfect moment when everything hung together in just the right way. As a professional watcher of dance now, I chase the same  kind of high, but from the other side of the footlights. It seems just as elusive, transitory and difficult to quantify, and yet so thoroughly satisfying that I keep coming back for more.

Sometimes I think that the mental headspace I put myself in for the "job" of being a writer gets in my way of getting that fix. A ballet master I know says that he can't enjoy performances for their own sake anymore because he finds he can't turn off the part of his brain that is making mental notes for the dancers all the time. It's a little like that for me too. At the opening of Smuin Ballet's season at the Palace of Fine Arts last Friday, I was enjoying the show, but on a slightly detached, almost technical level. 

Smuin Ballet dancers Jonathan Dummar and Jane Rehm with the men of the company in Dear Miss Cline by Choreographer in Residence Amy Seiwert, performed as part of Smuin's XXtremes Fall Program playing October 4-12 at San Francisco's Palace of Fine Arts. Photo credit: David DeSilva

Amy Seiwert's "Dear Miss Cline" is a warm, zippy cavalcade of vignettes to the music of Patsy Cline, that perfectly suits the company personality. It being the first night, many of the dancers looked a little serious, although Terez Dean was adorable and fresh foolin' around with Christian Squires, and Erin Yarbrough in her fitted pedal-pushers had exactly the right zany humor in her trio and duet. 

Christian Squires and Terez Dean in Dear Miss Cline. Photo: David DeSilva.

I love seeing a show with good production values, and that's one thing that Smuin Ballet has never skimped on. So, as I sit there, part of my head is taking note of the striking sets (Brian Jones) and the frothy costumes (Jo Ellen Arntz) and appreciating just how professionally everything has been put together. 

That continued right into the second piece of the night, Jiri Kylian's "Return to a Strange Land." I'd watched Arlette van Boven rehearsing it with the company and I was duly observing that certain details she had worked on were there. The company doesn't perform the ballet with the preternatural precision that I remember in Nederlands Dans Theatre, but there is instead a realness, a humanity and sensitivity to Smuin Ballet's approach that really appeals to me. It warms the sculptural quality of the choreography.

I like Terez Dean's restrained longing in the first trio, as she melts into the arms of Eduardo Permuy and Ben Needham-Wood. Later in the ballet, during Dean's duet with Permuy, there is an echo in Janaček's music of a theme in his "Sinfonietta," and Kylian likewise echoes the motif of wrapped arms that he scattered throughout his ballet of the same name. I wondered what he was trying to say with that motion, a kind of empty self-hug that feels lonely and internal, yet abandoned at the same time.

All of this, however, is happening on the conscious brain level. Look at that interesting movement, how nicely they execute that step, what clever lighting, and so on.

Until that moment. It was in the enigmatic melancholy duet for Jane Rehm and Joshua Reynolds, as he took her in a quick spiraling promenade in attitude. I can't explain why there was that frisson of something that just clicked exquisitely into place. And if I had glanced away for a second I wouldn't have seen it at all. Quite frankly, I'm not sure that that instant even struck anyone else in the audience the same way that it did me. But it was gorgeous, and for a moment, all the frontal lobe processing evaporated and the visceral took over. 

And then it was gone, but that didn't matter. Like the blue wash of light over the pas de deux, it had already colored the whole evening for me. 

Joshua Reynolds and Jane Rehm in Jirí Kylián’s Return to a Strange Land. Photo credit: Keith Sutter

Indigenous Peoples Day: Berkeley powwow

Indigenous Peoples Day: Berkeley powwow:

Though Indigenous Peoples Day usually falls on Oct. 12, Berkeley will celebrate the holiday a little early this year with the annual powwow and Indian market Saturday in the Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park.

This marks the 21st year for the gathering, which features not only a Native American arts and crafts fair, but also a kaleidoscope of drumming, singing and dance in intertribal exhibitions and contests.
A highlight of the morning will be the performances by about 20 dancers from the Northern California Pomo peoples.

Tribal members both young and old, outfitted in their vibrant beaded and feathered regalia, will share stories, dances and songs in the powwow circle, says Gino Barichello, the event's coordinator. He's been involved with the celebration since its inception in 1992, when Berkeley replaced Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day.

Kids and grown-ups alike can watch the high-energy, colorful Aztec dancers, who will perform dances representing peoples of Central America as part of the exhibitions. Following the exhibitions, there'll be a ceremonial Gourd Dance, which Barichello says will honor veterans and warriors.

That'll be followed by intertribal dancing, Barichello says, "when all people are welcomed into the powwow arena to dance and participate."

In traditional powwow fashion, around noon the dancers will parade into the circular dance arena for an invocation and ceremony known as the "grand entry." During the dancing that follows, Barichello says, "the whole general community comes out to enjoy each other's company and dance together, whether in Native American or street clothing."

If you'd rather not take part, it's fine to sit outside the dance arena and just take it all in. Do remember though that it's polite to ask first if you want to take a photo of a particular dancer in regalia, and photos aren't allowed during some parts of the day's proceedings.

If you don't know much about powwows, don't worry: Every gathering has a master of ceremonies - Saturday that will be Tom Phillips, of the Kiowa and Creek - who not only keeps the day moving along, but also explains who is performing. And Barichello says, don't be shy.

"We have community members who attend powwows all year long, and spectators will often come up and ask about dances or styles. You can always come up to the speaker stand and get an answer."