LEVYdance-Foundry alliance's promising prospects

Behind the heavy curtain in the lobby of Studio Gracia, hidden in a San Francisco SoMa alleyway, there's grooving going on. A pulsing beat echoes throughout the spacious refurbished warehouse home of LEVYdance as the dancers stretch and warm up under a disco ball in the mint-green studio.

Artistic associate and dancer Scott Marlowe joins in the good-natured joking that ensues when LEVYdance founder Benjamin Levy bounds irrepressibly across the polished hardwood floor, falling to the ground and pinwheeling his legs wildly.

"Don't worry," Levy shouts as he slides past a group of dancers in splits, "We're not doing floor work today ..."

LEVYdance-Foundry alliance's promising prospects

Luna Dance Institute in full swing as it turns 20

Rapt fascination was written on the faces of the two dozen schoolkids sitting scattered around the perimeter of Luna Dance Institute's main studio in an industrial building in the heart of Emeryville on Wednesday. Occasionally a teetering balance or a particular movement drew a quiet giggle, but for the most part, the students were mesmerized by the institute's "20/20 Points of View," in which Melissa Caywood of Deborah Slater Dance Theater performed a solo from Slater's latest work in progress.

"This has always been the dream," said Patricia Reedy, Luna Dance Institute's founder and director, "to bring together real working choreographers and kids - to get them thinking about how to get the kids engaged with dance."

It's been 20 years since Luna opened as a community dance space in Berkeley, a place that Reedy and her co-director, Nancy Ng, hoped would fill the need for rehearsal and class studios left by the loss of Citicentre Dance Theatre. Since 1992, the scope and complexity of Luna's programs have multiplied to include not only dance classes and summer camps for children and choreographic workshops for teens, but also professional development programs for teachers and dance artists, and support for school and community administrators who are interested in organizing dance programs in their home institutions.

Luna Dance Institute in full swing as it turns 20

Robert Moses' Kin poised for 'Helen' S.F. premiere

Underneath choreographer Robert Moses' urbane, composed exterior, you can almost feel the frothing intellectual energy of a mind always in motion. A conversation with Moses can range from sociopolitical ground, through poetry, and into music, art and philosophy with such ease that you wonder how he has time to think about all of this, as well as create new work for his 10-member company, Robert Moses' Kin, teach at Stanford University, raise his young kids with fellow choreographer and dancer Mary Carbonara, and still have time to sleep.

"Actually, I don't really sleep a lot," he says. "Now, I tend to go to bed when the kids go to bed at around 8:30, and I'm usually up by 1. Then I'm up and down through the evening, listening to music or writing, sometimes I'll just sit and consider stuff. I'm really up about 5, which is when my day gets going with other people because 5 a.m. is 8 a.m. in other places."

Robert Moses' Kin poised for 'Helen' S.F. premiere 

Batsheva dancers bring 'Max,' Gaga skills to YBCA

Forceful and enormously persuasive - an evening with the Batsheva Dance Company might portend dazzling, explosive zaniness or a visceral punch to the gut made of pure movement - or both simultaneously - and for that, credit Ohad Naharin, who has directed the 48-year-old company since 1990.

Speaking by phone from his home base in Tel Aviv, Naharin talked about the making of his 2007 "Max" - which Batsheva performs this weekend at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts as part of the San Francisco Performances season - and what Gaga, the unique system of movement exploration his dancers use as daily training, is all about.

Batsheva dancers bring 'Max,' Gaga skills to YBCA

'The Jewish Nutcracker, a Maccabee Celebration'

Who wouldn't want to make friends with the Sufganiyot Fairy?

Like her counterpart, the Sugarplum Fairy, she's delicate and sweet, and in the guise of Katy Alaniz Rous - who plays the Sufganiyot Fairy in "The Jewish Nutcracker," which opens at the ODC Theater today - she also looks as if she's got a Yiddishe kop - some real smarts.

"Usually when people hear about a Jewish 'Nutcracker,' they say, 'How is that Jewish?' " says Rous, who also choreographed this unusual production last year. "But you know, the regular 'Nutcracker' isn't really a Christian story; it just takes place at a Christmas party."

Read more: 'The Jewish Nutcracker, a Maccabee Celebration'

Pina Bausch company carries on with 'Danz�n'

In the world of modern dance, Pina Bausch is indisputably an icon of the postmodern dance movement. The sprawling works she created for Tanztheater Wuppertal redefined what it meant to create a dance. They might be simultaneously touching and yet cryptic, keenly perceptive and also frustratingly intellectual, but always they are movingly human.

Two years after the passing of its director and auteur at the age of 68, the company carries on her legacy with former dancer Dominique Mercy and Bausch's assistant Robert Sturm at the helm. The disarming and affable Mercy was one of Bausch's first recruits to the Tanztheater Wuppertal, and speaking by phone from the company's home base in Germany, he candidly discussed the troupe's direction after Bausch's death, and about "Danzón," her 1995 work that they'll bring to the Cal Performances stage at Zellerbach Hall in UC Berkeley this weekend.

Read more: Pina Bausch company carries on with 'Danzón':

Dominic Walsh's offers a 'Rose' to Diablo Ballet

"I feel that in some ways we've lost our understanding of theater," says choreographer Dominic Walsh, sitting quietly in a shady spot outside the Diablo Ballet studios in Walnut Creek.

Walsh gazes across an unromantic parking lot toward a line of trees as if deeper answers might lie percolating somewhere out there in the sunshine. There's an echo of that questing spirit in his version of "Le Spectre de la Rose," a reinterpretation of the Ballets Russes-era masterpiece originally created by Michel Fokine in 1911. Walsh is just finishing a whirlwind rehearsal of his "Spectre" for Diablo Ballet's 18th season, which opens Friday at the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek.

Dominic Walsh's offers a 'Rose' to Diablo Ballet...

'From Wallflower to Dance Brigade'

It's likely she would never describe herself this way, but Krissy Keefer is a force of nature.

Founder of the feminist dance collective the Wallflower Order and its successor Dance Brigade, Keefer has been a provocateur and an institution in the modern dance community since 1975. And with its new show at the Novellus Theater at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts this weekend, Dance Brigade celebrates Keefer's 35 years of modern dance theater.

Pragmatic and disarmingly direct, Keefer seems often to be in nonstop motion as she talks about her legacy - you get the sense that this boundless energy is the driving and organizing force behind the agitprop fury and dark humor that threads through much of her work.

From Wallflower to Dance Brigade...

'SenseScape': Chinese dance tradition updated

'SenseScape': Chinese dance tradition updated:

Traditional, classical Chinese dance gets a fresh flourish of energy in Lily Cai's newest creation, 'SenseScape.'

The Shanghai-born Cai is known for her blend of modern dance and Chinese influences, but whatever dance idiom she chooses, Cai's trademark is to give each work a unique texture. Cai - who founded her troupe in 1988 - credits the initial impetus of 'SenseScape' to composer Gang Situ, her longtime collaborative partner, who has created a partly original, partly sampled score for the work.

"It's about the human senses and the chi," Cai says, referencing the concept of energy and flow of life forces. "My technique itself is about the chi. In the past when I've choreographed, always I see an image first, but this time, I worked from the inside. I keep telling my dancers that the movement is just the result, like when you laugh or cry, you sense the sadness or happiness, then you start the action."

Read more at SFGate.com.

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Filmmaker trains camera on Paris Opera Ballet

Filmmaker trains camera on Paris Opera Ballet:

Real life is the script for Frederick Wiseman, the documentary filmmaker, who turns his lens onto one of France's grandest institutions, the Paris Opera Ballet, in his latest film 'La Danse,' which opens Friday. Taking the viewer into the nooks and crannies of the Opera's venerable Palais Garnier and Opera Bastille, Wiseman observes the company in a 'fly on the wall' fashion - dancers in rehearsal, at rest, meeting with administrators, costumers dying swaths of fabric and meticulously beading elaborate costumes - uncovering stories large and small in the process.

Shrinking 'Nutcracker' to child size

Shrinking 'Nutcracker' to child size:

Like most people in the ballet world, the soft-spoken Mark Foehringer has had long experience with 'Nutcracker.' But with his latest production - which the Mark Foehringer Dance Project|SF will perform twice a day at the Zeum from next Sunday to Dec. 20 - he's hoping to capture the interest of young audiences with a child-scaled ballet that he describes as more like 'danced storytelling.'

Q: Did the Zeum come to you with the idea of a "Nutcracker"?

A: Actually it worked the other way. We were putting together a long-term plan for the company, and one of the pieces of that plan was that we would do a show to help develop young audiences. Usually our shows are contemporary or abstract - more grown-up things, but we wanted to open up our work to kids.

One of the things I liked was that the theater at the Zeum was not in constant use. I think it was originally built as a teaching theater, and there have been workshops and some productions in it, but they hadn't had a lot that brought the theatergoing experience to that age range of 2 to 4 years old.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/11/27/PKBI1AN6TS.DTL#ixzz0YBRcOEGX

Gary Masters gives ballet a modern spin

Gary Masters gives ballet a modern spin: "Veteran choreographer Gary Masters is perhaps best known for his modern dance work, but ballet is the idiom of choice for his latest, 'Fete for Three,' his third work for Diablo Ballet, which kicks off its 16th season at Walnut Creek's Lesher Center for the Arts this weekend.

Masters - who is on the faculty at San Jose State University and also directs his own company, sjDANCEco - has deep connections to modern dance giant Jose Limon, who inspired him to found the Limon West Dance Project of San Jose, the West Coast ensemble of the Limon Company."

DV8's Newson discusses S.F. production

DV8's Newson discusses S.F. production: "Founded in 1986 by Australian-born Lloyd Newson - who studied psychology in Melbourne before joining New Zealand Ballet - DV8 Physical Theatre's unnerving and often raw work blends movement with text - sometimes provocative and unafraid to dive headlong into touchy topics like racism and religious intolerance."