Dance Archives — Page 117 of 147 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Working the curves

April 1, 2009

› culture@sfbg.com

Pole dancing classes have become increasingly popular in recent years, and strippers aren’t the ones getting schooled. Lawyers, doctors, social workers, stay-at-home moms, even postmenopausal women with gray hair are turning to a turn around the pole to learn more about their bodies and their sexuality. From group classes at gyms to private lessons in home studios, pole dancing can be now learned at any comfort level.

Once a week, eight to 10 women gather in the small, dimly lit, mirrorless classrooms at San Francisco’s S-Factor (2159 Filbert, SF. 415-440-6420, www.sfactor.com/SF) to learn pole tricks, stripping techniques, and lap dances. "We like to say that you’re teaching your body a new language," says Deb Arana, an instructor at S-Factor. "You need to slow down, think into your curves, play in your girly skin." The classes start with warm-ups based on core strengthening, and moves incorporate yoga, ballet and Pilates.

Each class builds on the one before, and by week three women get to wear their six-inch stripper heels. "Some women are confident enough that they will just carry their heels while walking down the sidewalk or riding the bus, while others tuck them away in their bags," says Arana. "Its amazing to see the changes in the women by the end of the class. I’d say 99 percent are not dancers, but they can flow and move in such a graceful way because the routines are so intuitive."

But perhaps the more significant learning experience comes from the personal and spiritual growth that occurs in the sessions. The small S-Factor classes, which usually have less than a dozen students each, become tight-knit communities. Positive reinforcement from classmates helps women to try new moves, and they encourage one another to take their dancing to a higher level.

Women take the lessons in order to identify with their sexuality as much as they do to get physical exercise. "I thought that the main complaint I would hear would be about being overweight," Arana reveals, "But it’s actually women coming in saying ‘I don’t feel sexy, I’ve never felt sexy.’<0x2009>"

That attitude changes over the course of the class. "Women become conscious of their feminine and sexual selves," says Arana. "It’s not just because we’re giving them new moves, but because they’re comfortable in their own skins."

"Pole dancing becomes an addiction and a way of life," she explains, a surprising note of conviction entering her soothing, honey-tinted voice. "It’s such a journey of self discovery."

S-Factor, whose classes are offered nationwide and bills itself as "the original striptease and pole-dancing-inspired workout," was started by actress Sheila Kelley, who found an intense sense of empowerment in the dancers she watched while researching a role in the movie Dancing at the Blue Iguana (2000). She claims to have started the S-Factor workout to share her newfound physical and emotional state with other women.

Carrying six-inch heels on the bus and learning how to wrap your legs around a pole properly in front of several people is not for all potential pole dancers, though. One-on-one lessons in personal studios can be arranged in San Francisco as well. A former exotic dancer who calls herself Cheri (and who now maintains a career as an economist) runs private lessons out of a classy, modern studio in a quiet residential neighborhood. There is no indication that pole dancing takes place in the unassuming light blue building. Two poles that look like structural supports stand in the center of the second-floor room, and when the lesson starts, Cheri draws the shades, blocking her view of the Bay Bridge to turn her attention to demonstrating pole tricks.

"The important part of pole dancing is making it look good; the workout is secondary," says Cheri. "It’s sort of a hidden workout. I don’t realize it until I wake up sore the next day and wonder what I did to myself. Then I say, ‘Oh, yeah, I was dancing yesterday.’<0x2009>" Light lifting and yoga are helpful supplemental activities to pole dancing, since strength is needed to support your body weight on the pole, and flexibility and mindfulness are essential to proper moves and flow.

Hard-pressed for cash during college, Cheri responded to an ad in the school’s paper for exotic dancers at a local club. "At that time, there was no such thing as pole dancing classes, or any sort of instruction," says Cheri. "You just had to watch yourself in the mirror, and watch other dancers and just sort of learn as you go." She used dancing to support travels through Australia and Europe, but dropped it once she settled down in San Francisco and started her career.

One day, Cheri mentioned to her boyfriend that she would dance for him if he bought her a pole. One was obtained quite quickly, of course. The pole began to be used at parties and Cheri’s friends stared asking her to teach them moves. She realized she had caught on to something, so she started her own studio, called Heels on the Ceiling (www.heelsontheceiling.com). Once she found another pole, a few floor mats, and stilettos in every size for her students, Cheri was in business.

Bachelorette groups flocked to her studio for Cheri’s energetic instruction on floor moves and simple spins. And private students, including mother-daughter pairs, started signing up as well. "I’m a much better educator than a dancer, I think," confesses Cheri. "But at the same time it’s harder to dance in front of women than in front of men. Men are simple creatures with simple minds, but women are constantly judging you and sizing you up."

Although she worries about being judged herself, helping women shift their mindsets about their bodies and sexual selves is the primary reason she continues her lessons. "Pole dancing is teaching women how to harness their sexuality through certain tricks and moves," says Cheri. "It helps women shed their sexual and image insecurities."

Advanced dancing seems like quite the workout: Cheri can suspend herself upside-down on the pole, balancing at a graceful diagonal, like a spoon resting inside of a bowl. Then, before you can blink, she’ll turn around the pole faster than a record spins, and climb to the top with agility of a cat on a fence.

The physical fitness aspect has made lessons at Heels on the Ceiling more legitimate for women. "Pole-dancing has become less politically incorrect recently, because of the workout angle," says Cheri. "I’m glad that society has finally accepted and embraced it."

Deathly youth

April 1, 2009

johnny@sfbg.com

A slow descent into a blasted-out void as intimate as it is alienated, the introductory track of the Antlers’ self-released Hospice drops the listener into a sonic space somewhere near This Mortal Coil’s 1984 It’ll End in Tears (4AD). The reference point is a rich one. Jeff Buckley was given to covering It’ll End in Tears‘ opening track, the Alex Chilton composition "Kangaroo," and when Antlers’ singer-songwriter Peter Silberman’s voice enters the scene on Hospice‘s next song, "Kettering," his fallen choir-boy high tenor is a polite echo of the drowned romantic Buckley, whose equally fatalistic father Tim wrote another one of It’ll End in Tears‘ signature tracks. More blatantly, Hospice is an album all about this mortal coil, a recording that — as the title makes clear — lives near or within a threshold into death, alternately charting out or clawing at broken bonds.

Not exactly a light listening experience, whicb might be why Hospice is being greeted as everything from a work of genius (an NPR critic not only deemed it the best album so far this year, but better than anything from 2008) to an overrated angst fest (in the ever-reactive blogosphere, crankier reviewers have envisioned it as backdrop music for Scrubs and deemed it the musical form of Cymbalta). Another aspect of Hospice that triggers strong reactions is its back story, a tale of the now 23-year-old Silberman’s extended creative isolation that’s an urban version of the rural tortured artistry yarn attached to Bon Iver’s acclaimed For Emma, Forever Ago (Jagjauwar, 2008).

To escape the growing chatter, it helps to engage directly with the music, itself far from devoid of cultural signposts. In crafting a 10-song cycle about life and love and death, Silberman draws heavily from the real-life stories and legends of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes; one gets the impression that he uses them as a loose-fitting cover for the skeletal remains of his own recent brush with mortality. At this point, Plath is a clichéd symbol of suicidal poeticism and youthful valorizing of depression. (I have memories of a fellow Guardian editor singing "You don’t not do, you do not do" from "Lady Lazarus" in a mockery of her proper bell-like intonation during our Detroit days of being young.)

While Silberman’s invocation of Plath’s inconsolable rage and death-drive lacks humor, it isn’t stiff or overly worshipful. He makes her spirit breathe only to quarrel with it. On the anti-lullaby "Bear," animal imagery gets a bleakly comic twist missing from the heavy-handed Hughes’ favored bestial themes. The bottom line is that Silberman is a talented young singer-songwriter. Hospice is not only prodigious in its ambition, it is well-executed. The title of "Thirteen" reinvokes Chilton while the music’s glacial-yet-golden shimmer could be a missing early Slowdive track or an outtake from Gregg Araki’s 2004 film adaptation of Mysterious Skin. Like another "newgazer," Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox, Silberman places the widescreen blurring soundscapes of late-1980s shoegaze bands in the service of American Gothic narrative impulses. In a perverse way, his odes to fatal anorexics and séances for long-dead writers offer the promise of great things to come.

PLAYLIST

Afrobutt, Wonderbutt (Electric Minds) Humor is at play in these neo-disco tracks and their titles, which include "Urgent Workout Required," "Torro de Butt," "Morning Bump," "Cracks All Gone," and "Wunderbutt."

Johan Agebjörn featuring Lisa Barra, Mossebo (Lotuspike) Paging Vangelis: the songwriter and studio whiz behind Sally Shapiro goes new age.

Blackbelt Andersen, Blackbelt Andersen (Full Pupp) Prins Thomas preps us for his vanilla-sented Lindstrøm reunion with this one-man act from his fledgling label.

Lô Borges, Lô Borges and Nuvem Cigana (EMI Brasil) It took me too long to realize all my favorite tracks on 1972’s classic Clube de Esquina are written by Lô. The cover of Lô’s debut album is perfection, and I am completely in love with Nuvem Cigana’s "A força do vento," "Uma canção," "Viver viver," and O vento não me levou."

Serge Gainsbourg, histoire de melody nelson (Light in the Attic) An appreciation of the recent reissue rainfall of Gainsbourg soundtracks and concept song cyles is overdue. For now, this is one of the best.

The New Dawn, There’s a New Dawn (Jackpot) Jackpot indeed — a lost ultra-collectible classic of ’60s Northwest garage rock is revived, much like Jesus.

Ofege, Try and Love (Academy) "It’s Not Easy" is kid soul at its finest, thanks especially to the singing of bandleader Melvin "Noks" Ukachi.

Arthur Russell, …The Sleeping Bag Sessions (Sleeping Bag/Traffic) Koala power! Russell used the narcoleptic furry clasper as the logo for his dance music label. This comp presents some rare treats. His collaborations with Nicky Siano as Felix are two of the best.

Stereo, Somewhere in the Night (Minimal Wave) This 1980s duo’s criss-cross sunglasses put Kanye’s venetian shades to shame. Minimal Wave delivers once again. (Huston)

SF pot raid clouds federal drug policies

March 26, 2009

Story by Steven T. Jones, Photos by Neil Motteram

Yesterday’s federal raid on the locally permitted SoMa medical marijuana dispensary Emmalyn’s California Cannabis Clinic caused confusion about what local growers can expect from an Obama Administration that recently announced that it would no longer be conducting such raids.

Drug Enforcement Administration officials are saying little about the raid, which came on a Wednesday, the day Emmalyn’s gives out free marijuana to poor patients. But the DEA seemed to be trying to dance around the conflict with the public statement, “Based on our investigation, we believe there are not only violations of federal law, but state law as well.”

Assembly member Tom Ammiano, whose Assembly Bill 390 would decriminalize even recreational uses of marijuana, told the Guardian that the raid sends a troubling message and could indicate internal conflicts within the administration.

“It’s a little vigilante for me. They’re obviously try to flex their muscles, probably to have a showdown with the Obama Administration,” Ammiano said of the DEA. “The dispensaries are going to be in the crosshairs of this struggle.”

Event fee policy threatens How Weird and other festivals

March 26, 2009

The How Weird Street Faire has become a popular event, particularly with the Guardian staff, including (from left) Associate Art Director Ben Hopfer, Culture Editor Molly Freedenberg, City Editor Steven T. Jones, and Art Director Mirissa Neff.

By Steven T. Jones

The city’s budget crunch and stricter policies on making special events pay up front for all city services that they’re required to use are once again threatening the How Weird Street Faire, a popular dance festival now in its 10th year that seems to battle city bureaucracy every year. Now, the grassroots organizers are challenging policies that could leave San Francisco with only events sponsored by deep-pocketed corporations.

Organizers say they can’t come up with the almost $10,000 that the San Francisco Police Department is requiring them to pay up front, a tab needed to pay for cops that do little except stand around at an event that would rather be allowed to police itself. The May 10 event is scheduled to take place around Howard and 2nd streets after city officials made them move from their previous spot 10 blocks away.

“The SFPD is demanding we pay them nearly $10K up front for police services, which was not discussed at the ISCOTT [the city body that issues street closure permits] hearing and is twice the amount of 2007. We simply do not have the money for this and they are threatening now to not plan for our police services. I have a bad feeling they will not sign off on our ABC license [needed for beer sales],” lead organizer Brad Olsen recently wrote in an appeal to City Hall for help.

Eclectic city

March 25, 2009

Beyond the comfy crib of steady gigs like the Symphony or, say, Beach Blanket Babylon, working musicians survive by adapting to myriad habitats. Popping up all over town, they transition from El Dive-o one night to Lé Deluxe Lounge the next. It’s audiences who enjoy the luxury of worshipping regularly at the same musical temple, with the same congregation, be it hipster, hippie, or hip-replaced.

That’s why it’s likely — and intentional — that attendees of the Second Annual Switchboard Music Festival feel a little out of place. Billed as a "genre-defying spectacle," Switchboard promises to pull the rug out from under the audience — whether they’re used to beer stains or rich upholstery — and wow them with a first-class variety show of adventurous Bay Area acts. "We definitely got a good mix of contemporary classical music fans and indie-rock type people last year," says festival codirector Jonathan Russell, taking satisfaction in having enabled ironic and un-ironic tweed jackets to brush suede elbows in cultural camaraderie.

Among the many wonders on display at Dance Mission Theater this year are Melody of China, an ensemble with mastery of both traditional Chinese music and contemporary classical compositions on Chinese instruments; Zoyres, the buoyant purveyors of "Eastern European wild ferment;" Pamela Z, known for her gloriously experimental vocal ingenuity; and Edmund Welles, the world’s baddest (if not only) black-metal bass clarinet quartet. Oh yes … and Moe!

"It’s hard to describe," Russell laughs when asked to pin down the percussive tour de force Moe! Staiano. "He sees the entire world as a potential percussion object. You never quite know what’s going to happen next." Like Moe!, Russell and festival codirector Ryan Brown cultivate the kind of musical versatility that Russell admits "doesn’t fit neatly in the usual genre categories." A composer himself, he’s hip to music that gets played at clubs in the Mission, where fans of "new music" composers featured on the festival bill (like Damon Waitkus, David Lang, Mason Bates, Max Stoffregen, and Ken Thomson) might not normally venture. "We wanted to present that music in a little bit more of a concert setting, as opposed to noisy clubs." So Switchboard was born, with the idea that lovers of all kinds of new sounds might actually like each other — and each other’s favorite bands. Er, ensembles.

If founding an upstart festival seems ambitious these days, don’t expect Russell and Brown to twiddle their thumbs until sunnier times arrive. "Major funding organizations have a lot less money to throw around," Russell concedes. "But it emphasizes all the more that we need to be self-sufficient and take control of our own scene." To wit, Russell and Brown raised the bulk of Switchboard’s funds themselves, scaring up a deliciously eclectic lineup without any fussy institutions footing the bill. "Although," Russell notes, "they’re welcome to give us money if they want to."

SWITCHBOARD MUSIC FESTIVAL

Sun/29, 2–10 p.m., $10–$35

Dance Mission Theater

3316 24th Street, SF

(800) 838-3006

www.switchboardmusic.com

The news from Rock Rapids: Shinny’s funeral

March 23, 2009

By Bruce B. Brugmann

Shinny during his years as chief of police in Rock Rapids, Iowa, during the l950s. This was the card I had in my billfold when I heard about his death. He was technically “Shene” but he was Shinny to me. Shinny approved of my pronunciation. His last card omitted a key word from his earlier cards: “lover.”

The funeral services for Elmer (Shinny) Sheneberger, the central figure in the famous Halloween caper of 1951, were held Friday March 20 in the Congregational Church in Rock Rapids, Iowa.

I got word from Marj and retired CPA Jim Wells and Shinny’s nieces Audrey and Margo Wallace that Shinny had died on Saturday March 14 in his suburban mobile home in Phoenix, Arizona. He had fallen the day before and was found 20 hours later. He was terminally ill with cancer but hanging on.

Shinny was born and raised and lived his entire life of 92 years in this little northwest Iowa town. He was what every small town needed and cherished: an authentic good-natured character who went on generation after generation. He was somehow always there, when you needed him and sometimes when you didn’t. When a politician came to town, the word would get around that Shinny was briefing him at the Lane Cafe. When the Hermie Casjens gang rolled a loaded boxcar across Main Street, twice, on Halloween eve in 1951, Shinny was on duty as chief of police and had to move the boxcars off the street.

I never told Shinny who was involved in the incident and he never asked. Finally, years later, I gave him the full story. He laughed and said, “Let’s drink to it.” We did and did all through the years. When he would call me at my office in San Francisco, he would say, “I want to speak to Bruce. This is his parole officer in Rock Rapids.” Shinny had a wonderful way of operating on Halloween: he would just come upon the roving Casjens gang, and would just shine his car lights. We would scatter and he would move on, never making an arrest. In fact, I don’t think he ever made many arrests, that night or on any other Halloweens. His was humane law enforcement, Rock Rapids style.

Shinny did roll the boxcars back off of Main Street, but we never knew exactly how he did it. He explained in detail at our 55th class reunion last June in Rock Rapids. We invited Shinny to come after Dave Dietz and I got firm assurances that the statute of limitations had run and we were free to talk about the incident. We surmised that Shinny had gotten everyone out of a nearby dance at the Community Building to move the cars. No, he said, he rousted people out of the nearby movie theater under threat of “arrest” and pressed them into action, twice.

Shinny was quietly generous. He owned a farm near town and he told me that he was would be willing it to Camp Foster, the YMCA camp on nearby West Okiboji Lake where many of us went to summer camp. “I always thought highly of the boys who came out of that camp,” he told me. “And so I thought that would be a good place for my farm.”

Through the years, Shinny would say to me, “Bruce, you and I have got to get along together. We’re going to be together for a long, long time.” I never could figure out what he was talking about until I was out visiting the Brugmann plot at the Riverview Cemetery, the picture postcard cemetery atop a hill overlooking the Rock River. I noticed that the plot next to the Brugmann plot was the Sheneberger plot. As usual, Shinny was right.

Click here to read Halloween 1951: Fast times in Rock Rapids, Iowa, from the Bruce Blog archive.

Here is the email note I sent to my classmates on our email tree for the Dream Class of 1953 (16 boys, 16 girls, now many less):

Shinny’s funeral will be tomorrow (Friday) in the Congregational Church in Rock Rapids.

I ordered a bouquet of red tulips for the service from the Flower Village, with a note “from the Brugmann family and the Class of 1953.” I assume I don’t need to go over the details once again about Shinny’s connection to our class and his involuntary participation in our class activities and the famous Halloween incident of 1951.

Shinny was a longtime member of our church. He always wanted to live as long as Henry Rahlk, also a member of our church, who lived to be 102. Shinny, alas, only made it to 92.

I always enjoy buying my flowers from Flower Village, which once was in the old Brugmann’s Drugstore building. It’s now across the street in the old Bernstein department store building. Each year on Memorial Day, I phone in to Flower Village and buy potted flowers for all the members of the Brugmann plot at Riverside Cemetery. That’s both sets of my grandparents (Ethel and C. C. Brugmann, founder of Brugmann’s Drug in l902; and Allie and A.R. Rice, a Congregational minister in several small Iowa towns); my mother and father (Bonnie and Conrad Brugmann, who was a partner with my grandfather in the drugstore from the Depression onward); and my aunt and uncle (Mary and Clarence Schmidt, a veterinarian from Worthington who was the family representative in World War II.) I hope to end up in the Brugmann plot with my wife Jean.

And the Village people put the flowers on the plot, always well positioned and blooming nicely. Shinny’s family had the next plot and he would always take pictures of my potted flowers and send them to me with a friendly note about “staying in touch and getting together someday.”

And then I would always call the former Janice Olsen to remind her to pick up the flowers and take them to her home in Rock Rapids, once the home of her aunt and uncle, Edna and Harold Jongewaard. Harold was a funeral director in Rock Rapids for many years and buried almost all of our family in our plot. Janice’ s mother was Elsie Olsen, Clarence’s sister, and the Merl Olsens had a family farm out near Edna that I used to visit when I dated her in our junior year.

I didn’t mean to ramble on so long, but Shinny’s death reminds me once again of how it was and still seems to be back there in Rock Rapids, the best little hometown in the country. There are lots of good connections and lots of good memories, but they grow dimmer and dimmer.

So long, Shinny. I’ll be seeing you soon. B3

Back to nature

March 18, 2009

› a&eletters@sfbg.com

ODC/Dance opened its 38th season with world premieres by artistic director Brenda Way and co-artistic director KT Nelson. Neither Way’s In the Memory of the Forest nor Nelson’s Grassland broke new ground. But novelty is overrated. What you want from experienced choreographers is that they continue challenging themselves with ideas that are compellingly realized. If both works need some settling, the rest of the season should take care of that. In upcoming performances they will be presented as part of the repertoire, which will give them a warmer context than the opening gala did. The dancers, who now include Robert Dekkers and Vanessa Thiessen, look as good as you may want them.

Nelson set her Grassland to a commissioned score by Brazilian composer Marcelo Zarvos, with whom she collaborated for her 2006 Stomp a Waltz. It’s a restless, driving piece of music, forcefully interpreted by a piano quintet and well-suited to Nelson’s equally restless, driving choreography. She kept the relationship to the music elastic, sometimes following its rhythmic impulse but also anticipating its sweep or going against its complexity.

Even without direct references to natural phenomena, Grassland suggests a vast sense of open space. Dancers tore in and out of the wings; they walked or scurried on tiptoe as if trying to see beyond the horizon. Legs swept the floor like scythes; four-legged critters scrambled across. The beautifully individualized duets for Daniel Santos and Yaoi Kambara, Anne Zivolich and Corey Brady, and Elizabeth Farotte and Jeremy Smith involved collisions and interlockings that then split, slithered, or scooted apart. The whole suggested a pulsating sense of aliveness, sometimes almost too much to take in.

Way’s elegiac In the Memory of the Forest was inspired by her mother-in-law’s escape from Poland in 1941 to find the man she loved. The work ended with parts of a recording — incorporated into Jay Cloidt’s musical score — of Iza Erlich telling her story. The audio was fragmented, pensive, and a little scratchy, just like Way’s choreography. Instead of fashioning a narrative, Way explored the anxiety, uncertainty, and determination — as well as the innocence and sense of loss — inherent in Erlich’s experience. More than anything, this is a piece about remembering. Cloidt’s music was multilayered and supportive; in the hands of Elaine Buckholtz’s set and lighting design, David and Hi-Jin Hodge’s video work looked first rate.

The piece opened with a stunning line of hand-holding dancers stepping from video images of woods; their line then began to fracture as if an earthquake had broken the ground beneath them. Joining them were video images of white-clad dancers who accumulated until they gave the sense of a world about to drown. But Way kept the focus on the private. Couples fused and separated, sometimes like silhouettes, sometimes very physically. Kambara was the heroine who flitted hither and yon. A limp Zivolich, dragged around by Santos, seemed to be an alter-ego whom Kambara befriended. In good movie tradition, it was not the men’s uniform gestures but Cloidt’s sound track that terrified. When Kambara finally threw herself against a slightly overwhelmed looking Smith, both froze and began to turn like music box figurines, while the shadows kept pace with their own whirling dance.

ODC/DANCE DOWNTOWN

Through March 29, $10–$45

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 700 Howard, SF

(415) 978-ARTS, www.odcdance.org

More meaner, more cleaner

March 18, 2009

› a&eletters@sfbg.com

"We’re not elitists," asserts Nick Catchdubs, co-founder of Brooklyn dance label Fool’s Gold. In a conference call with business partner A-Trak, he describes Fool’s Gold fans as a sea of hip-hop dudes, skinny-jeans-electro kids, super DJ nerds and Urban Outfitters girls. "The tempos and the beats-per-minute are the only governing factor," adds A-Trak.

You could say that Fool’s Gold is fomenting a cultural moment. After years of dismissing it as cheesy and "gay," rap fans have finally, tentatively, learned to accept dance music. Kanye West landed a number one hit with "Stronger" by remixing Daft Punk’s 2001 "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger." A-Trak, the other co-founder of Fool’s Gold, is Kanye’s tour DJ. And Washington, DC rapper Wale drove the Internet nuts with his remix of Justice’s "D.A.N.C.E." Catchdubs mixed 100 Miles and Running, the Wale mixtape which featured that viral hit.

Fool’s Gold works with many of the era’s players: Kid Sister, who scored the label’s first successes with clever pop-raps "Damn Girl" and "Pro Nails" (and is A-Trak’s girlfriend); Trackademicks, the Yay Area electro-funk producer-rapper who celebrated the release of the single "Enjoy What You Do" at SF nightspot Vessel last month; and Treasure Fingers, the Atlanta DJ who scored a disco-house smash last year with "Cross The Dancefloor." Its biggest hit to date, though, has been Kid Cudi’s "Day ‘N’ Nite," a lonely-stoner gem that mixes Cudi’s off-key harmonizing against winsome electro melancholy. A-Trak doesn’t have exact figures, but he places digital sales at around 100,000, which he rightly describes as "cool for an indie like us."

Kid Cudi was the first Fool’s Gold artist to win over difficult-to-please hip-hop blogs, which sometimes ridiculed Kid Sister as too fluffy and trendy (perhaps in part because she’s a woman). During Kid Sister’s run of singles in 2007, which eventually landed her a major label deal with Downtown Records, skeptics didn’t know what to make of her or Fool’s Gold — was she some kind of hipster rapper, and was Fool’s Gold just a goofy imprint for fashion-challenged scenesters?

"When we first started the label, we would do all these weird interviews, like, ‘Talk about the hipster rap movement.’ Just bizarre interviews where people would talk about your jeans and sneakers and shit," says A-Trak. "One year later, we hardly ever get those questions. It takes a minute for stuff to assimilate. I think people know that some stuff is trendy and is going to float away like all trends do. But a lot of times it’s just culture at work: ideas coming out and getting assimilated, and then people move on to the next shit."

Fool’s Gold’s greatest ambassador may be A-Trak. A DJ star since the age of 15, when he shocked the then-thriving turntablist world by winning the 1997 DMC World Championships, A-Trak has grown into an influential artist. In the next two months he’ll release DJ mixes for two reputed dance labels, Thrive (Infinity +1, due March 31) and Fabric (Fabriclive.31, set for May 5). His transition from scratch-happy hip-hop head to genre-blurring tastemaker is one that Fool’s Gold might follow.

"The whole aesthetic of Fool’s Gold is based on what Nick and I play in our DJ sets," says A-Trak. "What we put out is really varied, but it all kind of makes sense."

A-TRAK

with Trackademics, Vin Sol

Sat/21, 9pm, $13

Paradise Lounge

1501 Folsom St, SF

www.paradisesf.com

West ghost

March 18, 2009

› johnny@sfbg.com

This land isn’t your land, or my land, and it wasn’t made for you and me — such is the insightful and incite-full impression one gets from California Company Town, Lee Anne Schmitt’s beautifully photographed, concisely narrated, and ominously structured look at the Golden State and the state of capitalism. Sneak previewing at Other Cinema for one night before it screens in full 16mm glory at the upcoming San Francisco International Film Festival, Schmitt’s labor of love, shot between 2003 and 2008, is a provocative piece of American history. On a semi-buried level, it’s also an extraordinary act of personal filmmaking that subverts various stereotypes of first-person storytelling by women while simultaneously learning from and breaking away from some esteemed directors of the essay film.

Categorically speaking, Schmitt’s left-leaning survey of the American landscape belongs next to recent cinematic people’s histories such as Travis Wilkerson’s An Injury to One (2002) and John Gianvito’s Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind (2007). Her dedicated photographer’s eye for still-life truths of American sightseeing is influenced by Cal Arts filmmaking elder James Benning, while her carefully selective use of archival audio — in particular, radio — makes California Company Town an understated female answer to the gay reading of homophobia in Ohio within William E. Jones’s too-obscure classic of new queer cinema, Massillon (1991).

One by one, California Company Town investigates this state’s ghost towns — doom-laden boomtowns of the past where today, at best, bedazzled modern day cowboys and cowgirls reside and line dance for tourists. Surveying forgotten landscapes that verge on post-human, Schmitt has an eye for signs of the times, whether they be literal ("USA WILL PREVAIL" on a theater’s marquee in Westwood; "Stay out" spray-painted over a "Prayer Changes Things" billboard in Trona) or figurative: spider webs of broken glass; a tree falling through the roof of a house; punk rock kids skateboarding near factory ruins. She pairs these sights with the sounds of speeches by FDR, Eldridge Cleaver, Cesar Chavez, Ronald Reagan, radio testimonials, and — most contentiously — her deceptively flat voice-over, which renders each titular site as a place that looks like a dead end yet has roiling life beneath its stingy, abandoned surface.

California Company Town is a one-woman road movie. A lonely film, but also an act of strong resolve built to last — and, in its original filmic form, slowly decay. Over and over, from Chester to Scotia through to McCloud and even Richmond, Schmitt traces the varied yet similar ways in which private interests crush community and exploit natural resources. In the process, she reveals the ultimate forfeiting of American pride of ownership. Grim stuff, yet presented in a manner that ultimately flouts the dry speechifying of academia, doctrinaire ideologues, and public television pablum-pushers. Schmitt concludes her film with a mute final gesture designed to start arguments.

CALIFORNIA COMPANY TOWN

Sat/21, 8:30 p.m.; $6

Other Cinema at Artists’ Television Access

992 Valencia, SF

(415) 824-3890

www.othercinema.com

CALIFORNIA COMPANY TOWN is also screening April 30, May 2, and May 4 at various venues as part of the Golden Gate Awards Competition in the 52nd San Francisco International Film Festival. www.sffs.org>.

Say you, say me

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March 18, 2009
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› superego@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO Adult contemporary is alive and well and thriving in Southeast Asia. I just touched down from a refreshing jaunt to that worldly hot spot: Cambodia a capitalist riot of beauty and pollution, untamed Laos a communist stoner’s wet dream. Everyone Hunky Beau and I met was gorgeous, despite the odd backpacker overload, which occasioned a few frightful spottings of crocadreadles — northern Europeans sporting poorly waxed dreadlocks, jingle pants, and stomach-churning Crocs.

Memo to the Danes: please stop.

Still, even that led to some perfect Putamayo moments, as when a lovely Jewish-Korean singer at Dead Fish Tower guesthouse in Siem Reap launched into her acoustic version of Daft Punk’s "One More Time." Many of the citizens themselves, however, seemed happily obsessed with Lionel Richie, Westlife, Yanni (it lives!), and Thailand’s answer to Nickelback, Big Ass. The gay clubs were pumping the usual homo-panglobal Kylie Minoguerrhea, sigh, yet the drag was way brill. But alternative DJ and dance music culture — and even the hip-hop aspirations my Amerocentric, quasi-Orientalist mind expected to sense in the region’s rapidly developing economic climate — seemed banished to the land of wind and ghosts.

I’d say I felt a little sorry for the baby-boom youth there, but who am I to make value judgments? Value judgments give me acne, Jessica Simpson — and a few weeks probably aren’t enough time to properly shake out an underground. Besides, here on the other side of the rim our dance charts are clogged with Lady GaGa blah-blah-blah, zombie Prodigy retreads, and something called "Total Dance 2009." Goddess help us all. If ever there was a moment to hit the reboot on Western mainstream dance music — hell, even drag to trash and go running with the night — this may be it.

THE ID LIST

MIKE SLOTT AND KOTCHY

"If you’re tired of all the retro shit, holla," woozes New York City’s Kotchy on one of his typical genre-fuck tracks, blending ambient squelches with trippy bloops from inner space. "Our culture must be in a coma, and I’m not a doctor." Glasgow-based future bass collective LuckyMe brings twilit melodies, brogue-inflected park bench rhymes, and wry Scots humor to the burgeoning genre. Both Kotchy and LuckyMe’s Mike Slott will bruise the speakers with live performances, while graffiti artists sear your sinuses, at this month’s installment of Bass Camp.

Thu/19, 9 p.m., $10–$15. 111 Minna, SF. www.111minnagallery.com, www.myspace.com/basscampsf

DAVIES AFTER HOURS

Do the words "electric strings" excite you as much as they do me? Yeah, that’s right, I’m a geek. The San Francisco Symphony, following in the frisky footsteps of other wildly successful nightlife-aware arts institutions, is launching a monthly post-performance shindig composed of cutting-edge styles. Cellist Alex Kelly’s avant-jazz combo kicks off this month, with electric strings and rock from NTL in April and the massive DJ Masonic with Mercury Lounge in May.

Fri/20, April 24, and May 22, after 8 p.m. concert, free with purchase of symphony performance ticket. Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness, SF. www.sfsymphony.org

WORLD OF DRUM ‘N BASS

The name may sound like a trade show — and I’m here to tell you that drum ‘n bass fans make pretty great trade — but this huge affair brings serious low-end to Temple’s multiple floors, and a boffo chance to reconnect with, and lose your droopy drawers to, the fractured sound of yore. Chase and Status, Radioactive, 2 Cents, A.I., Havoc, and more break it up. Let’s get ready to rumble.

Fri/20, 10 p.m., $20. Temple, 540 Howard, www.templesf.com

DJ SNEAK

Ah, Sneak, how you play with our heart-shaped equalizers. One minute you’re banging chunky techno tunes, the next you’re upping the bongos for some well-earned soul release — and then you drop some serious freaking Chicago house gangster shit on us and we can’t stop screaming. Through it all you keep a shroom-happy smile on our faces and work the soles off our Keds. Here’s to another 15 years of squeaking the woodwork, and your choo-choo new contribution to the Back in the Box series. With Hector Moralez and Oscar Mirada.

Fri/20, 9 p.m., $10–$20. Six, 66 Sixth St., SF. www.clubsix1.com

CLIVE HENRY

Anyone who caught house legend Francois K.’s head-scratching but still rewarding set at Vessel on March 12 may have taken away the same thought I did — the sparkling Balearic revival of the past few years has now congealed into a full-on non-ironic Ibiza attack. That’s kind of scary, but maybe the crappy-champagne-and-carnival-siren sound is an interesting comment on now. Prolific DJ and producer Clive Henry, of the glittery Circo Loco party based at Ibiza’s humongous DC10, may be the best person to help you rethink the microgenre at EndUp. Whether or not he’ll be sponsored by Got 2 B Magnetik hair gel with pheromones, like most Ibiza denizens, remains to be seen.

Sat/21, 10 p.m., $10–$20. EndUp, 401 Sixth St., SF. www.theendup.com, www.sensesf.com

BOOKA SHADE

The moody duo is still touring — and bridging the gap between thoughtful Berlin minimal and the more laconic side of electro. Yet why would Walter Merziger and Arno Kammermeier ever stop accumuutf8g bonus miles as one of the most acclaimed live acts in dance music, especially with their Get Physical label still scoring kudos and their hoards of ready and willing fans? You may have seen it all before, but that doesn’t mean it’s not the tits.

Sun/22, 8:30 p.m., $22 advance. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. www.theindependentsf.com

Jewish Music Festival

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March 17, 2009
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PREVIEW Oh man, do we live in troubled times. If you possess a certain fundamentalist biblical streak, you might be forgiven for falling prey to thoughts of doom and damnation. For a proven antidote, try gospel music — certain postracial/maxicultural sectors of society are pushing back against the end times with joyous, fervent determination. Exhibit one: the "kosher gospel" of Joshua Nelson, a black Jew from New Jersey born to African American parents, who traces his religion to several generations of West African Senegalese Jews.

Nelson lived in Israel for two years and is fluent in Hebrew, and his music is as interesting as his lineage and biography. He draws from Jewish liturgy to rework a traditionally Christian genre of music, imbuing it with resonant Jewish themes — the despair of being lost, the longing for freedom. Despite his inventiveness with the form, his music retains gospel’s recognizably uplifting, stirring, soulful core. Nelson has performed before Yitzhak Rabin and Barack Obama, and Oprah Winfrey has championed and befriended him. At the Jewish Music Festival’s opening event (Sat/21, at First Congregational Church of Oakland), you’ll find out why his singing voice has been compared to Mahalia Jackson’s. For one night, at least, let the "Prince of Kosher Gospel" soothe your weary brow. He’s Oprah approved!

Another good Jewish Music Festival pick is a March 26 performance at the Rickshaw Stop by Daniel Kahn & the Painted Bird, who are on tour in support of their second CD, Partisans & Parasites (Oriente). Kahn is often called the Tom Waits of Berlin — his band mixes punk with political cabaret. If you’re looking for more of a raucous dance party, this is your night.

JEWISH MUSIC FESTIVAL Sat/21 through April 2. Various prices and venues. (510) 848-0237. www.jewishmusicfestival.org.

Hollis Update: Gold for our (open-eyed!) girl

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March 11, 2009
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The Guardian continues to follow the condition of local dancer and activist Hollis Hawthorne, who was in a serious motorcycle accident in India and is in a coma.

Miracles do happen! Hollis is doing better than expected. Though still not responding to commands, she is opening both eyes and squeezing the hands of her mom and boyfriend. She’s also been moved to a private room while her family works with several airlines to try to get her home. More info here.

Meanwhile, friends and family have raised $75,500 as of Monday. Almost halfway there! And we’ve been blown away by the support we’ve gotten for tomorrow’s Gold Rush fundraiser at Slim’s. It’s truly going to be a spectacular night – one we only wish Hollis could be present for.

Highlights? Extra Action Marching Band, who Hollis danced to just hours before she left for India last month; A raffle for two Burning Man tickets or two tickets to Teatro Zinzanni; An art auction curated by Will Chase, also known as the man at the helm of Jack Rabbit Speaks; Bohemian Carnival favorites Gooferman; performances by both of the dance troupes Hollis helped found; Live auction by Chicken John; and so much more… Pre-purchase your tickets at www.slims-sf.com and get there early, because this is going to be one fantastic, and PACKED, show.

Cut Copy

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March 10, 2009
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PREVIEW Cut Copy can’t help being so likable. They’re here to dance, they’re damn happy about it, and they want you to know it — and jump in. The happy-go-lucky aesthetic worked: last year’s In Ghost Colours (Modular Interscope) debuted at the top of the Australian charts and topped scads of year-end best-of lists. The trio — a skinny bunch with swishy haircuts, delectable Australian accents, and a pathological addition to plaid — put out that luminous trove of swirly synths, Day-Glo pop, and irrepressible dance-rock groove to near-unanimous critical acclaim.

And about time, too. Downright disco raver "Lights and Music," an ecstatic summer anthem with a veritable shirt-grabber of a hook, spawned about a trillion remixes and lit up transcontinental dance floors across the globe. Vocalist Dan Whitford, who started out as a DJ and has released comps under the Fabriclive mix series, formed the band in 2001, collecting guitarist Tim Hoey and drummer Mitchell Scott along the way to the band’s 2004 debut, Bright Like Neon Love (Modular Interscope). Maybe it’s Whitford’s DJ impulses that account for In Ghost Colours‘ chimerical meldings of disparate rock and electronic elements that give the group’s music its diverse, pastiche-y textures — and, for determined music taxonomists, a certain elusive quality. Nu rave, disco-punk, synth rock? Whichever and whatever, it just sounds like a good time.

CUT COPY With Matt and Kim, and Knightlife. Thurs/12, 8 p.m. $25. Fillmore, 1805 Geary, SF. (415) 346-6000, www.livenation.com. Cut Copy DJs a Popscene after-party. Thurs/12, 10 p.m., $10. 330 Ritch, SF. (415) 541-9574, www.popscene-sf.com

Project agora’s “With (& Without) Words”

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March 10, 2009
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PREVIEW In 2006 Kara Davis and Bliss Kohlmyer Dowman founded project agora as an umbrella organization under which they could present their own choreography. Strong and experienced performers — Davis with Kunst-Stoff and Janice Garret and Dancers; Kohlmyer Dowman with Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company and Robert Moses’ Kin — the two got to the point where realizing other choreographers’ dances became less attractive and creating their own work grew more compelling.

For With (& Without) Words, Davis went solo. She hooked up with soprano and songwriter Kary Stephan for an evening of songs and dances in a format in which a dance may be performed in silence and a song without dance. Davis and Stephan had admired each other from afar but decided to work together when they found that they had more in common than either initially had thought. Both were classically trained: Davis in ballet, Stephan in opera. Yet both had vastly expanded their artistic interests since those early days. For Davis, the idea of performing to live music became irresistible, while Stephan had watched and taken some of Davis’ modern dance classes and found she liked the experience.

The resulting collaboration will run in something akin to a salon format at the Community Music Center with the audience surrounding the vocalists and dancers. Davis’ veteran and new colleagues Nol Simonse, Marina Fukushima, Daniel Howerton, and Sierra Stockton will perform, and Stephan will be accompanied by a chamber music trio.

PROJECT AGORA’S WITH (& WITHOUT) WORDS Fri/13–Sat/14 and March 20–21, 8 p.m.; $10 at door only. Community Music Center, 544 Capp, SF. (415) 509-2124

San Francisco reactionaries and their crackdowns

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March 10, 2009
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By Steven T. Jones

Fresh off of a nearly averted city crackdown on partying at the Bay to Breakers race, the Chronicle has back-to-back reports that city officials are planning to crackdown on nightlife and on impromptu dance parties, zombie infestations, pillow fights, and other flash mobs. Further embarrassing this city that once embraced parties is the fact that this threat has already made international news.

Why must city officials use threats and zero tolerance as their first resorts? Problems with trash and noise can be solved if there’s creative leadership in City Hall willing to work with the community, and leaders that value San Francisco’s unique, messy, and fun culture. Instead, we have the absentee and conflict-averse Mayor Gavin Newsom, shorttimer Police Chief Heather Fong, and Newsom’s dour, judgmental special events coordinator Martha Cohen playing reactionary roles, time and again.

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater: following 50 years of footwork

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March 9, 2009
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Finding themselves at 50: Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at Zellerbach Hall. All photos by Ariel Soto.

By Ariel Soto

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater celebrated its 50th anniversary at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley from March 3 to March 8. The performance consisted of a succession of snippets from 50 years of work, and the company took the audience through Ailey’s work and the important mark he left on the.history of modern dance.

I was impressed by the dancers themselves: their toes appeared to almost touch the ceiling and their fluid, precise movements flowed like honey across the stage. I have had the chance to see Alvin Ailey several times in the past, but I still cried like a baby and clapped my hands in time with the music till they hurt because there’s no other dance company in the world like Alvin Ailey. The company can draw you so far into the dance that you forget everything around you and just become one with movement, the emotion, and those amazing twirls.

Talk about the passion

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March 6, 2009
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There’s an argument to be made that record love really begins when you start noticing the labels. Slumberland was one of my earliest such epiphanies. I was bit by one of the label’s groups, Velocity Girl, because, as much as anything, I felt I had come to them on my own. This secret knowledge kept me satisfied until an older friend made me a cassette mix heavy on the Slumberland set: pastel guitar music by Rocketship, the Softies, Lilys, Black Tambourine, the Ropers, and Amy Linton’s much-missed Bay Area groups, Henry’s Dress and the Aislers Set. I started paying more attention to the sleeve.

Slumberland has been a byword for the more melodic runoff of post-punk since 1989, when its premier release — a three-band 7-inch titled What Kind of Heaven Do You Want? — closed the gap between New York noise and English indie-pop. This is an area of music subject to quarrelsome subdivisions (see shoegaze, C86, dream pop), but Slumberland’s common denominator is the taste and passion of Mike Schulman, former member of Black Tambourine, Powderburns, and the underrated Whorl.

Though still associated with its initial crop of D.C.-area groups, Schulman has run Slumberland from the East Bay since 1992. After a dry spell in the early aughts, the label is disproving F. Scott Fitzgerald’s quip about second acts with a much-buzzed-about round of releases by Brooklyn pop stylists Crystal Stilts, Cause Co-Motion, and the Pains of Being Pure at Heart — an impressive slate that puts Schulman in the unusual position of encountering his own footsteps.

“I look at what we’re doing now, and I could easily imagine any of these bands being on Slumberland 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago,” Schulman tells me between sips of coffee on a gray Sunday morning in Oakland. He’s expansive about the joys of record collecting and vicissitudes of music press in spite of having been up since 4 a.m. with his new baby. Schulman’s tastes are eclectic — he ran the dance record store/label Drop Beat in Oakland’s Rockridge District from 1996 to 2000 and is happy to gab about doo-wop or Japanese noise — but Slumberland was dedicated to scruffy pop from the start. It was an obvious niche, though striking for its proximity to D.C.’s thriving hardcore scene. “I used to go see Minor Threat, Rites of Spring, and I loved those bands, but there were tons of hardcore labels,” Schulman reflects. “I couldn’t have named three labels in America that would do stuff by HoneyBunch or Small Factory. That music just seemed underserved.”

The Slumberland aesthetic was also a romance with a format. Schulman traces his own 45 rpm fixation back to his father’s R&B collection as well as a life-altering experience with the Jesus and Mary Chain’s 1985 A-side “Never Understand” (Blanco y Negro). “It just makes so much sense — the one great song on the one great side, something that fits in your hand. You can pick it up and carry it around. You can have a little box to take it to your friends to play it for people…. Historically, it was a very economical way to transmit the most amazing three minutes of music you’ve ever heard.”

This kind of object-oriented pleasure, along with visual aesthetics and the relative gender equity of the Slumberland bands, tends to get short shrift from blog critics who take the label to task for “playing it safe” with unabashedly melodic music. “I just think rock music is inherently conservative,” Schulman weighs in. “Everyone goes back to the same 15 references. I love the Siltbreeze stuff — those are great records — but you can’t tell me that there’s something shocking or new about them.”

Of course, a credible brand has the upshot of generating its own ancestry. The Brooklyn bands are all well-versed in the Slumberland back catalog — easily navigable on the label’s smartly designed Web site — though the Pains of Being Pure at Heart earn extra points for tapping Archie Moore (Velocity Girl, Black Tambourine) to mix their eponymous debut. Listening to the first 10 declarative seconds of every song on the album is a humbling refresher course in the elevating art of the single.

The Crystal Stilts don’t play for the same caffeinated high, but their 2008 full-length, Alight of Night, is addictive nonetheless. The disc’s zoned out, organ-laced stomps pull off the neat trick of making New York City post-disco punk sound good again. The creamiest song on the album, “Prismatic Room,” lights up the same pleasure zones in my brain as those early Velocity Girl tracks. I find myself going for seconds as soon it finishes — something I didn’t think I did anymore

www.slumberlandrecords.com

Call for help: SF artist in coma in India

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March 4, 2009
6

By Molly Freedenberg

My dear friend Hollis Hawthorne, a major force in the San Francisco art and bicycle scene, is in critical condition in India. The 31-year-old dancer, artist, and activist was in a tragic motorcycle accident near Pondicherry last Tuesday, February 24, which left her with severe head injuries and in a coma. As of today, she is at Apollo Hospital in Chennai and still unconscious, though she’s finally breathing on her own. Her prognosis is still unknown.

(For the full dramatic story, including heartbreaking details of how her boyfriend kept her alive for 30 minutes doing CPR, and the freak occurrence that rendered her motorcycle helmet useless, check out the blog www.friendsofhollis.blogspot.com. For updates on her health status, check out www.helpholligethome.blogspot.com. Donations can be collected at both sites.)

Hollis is known in San Francisco as co-founder of the Bay Area Derailleurs , an all-female bicycle dance troupe whose purpose is bike activism and female empowerment; founding member of the Cheese Puffs, a tap-dancing burlesque troupe who’ve performed at Hubba Hubba Revue, BootieSF, and for the Guardian at Maker Faire and the DeYoung Museum; member of Burning Man Organization’s DPW; and as a part of Ron Turner’s Last Gasp operation. Her community of friends, family and collaborators also extends to the Sprockettes in Portland, Oregon; Chicken John; the Yard Dogs Roadshow; Extra Action Marching Band; Cyclecide Bike Rodeo; ArtSF; promoters and owners of 1015 Folsom, the Independent, Rickshaw Stop; Los Angeles performance troupe Lucent Dossier (who starred in a Panic at the Disco video on MTV); and many more art, fashion, and activism groups. She is vibrant, creative, inspiring, and passionate – as are the communities she’s a part of.

Twister

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March 3, 2009
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› le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS I love how, on the train, you can see into people’s backyards. Backyards are so much more interesting to me than front ones. What you don’t see from the road … it’s the same in California as Iowa as Pennsylvania: piles of colorful plastic trash, tarp-covered mounds of mysterious not-yet-trash, broken-down swimming pools with bikes sticking out of them, neurotic dogs and malicious children tied to trees …

Sometimes, just outside of cities, between the tracks and the freeway, you see tent towns or hobo jungles, cluttered camps tucked into clusters of trees or just trying to hide in weeds and bushes. Sometimes there is smoke billowing up from a fire pit and you are free to think about coffee or a can of beans.

But litter is more beautiful than people think, especially blooming in an otherwise pristine "natural" landscape. Although … I would argue that our trash is natural too, that Coke cans and candy wrappers are to rocks and leaves what Miles Davis is to wind and rain. We make stuff that outlives us, get over it. Or not. Either way, detritus makes me want to dance.

What I don’t like about train travel, on the other hand, is the museum piece doofus who gets on in Sacramento and blabs about the Donner Party and this scenery and that history, PA system crackling, fracturing, and feeding back, all the way to Reno. I tried to drown him out with my headphones but Utah Phillips wasn’t loud enough. But Abba was, thank you for the music.

After Reno it doesn’t matter. You are too rattled and fuzzy to care — about the sunset or canyons, or the Colorado River, or the Great Plains. Of course, without the voice directing you to look at this, look at that, you tend to notice every single thing.

Two nights in a row I dreamed about tornadoes. The first night I was home in bed, and the second night I was on the train. Only thing tying the two nights together was what I’d had for dinner: Zachary’s pizza. So if I dream about tornadoes tonight, after eating Zachary’s yet again, then we will know the cause.

I’ve got a little cooler and am the envy of this choo-choo train, because I’m holding Zachs.

My thinking: nothing packs more caloric and nutritional value per square inch than a slice of deep-dish pizza. One little piece is a whole big meal. Plus pizza is good hot or cold, as every rocker knows, and it travels well. Well, it travels well in a cooler on a train. Not so much so in a pizza box in the rain. I had to walk five or ten blocks in a downpour, trying to hold my little umbrella over both me and this two-ton pizza. We both got soaked, and the toppings slipped off of the pie and my hat fell off of me. But we made it, and reassembled, and dried off, and by the time I get to Chicago I will have eaten Zachary’s for four straight days, and presumably will have dreamed about tornadoes for four straight nights.

But I mean to tell you about Christopher’s burger joint, which is my new favorite burger joint by virtue of being a little closer to my house than Barney’s. The burgers are made out of Niman Marcus designer cows, but the place itself has a lower brow feel to it, which of course I like.

And they have shoestring french fries, which I like.

Just be ready with the salt and pepper and hot sauce, because nothing, not even the spicy burger, was seasoned very much.

I ate there on a date (speaking of flavorlessness) with one of those guys who only really knows how to talk about himself. You know, the one with an hour-long answer to every question you ask, but he doesn’t have one single question for you. While not exactly what I’m looking for, these dates always go well for me, because while he’s talking, I get to focus on my burger. And fries. Which is ultimately what I’m more interested in.

My date said (among 9 million other things) that he’d met the owner of Zachary’s and, ha ha, told him that Zachary’s was the second-best pizza he’d ever had. And when Zachary asked whose he liked better he said his own homemade pizza. Dude makes better pizza than Zachary’s! And I have no reason not to believe him, except that — and this is pretty flimsy as well as retroactive — I did not dream about tornadoes that night.

CHRISTOPHER’S BURGER

Mon.–Sat.: 11:30 a.m.–9 p.m.; Sun., noon–9 p.m.

5295 College, Oakl.

(510) 601-8828

Beer & wine

AE/DISC/MC/V

L.E. Leone’s new book is Big Bend (Sparkle Street Books), a collection of short fiction.

Climate change

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March 3, 2009
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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

I’ve heard about a fortuneteller with a tarot deck and a dead fish. I can smell the fish, but I’m daunted by the line in front of the curtain, so I wander into another room and stand before a terrycloth sculpture of some tropical beach getaway. It looks a little like a desert nomad’s tent in Technicolor, and comes fronted by an immobile bare-shouldered woman in vertical repose, cast like a caryatid and basking in cat-eye shades under some imagined equatorial sun for, I’m told, hours on end.

I try not to stare at her beach towel, which not only conforms to her shape but also a life-size photorealistic representation of what you imagine to be the body underneath. Somebody finally offers her a color-appropriate drink through a straw as my eyes dart over to a bedroom scene of vaguely subconscious associations: an inanimate, incongruous couple pokes out from under a duvet, the whole scene partially obscured by a murky plastic curtain on which a playfully frenetic lightshow dances. Titled Sea of Dreams and fashioned by Joegh Bullock — landlord and Anon Gallery proprietor, in addition to being one of more than 20 artists with work on display here tonight — it stands just to the left of a DJ booth, and attracts a group of costumed art lovers who also break into dance.

Taking in Unseen/Unsaid, as this one-off evening of curated art and performance is called, is a lot like trying to take in the history of the Climate Theater itself, full of blurring boundaries and strange echoes. In some ways it’s as labyrinthine as the floor plan of the former bordering house at Ninth and Folsom streets whose second floor contains the theater, its offices, and Anon Gallery. Branching out in several directions at once, it also stitches together the fringe arts, tech, and underground party scenes of the mid-1980s to those of the present.

Next year the Climate turns 25, an impressive run for any theater, and probably a better occasion than just now to trace this one’s full baroque lineage. Suffice it to say that the Climate Gallery, as it was originally known, was an accidental theater started by artists who, by their own admission, had no background or even interest in theater per se. But in opening its doors in 1985 to Nina Wise, who had recently lost a performance space, it quickly became a vital scene and vibrant avenue for some of the most dynamic and promising crossover and experimental work around.

In the last year and a half, as a result of a spurt of new energy via new management — as well as a larger recrudescence, if you will, of some of the old SoMa arts scene of the ’80s — the Climate has been looking pretty spry for a decades-old theater. Granted, this is happening at a time of supreme social and economic uncertainty. But what’s particularly striking about this fresh whirl of eclectic programming, as well as some wider neighborhood networking, is how naturally it harks back to the early history of the quirky black box, founded by artists and famed trend-setting party impresarios Bullock and Marcia Crosby — also founders, with Mark Petrakis, of the famed Glashaus parties of the ’90s and the still-influential Anon Salons. The current vibrant and dedicated bustle on this little corner of the city frankly inclines one to wax wise: do not the biggest downpours also give rise to the most unexpected blooms?

NOW PLAYING: THE GREAT DEPRESSION II?

Then again, a few months ago Great Depression II: the Reckoning was just the big coming unattraction. By now it has officially hit theaters, and already set more than one teetering. Most dramatic cases so far: the Magic Theater — whose recent close shave with the bill collectors put in jeopardy the rest of the current season before a massive donor campaign was launched — and Shakespeare Santa Cruz, which underwent a similar, narrowly averted disaster. If this can happen to established, midsize institutions, what of the little guy? And with funding for the arts promising to be an even shakier proposition than usual — $50 mil in the stimulus bill notwithstanding — it’s small wonder that GDII is the inevitable topic of conversation in theater circles.

Climate Theater artistic director Jessica Heidt, however, is talking to me about sloths. We’re parked at a table outside Brainwash, a couple blocks east of Climate, and it’s becoming clear she admires them. "There’s this theory," she says, "that the reason sloths are so sedentary and stay in one tree is that they then fertilize their tree."

I wait for the relevance of this remark to wash over me. I had thought we were discussing the Climate.

"I’m really interested in being rooted in the neighborhood that you’re living in," she continues. "So you can fertilize what’s around you and have a more symbiotic relationship."

Heidt took over Climate in September 2007, shortly after leaving her associate artistic director position at the Magic. Since then, and true to her words on symbiosis, she has been strengthening the theater’s area ties. Recently she banded together with colleagues from other small neighborhood theaters and dance venues under the banner of the newly formed SOMA Culture Coalition, organizing the first theater crawl between the Garage, Boxcar Theater, and Climate.

Meanwhile, Heidt has been coordinating some theater and dinner packages with Climate’s downstairs neighbor, the Medici Lounge. Then there are the collaborations she’s facilitating between Climate artists and neighborhood organizations. She describes one involving women in the penal system based out of the women’s re-entry program on Bryant Street. "That’s been key with the resident artist program," she says, "figuring out partnerships for my eight resident artists to go work with social service organizations, specifically in this neighborhood, where they can give back a little bit — the sloth theory."

THE BIGGEST LITTLE THEATER IN SAN FRANCISCO

So much sprang from the Climate’s operation in the 1980s and ’90s that the outfit was soon labeled "the biggest little theater in San Francisco." And no wonder, since the space managed to be at the precise center of some mighty major trends. Tapped into the local vanguard geek scene of the burgeoning tech industry, for instance, Climate opened the country’s first Internet-wired restaurant-bar downstairs, the Icon Byte Bar and Grill. Meanwhile, the same confluence of art-types and venturesome techies spurred on new social networking strategies, including the earliest version of ex-Climate board member Craig Newmark’s ever-expanding online message board.

In the performance world, Climate helped spawn the storied Solo Mio Festival in 1990, a jaw-dropping who’s who of the form — which enjoyed a real vogue as the most promising segue out of a performance art shtick everyone was getting pretty bored with. Solo Mio’s principal curator was also, as it happens, its second performer, after Wise, to grace the Climate’s new stage in 1985: former SF denizen Bill Talen, a.k.a. Reverend Billy, followed by a runaway hit that solidified Climate’s new status as a serious alternative venue, "avant-vaudevillian" Helen Shumaker’s turn as Mona Rogers in Person, which ended up ensconced off-Broadway. One could go on. There was the international avant-puppetry performance showcase Festival Fantochio …

Climate worked with the hand they were dealt: once, Winston Tong, one "performance art crossover guy" who sparked Fantochio, was stabbed onstage. "Suddenly there was this big blood-spurting thing that we knew wasn’t special effects," remembers Crosby with a cringe. Soon afterward she discovered, while putting up flyers for the show, that the accident had helped them in the all-mighty word-of-mouth department. "’Is that the show where somebody got stabbed?’ they asked. I said, ‘Yeah, you should see it.’ They went, ‘Yeaaah!’<0x2009>"

Bullock — while still a practicing artist and one of the biggest events presenters around, associated with everything from the Sea of Dreams NYE parties to the SF Burning Man events, Decompression, and Flambé Lounge — notes wryly that these days he’s not always recognized when he strays from Anon to the other side of the building. In truth, his and Crosby’s involvement with the theater side of Climate is limited. "I’m still a board member, and I’m still sub-landlord of this space," he says. "But I don’t have much to say about the programming."

The theater itself is the Climate’s second incarnation — after a progressively overtaxed Bullock and Crosby finally decided to hang up their theater hats and vacate the storefront space at 252 Ninth St. in the late ’90s — and it’s the handiwork of magician, actor, showman, and impresario Paul Nathan of Dark Kabaret — a lavishly popular event that has served in part, like Bullock and Crosby’s famous Glashaus parties, as a fundraiser for the theater.

Nathan happened to be driving by, contemputf8g a sojourn in Europe in the wake of the dot-com bust, when he saw the for-rent sign at Ninth and Folsom. He knew the space well from Glashaus party days and the old Billboard Café, which derived its name from the sheets with painted messages that regularly hung from the roof. "I thought, you know, small theater is a dumb idea," he says. "But with a billboard there, we might be able to make a go of it." He got a good deal on the rent from Bullock, built a stage in the empty space, and took on the Climate name again with Bullock’s hearty approval.

"We started with Devil in the Deck and Titillation Theater," Nathan recalls. The evolving smart and sexy sketches of Titillation Theater (favorite program title: Let’s Pretend I’m Not Your Mother) produced another long-running success for the Climate. "We got huge crowds, but we were also advertising in the Chronicle, so our advertising budget was just insane," he adds. "We were breaking even, or making a little bit of money each week. But we really didn’t know what we were doing. There was no grant money." Eventually, Nathan says, they couldn’t afford to continue: "You do the numbers — it just can’t happen."

A NEW CLIMATE

Journey across the gulf of the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, during which the theater briefly disappeared along with many other art spaces and artists, to the moment when Heidt joined the Climate in 2007. In step with the intrepid optimism she detects in her SoMa environs, she has cheerfully and tirelessly overseen a remarkable resurgence of activity at the 49-seat black-box theater. With its all-volunteer staff, the venue hit a high point in February, presenting in that one month 16 downright disparate shows, including the current West Coast premiere of Skin, a smart, bold, adults-only rumination on lust and fidelity by the sharp and whimsical young Atlanta playwright Steve Yockey, a coproduction with Encore Theater, which coproduced Yockey’s Octopus at the Magic last year.

As offbeat as any play by Yockey promises to be, it remains one of the more straight-ahead components in an unusually varied theatrical lineup. The Climate’s programming stretches beyond the average small theater fare and its audience, to encompass a range of performance and visual art styles and solid Bay Area microscenes — like those around clowning or belly dance — as well as a laidback, brew-in-hand atmosphere of cultured fun, or just funny culture, amenable to a more general bar-hopping crowd.

The first show Heidt produced, You Tubed, a performance series codirected by the artistic director and Richard Ciccarone, was a crowd-pleasing blend of quotidian Internet technology and live reenactments. At the same time, Climate is also making forays into exploratory works in other media: one of Heidt’s first initiatives was establishing both a music and (now defunct) film series. She also repeatedly brought in acclaimed clown and Cirque de Soleil vet John Gilkey’s rollicking band of bad-boy "anticlowns," Your New Best Friends.

"The great thing about this space is that we get to try stuff out and to be much more experimental," Gilkey explains, taking a break from rehearsing a new show he’s developing for the Climate stage. Gilkey’s association with the Climate runs back at least 15 years, but it’s not nostalgia that brings him back.

"The history of San Francisco is that of producing amazing clowns," he says, citing Geoff Hoyle, Bill Irwin, and Larry Pisoni. "I think we have to push a lot harder to be more subversive, more daring, and bolder in the kind of clown we’re creating. This is the place that has open doors for the forward stuff, and that’s what excites me."

Climate’s forward programming last month included installments of the Wednesday night Music Box concerts; another Improv Soapbox open jam session hosted by resident champs Crisis Hopkins; the Monday night Clown Cabaret directed by Paoli Lacy and showcasing students and grads from the Clown Conservatory, as well as faculty and seasoned clowns of the likes of Gilkey, Joel Salom, and James Donlon; another boisterous staging of the matchmaking show and runaway hit, The Dating Game; and Unseen/Unsaid, one in a series of irregular, curated, multi-artist, multidisciplinary, and multi-roomed art parties.

Looking back at its history, the Climate’s success then, and now, has resided in its talent for bridging not just disciplines and genres, but audiences and whole scenes in what was once — and increasingly is again — a flourishing hub of arts and nightlife in SoMa. While it remains to be seen if this gradual crawl back to life can weather the full brunt of the coming economic storm, Heidt’s sloth theory dovetails comfortably with her vision of a diverse but tight-knit artistic community.

Her extensive theater background has held her in good stead: Heidt knows how to produce, direct, and write grants — although ticket sales are still the main source of operation revenue. At the same time, she’s been inspired by what she was not familiar with. "For me that’s been one of the most exciting things about being here — going to Burning Man, knowing it’s a city of crazy artists, incredibly talented people, and it’s all sort of below the surface of what you’re seeing in the mainstream," she says. "To be able to tap into that world a little has been really fun."

As for Bullock and Crosby, who both have remained deeply involved in the culture and organizing of Burning Man and its year-round Bay Area events, they are clearly gratified with a direction they see as consonant with the theater’s long, remarkably fruitful tradition of cultivating crossover communities and promoting the edgy, fun, experimental, and unexpected. "She’s doing the kind of programming that we used to do," says Bullock, "which is eclectic."

I’m hearing echoes again. "South of Market is starting to come back," he continues. "I think there’s a resurrection of the arts right now. I think this corner and this block are key to it, with New Langton Arts and Eighth Street. I mean, this is becoming what it used to be 20 years ago." Bullock laughs. "It’s like, what the hell?"

SKIN

Through March 21

Thurs.–Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat., 7:30 and 10 p.m.; $15–$20

Climate Theater

285 Ninth St., SF

(415) 263-0830

For info on this and other events, go to www.climatetheater.com

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater

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March 3, 2009
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PREVIEW If success breeds success, why has Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater not had any imitators? The company celebrated its 50th anniversary in December, and Revelations will be half a century old next year. Yet Ailey and Revelations continue to be as unique as they were on Jan. 31, 1960, when the company thought the work had failed because the audience greeted it with a stunned silence. Then, of course, the roof came down, and Revelations continues to move audiences around the globe. So would the Ailey company be such a hit wherever they go without Revelations? It’s on every single program of this year’s Berkeley run, and my suspicion is that it wouldn’t.

Still, the company has more going for itself than one masterpiece. For one thing, there are the dancers. They all are virtuosic, generous, and committed to each other. A sense of inclusivity was also key to Ailey and continues to be vital for artistic director Judith Jamison. Ailey never wanted this to be an Ailey-only, American-only ensemble. Today the company still takes chances — with younger choreographers such as Hope Boykin, whose 2008 work Go in Grace will be on Program A. Dutch choreographer Hans van Manen’s 1997 Solo, also seen at San Francisco Ballet, will be on Program D, as will Festa Barocca, a 2008 commission from the Italian Mauro Bigonzetti. One definite highlight should be the West Coast premiere of Ailey’s 1969 piece Masekela Language on Program C. It makes you wonder, what took them so long?

ALVIN AILEY AMERICAN DANCE THEATER Wed/4–Fri/6, 8 p.m.; Sat/7, 2 and 8 p.m.; Sun/8, 3 p.m.; $36–$62. Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley, Berk. (510) 642-9988, www.calperfs.berkeley.edu

Objects of Obsession: Featherlight

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February 28, 2009
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SFBG’s Laura Peach rounds up local items and experiences to die for. See her last installment here.

A few months ago I skipped down to Mexico to escape the cold and rainy west coast winter. As I stood in the square outside Museo National de Arte, smiling as the sun warmed my face, a group of traditional Aztec dancers started to dance. As their feet stamped the stone in unison I found myself mesmerized by the vibrant feathers swaying in their fancy headdresses.

When I travel, I usually pick just one thing from each place I visit to incorporate into my wardrobe to remind me of the beautiful places I’ve been. My sentimental takeaway from Mexico was, of course, feathered. I found a wispy pair of earrings I loved from a street vendor and every time I wear them, I hear drum beats and see swirling headdresses—at lease for a moment.

Back in San Francisco, I was again allured by feathered headdresses, this time as a fun accessory. For there is something magical about having feathers in your hair (or on your head). They take off some of the weight of the world and make the possibility of flight seem real. Here are a few ways to bring featherlightness into your life.

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1. Head Games

The playful colors and textured layers of this hairpiece ($68) make a strong statement. Rooster and pheasant feathers move with the breeze and every turn of your neck. “Each little feather is like a work of art in itself,” says local Circadian Studios designer Deanna Abney. “I was in awe of the spectacular colors and shapes.” All the feathers are naturally molted, then steamed and sanitized. So no stress that any unwelcome visitors will nestle in your tresses. This may just bring out the Aztec dancer in you.
Dress, 2271 Chestnut, SF. (415) 440-3737

Kinky Salon endures and expands

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February 27, 2009
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By Steven T. Jones

Polly Superstar and Barron Scott Levkoff met in 1999, shortly after Polly arrived in San Francisco from London, where she was a latex fashion designer involved in the fetish scene. They gravitated toward the same sex-positive community here, which they have tapped or morphed for the Kinky Salon parties they throw at a home they’ve dubbed Mission Control.

“I’ve been involved since 1990 with different costume subcultures in San Francisco,” Scott said. “Like the Costumer’s Society, like Dark Garden, doing fairy tale masquerade balls, doing the Renaissance Faire, getting involved with Burning Man early on.”

Sex has always been central to this open couple’s lifestyle, but the sex at their parties is almost secondary to the parties themselves, where costumes and other forms of creative expression dominate. As they like to say, they aren’t sex parties, but parties where sex and sexual expression happens, usually in the rooms off the dance floor.

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