Performance

Greater Goode

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Actors are advised to avoid sharing the stage with kids and dogs because they steal the show. Maybe puppets should be included. Joe Goode’s hero in Wonderboy is a not-quite-three-foot concoction of wood, plaster, and cloth. He is adorable and you can’t take your eyes off him. Master puppeteer Basil Twist gave him his body; Goode and his dancers gave him a soul.

With this world premiere Goode has created one of his most poetic works in years. It is not to be missed. He has done so with five new dancers who seem to have inspired choreography as richly physical as any he has done. The piece’s floating lifts, wrestling holds, and tumbling rolls looked spontaneous but were finely shaped. A male-female duet spoke of tortuous relationships with fury and compassion; a quartet for four bare-chested males came across as erotic and tender.

Melecio Estrella, Mark Stuver, and Jessica Swanson gave the puppet its brittle and slightly raspy voice for a narrative by Goode and what he called "some of the wonderboy artists and thinkers" he has known. He explored a question that has preoccupied him for his entire career: how does an outsider find a place for himself in life? Bringing his customary tenderness, wit, and melancholy to the inquiry, he rarely hit a wrong note. Wonderboy‘s outsider character begins life as a sensitive little boy who watches the world from the safety of his home (designed by Dan Sweeney). Gradually he steps out and encounters rejection, rage, and love — especially with dancer Andrew Ward — before finally finding a community of his own. Twist coached Goode’s six dancers in the nuances of puppetry to exquisitely animate the nuances of the boy’s trajectory.

The program opens with excerpts from the 1996 installation piece, Maverick Strain. The Western barroom scene includes two hard-drinking hookers (Patricia West plays the confused one, Swanson the tough one). As a lounge singer (music by the brilliant Beth Custer), Goode is never less than a star — as is Alexander Zendzian as a transvestite rape victim, in a performance that chills the soul.

JOE GOODE PERFORMANCE GROUP

Fri/13–Sat/14, 8 p.m.; Sun/15, 7 p.m.

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater

700 Howard, SF

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

Valet

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PREVIEW I admit I was a little skeptical on first receiving Valet’s Naked Acid (Kranky) in the mail. I was burned out on Terry Riley–inspired meditation music even before seeing the garishly New Age "vibe painting" gracing the sleeve. It took a couple of weeks for me to get around to actually listening to the thing, and I’m glad I waited: the album begins with bell chimes, distant drums, and a what sounds like a thumb-piano loop, but what follows is hardly Tubular Bells, part two. Naked Acid is a drone album, but an incredibly brave one in which emotions are laid bare and a surprising range of musical textures flow from a minimalist sonic palette. Take three tracks in their chronological order: "Drum Movie"’s milky growl sounds fit for a David Lynch movie. "Keehar"’s reverb-licked guitar plays like celestial rock. "Fuck It"’s scraping drawl evokes Patti Smith played at half-speed or a duskier Mazzy Star.

Though Valet springs from the same Portland, Ore., DIY scene as White Rainbow, guiding light Honey Owens’ musical family tree includes Austin, Texas’ Jana Hunter, Finland’s Lau Nau, and fellow Portlander Grouper. All these women are pushing the female singer-songwriter format into new atmospheric, painterly territory, taking advantage of loop pedals and thick layers of reverb to collapse the distance between performance and production. Naked Acid‘s constant dissolve hovers uneasily between Karen Dalton remove and electronic opacity. After 40 minutes of enclosed drifting, Owens finally bobs to the surface on "Streets," turning a few pirouettes over a bustling programmed beat before clipping it off in noisy heat.

When Owens opened for Atlas Sound here last March, she was plagued by sound problems and seemed lost in the gestalt of her multiplanar drones. This time she plays at two smaller venues — Hemlock Tavern and a Mission District underground space — better suited to her diffuse blues, though it may take something else for her to shake something indelible from what, for now, remains ineffable.

VALET With Galactic Core, Kawabata Makoto, and Numinous Eye. June 18, 9 p.m., $7. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. (415) 923-0923, www.hemlocktavern.com

White tigers: Your fierce queer arts week at a glance

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Pride is a rock! Whether a diamond or a millstone depends on which side of the Miller Lite bottle you view the whole dang sprawling homolicious mess from. HOWEVER, as usual, there’s a plethora of amazing performances and events happening — not only the gargantuan upcoming Frameline and Queer Women of Color Film Fest (of which I and the fab Johnny Ray Huston write about in this Wednesday’s Guardian) but also the citywide 11th Annual National Queer Arts Festival, that started at the beginning of June and continues throughout. Here’s a few choice choices from the NQAF coming up this week.

BUT FIRST — bonus pics! did you know that Seigfried of Seigfried and Roy was in town on Saturday (at the the Castro’s Lookout Bar) to celebrate his 250th birthday with his “protege” Darren Romero, “The (Gay) Voice of (Twink) Magic”? See his wizardly wizened face below, with fab girl about town Miss Kate and kind-of-bitchy Gloss Magazine columnist Pollo Del Mar. (Photos by Darwin Bell.) Roy did not attend.

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Now, out with the claws, and check here for more NQAF info and great events:

>>Kirk Read, This is the Thing

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Kirk Read, photo by Ed Wolf

450 pound sex work clients, surly Guitar Center employees, teenage Satanism, and touring through rural Alabama with strippers — what else would you want an evening of spoken performance to deliver? Perennial SF literary hotshot Kirk Read takes on sex work, hallucinations, and the apocalypse in this multinight odyssey, with musical accompaniment by Jeffrey Alphonsus Mooney.
June 10-14, 8pm, $12-$15
The Garage
975 Howard
Tickets: www.brownpapertickets.com/event/32515

No exit

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LIT An interviewee in Grant Gee’s excellent 2007 documentary Joy Division posits that the gloomy Manchester band inverted punk’s initial "Fuck you!" to convey a more atmospheric and ultimately unsettling sentiment of "I’m fucked." If so, the contemporaneous No Wave bands from New York City melted down those two approaches to one primal howl. Spiritually indebted to punk but suspicious of the first wave’s rockist stance, the No Wavers pursued aggressive detachment and tongue-in-cheek dissonance with the all-in brio of performance artists.

With its loose aesthetic boundaries, abbreviated timeline, and incestuous collaborations, the No Wave years are ripe for the kind of anthropological studies offered by two recent illustrated histories, Marc Masters’ No Wave (Black Dog, 205 pages, $29.95) and Thurston Moore and Byron Coley’s No Wave: Post-Punk. Underground. New York 1976-1980 (Abrams Image).

No Wave’s bylines make for an unwieldy taxonomy: Rhys Chatam studied with LaMonte Young and Tony Conrad; Lydia Lunch was a teenage runaway; Arto Lindsey of DNA and Mark Cunningham and China Burg of Mars all met at Eckard College in St. Petersburg, Fla. Moore and Coley have the most fun with the movement’s eclecticism. A No Wave coffee-table book may be a paradox, but they cram a fantastic level of detail into a handsome spread. If you want to learn that the artist Jeff Wall suggested the name of Glenn Branca’s group Theoretical Girls, theirs is the tome for you. But Masters gets several broader trends right, like when he makes the crucial point that No Wave filmmakers like Beth and Scott B. were upsetting an established avant-garde just as much as No Wave’s musicians were troubling their punk godparents.

Both No Wave overviews go to pains to limit their sphere of focus, though one does wish to read a little more about the movement’s literary influences (William Burroughs, J.G. Ballard, William Gibson) and outliers (Lizzy Mercier Descloux, please). Likewise, it would help to learn how the same set of city blocks produced Lydia Lunch and Madonna, and what exactly Jean-Michel Basquiat was doing all those nights at the Mudd Club.

But what these books skimp on context, they make up for in their rich detailing of No Wave’s internal split between Lower East Side habitués and SoHo aesthetes. There’s no question that Glenn Branca has influenced as many Mogwais as James Chance has Liars, but at the time of the movement’s heyday, downtown NYC was contested terrain. Brian Eno’s 1978 folklorist survey No New York (Phantom) conspicuously ignored the more outwardly intellectual SoHo contingent, and one still senses the bruised egos in Branca’s stinging account: "We were doing music that was too similar to what [Eno] was thinking about," the composer explains, elsewhere fuming, "If those East Village bastards had ever come down to Barnabus [a Tribeca bar], they would have found … as much sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll going on in our scene as theirs."

Never mind the bollocks, there’s one clear constant refrain in all the No Wave testimonies: gimme cheap rent. Robert Christgau is right when he muses that No Wave’s bundling of nihilism and self-righteousness was "symptomatic of formal exhaustion"; but beneath, one finds an obvious irony. Where the movement’s progenitors were reacting to a perceived state of endless urban decay, their actions have, in retrospective, taken shape as an essential pre-gentrification story. As with Weimar Germany, No Wave is compelling for what was — and for what followed.

Slamdance elegance

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"Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?" Rock critic Simon Reynolds opens his recent survey Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984 (Penguin, 432 pages, $16) with that famous piece of invective, courtesy of Johnny Rotten from the stage of San Francisco’s Winterland. Rotten sneered those words during a Sex Pistols show. Tellingly, they arrived at the end of an American tour that contained both a zeitgeist and its own annihilation — or so it seems from Lech Kowalski’s documentary D.O.A. (1980), one of four features comprising the Pacific Film Archive’s "Louder, Faster: Punk in Performance" series.

Even before the blowup, Rotten’s question had already been answered — first by the art school oddballs and city poets who pre-dated then capitalized on punk’s groundswell, and later by the younger acolytes who reclaimed the false prophets’ call for "louder, faster" with their authenticity-obsessed rebel yells. Punk was made to be photographed — Sex Pistols guru Malcolm McLaren ensured that much — but the spirit of the frame depended on who was doing the shooting. The same three-chord assaults could make for social documents (1978-’88’s Target Video) or hipster scrawls (1976’s Blank Generation). They might inspire science experiments (Bruce Conner’s 1978 Mongoloid; Graeme Whifler’s 1978 Hello Skinny), or lyrical love streams (1979’s Deaf/Punk).

Blank Generation is the earliest punk film essay, a given since its New York milieu was already codified and oozing latent celebrity before punk moved to the provinces. Directed by Patti Smith bassist Ivan Kral and future No Wave saint Amos Poe, the film’s chapbook portraiture is heightened via a Hollis Frampton-like use of non-synched sound. Grainy black-and-white 8mm footage floats over the skips and starts of the soundtrack’s mix, creating a jilted effect perfectly suited to the push-pull of Television and the Talking Heads, as well as the tense erotics of Smith and Blondie.

Crappy audio and video smears aside, Joe Rees’s Target Video compilation reveals Bay Area post-punk in full bloom as it moves between Black Flag’s pummeling hardcore and Flipper’s art-damaged sludge to Devo’s proto-Teletubbies weirdness. The austere, one-camera setups anticipate a billion YouTube transmissions. I’ve driven by San Quentin Prison dozens of times wondering how Johnny Cash scored his famous gig there, but that was before I saw Rees’ footage of Crime at the same site — thrashing away in mock police uniforms under the harsh glare of the afternoon sun.

Before it is art or communion, punk is permission. For a zenith-like picture of this freedom flight, one should look no further than John Gaikowski’s modest short Deaf/Punk. Gaikowski’s film uncorks a long-forgotten performance at San Francisco’s Deaf Club, using slow motion to revel in punk’s limitless potential energy. This music wasn’t designed to be elegant, but I can think of no better word for Gaikowski’s shocked vision of a singer standing in repose among a small crowd of daydreaming slamdancers.

"LOUDER, FASTER: PUNK IN PERFORMANCE"

Thurs/5 through June 26

Pacific Film Archive Theater

2575 Bancroft Way, Berk.

(510) 642-1124

Drug deal hurts consumers

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› gwschulz@sfbg.com

City Attorney Dennis Herrera made San Francisco the first government entity in the nation to accuse two major players in the pharmaceutical drug industry of conspiring to illegally manipulate the price of prescription drugs when he filed a lawsuit May 20. Connecticut followed Herrera’s lead days later, and filed an almost identical suit making the same charges.

The cases could have far-reaching implications. If Raymond Hartman, an economist and visiting professor at Boalt Hall School of Law who testified in a related case filed by a group of East Coast labor unions two years ago is correct, then consumers, insurers, and Medicaid administrators nationwide have overpaid for prescription drugs by billions of dollars as a result of the price manipulation scheme (see “Big Pharma’s Shadow,” 12/20/06).

To explain the highly complex litigation, consider how goods are usually priced. Take the 99¢, three-ounce bags of chips that are reliably available at the corner store near your house. Cool Ranch Doritos. Chili Cheese Fritos. Sour Cream and Onion Ruffles. It wouldn’t be a true bodega if there wasn’t a rack of them situated near the front door or register.

For as long as anyone can remember, it seems, they’ve cost just 99¢, regardless of the local cost of living, from Richmond, Va. to San Francisco. That’s because the suggested retail price of 99¢ is printed ubiquitously by the manufacturer on the packaging.

So you’d notice if a sticker suddenly appeared, lazily affixed to your bag of Sun Chips, stating a new price: $1.99. The manufacturer didn’t place it there because behind the sticker you can still see the old printed price. And the counter clerk didn’t place it there, because he knows the true suggested retail price is still just 99¢ and the laws of supply and demand never called for a price increase.

Instead, a local company that buys chips from the manufacturer and distributes them to the bodega in your neighborhood put it there. The bodega owner didn’t complain because now it’s possible for him to earn an extra dollar for each bag. In fact, as a result of the new sticker, he’s more likely to take his business back to that particular distribution company over a competitor since that company is willing to artificially inflate the retail cost of a bag of chips on his behalf simply by putting a new price tag on the bag.

Now imagine that the product isn’t a cheap bag of chips but billions of dollars worth of pain-reducing or life-saving pharmaceuticals. And the distributor isn’t a local guy who drives a delivery truck full of boxes of chips but a multinational corporation, headquartered in San Francisco, that’s ranked 18th on the Fortune 500 list, with $93.6 billion in annual revenue and a CEO, John Hammergren, who received compensation in 2007 worth more than $22 million after presiding over the company’s record profits that year.

Imagine, too, that the distributor is powerful enough to slap new price stickers on cartons of drugs around the country, not just at your corner bodega, so you can’t simply elect to shop elsewhere to protest the new prices. Neither can you just stop consuming needed medicines the way you can snack chips.

Herrera’s federal civil suit probably has escaped media attention due to its esoteric nature (not to mention a potential conflict of interest at the San Francisco Chronicle, but we’ll get to that in a minute). It charges that McKesson Corp., along with a tiny drug data publisher based in San Bruno called First DataBank, conspired in an "elaborate scheme" to unfairly mark up the price on more than 400 name-brand prescription drugs. The conspiracy allegedly resulted in the San Francisco Health Plan being forced to make thousands or even millions of dollars in excess payments to cover the cost of such medications.

The SF Health Plan is not the same as Healthy San Francisco, the city’s historic 2006 bid to grant universal health care to the 82,000 adults here who live without insurance. The SF Health Plan extends mental, medical, and dental health coverage to about 50,000 people, including approximately 28,000 children in the city, and offers in-home support workers to the disabled and elderly. The plan is funded through a combination of federal and state dollars known in California as Medi-Cal and elsewhere as Medicaid.

The programs help low-income residents get health care, but its public subsidies are being endangered by a massive state budget deficit. So making sure the SF Health Plan is paying the appropriate price for prescription drugs, a $200 billion industry in the United States, is more important than ever.

McKesson and First DataBank, the lawsuit alleges, placed new stickers on drug packages so that everyone — from private insurers to Medi-Cal to consumers without insurance who simply walk up to a pharmacy window and cover their drug treatments with cash — paid far more than they should have, based on an industry calculation that’s similar to the suggested retail price printed on our analogy of a bag of chips. Herrera says he took on the suit because San Francisco is not alone in overpaying for pharmaceuticals and he saw a chance to force greater reforms in the system.

"We make our decisions based on the facts and the law, and we do our best to protect consumers, taxpayers, and businesses alike," Herrera told the Guardian. "This impacts a lot of things. It’s about protecting consumers from having high drug costs passed on to them. It’s about protecting taxpayer dollars since this is the San Francisco Health Plan, and it’s something that emanates out of a city program. But it’s also about protecting businesses, because a lot of businesses and health plans are the ones footing the bill for increased drug costs."

First DataBank is not listed as a defendant in Herrera’s suit but is described as "an unnamed co-conspirator." The company is a little-known subsidiary of the private, New York–based media conglomerate Hearst Corp., which owns dozens of major publications including the San Francisco Chronicle, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Esquire, and The Oprah Magazine. Spokespersons for McKesson and First DataBank refused to comment for this story.

As far as revenue is concerned, First DataBank is a bit player in the world of pharmaceuticals. Court records in a related 2006 suit describe its annual pretax income as just $19 million, barely enough to cover the McKesson CEO’s compensation last year.

But the company is nonetheless important to people who rely on prescription drugs. It’s one of the few major companies in the United States that maintains a sophisticated electronic database of information on tens of thousands of prescription drugs. Plus, First DataBank possesses a virtual monopoly on the market because the company merged with its only real competitor, Medi-Span, in 1998. Its database includes numbers, for instance, on what a drug manufacturer like Aventis might charge distributor McKesson for the allergy medicine Allegra, a figure known as the "wholesale acquisition cost."

Because it’s almost impossible to track every transaction between McKesson and retail chain pharmacies that McKesson distributes bulk drugs to, like Rite Aid and CVS Caremark McKesson, it’s First DataBank’s job to survey the distributors and come up with an "average wholesale price."

After you obtain a bottle of Allegra with a co-pay to take care of your stuffy nose, your insurance provider, say, Blue Cross or Kaiser Permanente or the SF Health Plan, refers to First DataBank’s massive catalog of drugs — for which they’ve paid a hefty subscription fee — to make sure the price they’re paying for your allergy medicine is the one properly set by the market.

First DataBank claimed for years that it was surveying multiple drug wholesalers like McKesson to come up with its average published prices and that it was increasing the number of surveys it conducted. But there aren’t that many wholesalers to actually survey because so many of them have merged with one another in recent years. Also, two out of the nation’s three top wholesalers apparently declined to participate in the surveys as a matter of policy.

Troy Kirkpatrick, a spokesperson for Cardinal Health, one of McKesson’s few competitors, said his company doesn’t give out proprietary information to anyone, let alone First DataBank.

"We have a long-standing policy of not providing confidential pricing information to external sources," Kirkpatrick said. "So if we get asked to share that type of information, we decline."

By 2001 it appeared that First Databank wasn’t really surveying several wholesalers or even the two major companies that compete directly with McKesson, according to court records. First DataBank allegedly conspired with McKesson to establish an artificial baseline markup on hundreds of drugs that didn’t accurately represent their true suggested retail price

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But if the bodega, or in this case, the retail pharmacy, is benefiting from the new stickers, then what’s in it for McKesson?

Herrera’s suit contends that if pharmacies like CVS and Rite Aid saw McKesson pressing the scales for them, they’d return to McKesson with their business instead of its two other major American wholesale competitors, Cardinal Health and AmerisourceBergen.

The three companies aggressively compete with one another for business just like they’re supposed to in good ol’ free-market America. But now it appears that McKesson has found a way to game the system and edge ahead of its two rivals. Indeed, McKesson is narrowly beating them in total revenue according to the Fortune 500 list.

Profit margins from drugstore chains were sagging at the time the alleged scheme between McKesson and First DataBank took off, and chain pharmacies had been pressing manufacturers to help them earn higher profit margins. According to the lawsuit, distributor McKesson came to the rescue.

So the final question, then, is whether the drug stores were enriched by all this.

Longs Drugs last year made more than $5 billion in revenue. About 20 percent of that, or $1 billion, came from the government-subsidized health care programs Medicare and Medicaid, according to company records.

In its most recent annual report to the Securities and Exchange Commission, Longs admits that if insurers began using a different benchmark than the prices published by First DataBank, such as a pricing guide that more accurately reflected market prices, there could be a "material adverse effect on our financial performance."

Symphonic triple-whammy: Three hot conductors step up

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We loves us some Michael Tilson Thomas — we better, because she’s everywhere, darling — but it must be hard to live and gesticulate passionately for the San Francisco Symphony in the shadow of the great MTT. It’s not a competition! I know! Still, it’s a treat to see SFS program a night specifically dedicated to some of the other stellar conducting talents it retains, especially for a total symphony queen like moiself.

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Three great classical (bow-tied) tastes: Gaffigan, Bohlin, and Shwartz

The three-day “SFS Conductors on the Podium” series will see Associate Conductor James Gaffigan (who blew me and several thousand peeps away in Dolores Park a while back, conducting the 1812 Overture), Resident Conductor and total cutie Benjamin Shwartz, and fierce Chorus Director Ragnar Bohlin take the stage for a nice, slightly challenging change.

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Benjamin Shwartz, making beautiful music

Particularly interesting will be the world premiere of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s jazzy-sounding Three Asteroids: The Torino Scale, Juno, Ceres, conducted by Schwartz, and the sure-to-be-spectral a capella double-choir performance of Poulenc’s Figure humaine — a haunting setting of Paul Eluard’s poems about war and spirituality, conducted by Bohlin. Gaffigan conducts Bartok’s seldom-heard Suite from The Miraculous Mandarin, and the Thursday and Saturday programs will also feature Prokofiev’s ragged, fiery Violin Concerto No. 1 in D Major, also conducted by Gaffigan and featuring SFS concertmaster and string-whiz Alexander Barantschik. Should be a revelation.

SFS Conductors on the Podium
Thursday, June 5 at 2:00pm
Friday, June 6 at 6:30pm
Saturday, June 7 at 8:00pm
$25-$125
Davies Symphony Hall
201 Van Ness
(415) 864-6000
www.sfsymphony.org

‘REN’-membering Matthew Barney in LA

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Heave ho at Matthew’s Barney’s REN. Photo courtesy of www.lipsticktracez.com/reggie/.

By Glen Helfand

How any artist follows up a large scale, career-making project is accompanied by the same critical pressure that greets the sophomore album of a hot new band. Matthew Barney made it through his post-Cremaster days with Drawing Restraint 9, which took over a whole floor at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art a couple of summers ago, though many would agree that while it stayed the course, it was a film and exhibition that didn’t quite rival the five part film/sculpture extravaganza that preceded it.

In an interview before that show, Barney said his next works would be in the realm of live performance, and true to his word, he’s been mining that vein. He staged a typically perverse work at the 2007 Manchester International Festival, an adults-only performance that involved a bull, a self-fisting female contortionist and Barney wearing a live dog on his head. (The reviews were mixed.) Another performance, staged in New York, was shown as a video as part of an exhibition at Los Angeles’s Regen Projects last year.

I can’t say I wasn’t thrilled to get an invitation to a recent Barney performance, titled REN, that took place on May 18 in not so beautiful Norwalk, a south-of-LA suburban flatland populated by convenience stores and auto dealerships. Here’s some of what the invite promised: “’Ren’ represents the first stage of the soul in its journey through the afterlife in which its ‘Secret Name’ is revealed, and subsequently lost. REN will reference the Cremaster Cycle, linking Barney and [music collaborator Jonathan] Bepler’s earlier project to the iconography and mythology of ancient Egypt. REN will feature the return of the 1967 Chrysler Imperial and Aimee Mullins from Cremaster 3, a Southern California drum and bugle corps, ranchera singer Lila Downs, and British performance artist Mouse. Performance is approximately one and a half to two hours in duration.”

Art Street Theatre

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PREVIEW The places we long to be often have the greatest hold on our imaginations. In Chekhov’s The Three Sisters, Olga, Masha, and Irina dream of returning to Moscow, believing it’s the only place they can be truly happy. Of course, in Chekhov’s version, they never do manage to reach the Promised Land. Their dreams unfulfilled, the sisters eventually must resign themselves to their respective quiet desperations. Mark Jackson’s Yes, Yes to Moscow, which makes its North American premiere at Dance Mission Theatre for the San Francisco International Arts Festival, imagines the long-awaited arrival of the sisters to Moscow and the pitfalls of getting what you wish for.

Jackson, whose focus on the physical has long been a hallmark of his work, collaborates with Berlin-based choreographer Sommer Ulrickson, American actor Beth Wilmurt, and German performance artist Tilla Kratochwil to create a multidisciplinary, multilingual, multifaceted production. A smash hit at the Deutsches Theater a continent away (leading to a commission for Jackson and Ulrickson to collaborate again in 2009), Moscow‘s San Francisco debut fits in well with SFIAF’s theme: the truth in knowing/now. Forced by an unsympathetic and foreign reality to reexamine their assumptions about home, Moscow, and familiarity, the sisters must confront the not-knowing within their now, and rediscover truth as best they can.

Art Street Theatre Fri/30, 9:30 p.m.; Sat/31, 4:30 p.m.; Sun/1, 7 p.m. Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St., San Francisco. $20. 1-800-838-3006, www.sfiaf.org.

Nuclear fusings

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Jazz has always been about fusing rather than fusion. But there’s a new generation of improvisational players from around the world who are effortlessly blending wide-ranging cultural and generational ideas in their music. These artists are equally conversant in Ben Webster, Kanye West, and Fela Kuti. They might cover Coltrane and Radiohead, but using contemporary Western instruments. It’s jazz with a global scope, modern sensibility, and an intimate, personal feel.

One musician who is naturally engaging a world of influences in his music is Puerto Rico–born saxophonist David Sanchez. When he brings his new sextet to the Herbst Theatre June 13 to debut music from his just-released album, Cultural Survival (Concord), Sanchez will cap an expansive run of so-called multilingual jazz artists coming through the Bay Area. Preceding Sanchez at venues across the region are saxophonist Charles Lloyd, pianist Marc Cary, bassist Esperanza Spalding, and pianist Edward Simon, who are all bringing variations on the theme of modern jazz as a genre informed by worldwide cultures.

It all starts next week with SFJAZZ’s "Miles from India" concert at the Palace of Fine Arts, a live presentation of the recent Four Quarters album of the same name. Producer Bob Belden and Indian keyboardist and co-arranger Louiz Banks reworked the music of Miles Davis and recorded it with such Davis alumni as bassists Ron Carter, Michael Henderson, and Marcus Miller; keyboardists Chick Corea, Adam Holzman, and Robert Irving III; drummers Jimmy Cobb and Lenny White; and such Indian musicians as Ravi Chari on sitar, Vikku Vinayakram on ghatam, and V. Selvaganesh on khanjira. The composer himself used sitar and tabla on numerous sessions throughout the 1970s, when he began making funkier and more layered, open-ended music.

Davis and numerous jazz musicians before him — from Duke Ellington and Yusef Lateef to Randy Weston and John Handy — integrated musical elements from non-Western cultures into their work. So it’s not surprising that a younger player like Sanchez, who is equally at home improvising with Latin jazz piano legend Eddie Palmieri as he is touring with guitarist Pat Metheny, would meld ethnic nuances of his Caribbean heritage with a postmodern jazz sensibility.

SONG CYCLES


Sanchez’s Cultural Survival is a cycle of seven original songs and one Thelonious Monk ballad. The disc culminates in the 20-minute "La Leyenda del Canaveral," inspired by a poem written by Sanchez’s sister Margarita about African and Caribbean sugar cane plantation workers. It’s a relatively new and spare, though lyrically rhythmic, sound for Sanchez, forged during a three-year immersion in African folkloric recordings from Tanzania, Cameroon, and the Congo, and his impromptu tour with Metheny. "Doing the tour with Pat was really a confirmation for me that there are different sounds out there," Sanchez said from his Atlanta home. The saxophonist has mainly played with a pianist but now works with guitarist Lage Lund in his band.

"In some ways there is more space for me there," he added.

Also exploring new concepts is veteran saxophonist Lloyd, who performs at the Healdsburg Jazz Festival May 31 with his Indian-music–inspired Sangam Trio, which includes percussionist Zakir Hussain and drummer Eric Harland. The band uses its ethnic edges as stepping stones. "It’s really what propels the music," Harland said of the intuitively improvisational trio during an SFJAZZ rehearsal in the city.

Venezuelan pianist Edward Simon also mixes new and old approaches: he studied classical piano at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and jazz at the Manhattan School of Music before joining trumpeter Terence Blanchard’s band. His new Ensemble Venezuela, which plays the Herbst Theatre June 8, is a sterling gathering of major young players including Mark Turner on saxophone, Marco Granados on flute, Aquiles Báez on cuatro, Ben Street on bass, and Adam Cruz on drums. Báez will also perform with his own band while the local VNote Ensemble (formerly the Snake Trio) offers its take on jazz and Venezuelan traditional sounds.

FRESH FLAVORS


Such explorations vary conventional presentations and inject unexpected aural flavors. "Jazz is one of the most immediately gratifying art forms there is because it’s spontaneous development," pianist Marc Cary explained from New York. "It documents a moment, and that’s the moment you want people to hear."

Cary’s Focus Trio performs in Healdsburg June 5. His partners onstage are Bay Area musicians Sameer Gupta on drums and tablas and David Ewell on bass. "Sameer is from India and David is from China," said Cary. "I didn’t pick them because of that. I play with them because they’re good, but they’re bringing that too." On his 2006 album Focus (Motema), Cary wanted to get out of the standard chorus-solo-chorus cycle that has sometimes straitjacketed jazz. "I like continuous movement, a straight line, and I like to color that line," Cary mused. Gupta cowrote one song with Cary and contributed the reflective ballad "Taiwa," and his tablas close out the last three Cary originals with a distinctive flourish.

Cary played behind the übervocalist and band leader Betty Carter and has toured with hip-hop vocalist Erykah Badu, whose influences find their way into his work. "If you’re really going to play this music in today’s times, you have to bring in elements of the past, the present, and what you consider to be the future," Cary said.

That future is now with 23-year-old bassist Esperanza Spalding. The Portland, Ore., native, who graduated from and now teaches at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, recorded her 2006 full-length Junjo (Ayva) with two Cuba-born colleagues from the school: pianist Aruán Ortiz and drummer Francisco Mela. Their rhythmic approaches subtly imbue the recording’s sound as Spalding sings wordless, hornlike runs in a bright, fluttery alto. Her latest album, Esperanza (Heads Up), includes flamenco guitar virtuoso Niño Josele, drummer Horacio "El Negro" Hernández, and saxophonist Donald Harrison. She brings her new band to Yoshi’s in Oakland June 12.

Why have all these players connected with sounds so far afield? The world has not gotten smaller — it’s just better connected. Through technology even the most obscure genres find new and far-flung listeners. The communal spirit informing jazz performance and appreciation also transcends differences: jazz musicians have to be open; otherwise they can’t play the music. "At the end of the day, jazz is about how you relate to things happening at the moment," Sanchez said. He heard a reality in the African tribal drumming music he listened to and wanted to bring it to his own playing. "You have this feeling when you hear it that the music is like water or air for them."

"MILES FROM INDIA"

Sat/31, 8 p.m., $25–$56

Palace of Fine Arts Theatre

3301 Lyon, SF

www.sfjazz.org

CHARLES LLOYD QUARTET AND LLOYD’S SANGAM TRIO

Sat/31, 7:30 p.m., $45–<\d>$70

Jackson Theater

Sonoma Country Day School, Santa Rosa

www.healdsburgjazzfestival.org

MARC CARY’S FOCUS TRIO

June 5, 7 and 9 p.m., $26

Barndiva

231 Center, Healdsburg

www.healdsburgjazzfestival.org

EDWARD SIMON AND THE ENSEMBLE VENEZUELA

With Aquiles Báez Ensemble and VNote Ensemble

June 8, 7 p.m., $25–$56

Herbst Theatre

401 Van Ness, SF

www.sfjazz.org

ESPERANZA SPALDING

June 12, 8 and 10 p.m., $10–$16

Yoshi’s

510 Embarcadero West, Oakl

www.yoshis.com

DAVID SANCHEZ SEXTET

June 13, 8 p.m., $25–$56

Herbst Theatre

401 Van Ness, SF

www.sfjazz.org

Bullet time

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› cheryl@sfbg.com

An utterly complete retrospective of Johnnie To’s films would be too much to ask, really. To’s résumé to date involves nearly 50 features, with at least one release nearly every year since 1986. His work also spans such a gobsmacking array of genres that even an audience of dedicated fans might experience exploding-head syndrome. And genre is the key word here; the man’s a master at it, a trait that has earned him admiration if not fame stateside — probably a good thing, given the cautionary tale of the Hollywoodized John Woo. Though even his most bizarre Chinese New Year farces occasionally pop up at the 4-Star Theatre (and probably nowhere else in the Bay), To’s most internationally acclaimed entries are his action flicks, filled with blazing guns, taciturn antiheroes, and, inevitably, at least one scene in which several characters pause their killin’ to enjoy a hearty meal.

So, sorry, completists — To’s exercises in romance (including 2001’s gloriously offensive Love on a Diet, which makes Eddie Murphy’s fat-suit adventures look subtle), his 1993 supernatural tough-chick classic The Heroic Trio, and his goofy comedies (like 2003’s young-doctor yukfest Help!!!) are not repped in the Pacific Film Archive’s "Hong Kong Nocturne: The Films of Johnnie To." Even the PFA admits, in their notes on the series, this is a "small sampling" of To’s output. But if I had to pick nine To films — culled, as the PFA’s are, from To’s output under his own Milkyway Image banner, created in 1997 — my sampling would likely resemble what’s on tap through June.

The essential To screens first: 1999’s The Mission, as close to perfection as he’s ever come. Spare, gritty, and obsessed with the business of male bonding (a To leitmotif), The Mission is about five gunslingers (all character types: a hairdresser, a barkeep, a pimp, etc.) who come together to protect a mob boss, then close ranks when they’re ordered to off one of their own. To regular Anthony Wong plays the hairdresser — a guy so grim he’s known as "The Ice" — so you know this shit is serious.

The theme of loyalty among assassins who’ve become friends despite themselves is echoed in 2006’s Exiled, which brings back much of the Mission cast. In this modern-day spaghetti western, the gang is charged with killing a former comrade who’s left the organization and settled down with wife and baby. A straightforward execution is discarded in favor of an endlessly complicated scheme that involves a gold heist, double-crossing mob heavies, seedy operating rooms, and more; naturally, slow-motion bullet ballets punctuate every act with gory grace. Wong, as a sad-faced killer caught between doing the right thing for his boss and the right thing for his conscience, is typically top notch.

The more overtly linked Election (2005) and Triad Election (2006) also address the gangster code, taking a darkly realistic look at how Hong Kong gangsters select their leadership — honor takes a back seat to power, and money, of course, means everything. Breaking News (2004) adds eager TV crews to To’s usual cops-‘n’-robbers stew. There’s a lesson learned about not turning police business into a media circus, and yes, it’s a lesson tattooed into Hong Kong streets with many, many bullets.

"Hong Kong Nocturne" may be the PFA’s program title, but not every selection is a dark tale. Throw Down (2004) is a judo comedy. The amusing if overlong Fulltime Killer (2001, codirected with frequent collaborator Wai Ka-fai) follows dueling hired guns O (Takashi Sorimachi, stone-faced but Snoopy-obsessed) and Tok (a particularly smirky Andy Lau). To’s meta-intentions are signaled at the start, when Tok voiceovers, "I like watching movies, especially action movies." My general feeling on Fulltime Killer, from a later Tok observation: "Not the best movie, but I like the style." For an even more bizarre Lau performance, 2003’s Running on Karma is recommended; the star plays a psychic bodybuilder turned stripper. A muscle suit that eclipses even Love on a Diet‘s stunt-costume gimmickry is prominently featured.

The series’ local premiere, 2007’s Mad Detective, is unfortunately non-noteworthy. The rubber-faced Lau Ching-wan, a To favorite, stars as the titular detective. He hears voices! The voices are embodied by actors who follow him around! The conceit gets old fast. For a better Lau-To pairing, pick up 1999’s Running Out of Time — not part of "Hong Kong Nocturne" but worthy enough to be. *


"HONG KONG NOCTURNE: THE FILMS OF JOHNNIE TO"

May 29–June 27, check Web site for schedule, $9.50– $13.50

Pacific Film Archive

2575 Bancroft, UC Berkeley, Berk

(510) 642-1412, www.bampfa.berkeley.edu

A triumphant ‘Thirty Seven Isolated Events’ combines butoh, digital imagery at CounterPulse

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blindsight_photosbyianwinters_designby_paige_sorvillo.jpg
Eyeing Blindsight. Photos by Byian Winters and design by Paige Sorvillo.

By Dina Maccabee

It feels a little overblown to say that Thirty Seven Isolated Events, conceived by choreographer Paige Sorvillo with her company Blindsight and presented at CounterPulse with the San Francisco International Arts Festival, is a triumph of independent experimental performance. It’s a relatively lean production, well-scaled to maximize CounterPulse’s somewhat Spartan interior. Still, for this audience member, there were so many successful aspects in what might have been a risky venture that triumph is the word I’ll use.

Though promotion for Thirty Seven Events uses spiffy words like “intermedia,” dance fans wary of fancy gadgets edging out real-life rippling muscles needn’t be scared off. In fact, displacement of human intimacy and desensitization to violence enabled by ubiquitous modern media are the kernels of Sorvillo’s exploration, and they provide a rich source of imagery and metaphor. The Blindsight company members slithered, twitched, and struggled with determination, fluidity, and tight control, sculpting their own flesh into an unforgettable reminder that real human contact, whether caressing or brusque, is utterly irreplaceable.

Sorvillo’s training in contemporary Japanese butoh clearly played into both the conception of Thirty Seven Events as a platform for dealing with fairly abstract emotional material, and in the style and mood of the movement itself. In the opening passage, Sorvillo writhed in a single column of yellow light, seeming to test the power of her joints and limbs against the pull of gravity in an alternately lyrical and frenzied monologue. But as she pointed out in an after-show panel discussion, the ghostly white body paint and gruesome facial contortions are parts of the butoh vocabulary she’s deliberately left out.

Dancers without borders

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What do you need to create a first-rate hot product that is of value to others besides yourself? A great idea, a support structure, and money are good places to start. But what if you had no support structure and no money? If you believe in your idea, you’d plow ahead anyway — just like Andrew Wood, executive director of the San Francisco International Arts Festival.

In 2002, Wood began to think about something he felt this city full of artists and tourists needed: an arts festival that would bring the two together. The event would also focus local attention on a large, vibrant arts community that thrives in the shadow of the three big ones — the San Francisco Ballet, the San Francisco Symphony, and the San Francisco Opera.

"Lots of artists here are bursting with ideas," Wood explained during a recent interview. "We need an entity that supports them because they need more opportunities to show their work."

That a similarly ambitious undertaking called Festival 2000 went belly-up in 1990 didn’t deter the string bean–thin Brit, who talks faster than a cattle auctioneer. But Wood wasn’t about to let the fate of another festival stop him. Soon he was everywhere, talking to anyone who was willing to listen — and even to some who weren’t.

Mostly he encountered closed doors. The city had no extra cash. Foundations were already overcommitted. Wood — onetime director of ODC Theater — had no track record when it came to producing a such a large-scale event. Artists were suspicious that already-scarce funds would be siphoned off for a project that might have no room for their work. And another thing: did Wood know how to balance a budget?

He remained undeterred, largely because he had seen something happening in the Bay Area that others had noted as well, even if they hadn’t yet connected the dots. The community was supportive of young artists who were willing to put up with just about anything to get their work out — but once they got to the level where they needed decent rehearsal spaces, performers they could pay, and offices beyond their bedroom floors, the going got tough. Traditionally, local artists at this stage either called it quits or moved away. No longer.

HAVE ART, WILL TRAVEL


In scouring the local arts scene, Wood noticed what he calls the advent of "journeymen" artists. He named them after the century-old tradition of skilled professionals who traveled long distances and practiced their craft wherever they were hired. Propelled by a desire for adventure and professional improvement, they also managed to support themselves, often handsomely, whether they were roofers, storytellers, or healers.

"Dancers like Janice Garrett, Kim Epifano, Scott Wells, Jess Curtis, Shinichi Iova-Koga, and Stephen Pelton work part-time in Berlin, or London, or Tokyo, or Mexico City. They create work where they are supported and bring it back," Wood explained. In addition, these artists return home with news from abroad about who is doing what, and where.

Despite his admiration for the vitality of the Bay Area arts scene, Wood recognized that "not a lot of artists come through here [on their own]. This place is insular in many ways." As one working artist told him, "You don’t need to see Merce Cunningham for the umpteenth time. You want to see something that resonates within you."

There is a huge pool of artists all over the world whose work has simply not yet hit the radar screens of local presenters. When the San Francisco International Arts Festival launched in September 2003, Wood presented the astounding Quasar Dance Company from Brazil; Indian British dancer Akram Khan (now a megastar); and Compagnie Salia nï Seydou, the first in a succession of contemporary African dance companies that have been seen here since. In 2005 (there was no 2004 festival), the festival showcased extraordinary performances from the AKHE Group (Russia); Fabrik Companie (Germany); Manasku no Kai (Japan); and — one of the wildest of them all — the Moe!kestra, from Manteca.

A focus of SFIAF has become fostering international collaborations that make local artists into journeymen citizens of the world. "We need to support artists here but they also need to realize that there are opportunities somewhere else," Wood said.

This process of cross-fertilization started in 2006 and continued in 2007, when the festival highlighted art from Latin America and the African diaspora. Since the city has yet to commit to any direct funding — Wood called local arts leadership "miserable and petty" — he has become a wizard at patching his budget together, creating cosponsorships, acting as an umbrella organization, and linking artists with individual funding sources. He also has become adept at handling the Department of Homeland Security’s onerous (and expensive) visa process for performers. "They all have visas!" he exclaimed.

A monthlong visual arts exhibit loaned SFIAF 2008 its name: "What Goes Around … The Truth in Knowing/Now." This year’s fest kicks off Wednesday, May 21, and runs until June 8, when it will be capped with a free Yerba Buena Gardens concert by the Omar Sosa Afreecanos Quartet, with local Latin percussionist John Santos.

DANCE PLUS


The festival also includes operatic and theater pieces, as well as choreographers whose work might not be seen locally if not for SFIAF. For example, SFIAF enabled Idris Ackamoor, co-artistic director of Cultural Odyssey, to bring Brazilian dancer-choreographer Cristina Moura to San Francisco. "I was struck by her innovative movements," said Ackamoor, who encountered Moura while scouting for the National Performance Network’s Performing Americas Project, which he co-curated. "She moves like no one else, with a pedestrian and a highly physical vocabulary. She also has a unique way about storytelling." Moura’s solo like an idiot (2007) also resonated with him, as did the title. "Isn’t that the way we all sometimes feel?" he said, speaking of the work, which holds its California premiere at SFIAF.

Wood caught Shlomit Fundaminsky’s emblematic SkidMarks at the 2006 Dublin Fringe Festival and this year SFIAF is copresenting it with SF’s Israel Center. Speaking from Tel Aviv, Fundaminsky describes the work, a duet for herself and Gyula Csakvari, as inspired by "the home life of a man and a woman who live so close to each other — really as one person — that they lost their ability to communicate. They are creating this box for themselves and are unable to break out of it."

The Kate Foley Dance Ensemble may be familiar to Bay Area audiences because of Foley’s 10-year local performance history. In 1998 she moved to Croatia, where she is in residence at a newly constructed arts center. When Wood sent out a call for SFIAF participant proposals, John Daly of the Croatian American Cultural Center suggested her. Yet the Oakland-born Foley’s homecoming has not been without pain. "I have been so ashamed of what I have had to put my dancers through for the visa process," she said on the phone from Rijeka, Croatia. Her US premiere, Angels of Suderac, is a dance theater work using modern dance and what she calls "reconceived" folkloric material. The piece is based on her research into shamanistic practices that connect fairies and herbal medicine women.

By contrast, new to the Bay Area is the young AscenDance Project, which formed in 2006. German-born director Isabel von Rittberg joined Dancers’ Group when she moved to San Francisco, where she heard about SFIAF. The world premiere of Levitate, which combines rock climbing with dance, will be shown as part of "Jewels in the Square," a festival-spanning series of free performances in Union Square. *

SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL ARTS FESTIVAL

May 21–June 8, various venues, most shows $20

For complete schedule, visit www.sfaif.org

Dionysian Festival

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PREVIEW Mary Sano may have a small performance space, but she sure packs them in. The Tokyo-born Sano is a disciple — so to speak— of Isadora Duncan, one of the most influential yet most underperformed women dance pioneers from the dawn of modern dance. Sano regularly puts on mixed programs in which she and her dancers bring to life Duncan’s repertoire. The 11th Dionysian Festival presents Sano and her five dancers — one flying in from Tokyo — in selections from Duncan’s Brahms Waltzes, Op.39 (1905). Sano also premieres Spring, a tribute to her teacher Mignon, a protégé of Anna and Irma Duncan, who were themselves protégés of the free-spirited choreographer. (Duncan dancers trace their lineage like British aristocracy). Mignon, born a century ago, originally began — but did not complete — this piece set to Franz Schubert’s charming Rosamunde incidental music. Sano finished it in what she hopes would be her mentor’s spirit. An unnamed dance drama in collaboration with koto player Shoko Hikage highlights Sano in her experimental mode. Also performing are G. Hoffman Soto’s improvisational dance group, SotoMotion; two Bharata Natyam dancers, Priya Ravindhran and Rebecca Whittington; and on Saturday only, avant-garde Peruvian violinist Pauchi Sasaki with bamboo flutist Hideo Sekino.

11TH DIONYSIAN FESTIVAL Sat/24, 8 p.m. Sun/25, 5 p.m. Mary Sano Studio of Duncan Dancing, 245 Fifth St., SF. $15–$17. (415) 357-1817

Starry-eyed and stripped

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REVIEW More than one witness has reported that Mayor Gavin Newsom, fiancée in tow, dropped by the jam-packed opening reception for photographer Ryan McGinley’s show at Ratio 3. The civic-minded pair joined the fray of cool kids and art world cognoscenti — I heard John Waters and Todd Oldham were there — and in some ways the appearance was apropos: the artist and politician share a lineage of tall, charismatic Irish Catholics who inspire others to action. Noting celebrity, political, and religious connections is admittedly a little suspect in a review of a contemporary art show; still, the youthful but stately mayor’s presence at a gallery on a somewhat gritty Mission side street has meaning as an expression of the widespread appeal of McGinley’s pictures. Who could resist lush images of nubile white boys and girls cavorting naked amid what seem like national parks and roadside America?

McGinley is a particularly American artist. One of the photographs on view is even a dead ringer for an Andrew Wyeth painting. Rather than Christina crouched in the wheat field, McGinley’s Running Field (2007-08) offers a lithe young woman dashing through golden rolling hills wearing only white sneakers. His choreographed vision is a brand of hipster organic purity, a dream of back-to-the-land naturalism and free love.

McGinley also manages to straddle a number of positions and demographics. Among the 16 pictures in this satisfying exhibition, there’s full frontal male nudity, and a wonderful image of a shirtless blond guy embracing a black bear, both of which unabashedly read as queer. A centrally placed picture of a group of hikers in a rocky canyon plays like a still from an update of Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point (1970). McGinley’s photograph exudes cineaste hippie-spiritual vibes, as does the acid trippy image titled Blue Falling (2007-08), in which the silhouette of a male figure — the hair on his legs crisply visible in profile — is seemingly suspended in an intensely hued sky. Dakota’s Crack Up (2007-08), visualizing an ebullient male/female couple caught in an active moment of undressed while roller-skating, brims with both clothing-optional resort appeal and fashion photo bravado.

The youth and nakedness of this universe seems to be related to Larry Clark’s kid obsessions, except McGinley is still young himself — he had a solo show at the Whitney five years ago, when he was 24 — and his surprisingly wholesome pictures are more hooked on fresh air and community than the more troubled eroticism of the wizened though still dreamy-eyed elder artist. A cinematic influence also binds these two figures. Most of the photos in McGinley’s show blur the line between naturalism and studio artifice: the hikers on the rocks are positioned in light in such a way that they appear to have been inserted digitally, the woman in Fireworks Hysteric (2007-8) seems to be floating in a glittering, celestial space, as do other subjects who have been catapulted into thin air. And is that a naked dude embracing a stuffed animal or a real live bear?

According to the artist, the animal is a living thing, albeit a trained one. He also admits the colors in his works are achieved through an intense darkroom practice. That gray area between the real and the imagined works in the artist’s favor, lending his images a sense of the uncanny: the activities captured in his photos did happen, though they come across as otherworldly.

There’s also a performance art backbone to McGinley’s process. His photos depict a team of models, cast for their looks as well as their athletic abilities, who travel together for extended periods. The constant contact promotes intimacy and physical fearlessness, and while they are very believable as an actual pack of marauding, hopeful young people, they are in fact a constructed entity — a family of paid actors directed by an artist with a clear vision of a kind of communal lifestyle. McGinley assuredly realizes these images, but they don’t come off without some suspicion. Where can these photographs go from here? The likeability of the pictures — and models — is tinged with envy and perhaps a resentment of the cool high school kids who seem impervious to social or sexual obstacles. That McGinley’s models reportedly sustain their share of photo-shoot injuries only attests to his winning feats of fiction. It all appears so smooth and dreamy. I don’t know what the mayor thought, but in the end, McGinley’s work won me over, and I want the feeling to last. *

RYAN MCGINLEY: SPRING AND BY SUMMER FALL

Through June 21

Wed.–Sat., 11 a.m.–6 p.m.

Ratio 3

1447 Stevenson, SF

(415) 821-3371

www.ratio3.org

Body eclectic

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When Miguel Gutierrez left the Joe Goode Company in 1996, he was a hot dancer. He returned to the Bay Area a mature artist. In Retrospective Exhibitionist and Difficult Bodies, part of ODC Theater’s recent "For the Record: Dancers Debate the Body Politic" at Project Artaud Theater, Gutierrez worked at breaking down the invisible divide between performer and audience. Granted, this idea has been tried before — but few have taken it as far, or developed it as consistently, as Gutierrez has done. The result was an evening of dance theater that at times pushed beyond what I can stomach but nevertheless left me full of admiration for the skill with which he works the material and the audience.

Gutierrez’s focus of attention was the body, his and ours, individually and collectively. He raised questions about performers as narcissists and exhibitionists, and about the audience as voyeurs. He subverted expectations on timing, eliminated divisions of physical space (with brilliant lighting design by Lenore Doxsee), and embraced the authentic with the sentimental. It was manipulation of the first order, and totally autocratic.

In the opening segment when he futzed around, naked between his ankles and neck, assembling props, we learned only that he is well-built and has added a few pounds since his San Francisco days. When he then invited (actually, commanded) the audience to repeat after him, "I am Miguel Gutierrez," my reaction was, "The hell I am." The tone of confrontation wove through the evening like a cry, perhaps indicative of a love-hate relationship with performance.

Retrospective was a rich tapestry of episodes that raised questions about perception. What is more real, an ad lib monologue on video, or its imitation read live from a script? Where does the screaming singer stop and become the man spilling his guts? Do we direct our eyes to Gutierrez as a teen heartthrob in an archival clip downstage, or to the live dancer way off in a corner? Have the women disappeared in the glittering sequins of their gowns in Difficult Bodies?

When a burning candle was moved ever closer to Guiterrez’s naked butt, the performance became voyeurism at its worst. My instinct was to get up and grab the candle, saying "I am Miguel Guiterrez." Unfortunately, I didn’t have the guts.

She sang, he filmed

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Perhaps you’d like a dark date with Mary Wollstonecraft and Percy Bysshe Shelley. If not, you can always opt for a purple romp with Rimbaud and Verlaine, or Gertrude and Alice, or Paul and Jane Bowles. Maybe you have an ear for rock, in which case you can hit the bed or hit a vein with John and Yoko, or Sid and Nancy, or Kurt and Courtney. Really, what doesn’t fascinate us about legendary bohemian couples of various eras? They’re like Brangelina, but with a more thesis-friendly shelf life for anyone aspiring to a liberal arts degree.

We fetishize intersections between artists in any influential boho scene, from the Symbolists and the Dadaists to the Beats. Whether those bohos are hippies or punks, their brief encounters heighten each other’s retrospective glamour. Andy Warhol might be the all-time champ at making every minor contributor into a cult figure. One woman provided a bridge between the Warhol Factory and the fertile Euro boho scenes of the 1960s and ’70s. That woman was Nico (birth name: Christa Päffgen), the ethereally gorgeous model-actor turned avant-chanteuse who could transform anything — a sweet Jackson Browne ballad or one of her own inimitable compositions — into a postapocalyptic dirge.

The camera may have loved Nico, but that sentiment went unrequited. After she appeared in a few films, including 1966’s Chelsea Girls, and onstage as part of the Exploding Plastic Inevitable tour, Lou Reed dumped her, the Velvet Underground didn’t want her, and MGM Records realized the record-buying public enjoyed listening to this bleating beauty even less than they did the variably twee, glum, cacophonous, and not yet desert island–ready V.U.

Thus, this Germanic grievous angel slunk back to the continent from whence she came, leaving behind a list of ex-lovers that purportedly included Jim Morrison, John Cale, Brian Jones, Tim Buckley, and Iggy Pop. Once there, she fell in with a heady Parisian counterculture — in particular, with the filmmaker Philippe Garrel.

The film series "I’ll Be Your Mirror: Rare Films by Philippe Garrel" cuts a swath through Nico’s and Garrel’s enduring dual magnetism, a connection that endured long after her 1988 death from a cerebral hemorrhage. Ten years her junior, Garrel was barely out of his teens when he met Nico, yet he was already finishing his fourth feature, La Lit de la Vierge. She contributed the song "The Falconer" to that film’s ripe slice of 1969 Maintenant Génération angst, which was heavily dosed on post–May 1968 disillusionment and LSD.

A look at Morocco through a black-and-white CinemaScope viewfinder, La Lit de la Vierge is characteristic of Garrel’s hard-to-find (and hard to watch, some might say) early films. It’s visually striking, madly pretentious, and a perfect time capsule of a particular cultural moment’s entwined adventure and humorlessness. Scrawny and sporting a Prince Valiant ‘do, Pierre Clémenti is the film’s hippie Jesus, who rides into town on a burro only to be knocked off his humble ride by bullies. This Jesus has some real Oedipal issues, and no wonder — the actress Zouzou (Danièle Ciarlet) plays both Mary and Mary Magdalene. In case you can’t tell by now, there won’t be a Second Coming: when Christ makes an exit, it’s to get the hell away from people.

Nico appeared in virtually all of Garrel’s subsequent movies up until their decisive 1980 split. The fallout from their less-than-healthy relationship resonates through his more conventional later efforts, perhaps most blatantly within 1991’s I Don’t Hear the Guitar Anymore. In that film, Marianne (Johanna ter Steege; cute, but lacking Nico’s goddess quality) is a maddening object of desire who abandons lovers after dragging them into her heroin-addicted spiral. "I love you like a madman," declares Garrel’s stand-in Gerard (Benoît Régent). "That means the day you cease to be crazy, you won’t love me anymore," she snaps. Later, when talking to Gerard’s stable new squeeze, Marianna seems to speak for the director and his late muse when she ponders, "Maybe I didn’t make him happy, but it was a different era. Maybe we didn’t need to be happy. We were seeking something else."

Guitar‘s posthumous portrait is more repellent than alluring. But to help the unconverted fathom Nico’s peak mystique, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts film curator Joel Shepard has also programmed The Velvet Underground and Nico, an hour-long 1966 performance directed by Warhol. Static and chaotic, it features Nico on tambourine, with little Ari (her son by Alain Delon), a noise-jamming V.U., Mary Woronov and Gerard Malanga a-go-go, and a bout of performance interruptus courtesy of the NYPD. At the box office, up until 2005’s Regular Lovers, Philippe Garrel couldn’t get arrested. But outside of it, the types he hung with always could.

I’LL BE YOUR MIRROR: RARE FILMS BY PHILIPPE GARREL

Thurs/15–Sun/18, $6–$8

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Screening Room

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2787

www.ybca.org

Follow that “Balloon”

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After years of Tarantino twists and shot-for-shot shams, homage has gotten a bad name. Let’s call Flight of the Red Balloon something else: a transportation device in which Paris, Albert Lamorisse’s beloved 1956 slice of magical realism The Red Balloon, and a patchwork family float in and out of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s inscriptive view. At 61, the former Taiwanese new wave pacesetter is on a travel kick. After moving to Tokyo to film 2003’s Café Lumière, his tribute to Yasujiro Ozu, the filmmaker next went to Paris, thanks to a commission by the Musée d’Orsay. Flight of the Red Balloon‘s reception at Cannes was lukewarm, but away from that hothouse it’s plainly a masterwork. Mysterious without being opaque, it is as delightful in its particulars as in its overall musical intelligence.

It starts simply, with a boy and a balloon. The red orb reappears periodically in Hou’s film, like a refrain, but this prologue provides the fullest convergence with Lamorisse’s original. A sleepy-eyed child calls out to the air before descending the Metro steps; the camera pans up, catches a first glimpse of the talisman as it lingers behind wind-brushed trees, and then follows it across the rooftops of an overcast Paris.

The balloon retreats, but Hou’s camera stays alight. We soon find the boy, Simon, living in a jumbled apartment with his mother Suzanne (Juliette Binoche), a blustery creative type who voices puppet shows. She has engaged a young Chinese filmmaker as Simon’s nanny: Song Fang (playing herself) is first seen entering Suzanne’s puppet theatre, her oval visage shrouded in the richly-toned shades of black typical of Hou’s collaborations with cinematographer Mark Lee Ping-Bin.

The conflicts within this autumnal story world pass at a remove. Hou wryly observes aspects of Parisian life (a downstairs neighbor unable to ask a simple kitchen favor without detailing his mutton stew, for example), but doesn’t tether his film to such observations. Instead he emphasizes resonant textures: the musical interplay between the relaxed camerawork and Binoche’s breathy, bleached-blond performance; the lyrical enfolding of a child’s half-comprehending, absorbed perspective with that of a foreigner’s; and too many paired scenes and visual echoes to count, including a couple of lovely pirouettes up and down a spiral staircase. Throughout, Hou’s inclusive model of filmmaking draws from painting, music, and puppetry. Whenever he ventures into the mother and child’s apartment, currents of light and color are pitched between minimalism and reverie.

Much like some of this season’s other film highlights (In the City of Sylvia, Alexandra, Paranoid Park), Hou’s latest foregoes plot restrictions for acute ambience and sustained portraiture. I didn’t respond to Flight of the Red Balloon as quickly as I did to the others, but it’s the one I most want to revisit. Diffuse yet deep, Hou’s vision erases the boundaries between his film and the worlds that surround it.

The red balloon of The Red Balloon beckons, but Hou’s film also bears a surprising resemblance to Olivier Assayas’ Irma Vep (1996) in its skipping ellipticism, its depiction of a detached Asian woman swimming amid unkempt Parisians, its utterly free way of withholding story information and averting linearity, and its double-exposed invocation of a past French film classic. Assayas is no stranger to Hou’s work, having made a documentary about the Taiwanese director in 1997 (HHH), but their unique sensibilities impart common materials with entirely different moods. Where Irma Vep radiates frenetic energy, Hou’s profoundly subdued film lingers in the drowsy quiet of afternoon. In this respect, Flight of the Red Balloon also reminds me of another French film about childhood, stasis, and puppet shows: François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (1959). One new wave shores up another, and an old man’s meditation reflects a precocious debut like so many carefully angled mirrors.

FLIGHT OF THE RED BALLOON

Opens Fri/16 at Bay Area theaters
www.ifcfilms.com

SPORTS: Boo-yah! Johnnie LeMaster returns

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By A.J. Hayes

In current baseball vernacular, “wearing it” refers to owning up to a hellacious slump, a shoddy performance or bone-headed play sans lame excuse.

“I threw like ass… basically,” former Giants pitcher Sidney Ponson so elegantly put it following a horrible game a few seasons ago. That’s a fine example of “wearing it.”

Blaming a shipment of “soft” bats for a home run drought — as Oakland slugger Jack Cust did this spring — is most assuredly not “wearing it.”

In the late ’70s, much-maligned former Giants shortstop/futility icon Johnnie LeMaster, AKA “Bones,” AKA “Johnnie Disaster,” took “wearing it” to a whole new level.

lemaster.jpg

In one game vs. the Montreal Expos in 1979, LeMaster “wore it” – literally.

A prototypical good field/no hit shortstop during his best days at the park, the super slender LeMaster was enduring a prolonged stretch of through-the-wickets fielding/don’t-even-bother-stepping-into-the-box hitting that had everyone from little kids to blue-haired ladies at Candlestick Park calling for his scraggly ’70s-style mustache.

Razzing LeMaster had become the official second language of the frozen concrete bowl by the freeway.

So without informing the higher ups in the San Francisco front office, LeMaster had his name plate removed from the back of his No. 10 Giants jersey and replaced simply with a three letter word: “Boo.”

“It really caught everyone off guard, in fact when I walked to the plate that night I could hear manager Joe Altobelli say, ‘Why does John have “Bob” on the back of his uniform?’

“That stunt cost me a $500 fine, but it was worth every penny. It won over some of the media and the fans really got a kick out of it,” said LeMaster who was honored by the Giants last weekend as part of the club’s season long 50th San Francisco Anniversary celebration.

It was the Paintsville, Kentucky resident’s first visit to San Francisco’s downtown ballpark.

Fig-headed

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

It’s 1792 and the Terror reigns in Paris, the euphoric overthrow of the old regime in the name of universal brotherhood having given way to a fiesta of bloodletting and fear. Hiding out from the revolutionary mob, just a stone’s throw from the Bastille, a weathered aristocrat, Count Almaviva (Dominique Serrand), and his reluctantly loyal and much put-upon servant Fig (Steven Epp) carp and cavil and niggle at each other, poking old wounds and replaying the past. In Theatre de la Jeune Lune’s West Coast premiere of Figaro (adapted by Serrand and Epp), this adds up to an extremely agile blending of Mozart, Pierre Beaumarchais’ three Figaro plays, a bit of real-life biography (that old aristo holed up in a half-empty mansion resembling Beaumarchais himself), and something more besides that verges on poignant modernist doubt.

Berkeley Repertory’s massive Roda stage, left largely bare, provides ample scope for Jeune Lune’s audacious production, which includes operatic performances by a talented 10-member cast, the 7th Avenue String Quartet in the pit (conducted by pianist Jason Sherbundy), and actor-director Serrand’s wall-size video designs, which alternately cast the impression of once-lavish, now destitute surroundings and channel a live feed for some extreme and affecting closeups. The Minneapolis-based company (last here in 2006 with a memorable production of The Miser) proves adept at keeping several theatrical balls in the air, not least the music (Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro being well served), commedia dell’arte–inflected physical comedy (a representative gesture of Serrand’s Almaviva is a half-squat, with hands jutting back directing an unseen servant and chair assward), and several narrative lines looping through a series of flashbacks.

The central relationship between master and servant carries the most charge, as well as humor — Epp’s Fig is a hilariously affronted and rather naïve exponent of newfound democratic values. (Boasting of the newborn United States, he says: "They have a president, not a king who sits on the throne just because his daddy did. His name is George, um … something with a W.") Serrand’s marvelous Almaviva, meanwhile, is as astute in his political cynicism as he is childish in his pampered sense of entitlement. But the ingenious text soon loses the thread of their rich relationship among the several narrative strands that necessarily enter from the wistfully, painfully recollected past. For all the success of Figaro‘s ambitious and expert mix — and the transporting music, dynamic staging, and expert performances — something is sacrificed in not pursuing the crucial relationship between the Count and Fig more rigorously.

Clearly something more than Beaumarchais or Mozart is at stake. Epp’s multifaceted text seems to include, among other things, a sidelong glance at Samuel Beckett. Fig (a Beckett-like moniker for sure) and the Count, despite the weight of their shared history, sound thoroughly modern. Locked in a terrible if comical reciprocal bind, master and servant here lend the play an enticingly far-reaching metaphor. Just behind the obligatory if piquant jabs at Bush and Iraq, a larger theme looms, suggesting the limits and contradictions of modern liberal democracy itself. Those great booming flashes of cannon fire that finally punctuate the action seem to simultaneously signal a new order and an apocalypse, as if, there at the inception of the modern, the Revolution has revealed itself as both a cradle and grave in one.

FIGARO

Through June 8

Tues and Fri–Sat, 8 p.m. (also Thurs and Sat, 2 p.m.)

Wed and Sun, 7 p.m. (also Sun, 2 p.m.), $13.50–$69

Berkeley Repertory, Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison, Berk

(510) 647-2917, www.berkeleyrep.org

SON UP, SON DOWN: SON OF SAM I AM

The playful title of PUS’s ("Performers Under Stress") program of Samuel Beckett shorts denotes the sequel to last season’s Beckett program, Sam I Am. But the mingling here of Dr. Seuss’s nursery school rhymes with serial killer élan seems nothing if not apt. The formerly Chicago-based PUS continues to offer worthwhile if uneven stagings of otherwise rarely seen pieces. The selection this time is another uneven affair, but concludes with the essential monologue Krapp’s Last Tape, featuring a sure and absorbing performance by Skip Emerson as the aging Krapp reviewing the reel-to-reel recordings of his impossibly distant younger self. Emerson conveys the despairing character’s many colors: the clown, the buffoon, the baboon with his banana, the poet, the pretentious "I" of the tapes, all impossibly disconnected somehow from the man onstage. (Avila)

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

Early in January 1992, with Bill Clinton poised to win the crucial New Hampshire primary, a woman named Gennifer Flowers came forward with a sordid tale of a 12-year affair with the young Arkansas governor.

Pundits proclaimed that the allegation by Flowers, a former TV reporter who later posed nude for Penthouse, would sink the Clinton campaign. Instead, Bill and Hillary appeared on 60 Minutes right after the Jan. 26 Super Bowl and, in a stunning performance, the candidate diffused the damage and went on to win the primary and the White House.

Years later, a political operative I know offered a bizarre story: Clinton’s senior advisors not only knew that Flowers would go public; they were happy she did it.

See, back then, my source said, polling showed that Bill Clinton was popular among women and educated liberals. His only problem was with the so-called working class white-ethnic men, the blue-collar guys who were Democrats but voted for Ronald Reagan. Those voters thought Clinton was weak, and that his wife was pushing him around.

The Flowers affair was bound to come out eventually, the operative told me. So the strategists figured that sooner was better. Of course, the morality voters and the sanctity-of-marriage crew would be aghast, but they weren’t going to vote for Clinton anyway. The blue-collar guys wouldn’t be offended at all; in fact, some would think a guy who had a Penthouse centerfold on the side wasn’t such a chump after all. And the women had nowhere else to go.

So why not control the release, let Bill and Hillary deal with it, put it behind them, and defuse its potential as an October surprise?

If that account is true, the strategy worked brilliantly.

I thought about Flowers when I saw the video of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright speaking to the National Press Club.

The news media and a lot of Obama supporters say Wright, after talking about the oppression of African Americans, derailed the campaign of the only African American ever to get close to the presidency.

But let me offer a strange but plausible thesis here: what if the Obama campaign not only knew what Wright was going to do, but quietly approved of it?

Think about it: Obama is about two whiskers from being the most powerful person on Earth. If he really wanted Wright to shut up, he could have made a few calls, and I suspect the guy would be cloistered behind closed doors for months. But no: the fiery minister went and attacked America and insulted Obama in a way sure to make huge headlines.

The result: Obama gets to denounce and distance himself from a guy who was going to be a problem in the fall. The damage was done early enough that it will be old news by October. Obama will still win North Carolina, be close in Indiana — and Clinton simply won’t have the numbers to win the nomination.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the story I was told all those years ago was a total fabrication. Maybe Gennifer Flowers and Rev. Wright acted alone. But I’ve watched enough presidential campaigns to know it’s entirely possible they didn’t.

Summer 2008 fairs and festivals

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Grab your calendars, then get outside and celebrate summer in the Bay.

>Click here for a full-text version of this article.

ONGOING

United States of Asian America Arts Festival Various locations, SF; (415) 864-4120, www.apiculturalcenter.org. Through May 25. This festival, presented by the Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center, showcases Asian Pacific Islander dance, music, visual art, theater, and multidisciplinary performance ensembles at many San Francisco venues.

Yerba Buena Gardens Festival Yerba Buena Gardens, Third St at Mission, SF; (415) 543-1718, www.ybgf.org. Through Oct, free. Nearly 100 artistic and cultural events for all ages take place at the Gardens, including the Latin Jazz series and a performance by Rupa & the April Fishes.

MAY 10–31

Asian Pacific Heritage Festival Oakland Asian Cultural Center, 388 Ninth St, Oakl; (510) 637-0462, www.oacc.cc. Times vary, free. The OACC presents hands-on activities for families, film screenings, cooking classes, and performances throughout the month of May.

MAY 15–18

Carmel Art Festival Devendorf Park, Carmel; (831) 642-2503, www.carmelartfestival.org. Call for times, free. Enjoy viewing works by more than 60 visual artists at this four-day festival. In addition to the Plein Air and Sculpture-in-the-Park events, the CAF is host to the Carmel Youth Art Show, Quick Draw, and Kids Art Day.

MAY 16–18

Oakland Greek Festival 4700 Lincoln, Oakl; (510) 531-3400, www.oaklandgreekfestival.com. Fri-Sat, 10am-11pm; Sun, 11am-9pm, $6. Let’s hear an "opa!" for Greek music, dance, food, and a stunning view at the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Ascension’s three-day festival.

MAY 17

Asian Heritage Street Celebration Japantown; www.asianfairsf.com. 11am-6pm, free. The largest gathering of Asian Pacific Americans in the nation features artists, DJs, martial arts, Asian pop culture, karaoke, and much more.

Saints Kiril and Methody Bulgarian Festival Croatian American Cultural Center, 60 Onondaga; (510) 649-0941, www.slavonicweb.org. 4pm, $15. Enjoy live music, dance, and traditional food and wine in celebration of Bulgarian culture. A concert features special guests Radostina Koneva and Orchestra Ludi Maldi.

Taiwanese American Cultural Festival Union Square, SF; (408) 268-5637, www.tafnc.org. 11am-5pm, free. Explore Taiwan by tasting delicious Taiwanese delicacies, viewing a puppet show and other performances, and browsing arts and crafts exhibits.

Uncorked! Ghirardelli Square; 775-5500, www.ghirardellisq.com. 1-6pm, $40-45. Ghirardelli Square and nonprofit COPIA present their third annual wine festival, showcasing more than 40 local wineries and an array of gourmet food offerings.

BAY AREA

Cupertino Special Festival in the Park Cupertino Civic Center, 10300 Torre, Cupertino; (408) 996-0850, www.osfamilies.org. 10am-6pm, free. The Organization of Special Needs Families hosts its fourth annual festival for people of all walks or wheels of life. Featuring live music, food and beer, a petting zoo, arts and crafts, and other activities.

Enchanted Village Fair 1870 Salvador, Napa; (707) 252-5522. 11am-4pm, $1. Stone Bridge School creates a magical land of wonder and imagination, featuring games, crafts, a crystal room, and food.

Immigrants Day Festival Courthouse Square, 2200 Broadway, Redwood City; (650) 299-0104, www.historysmc.org. 12-4pm, free. Sample traditional Mexican food, make papel picado decorations, and watch Aztec dancing group Casa de la Cultura Quetzalcoatl at the San Mateo County History Museum.

MAY 17–18

A La Carte and Art Castro St, Mountain View; (650) 964-3395, www.miramarevents.com. 10am-6pm, free. The official kick-off to festival season, A La Carte is a moveable feast of people and colorful tents offering two days of attractions, music, art, a farmers’ market, and street performers.

Bay Area Storytelling Festival Kennedy Grove Regional Recreation Area, El Sobrante; (510) 869-4946, www.bayareastorytelling.org. Gather around and listen to stories told by storytellers from around the world at this outdoor festival. Carol Birch, Derek Burrows, Baba Jamal Koram, and Olga Loya are featured.

Castroville Artichoke Festival 10100 Merritt, Castroville; (831) 633-2465, www.artichoke-festival.org. Sat, 10am-6pm; Sun, 10am-5pm, $3-6. "Going Green and Global" is the theme of this year’s festival, which cooks up the vegetable in every way imaginable and features activities for kids, music, a parade, a farmers’ market, and much more.

French Flea Market Chateau Sonoma, 153 West Napa, Sonoma; (707) 935-8553, www.chateausonoma.com. Call for times and cost. Attention, Francophiles: this flea market is for you! Shop for antiques, garden furniture, and accessories from French importers.

Hats Off America Car Show Bollinger Canyon Rd and Camino Ramon, San Ramon; (925) 855-1950, www.hatsoffamerica.us. 10am-5pm, free. Hats Off America presents its fifth annual family event featuring muscle cars, classics and hot rods, art exhibits, children’s activities, live entertainment, a 10K run, and beer and wine.

Himalayan Fair Live Oak Park, 1300 Shattuck, Berk; (510) 869-3995, www.himalayanfair.net. Sat, 10am-7pm; Sun, 10am-5:30pm, $8.This benefit for humanitarian grassroots projects in the Himalayas features award-winning dancers and musicians representing Nepal, Tibet, Bhutan, India, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Mongolia. Check out the art and taste the delicious food.

Pixie Park Spring Fair Marin Art and Garden Center, Ross; www.pixiepark.org. 9am-4pm, free. The kids will love the bouncy houses, giant slide, petting zoo, pony rides, puppet shows, and more at this cooperative park designed for children under 6. Bring a book to donate to Homeward Bound of Marin.

Supercon San Jose Convention Center, San Jose; www.super-con.com. Sat., 10am-6pm; Sun., 10am-5pm, $20-30. The biggest stars of comics, sci-fi, and pop culture — including Lost’s Jorge Garcia and Groo writer Sergio Aragonés — descend on downtown San Jose for panels, discussions, displays, and presentations.

MAY 18

Bay to Breakers Begins at Howard and Spear, ends at the Great Highway along Ocean Beach, SF; www.baytobreakers.com. 8am, $39-59. See a gang of Elvis impersonators in running shorts and a gigantic balloon shaped like a tube of Crest floating above a crowd of scantily clad, and unclad, joggers at this annual "race" from the Embarcadero to the Pacific Ocean.

Carnival in the Xcelsior 125 Excelsior; 469-4739, my-sfcs.org/8.html. 11am-4pm, free. This benefit for the SF Community School features game booths, international food selections, prizes, music, and entertainment for all ages.

BAY AREA

Russian-American Fair Terman Middle School, 655 Arastradero, Palo Alto; (650) 852-3509, paloaltojcc.org. 10am-5pm, $3-5. The Palo Alto Jewish Community Center puts on this huge, colorful cultural extravaganza featuring ethnic food, entertainment, crafts and gift items, art exhibits, carnival games, and vodka tasting for adults.

MAY 21–JUNE 8

San Francisco International Arts Festival Various venues, SF; (415) 399-9554, www.sfiaf.org. The theme for the fifth year of this multidisciplinary festival is "The Truth in Knowing/Threads in Time, Place, Culture."

MAY 22–25

Sonoma Jazz Plus Festival Field of Dreams, 179 First St W, Sonoma; (866) 527-8499, www.sonomajazz.org. Thurs-Sat, 6:30 and 9pm; Sun, 8:30pm, $40+. Head on up to California’s wine country to soak in the sounds of Al Green, Herbie Hancock, Diana Krall, and Bonnie Raitt.

MAY 24–25

Carnaval Mission District, SF; (415) 920-0125, www.carnavalsf.com. 9:30am-6pm, free. California’s largest annual multicultural parade and festival celebrates its 30th anniversary with food, crafts, activities, performances by artists like deSoL, and "Zona Verde," an outdoor eco-green village at 17th and Harrison.

MAY 25–26

San Ramon Art and Wind Festival Central Park, San Ramon; (925) 973-3200, www.artandwind.com. 10am-5pm, free. For its 18th year, the City of San Ramon Parks and Community Services Department presents over 200 arts and crafts booths, entertainment on three stages, kite-flying demos, and activities for kids.

MAY 30–JUNE 8

Healdsburg Jazz Festival Check Web site for ticket prices and venues in and around Healdsburg; (707) 433-4644, www.healdsburgjazzfestival.com. This 10th annual, week-and-a-half-long jazz festival will feature a range of artists from Fred Hersch and Bobby Hutcherson to the Cedar Walton Trio.

MAY 31

Chocolate and Chalk Art Festival North Shattuck, Berk; (510) 548-5335, www.northshattuck.org. 10am-6pm, free. Create chalk drawings and sample chocolate delights while vendors, musicians, and clowns entertain the family.

Napa Valley Art Festival 500 Main, Napa; www.napavalleyartfestival.com. 10am-4pm, free. Napa Valley celebrates representational art on Copia’s beautiful garden promenade with art sales, ice cream, and live music. Net proceeds benefit The Land Trust of Napa County’s Connolly Ranch Education Center.

MAY 31–JUNE 1

Union Street Festival Union, between Gough and Steiner, SF; 1-800-310-6563, www.unionstreetfestival.com. 10am-6pm, free. For its 32nd anniversary, one of SF’s largest free art festivals is going green, featuring an organic farmer’s market, arts and crafts made with sustainable materials, eco-friendly exhibits, food, live entertainment, and bistro-style cafés.

JUNE 4–8

01SJ: Global Festival of Art on the Edge Various venues, San Jose; (408) 277-3111, ww.01sj.org. Various times. The nonprofit ZERO1 plans to host 20,000 visitors at this festival featuring 100 exhibiting artists exploring the digital age and novel creative expression.

JUNE 5–8

Harmony Festival Sonoma County Fairgrounds, Santa Rosa; www.harmonyfestival.com. $30-99. One of the largest progressive-lifestyle festivals of its kind, Harmony brings art, education, and cultural awareness together with world-class performers like George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic, Jefferson Starship, Damian Marley, Cheb I Sabbah, and Vau de Vire Society.

JUNE 7–8

Crystal Fair Fort Mason Center; 383-7837, www.crystalfair.com. Sat, 10am-6pm; Sun, 10am-5pm, $6. The Pacific Crystal Guild presents two days in celebration of crystals, minerals, jewelry, and metaphysical healing tools from an international selection of vendors.

BAY AREA

Sunset Celebration Weekend Sunset headquarters, 80 Willow Road, Menlo Park; 1-800-786-7375, www.sunset.com. 10am-5pm, $12, kids free. Sunset magazine presents a two-day outdoor festival featuring beer, wine, and food tasting; test-kitchen tours, celebrity chef demonstrations, live music, seminars, and more.

JUNE 8

Haight Ashbury Street Fair Haight and Ashbury; www.haightashburystreetfair.org. 11am-5:30pm, free. Celebrate the cultural contributions this historical district has made to SF with a one-day street fair featuring artisans, musicians, artists, and performers.

JUNE 14

Rock Art by the Bay Fort Mason, SF; www.trps.org. 10am-5pm, free. The Rock Poster Society hosts this event celebrating poster art from its origins to its most recent incarnations.

BAY AREA

City of Oakland Housing Fair Frank Ogawa Plaza; Oakl; (510) 238-3909, www.oaklandnet.com/housingfair. 10am-2pm, free. The City of Oakland presents this seventh annual event featuring workshops and resources for first-time homebuyers, renters, landlords, and homeowners.

JUNE 14–15

North Beach Festival Washington Square Park, 1200-1500 blocks of Grant and adjacent streets; 989-2220, www.sfnorthbeach.org. 10am-6pm, free. Touted as the country’s original outdoor arts and crafts festival, the North Beach Festival celebrates its 54th anniversary with juried arts and crafts exhibitions and sales, a celebrity pizza toss, live entertainment stages, a cooking stage with celebrity chefs, Assisi animal blessings, Arte di Gesso (Italian street chalk art competition, 1500 block Stockton), indoor Classical Concerts (4 pm, National Shrine of St. Francis), a poetry stage, and more.

BAY AREA

Sonoma Lavender Festival 8537 Sonoma Hwy, Kenwood; (707) 523-4411, www.sonomalavender.com. 10am-4pm, free. Sonoma Lavender opens its private farm to the public for craftmaking, lavender-infused culinary delights by Chef Richard Harper, tea time, and a chance to shop for one of Sonoma’s 300 fragrant products.

JUNE 7–AUG 17

Stern Grove Music Festival Stern Grove, 19th Ave and Sloat, SF; www.sterngrove.org. Sundays 2pm, free. This beloved San Francisco festival celebrates community, nature, and the arts is in its with its 71st year of admission-free concerts.

JUNE 17–20

Mission Creek Music Festival Venues and times vary; www.mcmf.org.The Mission Creek Music Festival celebrates twelve years of featuring the best and brightest local independent musicians and artists with this year’s events in venues big and small.

JUNE 20–22

Jewish Vintners Celebration Various locations, Napa Valley; (707) 968-9944, www.jewishvintners.org. Various times, $650. The third annual L’Chaim Napa Valley Jewish Vintners Celebration celebrates the theme "Connecting with Our Roots" with a weekend of wine, cuisine, camaraderie, and history featuring Jewish winemakers from Napa, Sonoma, and Israel.

Sierra Nevada World Music Festival Mendocino County Fairgrounds, 14480 Hwy 128, Boonville; (917) 777-5550, www.snwmf.com.Three-day pass, $135; camping, $50-100. Camp for three days and listen to the international sounds of Michael Franti & Spearhead, the English Beat, Yami Bolo, and many more.

JUNE 28–29

San Francisco Pride 2008 Civic Center, Larkin between Grove and McAllister; 864-FREE, www.sfpride.org. Celebration Sat-Sun, noon-6pm; parade Sun, 10:30am, free. A month of queer-empowering events culminates in this weekend celebration: a massive party with two days of music, food, and dancing that continues to boost San Francisco’s rep as a gay mecca. This year’s theme is "Bound for Equality."

JULY 3–6

High Sierra Music Festival Plumas-Sierra Fairgrounds, Quincy; (510) 547-1992, www.highsierramusic.com. Ticket prices vary. Enjoy four days of camping, stellar live music, yoga, shopping, and more at the 18th iteration of this beloved festival. This year’s highlights include ALO, Michael Franti and Spearhead, Built to Spill, Bob Weir & RatDog, Gov’t Mule, and Railroad Earth.

JULY 4

City of San Francisco Fourth of July Waterfront Celebration Pier 39, Embarcadero at Beach; 705-5500, www.pier39.com. 1-9:30pm, free. SF’s waterfront Independence Day celebration features live music by Big Bang Beat and Tainted Love, kids’ activities, and an exciting fireworks show.

JULY 5–6

Fillmore Jazz Festival Fillmore between Jackson and Eddy; www.fillmorejazzfestival.com.10am-6pm, free. More than 90,000 people will gather to celebrate Fillmore Street’s prosperous tradition of jazz, culture, and cuisine.

JULY 17–AUG 3

Midsummer Mozart Festival Various Bay Area venues; (415) 392-4400, www.midsummermozart.org. $20-60. This Mozart-only music concert series in its 34th season features talented musicians from SF and beyond.

JULY 18–AUG 8

Music@Menlo Chamber Music Festival Menlo School, 50 Valparaiso, Atherton; www.musicatmenlo.org. In its sixth season, this festival explores a musical journey through time, from Bach to Jennifer Higdon.

JULY 21–27

North Beach Jazz Fest Various locations; www.nbjazzfest.com. Various times and ticket prices. Sunset Productions presents the 15th annual gathering celebrating indoor and outdoor jazz by over 100 local and international artists. Special programs include free jazz in Washington Square Park.

JULY 26, AUG 16

FLAX Creative Arts Festival 1699 Market; 552-2355, www.flaxart.com. 11am-2pm, free. Flax Art and Design hosts an afternoon of hands-on demonstrations, free samples, and prizes for kids.

JULY 27

Up Your Alley Dore Alley between Folsom and Howard, Folsom between Ninth and 10th Sts; www.folsomstreetfair.com. 11am-6pm, free. Hundreds of naughty and nice leather-lovers sport their stuff in SoMa at this precursor to the Folsom Street Fair.

AUG 2–3

Aloha Festival San Francisco Presidio Parade Grounds, near Lincoln at Graham; www.pica-org.org/AlohaFest/index.html. 10am-5pm, free. The Pacific Islanders’ Cultural Association presents its annual Polynesian cultural festival featuring music, dance, arts, crafts, island cuisine, exhibits, and more.

AUG 9–10

Nihonmachi Street Fair Japantown Center, Post and Webster; www.nihonmachistreetfair.org. 11am-6pm, free. Japantown’s 35th annual celebration of the Bay Area’s Asian and Pacific Islander communities continues this year with educational booths and programs, local musicians and entertainers, exhibits, and artisans.

AUG 22–24

Outside Lands Music & Arts Festival Golden Gate Park; www.outsidelands.com. View Web site for times and price. Don’t miss the inaugural multifaceted festival of top-notch music, including Tom Petty, Jack Johnson, Manu Chao, Widespread Panic, Wilco, and Primus.

AUG 25–SEPT 1

Burning Man Black Rock City, NV; www.burningman.com. $295. Celebrate the theme "American Dream" at this weeklong participatory campout that started in the Bay Area. No tickets will be sold at the gate this year.

AUG 29–SEPT 1

Sausalito Art Festival 2400 Bridgeway, Sausalito; (415) 331-3757, www.sausalitoartfestival.org. Various times, $10. Spend Labor Day weekend enjoying the best local, national, and international artists as they display paintings, sculpture, ceramics, and more in this seaside village.

AUG 30–31

Millbrae Art and Wine Festival Broadway between Victoria and Meadow Glen, Millbrae; (650) 697-7324, www.miramarevents.com. 10am-5pm, free. The "Big Easy" comes to Millbrae for this huge Mardi Gras–style celebration featuring R&B, rock ‘n’ roll, jazz, and soul music, as well as arts and crafts, food and beverages, live performance, and activities for kids.

AUG 30–SEPT 1

Art and Soul Festival Various venues, Oakl; (510) 444-CITY, www.artandsouloakland.com. 11am-6pm, $5-$10. Enjoy three days of culturally diverse music, food, and art at the eighth annual Comcast Art and Soul Festival, which features a Family Fun Zone and an expo highlighting local food and wine producers.

SEPT 1–5

San Francisco Shakespeare Festival Various Bay Area locations; www.sfshakes.org. This nonprofit organization presents free Shakespeare in the Park, brings performances to schools, hosts theater camps, and more.

SEPT 6–7

Mountain View Art and Wine Festival Castro between El Camino Real and Evelyn, Mountain View; (650) 968-8378, www.miramarevents.com. 10am-6pm, free. Known as one of America’s finest art festivals, more than 200,000 arts lovers gather in Silicon Valley’s epicenter for this vibrant celebration featuring art, music, and a Kids’ Park.

SEPT 20–21

Treasure Island Music Festival Treasure Island; treasureislandfestival.com. The second year of this two-day celebration, organized by the creators of Noise Pop, promises an impressive selection of indie, rock, and hip-hop artists.

SEPT 28

Folsom Street Fair Folsom Street; www.folsomstreetfair.com. Eight days of Leather Pride Week finishes up with the 25th anniversary of this famous and fun fair.

Listings compiled by Molly Freedenberg.

SFIFF, day ten: Cachao and the wow of Still Life

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By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Last night, Maria Bello accepted her Peter J. Owens award and hosted a screening of her new film Yellow Handkerchief. I haven’t seen that film yet, but Bello will always have a place in my heart for her fearless performance in David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence (2005).

If you saw Buena Vista Social Club at the festival in 1999 and Calle 54 at the festival in 2001, then you may be familiar with the music of Israel ‘Cachao’ Lopez, the great Cuban songwriter and bassist who helped bring the mambo to popularity. The new Cachao: Uno Mas arrives just in time, given that Cachao passed away two months ago at the age of 89. It would be great to report that this 68-minute documentary was a worthy farewell, but it’s far too brief and it breaks the cardinal rule of music films: it interrupts the songs with talking heads.

Cachao: Uno Mas talk at SFIFF

Sara Shelton Mann

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PREVIEW Only a few seasons into a more extensive performance schedule, ODC Theater began an extensive remodeling of its well-appointed building on 17th Street at Shotwell — and found itself without a space to showcase its work. What to do? Artistic director Rob Bailis seized the opportunity to move a few blocks up the street to the much beloved but lately much neglected Theater Artaud. For the rest of the year, ODC Theater plans to take advantage of the cavernous space, decent technical equipment, and stadium seating with a series of mini-festivals. "For the Record," the first in the series, examines the relationship between the body dancing and the body politic with three separate programs.

Few in the Bay Area dance world have examined this nexus more extensively than Sara Shelton Mann, whose works make up the second week of the festival. Founder of the highly praised Contraband, she revolutionized multi-disciplined dance theater, launching the careers of original thinkers and artists as Kim Epifano, Jess Curtis, and Keith Hennessy. Shelton Mann is working with fewer dancers these days but is no less committed to digging into the flesh. For proof, watch her dance/video trilogy Inspirare, three years in the making. In Telios/Telios, two couples — Kathleen Hermesdorf and Yannis Adoniou, and Hana Erdman and Alex Zendzian — reprise their passionate give-and-take roles of 2006. In Inspirare, Hermesdorf and Maria Francesca Scaroni expand notions of the body’s physicality. The triptych opens with its newest section, the ensemble piece RedGoldSky, which Shelton Mann describes as a "stream of consciousness ramble that touches on the absurd."

SARA SHELTON MANN Thurs/1-Sat/3, 8 p.m., Theater Artaud, 450 Florida, SF. $20–$25. (415) 626-4370, www.odctheater.org

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