Katie Gaydos

Dark power

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Dark power

arts@sfbg.com

DANCE With stunning classically trained dancers and a repertory that features emerging and legendary choreographers, it’s no surprise that after bringing four West Coast premieres to Cal Performances at Zellerbach Hall (Oct. 29-30), Hubbard Street Dance Chicago left audience members in awe. Under the artistic direction of Glenn Edgerton, former dancer and artistic director of Nederlands Dans Theater, HSDC continues to uphold a long tradition of exceptional dancing and exciting contemporary choreography.

In the show’s opening piece, Nacho Duato’s Arcangelo (2000), warm hues of dark yellow and gold (lighting by Brad Fields) illuminate a lustrous gold backdrop as the dancers (Laura Halm, Alejandro Piris-Nino, Penny Saunders, Jesse Bechard, Ana Lopez, Kevin Shannon, Jacqueline Burnett, and Pablo Piantino) bathed in light move through a series of intimate duets and solos with grace and power. Duato’s choreography subtly juxtaposes severe movements — hunched backs, flexed feet, and jagged angular undulations — with an overall classical and streamlined aesthetic. In doing so, Duato emphasizes the heavenly lightness and deep emotional currents inherent in the music of Arcangelo Corelli and Alessandro Scarlatti. The piece ends in ethereal light and grounded darkness, as three couples lie motionless on the floor while the fourth couple climbs a long dark silvery cloth and — hanging, bodies outstretched — is pulled upward toward an imagined heaven.

The middle portion of the evening featured two works by Hubbard Street dancer and resident choreographer Alejandro Cerrudo. The curtain rose on Cerrudo’s Blanco to reveal four spotlights (set and lighting design by Nicholas Phillips), each illuminating a woman beneath a billowing cloud of smoke. Even in stillness, the four exquisite dancers, Halm, Jessica Tong, Meredith Dincolo, and Robyn Mineko Williams, exhibited strength and conviction. Dressed in attractive blue-gray leotards, sometimes moving together and at other times breaking off into solos, the dancers remain for the most part contained in their own personal spotlight. While the four women move like sculptures of contained perfection, an organic fluidity and drive to break free lies beneath the calm. Precise arm gestures and firm shapes melt into subtle head rolls and seamless transitions to the floor. The dark, driving piano melodies by Mendelssohn and Charles-Valentin Alkan emphasize a raw, dramatic emotion at the core of Blanco.

In Deep Down Dos, Cerrudo, “inspired by imagery and sounds of tectonic plates, crystalline caverns, and blazing infernos,” launches his dancers into shadowy darkness and continual motion. The dancers (Lopez, Burnett, Saunders, Kellie Epperheimer, Benjamin Wardell, Pablo Piantino, Jason Hortin, Jesse Bechard, Kevin Shannon) run and leap across the floor in a fast-paced frenzy of activity. Although this extreme physicality generates a wonderful excitement, Cerrudo’s choreography in this work at times feels disconnected. When the four men dance together, their lighthearted jazz leaps seem to go against the piece’s dark atmosphere and the compellingly dissonant music score by Mason Bates. Is this disconnect between movement and atmosphere intentional or accidental? Regardless, Cerrudo’s work stands up well alongside legends Kylian and Duato.

The evening ended with Jiri Kylian’s 27’52”, staged by Christina Gallofre Vargas and Gerald Tibbs. Set to eerie and electrifying music by Dirk Haubrich, Kylian brings his six dancers into violent and vulnerable contact. Cutting though space like exploding glass, the dancers crash, clash, pull, push, resist, and manipulate their way through quick gestures and athletic partnering sequences. On Oct. 30, the way in which dancers Tong, Hortin, Epperheimer, Piris-Nino, Piantino, and Halm expressed a sense of human vulnerability amid such fierce and gutsy movement was perhaps the most awe-inspiring aspect of the entire night. After an emotionally intense duet between Tong and Hortin — in which the two beautifully intertwine, lean, and lift each other through a struggle of resisting and giving in — the pair ultimately end up lying alone on opposite sides of the stage as thick white sheets, used as scenery throughout the piece, come plummeting to the floor.

Orgone heats up the Independent with fresh funk, 8/6/10

John Elberling
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Orgone heats up the Independent with fresh funk, 8/6/10

It was freezing (as usual) outside SF’s Independent last Friday. Thankfully, Orgone kept the packed venue warm and sweaty inside with funky rhythms, thick bass lines, sexy vocals, and swanky brass melodies. On stage, like old friends jamming together, the nine-member band emulated the upbeat enthusiasm and down to earth cool (that’s not too cool to get down) that their unique sound embodies. Merging old-school funk and jazzy hip swaying grooves with experimental psychedelic undertones, Orgone delivered upbeat funk with a mellow modern swagger.

With such a large instrumental band (guitar, keys, bass, percussion, trombone, trumpet, saxophone, drums) Orgone manages to create a complex sound that engages and yet never overwhelms. Striking the perfect balance between driving grounded sounds and more airy, free flowing vibrations, the ensemble definitely knows how to get people dancing. Their passion for feel-good, dance-y music is no more apparent then in the way they play together. Vibing off each other, their contagious energy ignited an on-stage fire that lit up their audience of glowing, dancing fans. 

While each band member played an equally integral part in Friday night’s show, the smooth, passionate voice and fiery stage presence of lead vocalist Fanny Franklin, the only female on stage, deserves special mention. With sexy ease and captivating charisma, this goddess knows how to command a stage. If you’re feeling nostalgic for the good ‘ol days, when live instruments trumped laptop beats, Orgone’s got what you want. 

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0bMoDUyRxk 

West Coast represents

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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West Coast represents

arts@sfbg.com

DANCE Dance is inherently sexy. The millions of devoted fans obsessed with shows like So You Think You Can Dance and Dancing with the Stars certainly think so. But why, when so many people love watching dance, does the general public still place modern dance on an out-of-reach pedestal? Maybe the overly general words “modern dance” scare people away. Whatever the aversion, the question still remains: why is it so difficult to get people to go see something they’ll ultimately love?

ODC’s fourth annual “Summer Sampler,” held July 30-31, proved that ODC/Dance artistic directors and choreographers Brenda Way and KT Nelson not only know how to get people to see dance, they know how to create works that keep people coming back for more. “Summer Sampler” offered pre-performance wine and snacks, an early enough showtime (6:30 p.m.) to allow a Friday and Saturday night out, and most important, an hour of breathtaking dance.

The show opened with the epitome of dance-y dance, Nelson’s Stomp a Waltz (2006). Continually in motion, the dancers ran across the stage, threw each other into the air, and incorporated their entire bodies in fast-paced, rhythmically complex gestures. The ODC dancers possess great athleticism. and Friday night was no exception. Eating up the space around them, they took Nelson’s already daring choreography to the edge. I’ve seen these dancers command the large stage at Yerba Buena’s Novellus Theater, but watching them perform in the ODC Dance Commons — a space so intimate I could hear their breath and see their sweat — was an entirely new and exciting experience.

While Nelson’s very technical Stomp a Waltz was visually exhilarating, there was more to the piece than pretty tricks and leaps. A sense of raw emotion underlies Nelson’s abstract choreography. With the eye of an architect and spirit of a musician, she layered movement phrases that paired perfectly with Marcelo Zarvo’s rhythmically driving, highly emotional music.

Following Nelson’s piece, Way’s newest work Waving Not Drowning: (A Guide to Elegance) demonstrated that dance can be as tongue-in-check and cerebral as it is aesthetic. Inspired by Genevieve Antoine Dariaux’s 1963 A Guide to Elegance, the piece used playful humor and inventive movement to articulate the absurdity of gender norms. A commissioned score by Pamela Z looped text from Dariaux’s original guide, snippets of fashion advice, and a list of “important” feminine concerns like “adaptability, age, weddings, and Xmas” to confront everything from femininity and grace to sex and submission. The dancers — moving through doll-like movements, a sexy hip-swaying waltz, sexually-charged duets, and silly facial expressions — owned Way’s playful yet profound choreography with sassy elegance and bold maturity.

Though ODC is known as one of the nation’s top contemporary dance companies, it hasn’t lost sight of the importance of a local dance community. As a state of the art dance facility — housing a dance company, a pre-professional training school, recreational dance classes, a dancers’ clinic open to the public, and a performance space upstairs — the ODC Dance Commons is making dance accessible for Bay Area residents and visitors. A new ODC Theater is set to open at the end of September, making ODC’s 36,000-square-foot, two building campus the largest, most comprehensive dance facility on the West Coast.

Labayen Dance/SF revisits Carl Orff’s iconic Carmina Burana

John Elberling
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Labayen Dance/SF revisits Carl Orff’s iconic Carmina Burana

Enrico Labayen’s dance company Labayen Dance/SF took a hiatus from 2004 to 2009 while Labayen was off studying traditional folkloric dances in Southeast Asia. Labayen may have been absent for a few years, but the world premiere of his Carmina Burana, Revisited at Dance Mission Theater (July 23-25) proved that Labayen Dance/SF is back in full force. Inspired by the Philippine matriarchal ritual Tadtarin and set to Carl Orff’s iconic score, Carmina Burana, Revisited was a powerful and passionate celebration of female strength.

From the beginning the women dominated the stage. Dressed in long red skirts and red strapless tops, the dancers (Daiane Lopes, Alyson Abriel, Crystaldawn Bell, Diane Mateo, Leda Pennell, Morgan Eichwald and Lisa Lincoln) emerged into the light, one after another, to stand before the audience like regal warriors ready for battle. As “Ol Fortuna” (perhaps the most well-known and dramatic movement of Orff’s score) began, the well-rehearsed dancers moved perfectly in sync through a series of powerful shoulder shrugs as if tossing off anything that stood in their way. Such dramatic music has the potential to outweigh and undermine (even render silly) any kind of choreographed movement. Yet these women rose to the almost impossible occasion. They didn’t simply own the music, they fed off of its intensity, eating up not only “Ol Fortuna” but every musical movement that followed, hyper-aware of the score’s subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, emotive undertones.

The women also fed off of each others energy. The full-length evening featured various solos, duets, and ensemble dances. While lacking a narrative base, these dances captured a wide range of feminine identities, issues, and emotions, from jealousy and rage to love and triumph. Even in the dances that depicted female rage and cattiness, it was obvious that underneath it all, the dancers were committed to inspiring each other to reach full potential. On Sat/24, after Mateo finished a truly mesmerizing solo to “Omnia Sol Temperat,” she sat down aside Lopes, and I couldn’t help but notice Lopes take Mateo’s hand in her own as if acknowledging the spectacular performance. It’s possible that this gesture took place within character, as part of the performative world the women created. But it just as likely might have been an impulsive moment between the two. Regardless, the act of acknowledgment was an intimate moment that felt characteristic of the powerfully female-centered evening.

The women’s physical stamina was as impressive as their contagious energy. They moved through everything from extremely fast-paced jumps and leaps to slower, more lyrical, classical ballet poses with zest and playful charisma. Nothing seemed too difficult or too grand. Incorporating classical ballet, folkloric dance forms, and more sensual modern movement, Labayen’s elegant and exciting choreography emphasized the women’s versatile strength, but it was the all-female cast of badass dancers that not only brought Carmina Burana to life, but ultimately brought the admiring audience — screaming and stomping — to their feet.

Freeing up the ballet — Post:Ballet performs at Cowell Theater

John Elberling
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Freeing up the ballet — Post:Ballet performs at Cowell Theater

Call me a bourgeois classicist, but I like pretty dance. Maybe a decade of ballet training left me partial to a streamline aesthetic and women in pointe shoes, but regardless, I think there is something undeniably appealing about watching dance rooted in beauty. Luckily, choreographer Robert Dekkers knows how to make dance that is both aesthetically pleasing and free from some of the more restrictive aspects of ballet. No tutus, tight buns, or overly sweet sugarplum fairies with Dekkers’ new contemporary ballet company, Post:Ballet. In its inaugural performance at Cowell Theater last weekend (July 16-17), the company proved that even classical ballet dancers are capable of moving with the free-flowing release associated with modern dance.
Post:Ballet’s “Concert One” opened with Dekkers’ Milieu (2009). The curtain rose to reveal the dancers—dressed in simple yet attractive Yumiko leotards and shorts—crouched, head in hands, in various folded shapes on stage. With live music and an exciting original score by SF based composer Daniel Berkman (known for his eclectic sound and mastery of the kora, a 21-string harp/lute from West Africa), Milieu instantly took on an innovative and experimental feel. Emerging from their crouching positions like primordial birds hatching from eggs, the dancers began dancing through a series of geometrical movements with both precision and fluidity. While the stage became a flurry of activity, the dancers—Alessandra Ball, Beau Campbell, Ashley Flaner, Jared Hunt, Beth Kaczmarek, David Ligon, and Christian Squires—maintained Dekkers’ complex, high-octane choreography with graceful vigor. Like Dekkers’ other pieces, Milieu does not revolve around a story-based narrative. Instead the highly expressive movements speak for themselves.

This is nowhere more evident than in Dekkers’ passionate duet B-Sides (2009). Christian Squires and Jared Hunt took the stage by storm as they moved together through interdependent, asymmetrical leans, expansive jumps and sleek gestures. Music by Grizzly Bear paired perfectly with the boys’ boundless energy and vibrant expression.

Just as impressive as the boys were the girls in Dekkers’ trio Flutter. Appearing onstage in flowy tops and black shorts, the three, long legged women—Campbell, Flaner, and Kaczmarek—looked like Grecian muses. The women moved through meticulous movements in rhythmic cannon to Steve Reich’s percussive Clapping Music before giving way to Bach’s Partita for Solo Violin No. 2 with more romantic, free flowing leg extensions and feather light rolls on the ground.

While the dancers all held their own throughout the show, it was in the closing piece—Dekkers’ newest work, The Happiness of Pursuit— that the dancers seemed the most comfortable and brought the most energy to the stage. As the dancers skipped, slid, and leaned up against each other to a score by Jacob Wolkenhauer, they embodied a playful and eager innocence. Even as the piece built in intensity and speed, the dancers — executing fast-paced leg kicks, intricate hand gestures, and urgent crawls — never lost their underlying joy. It is that sense of eager joy and fresh charisma that will see Dekkers’ Post:Ballet through many more concerts to come.

State of interdependence

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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State of interdependence

DANCE There’s no question that dance and music live and breathe together. Anyone who has been moved to motion by a rhythmic beat or catchy melody can attest to that. Yet where the two art forms intersect and drive each others’ creative process is often harder to pin down, for they exist both independently and interdependently.

Like their respective art forms, choreographer Kara Davis and composer Sarah Jo Zaharako of Gojogo inspire and influence each other. Part of Dance Mission Theater’s Down and Dirty series, their recent performance “Symbiosis: An Evening of Music & Dance” (July 11) not only marked five years of collaboration and creative dialogue, but proved to be a stunning display of talented dancers and musicians.

The first half of the evening featured Davis’ dance company project agora, opening with Davis’ 2009 piece A Softened Law. It began with a line of dancers walking away from and yet always returning to a bright light in front of them, as if in prayer. When one dancer broke away from the repetitive and confined ebb and flow of the group, her series of expansive steps summoned a sense of freedom emerging from confinement. Under beams of gold light, the dancers — dressed in desert-toned hues — ran, leapt, and fell to the floor with passionate intensity and athletic agility. Ethereal yet grounded, Davis’ choreography flowed like a cool stream through a desert.

Because every step seamlessly initiated the next, Davis’ movement style never felt forced. This was particularly true in One Tuesday Afternoon (2008), where the dancers entered and exited the stage in interweaving duets. While the project agora dancers embody the spirit of Davis’ choreography, there is something extra special about watching Davis perform her own work. In the romantic duet Exit Wound (2006) — the first piece Davis and Zaharako created together — she and Nol Simonse graced the stage with captivating rapport. Whether swaying through simple waltz-like steps or intricate entangled arms, they never lost sight of each other. Zaharako and bassist Eric Perney were equally involved in the intimate duet. The warm violin parts of Zaharako’s composition fueled the couple’s dancing as much as their dancing seemed to fuel the music.

It was fitting that Davis ended the dancing part of the evening with the world premiere of her most recent collaboration with Zaharako, Symbiosis. Dancing with an awareness of Zaharako and her ensemble and incorporating elements of improvisation, Davis made the solo feel more like an exploration than a formulation. Each of her gestures, whether slowly moving her hand to her chin or stretching her white shirt overhead like a veil, implied a weighty yet inexplicable significance. Through their navigation of the parameters of dance and music, Davis and Zaharako brought the potential beauty of symbiosis to life.

Falling in love with the Foundry’s Please Love Me

John Elberling
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Falling in love with the Foundry’s Please Love Me

After the SF-based dance company the Foundry (founded by Alex Ketley and Christian Burns in 1998) performed their most recent project, Please Love Me, July 7 at Theater Artaud, I overheard a woman ask her friend: “Well, what did you think?” After a minute of searching for just the right words, her friend replied, “I feel like I just had really intense, emotional sex. I need a second to process it.” While Please Love Me isn’t about sex, the woman’s answer seems fitting. Combining dance with original music and video projection by former Ballet Frankfurt media artist Les Stuck, Please Love Me is intense, beautiful and emotionally poignant.

The piece starts with dancer Malinda Lavelle slowly moving through a series of gestures and shapes as the Foundry’s four other dancers (Burns, Andrea Basile, Kara Davis and Joy Prendergast) sit in a line of chairs behind her. Our attention is immediately drawn to the relationship between performer and audience as we watch not only Lavelle, but also the other dancers watching Lavelle. In addition to this “audience” of four dancers, chairs occupied by regular audience members line both sides of the stage and add an element of up-close-and-personal intimacy to Theater Artaud while blurring the line between performer and observer.

Ketley’s interest in that blurry line, so to speak, is key to his innovative choreography. As Basile and Davis dance together in one of the pieces’ fast-paced duets, their movements build in speed and momentum to the point where it becomes difficult to tell whether their powerful intensity conveys a sense of fighting or loving. It is exactly these kinds of dichotomies (love and frustration, connection and disconnection, performer and observer) that Ketley captures so eloquently.

Later in the piece, Burns and Davis dance together as they voice stream-of-consciousness dialogue. Phrases like “all I ever do is this,” “more sex, more couples,” “movie rentals,” “a policeman shoots himself the neighbors’ backyard,” “I saw you twice, briefly, but never again,” and finally, “in the end, please love me” add a sense of loaded meaning to each action. While following no specific storyline, each piece of movement and phrase is relatable and random enough for open interpretation by the audience.

In their duet, Davis and Burns maintain a constant awareness of each other even when moving independently. We see this same awareness in a roantic duet between Burns and Basile. Always in the present movement and moment, they own each step with a sense of life-or-death urgency that gives the piece its characteristic realness and honesty.

It’s hard to pinpoint or describe what makes the Foundry dancers so amazing. Surely, they all have breathtaking technique, yet they also bring something more. They each possess a unique quality that refuses to be pinned down. My eye kept being drawn again and again to subtle nuances: the way Lavelle suggests a world of meaning and emotion through a single small gesture; the way Prendergast moves through a flurry of guttural movement and sound before striking a classical ballet arabesque; the way Davis walks away from Andrea Basile at the end of their duet, and then the way she returns. The way Basile leans her head on Burns’ chest during their duet. All these instances drew me in and left me feeling connected to the dancers in a profoundly moving, yet inexplicable way.

Kara Davis and Christian Burns dancing in Please Love Me:

 

 

Powell Street dancers find a TURF of their own in the heart of the city

John Elberling
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Powell Street dancers find a TURF of their own in the heart of the city

If you’ve ever stepped outside the BART/MUNI Powell Street Station, or passed by the three-story Forever 21, you’ve probably seen the group of street dancers between Market Street and the cable car turnaround. They make spinning on their sneakers look deceptively easy. They form right angles with their arms behind their backs. And most impressively, they flaunt fast-paced hand gestures and optically illusory movements with a crisp, clean swagger.
The dancers, a dozen or so boys (with personas like Sir, Fracture, J-Tro, and Inspector Gadget) and two girls (Charmika and Vernita) all share a distinct dance style. It’s called turfing. TURF, an acronym for Taking Up Room on the Floor, incorporates elements from various dance styles like breakdancing, popping, and gliding, but has a much smoother, free -flowing look than its popping and locking counterparts.

With roots that reach back to the Bay Area’s hyphy movement and beyond, turfing is a specifically local dance form. Some of today’s freestyle turf groups — Get Wet Ent., Best Alive, and Turf Feinz, to name a few — host and participate in battles where the best turf dancers come out to strut their stuff.

A few dancers at Powell Street spoke of original turf dancers and older styles, suggesting that turfing is an evolving art form shaped by different generations of dancers. While different dancers come out to Powell Street each day, there is a core group of regulars who all know and support each other.

The Powell Street turf dancers are aware of their place within a larger group and also more than capable of holding their own on the dance floor. Moreover, these relatively young dancers, ranging in ages from 16 to 25, possess a level of maturity and confidence akin to professional dance artists. With believe-it-or-not moves, they certainly know how to work a crowd.

Turf dancers outside Powell Street Station:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=un7L6gWyKfI

A turf battle hosted by Get Wet Ent.:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eg8ntk_86Xw

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