"Dance Lovers #5"

James Graham Dance Theatre

Dance Lovers #5

Joe Goode Annex, San Francisco

Feb 14^th, 2016

This past weekend, James Graham Dance Theatre celebrated the wonder and strength of human connection with their multi-genre performance cabaret, Dance Lovers. In its fifth year, the program featured an eclectic mix of San Francisco/Bay Area artists in a series of duets that ranged from eccentric to touching to hilarious. With this spectacular evening, director James Graham and the entire cast have reminded us of something important - modern performance can be topical and penetrating but that doesn’t mean it can’t also be fun and full of laughter.

Melissa Lewis and Christina Busler kicked off the night with their dance theater offering, I Wanna Be Ur Boyfriend. A comical foray into infatuation, flirting and dating practices, this duet had all the landmarks of the dance theater genre. A healthy dose of absurd wit met with a little angst, a deconstruction of popular dances ensued, and there was a mix of disciplines including spoken word, song, gestural phrases, instrumental work and of course choreography. A multi-generational pas de deux followed with Raphaël Boumaïla and Heather Cooper’s Broken Wing, danced by Boumaïla and Molly Allen. Broken Wing opened with a phenomenal solo by the father character, contemporary dance drama at its best. Limón curves abounded, as did expansive spirals, gorgeous hinges and an open upper torso. With a curiosity toward the space and surroundings, the daughter figure then danced a lovely and sweet solo full of childhood joy and freedom (and some impressive grand jeté leaps). The work concluded with a heartfelt and nostalgic duet that captured motifs from both of the solos.

Hot is by far the best word to describe Vincent Chavez and Michael Galloway’s Sweetheart Merry-Go-Round. This sexy and playful contemporary dance communicated romance, intimacy and affection through sensual partnering and connected unison sequences. It was a duet that just made you smile. Dance Lovers’ first half closed with a performance art piece by Morgan True and Thomas Anthony Owen about gender identity, fluidity, stereotypes and image. To explore these complex themes, True and Owen employed an interesting (and admittedly cheeky) mix of aggressiveness, control and dominance alongside trust and reliance.   

Act II opened with Patrick Barnes and Rowan Turner’s theater-inspired parkour meditation, I Don’t Dance. A comment on winning, losing, participation and camaraderie, I Don’t Dance utilized a smart combination of interactive games – tag, boxing, wrestling and rock-paper-scissors – and text to share its narrative message. Eric Garcia and Wiley Naman Strasser invited the audience to join them in the performance space and form a circle around the perimeter for Chan Chan. They told stories, taught a song and initiated a telephone game that went on while they danced a short duet. Pedestrian gestures coupled with suspension and release, all very authentic and in the moment. Chan Chan was also an intriguing bi-lateral choreographic experiment. Experiencing the space together created a real sense of egalitarianism and inclusion, yet the stories and movement were quite intimate and personal. A great addition to the Dance Lovers program.

Next up, Melissa Hudson Bell and W. Kamau Bell delighted the audience with their priceless duet, Thirteen and Counting. A comedy monologue and an interpretive physical phrase came together to tell their unique story and history. This fed into a brilliant and humorous sequence that they dubbed “thirteen marital gestures”, in which they took cues and direction from their four-year-old, whose vocal instructions had made up the score. It was an adorable and plucky picture of what love looks like. And a piece that includes a sequence of gestures is certainly à propos when the performance is taking place at the Joe Goode Annex. For the evening’s finale, Graham took the stage in a center pool of light. With reaching choreography, he welcomed the entire cast of Dance Lovers #5 to join him. A community, together, expressing themselves through joyful movement erupted in the space – a beautiful ending to a strikingly beautiful program.

Scratch Dance

Scratch Dance

Pictured: Maya Haines and Emmeline Gonzales-Beban
Photo: Harper Addison, courtesy of Scratch Dance

Of Stills and Lifes

The Flight Deck, Oakland

Feb 13^th, 2016

Scratch Dance’s inaugural home season, their new premiere work conceived by Artistic Director Erica Pinigis, Of Stills and Lifes, and my first visit to The Flight Deck performance space in Oakland. Saturday night was definitely an evening of firsts.

Of Stills and Lifes struck on two fronts. It was intriguing to witness the result of such a distinct compositional structure and choreographic course. As Pinigis’ program notes explained, “each new duet was created from the same base phrases and generative prompts, then the dancers created telephone game interpretations of the previous duet.” While we didn’t see that game unfold in real time on the stage, the process Scratch Dance had employed was readily apparent - each sequence was very much informed by the others. Also, it was fascinating to consider whether there were real time implications at play. Was there any ‘in the moment’ decision-making happening? If so, how different was each individual performance? Scratch Dance is off to a promising start with this smart and engaging conceptual experiment in form and content.

As the house lights went down, six dancers entered the black box space and separated into pairs to share different but concurrent pas de deuxs. From there, the action oscillated back and forth between brief unison segments and the core of the work, the collection of duets. The flow in and out of these formations was both secure and confident and the duets themselves varied on several levels. Pairings shifted throughout and the choreography ranged from minimalist pedestrianism to contact improv-styled lifts to intricate modern technique. While each pas de deux was unique, postures, poses and steps did recur, revealing the piece’s construction. And in a nice contrast to the earlier duet material, a commanding and powerful solo closed the first act, full of large circular motions, spirals and early modern dance-inspired postures.

Of Stills and Lifes was separated into two halves by a short intermission during which the set was slightly re-ordered. This broke the work’s overall flow and seemed kind of unnecessary. Having said that, choreographically and performance-wise, the second part of the dance was very strong. The opening movement phrase was captivating – a solo of graceful port de bras met robust front attitudes and deep pliés in second position. Four additional cast members joined in this meditative circuit, bringing their own interpretation and individualism to the table. It was a beautiful statement of quiet fortitude and calm elegance. A sense of searching and outward focus also pervaded and again, motifs from the opening duets provided cohesiveness and throughlines. With its hip circles, skips, directional shifts and parallel pas de chats, the line dance scene near the end had a delightful folkloric feel to it. And Of Stills and Lifes closed with a unison sequence full of motion, excitement and joy. The entire ensemble was all in, committed and present in every second of the dance, but the technical clarity and communication of the choreography was uneven at times.

Of Stills and Lifes had a number of additional theatrical elements to it – a visual artist working downstage right, a clothesline from which the dancers dropped hanging wooden pegs, buckets of sand, a wooden teeter-totter set piece and a game of shuffle puck. While all were visually interesting and the cast interacted with many of these components, it was difficult to understand their function in the work and they actually pulled focus away from the dance. There was just too much going on at the same time in a small space. Perhaps these collaborative elements were speaking to a larger narrative (whether linear or deconstructed) but if so, the connective fibers were a little unclear. 

Exchange/Engage

Exchange/Engage

Pictured: ka·nei·see | collective's Mallory Markham
Photo: Rob Best

SAFEhouse Arts, San Francisco

Feb 11^th, 2016

Collaboration. Risk-taking. Experimentation. Pushing the envelope. These creative processes fuel new contemporary dance. And they are certainly at the heart of SAFEhouse Arts’ latest Resident Artist Workshop (RAW). Curated by directors Peter Cheng of Peter & Co. and Tanya Chianese of ka·nei·see | collective, the evening featured a five-piece salon of current choreographic compositions and works-in-progress, many of which will be part of upcoming festivals and home seasons. The choreographic points of view impressed and in every instance, the dance artists handily communicated the breadth, range and distinctness of the material.

Excerpts from Cheng’s Transverse Course opened the program; a picturesque and sculptural trio. The dance progressed as a series of short scenes, each separated by a blackout, almost like a set of passing, but related thoughts. For the first of these vignettes, the three women took turns soloing with a tactile movement phrase. Some choreographic throughlines were present in each version, yet none of the solos were the same. Instead Cheng employed choreographic devices to adjust and change the pattern – sequence, repetition, accumulation and stretto – revealing the layers, diversity and possibilities inherent in a single movement phrase. Following this initial statement, the full trio unfolded in a variety of formations including two versus one, duets and unison work. And the unison was good. Unison in contemporary dance is a tricky business, requiring technical accuracy while still celebrating the individualism of the dancers. This delicate balance was reached in Transverse Course. Choreographically, the movement carved through the space at every juncture (demonstrated with careful attention by Angela Bevevino, Sarah Butler and Sophia Larriva): rond de jambes in plié and arabesque developpés alongside simple and elegant hand motions.

Next up was Binki Danz in Bianca Stephanie Mendoza’s The Ground I Stand On. A brief, yet powerful solo danced by Mendoza, The Ground I Stand On was a contiguous physical statement with a phenomenal fusion of styles and genres – street dance, percussive pedestrianism, hip hop and contemporary release technique. LV Dance Collective brought Son Lost In A Moment, a meditative and graceful duet danced by Devon Chen and Kao Vey Saephanh, who also served the piece’s choreographer. Chen entered with her hands in prayer (an image that would recur) and took her place in a preset circle of flowers. That opening combined with white costuming immediately gave a serenity, tranquility and spiritual feel to the work. This sense was maintained through large movements, big lifts and long extensions. And there was an intriguing and subtle narrative at play – Son Lost In A Moment spoke of solitude and companionship at the same time. Ayana Yonesaka offered her duet OHN, perhaps the most narratively driven (though non-linear) dance of the night. The foreground dancer began with a calm kind of body scan, like something that might be found as part of a mindfulness practice. In stark contrast, the upstage dancer moved towards her in an aggressive, preying crawl. Quickly, the mindfulness evolved into a dominant, strong and assured charge. Yonesaka’s contemporary pas de deux for two women would continue to deliciously toggle back and forth between these two states – purposeful self-awareness and combative self-determination. And in the end, it seemed that the first dancer had devoured the other.

ka·nei·see | collective closed this edition of SAFEhouse’s Resident Artist Workshop with Chianese’s ensemble work, Readymade. Two dancers began facing away from the audience and cycled through a movement phrase, their shadows simultaneously dancing on the exposed brick wall while beautiful string music sang through the space. The dancers eventually turned to face front, growing and developing their sequence before being joined by the full cast. And what a transition that was. Full of forward motion and drive, each dancer entered from behind an upstage left screen and traveled on the diagonal to downstage right, then ran behind the house seats to begin the circuit again and again (with differing choreography). Individuals and small groups would feed in and out of the stream to dance featured sections, and Readymade concluded with a unison gesture sequence to text by Alan Watts. For me, the striking element of this work was the depth of collaboration and how that collaboration challenged assumptions about the relationship between choreography and sound. Readymade wasn’t a neoclassical imagining of how a musical or text score could be translated by movement, nor was the score simply an accompaniment for the dance. The collaboration went far beyond this, to the point that the elements started to become one – the dance and the music, the gestures and the text. The legato runs, the staccato pulses, the pizzicato plucking, the percussive rhythms were in the bodies and the score. Musical arpeggios and articulated limbs were married. No part of the work dominated the other – the achieved cohesiveness was stunning and rare.