First Position LXX Another Year, Another Ten
December 20, 2007
By
ALLAN ULRICH
allanu815@aol.com
VoiceofDance.com 2007
Katita Waldo, Nicloas Blanc and Rachel Viselli in Balanchine's Divertimento No.15. Photo by Erik Tomasson.
Before we get to the canonical list of what made 2007 in dance so special, congratulations are in order for some of the events that won't make it into the ritual tally.
The rush of enthusiasm and good will flooding the Oakland Paramount on that October afternoon when the Oakland Ballet Company returned to the land of the living was a unique experience. At 72, the troupe's founding artistic director Ronn Guidi picked up the pieces left by his hapless predecessor and produced an admirable repertory program with Michael Morgan's Oakland East Bay Symphony doing its considerable best in the pit. The fare was typical Guidi, something ancient and something a bit newer. But, if you consider that the Oakland Ballet was officially disbanded 18 months earlier, this was an almost heroic accomplishment. There is a place for Guidi's vision among Bay Area classical troupes, and it was heartening to watch it gather steam for future endeavors.
The anniversary of the year was LINES Ballet's 25th. That this single-choreographer contemporary ballet troupe has continued to prosper in grave financial times is attributable entirely to founding artistic director Alonzo King's artistry and to the support he has mustered within the community. Considering how many companies initially blossom and wither on the vine, King's steady rise and his refusal to diverge from his aesthetic principles is a continuing source of wonder.
The year witnessed several dramatic transitions. The San Francisco Ballet lost two leading lights of the Helgi Tomasson era. Laden with honors, Muriel Maffre has retired (at least from the company) and Gonzalo Garcia now dances at New York City Ballet (which really needs him), and both will be missed more than words can convey. ODC Theater has closed for extensive renovation and will reopen sometime in 2009; a look at the plans suggest that the project will be worth the wait. The theater's presenting program has added immeasurably to the local scene in the past few years. As long as we're talking about performance spaces, here's a cheer for Jessica Robinson, who is attempting to make CounterPULSE a mandatory stop on the local experiemental scene.
After years of herculean struggle, Joan Lazarus has retired from producing West Wave/Summerfest Dance. The project will continue under the joint aegis of LazarusDanceArt and DancersGroup. The initial call for performers to deliver works of under five minutes duration fills one with foreboding. From the wording of the press release (and I hope to be proved wrong next summer), this looks a lot like dancers dancing only for each other. Where does a general audience figure in this equation?
The dance world lost many of its luminaries in 2007. The sudden death of Michael Smuin, the founder of Smuin Ballet and former co-director of the SF Ballet, saddened many of his admirers in the Bay Area community. The passing of French choreographer Maurice B'jart seemed a blow to many dance fans around the world. And the demise (at 101!) of Russia's long-retired Igor Moiseyev was the occasion to recall the company that bears his name.
Like Smuin, B'jart dramatically divided audiences and critics. Yet, B'jart's Ballet of the 20th Century represented, for most Americans, their first exposure to modern European ballet, and many people with long memories still get emotional about it, the way they mist up recalling their first love. Yes, B'jart's dances could be stiflingly loghorreic (we learned early to avoid the mumbo-jumbo of his written introductions), but his vision of dance was daring in its scope and his choice of music was often astonishing in its complexity. If only the steps had measured up to the pretensions. Coincidentally, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater has just revived B'jart's Firebird (the SF Ballet danced it in 1977); everybody can make up their own minds about the choreography when the company brings it to Zellerbach Hall in March.
Moiseyev, once a member of the Bolshoi, was the greatest trendsetter of the bunch. Through the company that still bears his name, he created an audience for ethnically sourced material filtered through a classically trained and awesomely theatrical sensibility. The company's American debut at the height of the Cold War not only dropped a bombshell. It inspired a host of world dance spectaculars from Russia and other nations that continue to wow the crowds even today, The Moiseyev Ballet will play Zellerbach Hall Feb. 8-10.
So, enough of the throat-clearing and reminiscing. Here are my top 10 of 2007, listed in order of attendance.
1) San Francisco Ballet: Divertimento No. 15. Only artistic director Helgi Tomasson can tell us why, for 22 years, he resisted staging George Balanchine's 1956 masterwork, the first of the choreographer's two great surviving ballets to Mozart scores. A rococo garden of delights, the revival only grew in stature during the run. Gennadi Nedvigin and Jaime Garcia Castilla dominated the male complement. Kristin Long and the ageless Katita Waldo stood out in the variations movement.
2) The Forsythe Company: Three Atmospheric Studies. The local debut of expatriate William Forsythe's new, German-based troupe brought us an indictment of the Iraqi War like no other. The choreographer first plunged us into the thick of chaos, then probed fundamental areas of perception and communication. The piece grows a bit fuzzy and even sophomoric near the end, but no other choreographer has so potently captured the anguish of people trapped in a conflict that no one can stop, let alone comprehend.
The Forsythe Company in Three Atmospheric Studies. Photo courtesy of Cal Performances.
3) Sydney Dance Theatre: Underland. Former company director Graeme Murphy gave New York postmodernist Stephen Petronio free rein over his sleek Australian company. The result was this full-evening abstraction inspired by the music of rocker Nick Cave. Meaning was elusive, but the dancing was electrifying, Petronio at his most visceral (and that's very visceral). Another of the worthy presentations at University of California, Davis that Bay Area presenters wouldn't touch.
4) San Francisco Ballet: Eden/Eden. Call it The Blade Runner of ballets. British choreographer Wayne McGregor, with the help Steve Reich's Dolly, goes the multimedia route in this compelling and eerie essay on cloning and its perils. This American premiere found the SF Ballet dancers in superb form as the replicants of this new world.
5) Paul Taylor Dance Company: Lines of Loss. A quiet, contemplative masterpiece on how we cope with grief, a companion to Taylor's sublime Promethean Fire. The image of Lisa Viola wandering through a field of human debris haunts me almost a year after the performance. The worst news for 2008 is that PTDC will skip the Bay Area.
6) Metropolitan Opera: Orfeo ed Euridice. Mark Morris made his belated debut with the nation's most prestigious opera company with a setting of Gluck's extraordinary opera and scored one of those crossover (music/dance) hits he always does in opera productions. The Mark Morris Dance Group looked splendid on the huge Lincoln Center stage and Morrischoreography for the "Dance of the Blessed Spirits" was both simple and beautiful, in this artist's manner. This was the first time since 1953 that the Met hired a choreographer to direct an opera (the last was George Balanchine) and probably won't be the last. The initial run of Orfeo was limited to four, sold-out performances, but it will be revived in January, 2009.
7) David Gordon Pick Up Performance Company: Dancing Henry Five. Three years late in arriving in San Francisco, this partly danced, partly orated version of Shakespeare's Henry V invites us into Gordon's world, where word and music blend into a wondrously witty agglomeration that does the job and then some. The incomparable Valda Setterfield, Gordon's wife and longtime collaborator, was our guide. Bolts of fabric, a bunch of folding chairs and a talented group of dancers did the rest.
Jason Samuels Smith and Pandit Chitresh Das. Photo by Marty Sohl.
8) Pandit Chitresh Das and Jason Samuels Smith: India Jazz Progressions. A year ago, Bay Area Kathak master Das and Los Angeles-based tap ace Smith got together for a jam, in which each tried to infiltrate and absorb the other's language. First, they found what united their styles. It was outrageous good fun. For this year's sequel, the pair brought along friends and colleagues and it was even more thrilling.
9) Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company: Chapel/Chapter. There's Jones the formalist and there's Jones the politically concerned artist. Rarely do the two aspects of the man meet as eloquently as in this 2006 work. It concerns murder, mayhem and the retribution meted out by society. It's one of Jonesmost articulated dances in years and one that shimmers with humanity. My only qualm was the "in-the-oval" staging favored by Jones and/or Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Superior sightlines were sacrificed to principle.
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company in Chapel/Chapter. Photo by Paul B. Goode.
10) American Ballet Theatre. I'm having trouble singling out one moment from the generally top-flight Zellerbach visit. I could select the wonderfully characterful revival of Jerome RobbinsFancy Free or the revival of Twyla Tharp's Baker's Dozen, in which ABT's dancers reveled in the work's slouchy virtuosity. Or I might pick the phenomenal Herman Cornejo whizzing through space in the Corsaire pas de deux. Maybe, I'll stick with Cornejo's animating the old Baryshnikov part in Tharp's Sinatra Suite on a rainy Saturday afternoon and finding a measure of soulfulness that proved utterly disarming. Like all the above choices, I was just happy to be there.
