ODC Theater Festival 2, Local Heroes: Hearan Chung’s The Call to Invocation and Long Sword Dance; Colette Eloi’s Kaleidoscope; Vishnu Tattva Das’ Entering Vrindavan-Mangalacharan, Shiv Panchaksar Stotram
Until Thursday (July 24), ODC Theater’s second off-site dance festival at Project Artaud Theatre had generated few superlatives, as one endured dubious imports, tired revivals and underprepared premieres. Not at all festive. But the final installment of the summertime project has proved a remarkably rich sampler of world dance, worth a look through Saturday evening.
In introducing the “New Traditionalists” program, festival director Rob Bailis offered a convincing argument for bringing the ethnic community into a contemporary dance series. It is a thoughtful, even valiant attempt to lure audiences in under the same tent, but probably too idealistic to take hold, given the parochial nature of local aficionados’ tastes. Thursday’s appreciative audience did not resemble the crowds that attended the earlier programs; this latest bunch, for one thing, talked through the performance.
Still, all three companies were buzz-worthy, masterful artists of dramatically contrasting provenance residing in the Bay Area and deserving of wider recognition. The Korean dancer-choreographer Hearan Chung has developed an underground reputation, and her surfacing in a group piece can only contribute to her future success. The Call for Invocation showed us Chung slowly advancing through the performance space, while four of her dancers were seated on the floor. They all pick up pairs of cymbals, strike them in unison and waves of excitement flow through the house. This shamanistic piece depends on slow, spare movement spiced with sudden flourishes of energy; thus, Chung’s rapid turns, her skirt billowing around her. Arms reach purposefully, as if to ward odd forces of evil. Chung’s brandishing of a bamboo stick is her most potent weapon in that endeavor.
Korean dance, or at least what has been shown hereabouts recently, blends sensuousness and rigor to an astonishing degree. The costumes with their long sleeves are familiar trappings and the music, played by a terrific four-member consort Thursday, is worth the price of admission alone; hearing a synthesizer in tandem with drums, wooden and metallic percussion signifies the extent to which traditional Korean arts have adapted to technological innovation. It’s a thrilling experience.
So is watching Chung in a long sword dance. One blade metamorphoses into two. Now, dressed in deep crimson, she manipulates and twirls them with the skill of a master juggler. You’re entranced.
Vishnu Tattva Das. Photo by Andy Mogg.
The beguilement continues. Vishnu Tattva Das specializes in Odissi, one of several strains of Indian classical dance and one that we see performed rarely in the Bay Area. Odissi, it would seem, customarily has a religious function. The style is marked by tripartite divisions of the body, striking poses and the emphasis on mudras, or hand gestures. None of those characteristics, however, explains the quiet sensation made in two solos by Das Thursday evening, despite the recorded music.
An homage to Jagannath, the presiding deity of dance (represented by a small, decorative altar), yields a sinuous panoply of extreme turnout postures, bent knees, sudden turns, vivid mimetic episodes and the feeling that the performer is moving through a landscape fabricated from silk. Wearing ornamental bracelets and a peacock headdress, Das radiates undeniable charisma, and in his second outing, his contribution comes as close to movement poetry as you’re likely to see this season. Das, the program tells us, is the founder of Odissi Vilas: Sacred Dance of India and is currently working on a collaboration with Cambodian and Japanese classical dance artists Charya Burt and Melody Kurt. Watch for it.
The jump from this serene artist to the pounding excitement of Colette Eloi’s Kaleidoscope is jarring. Yet, this tribute to the folk culture of Haiti, as rendered by the El-Wah Movement Company, certainly raised the temperature in the house. This ambitious project features a spoken text, projections, live musicians (including a harpist), vocalists and dancers. The movement episodes, marked by earthy stamping, undulating torsos and much energetic arm movement, flows into a courtship duet delivered with panache by Shawn Merriman-Roberts and Jabris Rucker. Laila Jenkins-Perez is the striking lead in the “Grandma’s Hands” number.
Eloi intends the work as both a lament for Haiti and a tribute to that beleaguered Caribbean nation, and all that comes through. But Kaleidoscope is a reduced version of a longer piece made for the Black Choreographers Festival, and, in the current form, it looks a bit patchy and arbitrary. The large complement of exuberant dancers seem transported by the experience, but some of us in the audience felt we were getting too much of a good thing.
One advisory: If you attend this concert, bring a book. The set-ups between companies take a small eternity and extend the program far beyond the promised 1 hour, 45 minutes running time.
The ODC Theater Festival continues through Saturday at 8 p.m. at Project Artaud Theater, 450 Florida St., San Francisco. For tickets, call (415) 863-9834 or visit www.odctheater.org.
