Jeremiah Crank and Heather Daane. Photo by RJ Muna.
What one heard Thursday evening (Sept. 11) at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ Novellus Theater was rare, if not unprecedented in the local modern dance world.
Every piece of music was a substantial composition and most of them were penned in the 20th and 21st centuries. There is no denying choreographer Liss Fain’s musical tastes, no disputing the breadth of her record collection. What one saw, however, rarely lived up to the challenges presented by Bach, Steve Reich, Olivier Messiaen and Béla Bartók. You admire Fain’s daring musical appetites while regretting that so many of the dances, dispatched by 10 eager dancers, failed to explore the music with comparable imagination. The results, while competent, proved anodyne as the evening proceeded.
Still, if bodies twisting and flowing breathlessly through space adds up to a satisfying modern dance experience for you, there’s plenty of it on view at YBCA through Saturday evening during Liss Fain Dance’s 12th annual season. Three of the four works here are group pieces, and, although the music, the costuming and the lighting varied, Fain’s choreography slipped into the predictable far too often. You saw the ensemble standing rigidly, while couples whizzed through the performance space, pausing for transitory exchanges. Occasionally, we get a contrapuntal gambit, with two pairs of dancers offering contrasting material. Fain’s limited vocabulary begins to wear you down; the interminable unsupported arabesques, the constant manipulation of limbs, the reiterated corkscrewing torsos add up to a formulaic two hours. Somewhere in the middle of the program, a man hoists a woman dramatically above his shoulders, and because we haven’t seen this combination before, you sit up straight in your seat.
First came the Bach piece, Crossing, a revival of a 2004 opus set, made for six dancers and set to a recording of the Violin Partita No 1. Here, as elsewhere in the program, Matthew Antaky’s lighting and scenic design is compelling. I have considerable qualms about the costumes by Eimaj Designs. The filmy white outfits look OK on the women, but the men looked like they were sporting diapers, which I do not think was Fain’s intention. Unisons and canons proliferate, arms windmill frantically, a woman is upended, and, in the third movement, Kai Davis’ exuberance is infectious. Four duets leaven the texture, dancers walk off in different directions. But nothing really sticks in the mind.
Jennifer Beamer Fernandez. Photo by RJ Muna.
In the revival of 2005’s Line Between Night and Day, Fain more eloquently distills her technique. Two movements from Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du temps propel seven performers through a moody essay inspired, Fain says in her notes, from thoughts about Adam and Eve expelled from Eden and the devastation of World War II. It starts promisingly with a focus on rippling backs of a couple moving through a crepuscular landscape (maybe they are Adam and Eve). Fain proves more adept here at varying the group dynamic, propelling promenades on demi-pointe, but there’s an uncomfortable stress on flow at the expense of structure, recurring imagery or emotional inflection. This is choreography suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder. More than once, here and elsewhere, I longed for a couple to engage with each other, to establish and explore their relationship.
The sole opportunity came with the program’s only premiere. But At the Time is hopelessly at odds with its music, Steve Reich’s vocal essay, You Are (Variations). The score, from one of our leading minimalists, is rife with rhythmic energy. What we get is Bethany Mitchell (dressed in gartered bordello chic) and Dexandro Montalvo (in cycling garb) mostly tussling on the floor, while the music trips on. The couple eventually rises, but Fain’s inability to focus her tone leaves one bewildered.
Looking, Looking may have gone over better in Europe last year than it did Thursday in its U.S. premiere. The Bartók Viola Concerto completed by Tibor Serly offers episodes of the composer’s typical “night music” forays with bold folk dance motifs. The rigid tableaux and scooping arms yearn for significance and Fain, in a couple of circular formations, suggests a concern for spatial rearrangements not witnessed earlier in the evening. Yet, a coherent line never establishes itself. The performers, in addition to Davis and Montalvo, included Jeremiah Crank, Heather Daane, Jennifer Beamer Fernandez, Lindsey Fitzmorris and Daphne Zneimer.
Liss Fain Dance continues through Saturday at 8 p.m. at YBCA’s Novellus Theater, San Francisco. For tickets, call 415.978.2787.
.jpg)
