So here’s the problem. Ever enterprising Benjamin Levy has decided that his dance company’s home season should be staged outdoors, to be specific on Heron Street, a South of Market Street cul-de-sac, on which you will find the troupe’s home, Studio Gracia, to which they moved a little over a year ago. The program handout at the opening Wednesday (Nov. 12) offered a bit of twaddle from the choreographer about bringing dance to the backdrop of our everyday life. Dare one mention that many of us attend dance concerts precisely to remove ourselves from quotidian existence? I don’t know for sure, but I’ll bet this gambit saved Levydance many dollars that might have gone to defraying the cost of a theater rental.
Even if you’re a fan of Levy’s choreography, this engagement is not for everyone. If you relish sitting outdoors on a cool, damp San Francisco evening (are there any other kind?), swaddled in blankets (free to ticketholders) holding a hot beverage (not free), you might find it all very neat. But, even by the light of the moon Wednesday, this was a dumb idea. On its best evenings, San Francisco is not Panama City, and, if you were counting, more time was allotted to mopping down the accumulated moisture on the stage area between numbers (that took a small army) than was given over to the dancing itself. More germane, however, is the fact that Levy’s works on display here, almost all intimate and intense, lend themselves poorly to alfresco settings. Realigning spatial parameters has never seemed one of his primary concerns, so the extended dancing area doesn’t seem to matter much.
Levy and his associates did what they could with a set-up of three stages connected by a catwalk, something like a fashion runway. Audiences are seated in front, on one side, and in the gap between the walkway. They perform in front of a brick wall, festooned with eye-catching murals. Under the circumstances, Greg Emetaz’s lighting is effective and the amplification of the recorded music is highly professional. Pray for a heat wave.
The three premieres on the program (which continues through Saturday at 8 p.m.), all trade in ambiguous relationships, so much so that, even with different scores, it is not easy to tell them apart, though one can’t fault the handsome, expressive company for that. The Levydance roster includes Lily Dwyer, Brooke Gessay, Scott Marlowe, Christopher Hojin Lee and newcomer Aline Wachsmuth. All but the latter, garbed in ugly peekaboo costumes, animate Physics, an almost clammy essay in loving and hating. Arms-length encounters mutate from supportiveness to hostility and back again. Limbs entwine and Levy reiterates an odd, disturbing image, as a woman, hand on her partner’s chin, leads him around the catwalk. Arched backs and sudden flips sustain the aggressive mood, but the movement simply doesn’t go anywhere. What progression one finds here is in the commissioned score by Mason Bates. Levy leads the crowd hereabouts in securing music from the leading lights, and he doesn’t disappoint here.
Gessay and Marlowe go at it alone in Wake, a shivery, nuzzling duet that deploys an original score by Rachel’s. He holds her, she slips away, shoulders are attacked; the atmosphere is implosive. Marlowe is laconic, Gessay is febrile. As it proceeds, the piece assumes the character of a ritual. This pair will go at it for time immemorial.
Cirrus, which is set both to ancient music (Trio Medieval, Thomas Tallis) and contemporary fare (Nico Muhly), seemed the most promising piece at the start, when, downstage, Wachsmuth launched a nervous, arm swinging, weight-shifting solo that contrasted stunningly with the serene choral music. On the rear stage, Lee and Marlowe melt into unisons. The arrival of the other two women prompts episodes of spinning and cantilevered bodies and elusive encounters. I cannot understand why Levy plots this piece in such a restricted area, unless he is attempting to persuade us of the oppressiveness. Still, Cirrus, with a bit of work (and a real theatrical environment) holds possibilities missing elswhere.
When Levy introduced his Nu Nu last year at Kanbar Hall, it looked like a throwaway. Wednesday, the piece still seemed afflicted with that “let’s be zany for the sake of zaniness” attitude, but it certainly worked more successfully in these alfresco circumstances. Marlowe and Gessay made much of the pseudo-tango of Peggy Lee’s “Is That All There Is?” They even warmed up the alley for a few minutes.
Heron Street runs off 8th Street, between Folsom and Harrison streets. For tickets, go to www.levydance.org.
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