Daniel Madoff and Julie Cunningham of Merce Cunningham Dance Company in XOVER. Photo by Kawakahi Amina.
Before offering a 10-best list for the year that is quickly slipping away, I’d like to talk about the financial crunch everybody is feeling, the state of the arts therein and how, in particular, the city of San Francisco almost responded to this ongoing situation.
The incident tells us much about the way in which the arts are still perceived by those whom we have elected to govern us. Although much of the furor has revolved around the San Francisco Symphony, do not for a moment doubt that this episode also involves the San Francisco Ballet, American Conservatory Theater or any artistic organization that boasts substantial audiences and operates with a substantial budget. It all started last month with a dyspeptic and shockingly ill-informed screed in the San Francisco Weekly, which discussed the annual earnings, here and elsewhere, of the Symphony’s music director of 14 years, Michael Tilson Thomas. Facts about his wages and emoluments were not verified; for example, the $1.77 million that the Weekly claimed went from the city’s coffers into the Symphony’s bank account is, in fact, given annually to S.F. Arts Commission to sponsor the orchestra’s lower-priced Summer in the City concerts.
Confirmed in his faux-populism, the outgoing Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin introduced a budget proposal that would have cut the city’s stipends to these organizations by 50 percent for the coming year. In any case, the major arts institutions will take a voluntary seven percent cut in their budgets for the coming year. Fortunately, the Peskin proposal was tabled until sometime in 2009.
The outlook is grim, but not hopeless. To the voluntary cuts the Ballet and others are taking, you can add previously reduced budgets prompted by the dramatic drop in the arts organizations’ endowments, thanks to our declining economic health. You can’t expect a white knight with a withered stock portfolio to ride to the rescue this time. So, the Symphony, Ballet and Opera had already prepared to tighten their belts, hopefully, to somewhere short of asphyxiation. But you can be sure that Helgi Tomasson’s fabulous company and Tilson Thomas’ wonderful relationship with the Symphony will persevere until long after the crisis has passed. Those bonds may even be strengthened.
What irks me are the accusations of snobbism and elitism that have risen in the past month and still linger in the air like a miasma, greenhouse gases dispelled by uninformed minds. First, some economic facts of which both the Board of Supervisors and the Weekly’s writers need reminding. The major arts organizations are major employers; their staffs and artists mostly live in the Bay Area. They spend money and pay taxes here, thus contributing significantly to the economy. These organizations also attract millions of dollars annually from visitors drawn by our vibrant artistic life, and they leave the contents of their wallets here.
Our principal arts organizations are also leaders in the educational field, all of them maintaining outreach and educational programs envied by other communities around the country. Representatives from the Ballet, Symphony and Opera spoke about these matters during last week’s Board hearings. Now, I don’t expect Peskin to know that Tilson Thomas’ remuneration is commensurate with what top conductors get in the field. But I do expect a prominent public official to know that the Opera House and Davies Symphony Hall are not the playpens of the rich. Audiences sacrifice elsewhere in their lives to keep up their Ballet subscriptions, and they wouldn’t have it any other way. These institutions attract too many people to be described as elitist. Under the circumstances, it might be appropriate to redefine elitism as, “A mania for putting down the arts the significance and broad appeal of which one is blissfully unaware.” Which certainly describes the attitudes of the scribes at the Weekly. Talk about denial.
I wonder if the Weekly’s editors actually compared the cost of orchestra tickets to the Ballet with the price of a ticket to a rock concert featuring a current pop idol. I suppose it is too much to expect a publication that rarely features critical coverage of classical music or dance to acknowledge that there’s another world out there. It is depressing, however, to realize that the culture wars of a generation ago persist in a community whose arts organizations are, in terms of quality, flourishing as they never have before. Despite the grim days ahead, I suspect they will continue to flourish, despite bureaucratic ignorance and pseudo-populist hostility. Bet on it.
Jess Curtis and Maria Scaroni in The Symmetry Project. Photo by Sven Hagolani.
Now for the list, as always, arranged in chronological order. Missing any of these events, all seen in the Bay Area, would, in some way, have diminished me.
1) Jess Curtis’ Symmetry Study #7 (CounterPulse). If ever you doubted that travel broadens choreographers’ minds, this duet will eradicate your skepticism. A founding member of long-disbanded Contraband, Curtis spends half the year in Berlin, and the experience has brought him enormous artistic discipline. It’s basically an essay in liquid sculpture for the choreographer and Maria Francesca Scaroni, and performed mostly in the nude. The effect is riveting.
2) Miguel Gutierrez’ Retrospective Exhibitionist (Project Artaud). The noted conceptualist and performance artist returned to San Francisco with this unique solo venture, in which self-revelation and narcissism compete for attention. The piece is a bit gamy in places, but it reveals Gutierrez as a master of mingling laughter and pathos. The engagement marked the high point of ODC Theater’s off-site mini-festivals, which will continue in 2009.
3) Christopher Wheeldon’s Within the Golden Hour (War Memorial Opera House). No two observers agreed on what they liked and what they detested during the San Francisco Ballet’s 75th anniversary New Works Festival. But it took a deeply unromantic soul to resist this glittering series of duets and a group finale set to piquant Italian string music. The premiere cast, headed by the indestructible Katita Waldo, Damian Smith, Sarah Van Patten, Pierre-François Vilanoba, Maria Kochetkova and Joan Boada were all at their glamorous best.
4) Mark Morris’ Joy Ride (War Memorial Opera House). Two evenings later, we watched Mark Morris, who is, thankfully, a regular contributor to the SFB repertoire, struggling with what may have been the most untameable score of his career—John Adams’ rhythmically devastating Son of Chamber Symphony. Morris seized upon any type of dance that made sense in the instant and gave us a whirlwind excursion, all decked out in Isaac Mizrahi’s shiny metallic body stockings. Both Joy Ride and Within the Golden Hour return to the SFB repertoire in the 2009 season.
5) Rachel Lincoln and Leslie Seiters’ An Attic An Exit (Dance Mission Theater). Amid the very mixed offerings introduced by the San Francisco International Arts Festival, this performance piece stood out. The two women bound together by myriad props may be sisters or even aspects of the same individual, but meaning yielded to gesture. One was drawn to the dancers’ wit and the masterly deployment of props. Watching the pair devour a spaghetti dinner during a dance piece was certainly a first for me. Based in Los Angeles, Lincoln and Seiters merit a return engagement.
6) Joe Goode’s Wonderboy (Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Novellus Theater). In this collaboration with celebrated puppeteer Basil Twist, the veteran Bay Area choreographer has restored dance rather than talk or histrionics to the center of his artistic universe. Twist’s creation is a little fellow living out a fantasy of unconsummated desire and Goode surrounded him with the strongest, most attractive team of dancers he has fielded in years.
7) Alex Ketley’s To Color Me Different (YBCA Novellus Theater). The dances came fast and furious in this year’s WestWave which limited all entries to under five minutes duration. That was more than enough time for Ketley to deliver this searing duet for Sonsherée Giles and Rodney Bell from AXIS, The constant shifts for dominance by the dancers seemed almost transgressive. Unforgettable. Alas, the effect was somewhat diluted when, in the AXIS fall season, Ketley augmented the duet with a group section. First thoughts are sometimes the best.
8) Diana Vishneva in Don Quixote (Zellerbach Hall). A relatively humdrum Kirov Ballet visit soared into distinction at the final performance when Vishneva revealed why she has come honestly by her international superstar status. This Kitri was absolutely delectable from opening number to wedding duet, where her partner proved merely mortal.
9) Merce Cunningham’s Craneway Event (Ford Point). A major attraction of the two-week Berkeley residency by the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, this “event,” made by the choreographer for the glass-walled craneway hall in the Richmond Plant, gave us 40 minutes of kinetic beauty, as the dancers traveled over three interconnected stages, while onlookers wandered with them, making the perceptual choices for themselves.
10) Merce Cunningham’s XOVER (Zellerbach Hall). Yes, I have cited Cunningham a second time, but he is twice as old as the other choreographers and twice as gifted at fashioning movement that has resonated through the decades. Although it carries no narrative, XOVER is a disquisition about partnering that reveals an unsuspected tenderness toward the moves we make and how the most insignificant of them can alter the universe. In its West Coast premiere, this looked like the most youthful dance around.
Oh, yes, Cunningham was 88 when he made it.
For more information:
What did you think of the picks? Comment below!
Read more of Allan Ulrich's reviews in his archives
*Disclaimer: The views of Allan Ulrich are not necessarily the views of Voice of Dance
.jpg)
