WestWaveDance Festival: Programs 4 & 6 2006
July 25, 2006
By
ALLAN ULRICH
allan@voiceofdance.com
VoiceofDance.com 2006
Sue Li-Jue of Facing East Dance + Music in (Not Your Traditional) Fan Dance. Photo by Matt Haber.
The WestWave program last Tuesday evening (July 18) brought an almost capacity crowd into Project Artaud Theater. No major names here, but the fare was heavy on group pieces, which means more friends and family show up at these affairs with cheering sections and bouquets in tow. Again, the curating of producer Joan Lazarus proved a bit cloudy where quality is concerned.
Yet, this sequence brimmed with evidence of trends half-baked and unintegrated. Mark Bartscher provided a compelling video for Alyssa Lee's premiere, Absence/Presence, but all those abstract squiggles had nothing to do with the stretches and bends of the nine women garbed in white, with their backs turned to us through much of the piece. Lee doesn't seem much of a formalist on the evidence here. Tributes to feminist icons are all the rage these days, but it would have taken more than admiration for aviatrix Amelia Earhardt and her sisters to breathe life into Martt Lawrence's Ceiling Zero: New Frontiers (premiere). Accompanied by Thomas Canning's romantic "Fantasy on a Hymn by Justin Morgan," Lawrence, Rebecca Johnson and Jill Randall, all garbed in goggles and ancient flying suits, indulge in a series of wan, lyrical combinations which overstay their welcome by at least half.
Carol Abohatab's Birthday Suite may be three years old, but these variations on "Happy Birthday," served notice of a fanciful comic sensibility at the helm. The choreography knows how to gently parody dance styles (the take-off on the mazurka brought a few chuckles), but the dancing by members of the Vanguard Dance Company was downright amateurish, unmusical impulses encased in stolid bodies. This should be one for the pros.
Speaking of pros...If you were looking for memorable dancing, it was there in Private Freeman's sizzling performance of Patricia Banchik Bell's In Between (2004), which provided deep satisfaction. With Sarah Marcus his mettlesome partner in this tender duet, Freeman (who, despite rumors, will return to ODC/Dance this fall), offered such intensely calibrated and seamless moves that he brought a luster to the choreography it may not possess without him. Bell's ensemble, Dream Realm (2006), propelled the seven, crimson-clad women expertly in a cross-cultural foray at the end of the evening.
For sheer ambition, there was Carmen CarnesMa Kali: Fierce Mother (2005), which opened the program. Carnes, who works at Voice of Dance, has attempted to fuse modern movement with the strain of Indian classical dance known as Odissi. The piece partakes of both ritual patterning (beautifully executed by eight women and one man) and narrative: Carnes, who leads off with a solo, later brings on a bloodied Chelsea Taylor for what one presumes is a living sacrifice. A big bonus here was the live narrator and instrumental and vocal ensemble, who delivered Patricia Brothersoriginal score. They made a major difference.
Carmen Carnes Dance Ensemble in Ma Kali: Fierce Mother. Photo by JCBPhotos.
Brittany Brown Ceres may be WestWave Festival producer, but her Simultaneous Solos, premiered at the top of the bill last Saturday (July 22) earned its place through talent alone. An abstraction for five women set to Michael Gordon's industrial strength Weather, the piece was carefully plotted. Vibrating wrists seemed to unleash a contrapuntal exercise constructed with almost lapidary precision. Movement motives were introduced austerely and leavened with group strides; the trajectory was swift and irresistible.
Brittany Brown Ceres of Dance Ceres. Photo by Andy Mogg.
Amy Seiwert's Tonic found this fine classicist probing the gloomy posturing of European modern dance in ballet slippers. Torsos bent at extreme angles, extensions flared and the home-cooked score by trumpeter Darren Johnson, blowing notes into a recorder and letting us hear the playback, was no help. The dancing by Seiwert, Phaedra Jarrett, Tricia Sundbeck, Joseph Copley, Carlos Venturo and LinesBen Wardell was suitably intense, but all the manufactured angst failed to convince. Still WestWave should provide a haven out of the spotlight for a superior choreographer like Seiwert to experiment occasionally.
Another premiere, Manuelito Biag's The Shape of Poison found the choreographer and Alisa Michele bound in one of those volatile relationships, in which the two can't live with each other and can't survive alone. The vocabulary was mixed but the heat generated by the pair flared into an emotional conflagration, Biag calls this an excerpt, but it looks fine as is.
For the rest, Alma Esperanza Cunningham offered an old solo, Parade, in which the hapless Ashley Taylor, in thrift shop tutu, with appended flag, channels George Balanchine through Kurt Jooss, all to Sousa music. Cunningham's More found two androids in a state of terminal cuteness, cavorting to three versions of Ravel's Bol'ro. These are not dances that will consolidate the choreographer's reputation.
Sue Li-Jue's (Not Your Traditional) Fan Dance found itself trapped between political rant, cultural commentary and parody. First, four heavily costumed women respond to Noam Chomsky's recorded bloviations. At the end, there's fan dance for six women; the imprecision of the performance suggested it was a big joke.
Elizebeth Randall and Kerry Mehling of Deborah Slater Dance Theater. Photo by Liz Payne.
And, in Without Time, Without Place (premiere), Deborah Slater exhumed moldy performance art tropes (please, suitcases that get kicked around; been there, endured that). Kerry Mehling and Elizebeth Randall simulated anguish with the help of two kitchen chairs. Travis Rowland lumbered endearingly, The pastiche score was no help; scarcely cutting edge.
WestWave concludes with two more programs, Thursday-Friday and Saturday-Sunday, all at 8 p.m. Project Artaud is at 450 Florida St., San Francisco.
