SEPT
3: PILOT 41: SEAMS LIKE THESE
This month's program for emerging choreographers features
works by Brittany Brown, Kelly Kemp, and Sarah Sass.
Sept. 3, 8pm, ODC Theater, 3153 17th St., San Francisco,
(415) 863-9834, www.odcdance.org.
SEPT 4-7: MARK MORRIS DANCE GROUP
The Bay Area will be seeing a lot of Morris's company
this year, thanks to his strengthened ties with UC Berkeley's
Cal Performances. The season, which will include an
MMDG rep program and the return of the Nutcracker alternative
"The Hard Nut," kicks off with Morris's acknowledged
masterpiece, the celebratory full-length "L'Allegro,,
il Penseroso, ed il Moderato," in its third presentation
at Zellerbach Hall.
Sept. 4-6, 8pm, Sept. 7 3pm, Zellerbach Hall, Telegraph
Ave. at Bancroft Way, Berkeley, (510) 642-9988, www.calperfs.berkeley.edu.
SEPT 4-7: TERE O'CONNOR DANCE
The ambitious first annual San Francisco International
Arts Festival launches with the San Francisco debut
of this New York-based company. Known for his wit and
intelligence, O'Connor brings two programs. "Choke,"
in which sidewalk encounters arouse unexpected emotions,
is paired with "Winter Belly," a visually
arresting metaphorical landscape. The second program
presents the world premiere of "Lawn."
Sept. 4-5, 8pm, "Choke" and "Winter Belly."
Sept. 6, 8pm and 7 7pm, "Lawn," Yerba Buena
Center for the Arts Theater, Third and Howard Streets,
San Francisco, (415) 978-2782, www.yerbabuenaarts.org
SEPT 5-6: COMPANY C CONTEMPORARY BALLET
Former New York City Ballet dancer Charles Anderson
brings his young East Bay-based company back to San
Francisco for a second season. The anchor is the premiere
of Anderson's "The Soldier's Tale," set to
Stravinsky. Also on the program is a work by James Sewell
and "Voiceprint," Anderson's more than faintly
eighties abstract ballet premiered during Summerfest.
Sept. 5-6, 8pm, Cowell Theater, Fort Mason Center, Marina
and Buchanan St., San Francisco, (415) 345-7575, www.companycballet.org.
SEPT 5-7: OPHELIA'S STAGE DANCE COMPANY
Works by Abigail Hosein.
Sept. 5-6, 8pm, Sept. 7, 6pm, Dance Mission, 3316 24th
St. (at Mission), San Francisco, (415) 826-4441.
SEPT 6: RE-VISIONING THE BODY IN DANCE
Eric Kupers' Dandelion Dance Theater has been exploring
extensive onstage nudity as of late, with wonderfully
frank, self-deprecating, and-ahem-revealing results.
This event, continuing a dialogue begun in May, features
performances and a panel discussion with such participants
as Della Davidson/SIDESHOW Physical Theater, Big Moves
Modern Ensemble, Bruce Curtis, and the dance writer
Sima Belmar. A benefit for Dandelion's "Undressed
Project."
Sept. 6, 8pm, Western Sky Studio, 2525 Eighth St., Berkeley,
(510) 863-3040, ext. 284, www.dandeliondancetheater.org.
—Rachel
Howard
Calendar
Listings source courtesy of IN DANCE, a FREE monthly
publication of Dancers' Group at http://www.dancersgroup.org
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Some
composers, like Bach and Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky,
really speak to dancers—and so do some painters
and sculptors. One of these for me is Rubens—he
uses bodies and orchestrates movement like a choreographer
(Lavrovsky, Fokine, probably Noverre). I've come to
this conclusion after going back over and over to visit
a painting of his; not an important Rubens, just an
oil sketch, a preparatory study for a larger work, not
even in color, really, just black and white and sepia,
bought in the 1960's for less than $100,000—but
still, it's the most appealing painting in the Bay Area
to me. For a sketch, it's brought up to a high level
of finish. The physicality of the brush-work is as hot
as any action-painter's, and more delicate—check
out the white threads in the horse's manes, on the satin
skirt as it molds to Veronica's thigh, on the Roman
soldier's helmet, in that exultant hunting-horn. The
painting itself is about as broad as my shoulders, nearly
two feet high, and wears a frame of dark wood about
as wide as my hand. It's hung too low: the top of it
is level with my hairline (about 5'7") *
Somewhere
in his writing T.S. Eliot talked about trying to make
sense of poetic experience in terms of “hints” that
are “only half understood”. It’s a reference that kept
swirling around the edges of ODC’s “House Special 2”,
(August 30), the program that culminated a two-week
residency for choreographers Yannis Adoniou,
Benjamin Levy and Erika Shuch.
You walked away into a gray and foggy night, having
witnessed projects that bubbled with the excitement
of the last fortnight’s discoveries. Not that there
were any masterpieces. But you had been in the presence
of some kind of “poetic experience.” This was lucid
and intelligent work by good artists who had been freed
to roam in a supportive environment. None of the pieces
were what you might called finished; they don’t even
have names yet. But each work oozed with character.
Shapes were fluid but they existed. Trajectories were
non-linear but they had direction. “House Special 2”
was full of fresh ideas, imaginatively realized with
not a cliché on the horizon.