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danceviewwest The
DanceView Times, San Francisco Bay Area edition |
Volume 2, Number 10 March 8, 2004 The weekly online supplement to DanceView magazine
No new reviews this week, but a press release from the Izzies committee with background on this year's nominations: THE 18th ANNUAL ISADORA DUNCAN AWARDS COMMITTEE ANNOUNCES 2002-2003 SEASON NOMINEES San Francisco ----The Isadora Duncan Dance Awards Committee announces the “Izzie” awards nominees for the 2002-2003 performance season, and the first year of a vibrant collaboration among Bay Area dance organizations. The Izzies will join forces with Bay Area Celebrates National Dance Week and the website Voice of Dance for the first ever Bay Area Dance Awards evening, presented in association with the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. The program will bring together Bay Area Celebrates National Dance Week’s annual awards, a new Voice of Dance “Dance Critic of Merit” award, and the Izzies in a shared production. This inclusive celebration will be held Monday, April 26, in the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Forum, with a reception at 6 p.m. followed by the ceremony at 7 p.m. The event is free to the local community. Last year’s ceremony drew nearly 400 members of the dance community representing myriad dance forms. This year the Izzies expects its new partnerships to attract an even broader segment of the dance community. 2004 will mark the 18th year that the Izzies Committee has recognized the excellence and diversity of Bay Area dance. Awards are bestowed in ten categories to Bay Area dancers, choreographers, their collaborators and composers as well as to others who contribute to the advancement of the dance community. The Isadora Duncan Dance Awards Committee seeks to honor local dance artists and promote their visibility, primarily by acknowledging outstanding achievements within a twelve-month period of performances, running September 1 through August 31. The “Izzie” awards, formed as part of Dance Bay Area in 1984 with honors first given in 1985, are designed to celebrate the unique richness, diversity and excellence of Bay Area dance. In 1994, the Isadora Duncan Dance Awards Committee reincorporated as a volunteer association under the auspices of the San Francisco Performing Arts Library and Museum. In 2002, it became a fiscally sponsored entity of Dancers Group. Its members are choreographers, dancers, teachers, critics, writers, and arts administrators who serve one- or three-year terms. Below is the roster of this year’s nominees, with the choreographer of a given piece indicated in parentheses: ISADORA DUNCAN DANCE AWARDS NOMINEES: 2002-2003 SEASON CHOREOGRAPHY INDIVIDUAL
PERFORMANCE ENSEMBLE
PERFORMANCE COMPANY
PERFORMANCE REVIVAL/RESTAGING/RECONSTRUCTION MUSIC/SOUND/TEXT VISUAL
DESIGN SPECIAL AWARDS Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, Three Decades of Dance An extraordinary team of collaborators worked for more than a year to celebrate the work of one of San Francisco’s bedrock choreographers. In April 2003, Margaret Jenkins Dance Company: Three Decades of Dance transformed the vast Herbst Pavilion into a living museum of dance history. Set designer Alexander V. Nichols, poet Michael Palmer, videographer Martin Gould and sound designer Gregory T. Kuhn created a truly transporting environment to showcase the company’s past. More than 100 former MJDC dancers were contacted to participate, and several veterans performed significant past works during a pre-show. The company’s program presented a new work with an original live score and also restaged MJDC classics not seen in many years, notably bringing writer and performance artist Rinde Eckert back to the stage in the 1988 work Shorebirds Atlantic. The Margaret Jenkins Dance Company retrospective was an absorbing testament to the company’s past and future. Chitresh Das, Ni Ketut Arini, Govindan Kutty for choreography and performance and Matthew Antaky for visual design, East as Center In May 2003 three renowned masters of Asian dance—North Indian Kathak dancer Chitresh Das, Balinese dancer Ni Ketut Arini, and South Indian Katahkali dancer P. Govindan Kutty—met on the common ground of the Ramayana, an ancient Sanskrit epic. In East as Center, presented at ODC Theater during Das’ artistic residency, each master portrayed distinct characters in stories excerpted from the Ramayana, with the cast augmented by their disciples. This method of collaboration highlighted the differences between the disciplines while creating a satisfying artistic whole, greatly enhanced by Matthew Antaky’s imaginative lighting and live music by Gamelan Sekar Jaya with guests from India and Bali.
LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD Malonga Casquelourd was born in Douala, Cameroon in 1947. As a principal dancer of the National Congolese Dance Company and as a resident choreographer and performer with Le Ballet Diaboua, a Congolese repertory company based in Paris, he attracted an international following. Malonga leaves an impressive legacy of institution-building as the founder of Fua Dia Congo, a nonprofit performing arts company formed in East Palo Alto (1977) and currently based in Oakland; Congolese Dance & Drum Camp, the first and longest running Aftican dance, drum and percussion workshop (1979), and Ballet Kizingu, the youth division of Fua Dia Congo (1994). He co-founded Tanawa, the first professional Congolese Dance Company in New York City (1972), and Diata Diata, an all women's Congolese drum ensemble (1990). He was instrumental in establishing Everybody's Creative Arts Center, known today as Citicentre Dance Theatre in downtown Oakland, and the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival. He served on the faculty at many institutions, including New York University, Stanford University and San Francisco State University, where he taught for 26 years. A pioneer, cultural ambassador and visionary leader, Malonga welcomed artists from every continent, challenging all to engage in dialogue and build bridges for cultural exchange. He encouraged the elimination of barriers between continental Africans and African Americans. Malonga died on June 15, 2003. His last projects included Kusum Africa, a dance-theater performance showcasing the collaborative works of African director/choreographers; Malaki Matanga 2003: Congo of Yesterday & Today; and Wa Dia Fua Yiko Dio, a project exploring themes of cultural inheritance and exchange between urban/hip hop culture and traditional Congolese culture to be completed in the Summer of 2005. Lou Harrison, one of North America’s most original and influential composers, was best known for his luscious, prolific music for symphony, gamelan and percussion orchestras, chamber ensembles, choral groups and operas. He also composed scores for dancers and played live at dance performances. What is less known was that he danced himself, and would sometimes get up from playing the piano or hitting a gong or drum and get on stage to join the fray. He also worked as an accompanist, improvising for dance classes. He later said that learning how to improvise helped him with composing. He started his stage career at the age of two and a half and stole the show as “Buster” in Daddy Long Legs. On the West Coast he appeared as a dancer and/or as an accompanist and composer for/with Bella Lewitsky, Marian Van Tuyl, Tina Flade, Carol Beals, Lenore Peters Job, Bernice van Gelder, Bodil Genkel, Louise Kloepper, Bonnie Bird, Lorie Kranzer, Tandy Beal and Eva Soltes. In New York, he wrote music for Katherine Litz, Jean Erdman, Erick Hawkins, Merce Cunningham, Mark Morris and Remy Charlip. Lou Harrison was also a skilled painter, calligrapher, type designer, essayist, critic, poet, teacher, instrument builder and political activist. He championed causes ranging through gay rights, pacifism, environmental & ecological, the use of Esperanto and the sign language of deaf people. He taught a course entitled “Music of the World’s People” furthering the study of multi-cultural sources, which has changed what and how we hear today beyond Euro-centric music. In his early years he loved to go to the Chinese Opera. His piece for Michael Tilson Thomas’ debut with the San Francisco Symphony, “A Parade for MTT,” was influenced by Harrison’s love for San Francisco’s Chinese New Years Day Parade. He enlivened the range of musical instruments by his playful use of found objects. He learned Labanotation so he could help choreographers remember what they did from rehearsal to rehearsal. He said, “If you work with dancers, you must learn to dance.” |
What's On This Week March
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9, 2004 March
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11, 2004 March
12, 2004 March
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12, 2004 March
12-13, 2004 March
13, 2004 March
13, 2004 March
13, 2004 calendar courtesy of Dancers Group
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