Catching Up With Richard

When the Paul Taylor Company appears on San Francisco Performances annual roster of events , it’s a safe bet that Richard Chen See will be around at some point, even though he no longer is a member of Taylor’s main company.  The reason is that Caribbean island-born Chen See has a fair portion of dance history in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Richard first came to my attention as a member of Oakland Ballet.  During his tenure in the East Bay I remember two dances he created, both danced at Laney College if my memory is accurate, and both concerned with his background as a Chinese.  The overseas inference was not explicit, but what intrigued me were two features, which I honestly forget appeared in one or both of the dances.  One was his use of Chinese theatrical convention; a red table fulfilling multiple uses, and the other a memory of and tribute to one of his grandmothers.  Mixed with his acrobatic-movement skills, I remember being satisfied and elated at seeing both works and wanting to see more.

I forget, honestly, what he danced in for Ronn Guidi in Oakland Ballet, although I seem to remember he participated in one of the seasons when Marc Wilde’s version of  Maurice Ravel’sf Bolero was part of the repertoire.  But what I clearly enjoyed was a very brief showing of Shan Yee Poon’s production of Fred Ho’s jazz score about Monkey, the beloved Chinese story of the trouble Monkey got into when he stole peaches from the Pear Garden in the West and was sent to India to bring back the Tripataka to China.  Jack Chen had commissioned the score and Poon danced Spider Woman, one of her last performances as she was starting her ballet school in San Francisco.  Richard was Monkey,a thoroughly engaging one;  I’ve longed to see a new production of the unlikely but lively score.  At one point after the production, I remember Shan Yee Poon and Richard discussing the rigors of their training at The Royal Ballet School at a time when being Asian permitted training but exclusion from becoming a member of the company dancing at Covent Garden.

Somewhere about this time Richard threw a party at his apartment, fashioned out of a spacious downstairs room of a Victorian home.  The edifice was tucked away on a narrow street in Oakland, ending in this surprising structure.  According to Richard, the house had been constructed by a retired sea captain on a lot which provided him with an unobstructed view to San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate.  Clearly time and real estate ventures changed the environment and the house.  But it was typical of Richard to know the details.

Shortly after that short jazz-based production, Richard  joined ODC briefly, before becoming a member of Paul Taylor’s group for  close to a decade if not longer. {My notes are scattered, the written ones not meticulous.]  On the side he took up kayaking, and, as his career with Taylor was winding down, Richard  became affiliated with the New York International Ballet Competition [NYIBC] and was slated to succeed executive director Ilona Copen, then dying of cancer. It seemed an obvious fit.

I don’t know how long he remained as executive director of the NYIBC but the reasons for the brevity seemed cogent and logical when mentioned in 2011. (This January NYIBC’s executive director  announced there would be no 2013 NYIBC competition.)  Richard then delved into a master’s program in dance with Hollins University and The American Dance Festival.  When he lived in the East Bay  Richard studied international business at U.C., Berkeley but did not complete that degree.

Chatting with Richard the final Taylor matinee in San Francisco he said he was heading to Beijing to set Paul Taylor’s Company B at the National Ballet Academy.  H expected to be gone four weeks, spending two weeks teaching the ballet, a week polishing the work and then a week exploring Beijing.  What a fitting chapter in Richard Chen See’s career.

Remembering Bobby Lindgren, 1923-2013

Terry de Mari, who also danced with Ballets Russe de Monte Carlo, conveyed the news of Robert [Bobby] Lindgren’s death to me this morning, referring to Anna Kisselgoff’s obituary in The New York Times.  Such memories his life and career evokes for me.

I remember him dancing at the old Philharmonic Auditorium in Los Angeles when Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo spent a week there each spring during the ‘Forties.  Early on, he led the czardas in Coppelia with Sonya Tyven, who became his wife, and  he was the first golden slave I saw in Michel Fokine’s Scheherazade.  Decidedly, but not excessively forceful male, he was a pleasure to watch, and there was a certain freshness about him which kindled my spirits.

That responsiveness doubled when I learned he was Canadian for my father was born in Victoria. In his obituary today I learned they shared the same birthplace, Victoria, if with a thirty-five year  difference.  In the irrational way one makes emotional connections, Bobby remained one of my early favorites.

When Lindgren became Dean of Dance at the North Carolina School of the Arts in 1963, he came to the annual Pacific Regional Ballet Festival looking for talent.  By that time I was the San Francisco correspondent for Dance News, making it easier for me to speak to him with less fear of being gaga. I remember what a tidy figure he made walking into one of the improvised studios, typical of regional dance festivals at the time, with the simple elegance of his compact body his feet with a sure flex in his walk, a person at home in his body, with an unaffected response to greeting or comments.  He made the Festivals that much more special.

I, for one, was enriched, a feeling I am certain shared by many.  Robert Lindgren, a  good man and a life well lived.

Shudders

A recent real estate tour in the San Francisco Chronicle twice referred to the “shudders” on the windows.

Wonder what happens when the weather turns chilly.

 

Ballet San Jose’s Departing Dancers

Ballet San Jose is losing ten dancers out of a roster total of 40: two from the seven principals; two from the ten soloists; four from the eighteen corps members and one from the apprentice roster.

Among the dancers who will not be appearing at Ballet San Jose’s performances for the 2013-2014 season are:

Principal dancer Maximo Califano, who joined the company in 2001; 12 years

Soloist Peter Hersey, with the company since 2001; 12 years

Soloist Anton Pankevitch, with Ballet San Jose since 2009

Corps de Ballet departures include dancers with company six and seven years:

Shuai Chen, debuting in 2007

Harriet McMeekin, also a 2007 arrival

Keira Schwartz joining the company also in 2007

Mallory Welsh, a 2008 arrival

Apprentice Vimala Jeffrey-Howe will not be returning.

The lovely principal Maria Jacobs-Yu has decided not to renew her contract.  Jacobs-Yu joined the company in 1996 when it was still a two-city arrangement, and has logged in seventeen years of distinguished dancing and portrayals.  Her departure is a decided loss, for her small, fleet body and technique could hold its own in any ensemble; I, for one, hope she will be seen somewhere in the area again in the fall.

This number of dancers  may mean some promotions, but surely several auditions, and certainly adjustments in who partners whom, as well as in overall casting.

Thirty Years of Lines’ Contemporary Ballet

With an enthusiastic audience at the final Sunday matinee April 28 Lines’ Contemporary Ballet danced indications of subtle shifts in Alonzo King’s choreography, an impetus possibly due to the commission for the Hubbard Street Dance Theater which debuted the work at Zellerbach Hall in February.

Many things, however, remain constant in this dozen dancer ensemble, a steadfast trait being the dancers’ eloquence and what superb instruments King has shaped them for his choreographic vision.  Works dating from 1994, 2005, 2010 plus this season’s premiere, Collaborations with Edgar Meyer, demonstrates part of that evolution.

Before comments on the dances, let me say the program itself celebrated King’s longevity, not only with elegant advertising, which probably covered the cost of the letter-size doubled 50 pages of text plus advertising and R. J. Muna’s spectacular photography. Following the current program and roster of dancers photographed by Quinn Wharton, there was a list of ballets created from 1982, an enumeration of King awards, dancers and guest artists over thirty years, collaborators, comments by the dancers and Pam Hagen, the third member of the founding trio, the King Training programs, board members, staff and donors, of course. The design was credited to Nancy Bertossa who moved over last year from ODC to head the Lines’ Marketing Division.  It’s a handsome record.  If space had permitted, dates and specifics might have been added to the Isadora Duncan Dance Award citation.  It also would have been  nice to acknowledge Lines’  president, Dennis Mullen, who was on board with Pam Hagen when the initial fiscal budget moved from $500 to $1.2 million.  Mullen now chairs the Isadora Duncan Dance Award Committee.

To George Frederic Handel music, work unspecified, King utilized the extended phrases of organ music to move his dancers horizontally.  In other works diagonal or upstage entrances tend to introduce the dancers.  Here it seemed they skittered to a tone or pitch held by the organ.  The body rolls, pumping, circling or flaying arm use strangely complimented music large enough  in sound and scale to accommodate the highly individualistic emphasis based on classic ballet vocabulary.  I found myself intrigued and engaged.

I remember the stretch of Kara Wilkes, torso in profile, partnered by David Harvey, her line from ear through shoulders, hip and knee ending in point as she was absorbe in a rendering of the sonorous organ music sounds.  Earlier, Ashley Jackson introducing the piece, arms flexing, but also pausing in a motion driven arabesque, poised on her pointe in momentary infinity.  With such balance the Rose Adagio would be a breeze.

King has acquired a remarkably agile exponent in Ricardo Zayas, a movement style which is elemental, not simply well trained and flexible. Stripped to the waist, his muscles and bones at peak movement were mesmerizing to regard.  In a similar vein, Yujin Kim’s final variation demonstrated the slender Korean incorporates her culture’s rhythmic response, the slight flexing of her shoulders as she began to dance.

The excerpt from The Writing Ground, premiered by the Monte Carlo Ballet in 2010 for the Ballets Russes Centenary and commissioned by  artistic director Jean-Christophe Maillot,  gave Meredith Webster an extended solo with four men as support. Portraying a woman in extremis, the men attentive, supporting, waiting for her to move, Webster struggled handsomely, lurching, collapsing, staggering, paralyzed.  Sinister, it also displayed a mastery of controlled collapse, one of the more ultimate examples of what the King training can accomplish for a dancer.  Performed to The Tsok Offering by Jean-Phillipe Rykiel and Larna Gyurme, it was easy connecting the imagery to contemporary horrors.  Mid-way a friend remarked to me “epilepsy.”

This season’s collaboration with Edgar Meyer was titled just that.  The musician/composer was seconded by Gabriel Cabezas on cello and Robert Moose on the violin.  As background,  Jim Doyle created vertical streams of water, starting with slender double strands, gradually increasing to six or eight before sheets, sporadic and then steady, like daubs of glistening paint wielded by a master Asian calligrapher.

While some musical sections were plucked strings, others hinted at melody, particular in a pas de deux for Meredith Webster and David Harvey.  Titled 7 First Impressions, it seemed to try connecting with the sweet tunes of Stephen Foster.  In section 5, Cards, Kara Wilkes and David Harvey appeared guided by a hing of the sonata allegro form, one of Western symphonic music’s cornerstones. And in VI, Pas Solo, Men to Trio Movement 3, there actually were sections where three men executed the same movement in a line, and something similar occurred with four women.  For the Finale, Trio 88, Movement 4, the ensemble approximated a semblance of a conventional formation.

While highly individualistic movement was clearly present, the formations of company ensemble were clear, if absent the single line repetition like Balanchine’s opening in Symphony in Three Movements. It seems King’s three decades of accomplishments are allowing him to entertain such conventions without sacrificing his individualistic approach.  It’s a welcome development.

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Karen Gabay’s Gala with Ballet San Jose

Karen Gabay’s Gala, her final performance as a principal with Ballet San Jose, was rather hastily arranged and followed the company’s final performance of the season April 21.  However short the arrangements were, the tribute selections which started at 7 p.m. were warmly received by the audience in the half filled San Jose Center for the Performing Arts.

Excepting Amour Gitan, the music was recorded.  The selections were apt, however, and included video selections from Gabay’s thirty-some year sojourn with a company originally founded by Dennis Nahat and the late Ian Hovarth.  The first of three videos showed footage from her early Cleveland years, Gabay a glowing young woman with her initial principal role as Maria in the Nahat-Hovarth production of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker; her attentive partner was an equally youthful Raymond Rodriguez. As Maria, Gabay’s hair was noticeable in supported turns; I couldn’t help but wonder what such flung tresses in pirouettes does to a partner.  This section also featured a bespectacled youngish man with an abundant head of hair and an enthusiastic, discerning delivery.  It took me several seconds to register this spokesman as Dennis Nahat.

Fast forward, The Nutcracker  grand pas de deux  provided Gabay in white classical tutu with seven cavaliers dressed in black.  As  arranged by Gabay, each partner supported her for a phrase or two of that swelling hymn to the pas de deux.  The swains were: Maximo Califano, Rudy Candia, Jeremy Kovitch, Ramon Moreno, Anton Pankevitch, Raymond Rodriguez, Maykel Solas.  Bright eyes gleaming, her smile radiant, Gabay looked sensational.

The next video permitted time for Gabay to change for Amour Gitan with Maykel Solas, the pas de deux she created and danced in Ballet San Jose’s spring series.  The video included moments from the Nahat production of Romeo and Juliet which was created on Gabay with Rodriguez as Romeo. While Lev Polyakin was the violinist once more with George Lopez as pianist for the Maurice Ravel Tzigane created for the two instruments; later the orchestrated version was debuted in 1924 under the direction of Pierre Monteux. In 1975  Balanchine created a work for Suzanne Farrell to the symphonic version.

In her one-sided slit ruffled red sheath, Gabay was sufficiently alluring to get her way with the bare-chested Solas after some preliminary squabbles and one or two spectacular Solas jetes. In this partnership Gabay’s upper back stiffness was noted, neck and shoulders creating a forward emphasis in the upper torso, a foreshortening developing over time as a mannerism.  With her petite appeal, generous spirit and steady technique it was little noticed.

Following intermission and another video the program finished with another Gabay creation, 2-2 Tango, featuring many of the company dancers.  One could enjoy the haunting phrases, with that wonderful swoop and punctuation in the tango.  Gabay has the ability to create light-hearted, sometimes cheeky, unexpectedly punctuated dances as demonstrated in Point of Departure summer tours  as well as two pas de deux danced by Junna Ige and Shimon Ito in 2010′s USA International Ballet Competition.  Enjoyable, they register as clever, well constructed, a new take on some formulaic situations if one is scarcely torn asunder emotionally.  It’s  a genuine talent.

Gabay utilized Maximo Califano handsomely.  In suit and fedora at a slight sinister angle, it was a neat touch having him launch the piece evoking the drama inherent in his native Argentine music. He moved around three couples, the women dressed in red with a touch of flounces.  Three couples followed, then a pas de trois where Mirai Noda and Maria Jacobs-Yu skirmished over Akira Takahashi before joining forces to defeat his ambivalence towards their charms. Mordido paired Gabay and Rodriguez in a skillful, if deadly-tender death dance, Gabay’s only appearance here.  Down the line Califano, Beth Ann Namey and James Kopecky reversed the two and one face off.  Eight couples danced the finale with Califano to complete the dance with a final dashing gesture.

Following the warm audience enthusiasm,  there was a large bouquet of red roses for Gabay.  Raymond Rodriguez delivered a tribute after the individual tributes when each dancer in the company, whether on or off stage, brought a single rose to Gabay.  Jacobs-Yu curtseyed, stage hands came on, conductor George Daugherty, the evening’s musicians, costumers, electricians, publicist Lee Kopp.  It was a genuine parade of associates.

A jarring visual note occurred when Alexsandra Meijer in a short strapless white dress retired into the group after giving a rose to Gabay; she  then rendered a curtsey and rose to Maximo Califano before weeping on his shoulder.  Rumored not to have his contract renewed,  Califano and Meijer both joined the company in 2001.

It is thought and hoped that Karen Gabay will remain with Ballet San Jose as ballet mistress.  She would, like Rodriguez, contribute an enormous institutional memory and professional wealth.  Seeing glimpses of her mad scene in Giselle and verve in Toreador in the videos, character roles would benefit from her dramatic skill and theatrical savvy.  Where ever she settles, the organization will be damned lucky.

Ernesto Hernandez, Flamenco Exponent

Ernesto Hernandez, also known just as Ernesto, died April 23, the last I believe of that intrepid band of dancers who peopled The Spaghetti Factory in its earliest manifestations.  Others may be alive, but Ernesto was one of the original  Los Flamencos de la Bodega.

I know comparatively little about him, and yet he was part of my dance landscape in late ‘Fifties and early ‘Sixties.  I know his family was Puerto Rican, and he may have been born there, though he came to San Francisco early on and, at one time, studied at San Francisco City College.  There was a time when he was a member of Jay No Period Marks’ Contemporary Dancers which was frequently dubbed “the Contemptibles.” Years later, he spoke of the peon work the dancers were expected to accomplish at the old Washington Street Playhouse, on the south side between Polk and Van Ness which also had been an interim studio for San Francisco Ballet before it moved to 18th Avenue.  That memorable wooden edifice has since been replaced by a nondescript apartment building.

I may have seen him dancing flamenco at that time because I had a chance to chat with him and said, “You’re going to have to choose what you emphasize – modern or flamenco and I think it should be flamenco.”  I cannot take full credit for influencing Ernesto, but he did leave Washington Street for North Beach and The Old Spaghetti Factory,  that remarkable institution with its pigeon hole-sized theater.  He and Isa Mura, mother of  Yaelisa, were among the stalwarts, at a time when the visiting Spanish troupes included Carmen Amaya, Teresa and Luisillo, Ximenez and Vargas,  Pilar Lopez and later Jose Greco.  To the best of my memory, the Bodega crowd predated Cruz Luna and Rosa Montoya with Ciro in North Beach, the latter two attracting the more chic crowd, the die-hard lovers with limited pocketbooks gathering around the Spaghetti Factory.

Ernesto lived in North Beach after the Bodega troupe disbursed, continuing to sing and perform, working in a specialty shop for the main source of his lilvelihood..  I talked to him when Joanna Harris was organizing a two-day celebration of Bay Area dance history which  launched  the research resulting in her photographic history of Bay Area dance titled Beyond Isadora. He arranged to have Yaelisa represent the flamenco tradition in the closing performance of the two-day conference.

After Ernesto’s long-term partner died, he was evicted from their flat, but helped by friends to find lodging.  I saw him briefly on the #1 California bus  perhaps six months ago looking quite dapper. I can only assume that his fondness for alcohol contributed  to his death.   I remember with affection his warmth and full bodied engagement with the flamenco tradition, a truly memorable individual.  Ernesto, we owe you a salute for what you gave with such heart.