Menlowe Ballet’s 2016 Spring Season

Coming thick and fast, late April-early May signal performance, performance, performance.

Lucky for Menlowe Ballet-it was able to engage four Silicon Valley Ballet soloists and principals for its spring season titled Collage. The company has a penchant for bold single title programs, though the performance does not always reinforce the declaration. This time, with its three numbers, the label was apt. It featured Michael Lowe’s Jin Ji [Collage[; Repeat after Me by Val Caniparoli to Johann Paul Von Westhoff’s Sonatas Pour Violin and Basse Continuo; and Gregory Dawson’s “and so I say to you,” to music by Dalmusio Payomo, Ron Kurti, Gregory Dawson. The Caniparoli and Dawson works were premieres, the Lowe work a mix of former parts from his Izzie-winning Bamboo and two additional numbers.

Lowe engaged Junna Ige and Maykel Solas, principal dancers, and soloists Amy Marie Briones and Akira Takahashi from the ill-fated Silicon Valley Ballet, all of whom had been initially hired by Dennis Nahat when the company was named Ballet San Jose. The fifth dancer, Anton Pankovitch also enjoyed the Nahat imprimatur, [ if you can apply that word to dancers] but had appeared with Menlowe Ballet in 2014; a quintet of excellent troupers..

The cheerful charm of Lowe’s choreography has been reinforced by the Menlo Park Academy of Dance students, seven of them in Chai DaiRibbons], included in Jin Ji. Well trained, mostly on the medium-sized, they danced with non-nonsense and confidence. What was most interesting in this pleasant Asian-accented work was Chu Yi [New Year’s Eve] featuring Akira Takahashi as a young man on a drunk with fantasies of three women [Christina Schitano, Amy Marie Briones and Chantelle Pianetta]. Moving between the table with bottle and tumbler and center stage Takahashi partnered the trio in succession as they emerged from a glittering, multi-hued shimmer of metallic ribbons. Consistently in character, Takahashi warmed to his role with an energy which he didn’t seem allowed to unharness in the years following Nahat’s departure from the ill-fated Ballet San Jose-Silicon Valley Ballet.

Val Caniparoli’s Repeat After Me hued to its formal structure, if the music itself had measures anything but classical. Angular gestures of arms, hands and head accents opened and closed the work. Susan Roemer’s costumes gave the women short grey blue skirts with a black line front and back. The colors were matched by the men, but might have been enhanced with a belt. Maykel Solas made his first appearance as did Anton Pankovich, both excellent partners.

“And so I say to you,” Gregory Dawson’s first work for Menlowe Ballet, gave clear evidence that he has moved on from the predominantly singular variations of his mentor and former director Alonso King. Using Pankovich to commence and complete the work, Dawson’s ensemble passages, particularly at lower stage left, worked well with the energetic score attacked at equal pitch by the ensemble.

Typical of my reactions to both new works, I need a second viewing to deliver an opinion verging below the initial visual and aural impact. What lingers from this performance was the cohesion of the new artists, the existing dancers and the students.It would be terrific if the new artists could remain with Menlowe Ballet, enriching the ballets and certainly drawing audience members from their former company. It also might inveigle more critics to watch Menlowe Ballet grow from strength to strength.

A final charm to the evening was to see Betsey Erickson in the audience and
elsewhere Christine Elliott, both with length histories in Bay Area dance and seasons with American Ballet Theatre and Rika Onizuka, a veteran both of Smuin Ballet and Lines Contemporary Ballet. Carlos Carvajal’s wheels wrapped it up as a singular evening’s treat.

Company C Contemporary Ballet at Z Space, May 4, 2013

Z Space has a healthy history of dance presentation under its former name of Theatre Artaud, and the house manager smilingly asserts it is the oldest operating artistic cooperative in the United States; it still reveals its former industrial origins. Z Space continues to present dance companies but ballet companies do have problems with entrances and exits.  If a dancer is supposed to bound on stage in a grand jete or a winged arabesque a la the iconic Italian-sculpted statue of  Mercury, problems can arise. Modern dance companies tend to create  works  with such challenges in mind; not so ensembles utilizing pointe shoes.

With a company like Charles Anderson’s Company C Contemporary Ballet which performs in varied venues, such adaptation is not always possible.  Company C, with its roster of fifteen dancers, also has the daunting factor of turnover: one dancer remains from the 2007 season, one from 2009.  Four members joined in 2010, three in 2011 and three, all men, joined this year, making continuity and cohesion the more challenging, particularly concerning collective company memory. The dancers compensate by their earnestness and are doubtless aided by Charles Anderson’s seemingly unflappable qualities.  Longer seasons, of course, would compensate for the turnover.

Each season Anderson tries to include works of a guest choreographer of note, ranging from Anthony Tudor to Twyla Tharp, and, once I believe, Paul Taylor’s Three Epitaphs.  This year Anderson reached into his advisory board and asked Dennis Nahat to mount Ontogeny, his 1970 work for The Royal Swedish Ballet which also was included in American Ballet Theatre’s repertoire at one point.  The revival was partially notable for the role given to Tian Tan and his execution, the floor postures at the opening evoking the starkness and geometric qualities of Mary Wigman and Doris Humphrey’s Life of a Bee.

Prior to the first intermission, Carl Flink’s A Modest Proposal and company member David Van Ligon’s Natoma were danced, and following the second intermission the company performed two Anderson works, For Your Eyes Only and Maurice Ravel’s Bolero, both premiered in 2007.  The first, danced in silence by Chantelle Pianetta, a small, rounded blonde and Bobby Briscoe, tall with sculpted muscles, required a pacing before rigorous lifts, each regarding the other.  I later learned For Your Eyes Only was created for a deaf audience to provide a sense of coordination between two dancers.  Pianetta and Briscoe reflected that requirement.

The entire ensemble pitched to dance the monotonous phrasing of Bolero, dressed in khaki green, with the girls’ costumes sporting bands of glitter and bare midriffs.  They clearly seemed to enjoy themselves, bringing the program to an energetic conclusion.