Five, Nineteen Equals Twenty-Three According to Joe Landini

Joe Landini, that force in San Francisco who has masterminded SAFE – Save the Arts From Extinction – has undisguised flair and presence which he demonstrated in introducing the two programs Rita Felciano and I saw Sunday, July 10 in different parts of ODC’s Theatre. This was Landini’s SAFEhouse Arts’ 6th Annual Summer Performance Festival.

Before discussing the two events seen, Landini’s assumption of One Grove Street’s space is numbered from the general conversation I was witness to. Burger King apparently owned the ground floor and has sold it, meaning that One Grove Street has perhaps a year remaining as a performance venue. Not much isk known about the new owners – I heard that doctors will be the new occupants – a clinic? A state of the Art something or other? If medical, are the practitioners aware that art belongs to the healing equation in they took the oath of Hippocrates.

The site of Ephesus possessed not only a hospital, but sports facilities and one of the great Greek classical theatres remaining. Would that medicine heed the confluence of forces, mind; body;expression.

Editorializing aside, three events were witnessed. The first, at 6p.m. in ODC’s upstairs studio on Shotwell and 17th was soloist Lucia August/Everybody Can Dance, “standing OUTstanding.”

August, a large, heavy set woman, handsome head with cropped grey hair, flashing greyish eyes and straight nose, and wonderfully capable hands with a sweeping arm capacity, started her largely autobiographical hour with Parallel Lives, describing how life went along on one track and her love of dancing intertwined until they joined forces at age 50.

The second piece, Consistent Paradox, told the tale of a man who “Had it all,” paid his minions well, who kept his secret that he was, in reality, a woman. This involved gestures showing him boxing himself in tighter and tighter, working himself into a frenzy, clearly fooling noone but himself.

They Never Really Leave, which completed the program told the tale of a lover from U.C. Santa Barbara days, who disappeared in 1983, but whose presence returns vividly every so often. Lucia August’s seniority has given her a forthright presence, an honesty about sexual preferences and definite performing skills.

Using the small elevator to get downstairs and around the corner [if not under the tree or hearing the Sergeant Major], it was to witness two much younger groups and an intriguing soloist who knows how to use lighting to enhance his movement

Peter and Co., formed in 2104, featured a solo, Interstice, and a trio titled Transverse Course. If not mistaken, Chen draws some of his inspiration from the circular, sinewy qualities of Asian marital arts. The credits indicate that solo works were the beginning, and the two pieces clearly reflect that particular emphasis.

Interstice as Websters New World Dictionary describes it is a small or narrow space between things or space, a cranny, crook, and, with the aid of side lighting, Chen’s solo conveyed that narrowness, the inability of the body to face fully forward, side ward or back. Yet, with the lighting and a remarkably eloquent torso and arm movement his body wended an eerie way with considerable cogency.

Transverse Course presented a trio, Kalani Hicks, Sophia Larriva, Alyssa Mirchel, in patterns which echoed faintly the circular and oval movements of Peter Chen but minus the shifts in height or eerie lighting. The piece demonstrated devoted dancers, but Chen still working towards movement with dancers as effective as his own personal style.

Tanya Charese’s Masses utilized a dozen dancers in an ambitious, semi-martial series of maneuvers, sometimes vertical, sometimes dropping or hunching on the floor, to emphasize not only routine, habitual daily movement, but also the loneliness of contemporary life. She assembled the ensemble and deployed them like a general, managing to convey an army-like movement on the march. Whether that was her intention I am unsure, but it was impressive.

The dozen performances were: Hayley Bowman, Kelsey Gerber, Mallory Markham, Maddie Matuska, Amy McMurcha, Rebecca Morris, Lind Phung, Jessica Rols, Emma Salmon, Vera Schwegher, Brittany Tran, Oona Wong-Danders.

Seeing these young dancers plus noting Joe Landini’s prodigous generosity in providing a showcase for their development provides hope for strong future dance statements.

Japanese Artistry at the 2016 San Francisco International Arts Festival

Cowell Theater at Fort Mason provided the venue for the opening performance May 19 of the Hiroshi Koike Bridge Project at the 2016 San Francisco International Arts Festival. The famous chilly winds of San Francisco Bay also were out whipping up the waters and chilling the audience as it walked the length of the pier to Cowell Theater’s new entrance.

Titled The Restaurant of Many Orders and supported by the U.S./Japan Cultural Trade Network, the 7 p.m. was the first of two performances constituting the three-person ensemble’s U.S. premiere.  It possessed many features making Japanese theatre such a treat and absorbing experience, even when the supporting sound is recorded. Let me enumerate: Asikazu Nakamura, shakuhachi; Shitamachi Kyodai, percussion; Toshio Nakagawa, piano with masks by the Balinese artisans I Wayan Tanggu and I Made Sutarka. Makoto Matushima is credited with art and Seiichiro Mori with props and Lighting by Takayuki Tomiyama. Responsible choreography and direction was byHiroshi Koike.

Rita Felicano expanded on the story of hunters seeking game, encounter a storm, getting lost until discovering the restaurant Wildcat Inn. She said the original story made the hunters English. Following instructions. two of them enter, following instructions, only to find themselves possible objects for dinner. Apparently the story was acquired by the Japanese.  Three superlative animal masks transform the hunters into forest animals, the configurations very traditional Japanese in style.

The three performers are Tatsuro Koyano, Ayako Araki, and Akira Otsuka. What a trio they are. Two are tall, willowy and fairly young,  the third stocky, of medium height, clearly the senior of the three , who may have passed forty. For eloquence of body they are fantastic for the myriad of body gestures and expressive movements,  all mouth-gapingly terrific.

The opening smoke wafted ahead of the players’ entry, one shape looking like a creeping dragon, fitfully illumined. The sounds followed the story line faithfully.

Using a low semi-circle construction as their stage, two signboards and a portable structure to indicate a doorway, the trio present themselves in terribly correct gentlemen hunter garb, using long metallic poles to indicate weapons, sticking them in holes in the semi-circular structure from time to time;  expressions, postures and interplay would do credit to the Marx Brothers. There didn’t seem to be an eye-brow lift, shoulder shrug, weight shift or body lunge  left not utilized. Off center balances were remarkable with front and center to the audience seemed to complete a paragraph or episode in the story. The deftness used with the props was like watching a master calligrapher arranging ink, paper and brush. In the end, the shirts of the trios were drenched, the completeness of performance visibly illustrated.

Twenty-four hours later, my mind replays ambiance, gestures, filled with admiration and satisfaction over this gift from the Land of the Rising Sun.

Ghosts and Samurai as seen by Tajal Harrell

Cal Performances presented Tajal Harrell’s performance piece, The Ghost of Montpelier Meets the Samurai, at Zellerbach Playhouse March 18 to an audience of widely ranging ages; judging from post-performance comments, varied aesthetic persuasions. I went with Rita Felciano who filled me in on from ‘Eighties practices in New York City after the hour and forty minutes of non-stop watching an amazing parade of stylistic devices. Seven skillful dancers used their admirable physiques in the performing admonition “Etonne moi!” They succeeded in that regard without leaving me particularly gratified, but cognizant there’s a lot “out there” of which I have been blissfully and happily ignorant. A 2012 New Yorker review also helped bring me up to snuff regarding M. Harrell.

Clearly I mentally live in a cultural backwater when reading the program’s production support: Festival Montpellier Dance 2014; Festival d’Automme 2015, Centre Pompidou; Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis; Hau Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin and residency support also stemmed from Montpelier, Antwerp and Angers, The French US Exchange in Dance and Creative Capital, New England Foundation for the Arts/National Dance Project; Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts.

The Zellerbach Playhouse has a broad proscenium and presented several chairs near the stage lip, a low table which had steps leading up to it in the back and down the stage left corner. Behind it were about three oblong pads about two or three inches high and before the exit/ entrances on either side of the back stage; another table, lower than the front, with a variety of objects atop and cluttered around the long side faced the audience from upstage right.

Two of the seven performers with Harrell making a third were mentioned in the 2012 New Yorker review: Thibault Lac and Ondrej Vidial. The others were Perle Polombe, Steven Thompson, Christine Vassiliou, and Camille Durif Bonis.

Production credits were heavily weighted with Harrell’s name: soundtrack, set design with Erik Flatmo, costumes with the performers and, of course, choreography, such as it was. Stefane Parraud was credited with lighting design, dramaturgy with Gerard Mayen and Rob Fordeyn provided the voice over.
Harrell, swathed in red, started off the performance in the guise of Anna Wintour of Vogue exhorting the audience to support the arts in the face of continuing cuts. There was a raffle with first a man and then a woman making choices from the upstage props. One of the performers came out in sneakers and then a girl from stage left crossed the stage in grey sweat pants and very ordinary tee shirt in a loping walk referencing the cat walk of fashion shows. After perching on the table with a slim young woman who came out in high heels, and the two of them chatting via hand-held mikes, the cast began to emerge in costumes ranging from the minimal to the maximum covering. These latter garments were burka-like draperies of colorful prints, suggesting “the mysterious East” of late nineteenth century imagination. The accompanying music possessed a strong beat and minimal melody, the performers moving with a sway to the hips, a strut to the walk and on partial toe, barefoot, which in itself, was quite a feat.  This apparently is “vogueing.”

There was an early discussion about the connection between Dominique Bagouet and Tatsumi Hijikata, credited as the co-founder of butoh. [Kazuo Ohno is the other.] The performers who claimed it had started in Paris were corrected by Harrell, who said it happened in the East Village because Ellen Stewart, the founder of La Mama, brought them together.  White makeup was later applied by the performers to one another.

Harrell came on stage, first in black street wear, later in patterned brown draperies, echoing and leading the one-two-three hitching movement which varied from marching to swaying, pairing performers in a vastly modified echo of Greek dancing. Eventually, they all meandered their way to the backstage exits, after Harrell moved along the aisles in front of the seated audience exhorting the audience to join the rhythm.

During the performance there were three or four lighted objects circling on the backstage table among the objects originally available for the raffle. It was impossible to discern exactly their raison d’etre from my particular seat.

The ensemble enjoyed some loud cheers and clapping from the back. Next to me a senior couple left their seats sometime during the first twenty minutes. As Rita and I walked to her car, I heard members of the audience remark, “It’s a sort of alternate theatre, as if you had strayed up to the Castro,” and another phrase a minute or two later from someone else, “There were obviously layers of reference which were quite obscure.”

The burka-like costumes reminded me of gypsy costumes, my sister, first cousin and I wore one afternoon in my grandmother’s back yard.  I never ticked that off as art.

 

 

 

San Francisco Ballet’s Swan Lake, February 19 and 23

Swan Lake’s opening lost to Jacques d’Amboise appearance at Nourse
Auditorium so I saw Davit Karapetyan and Maria Kochetkova in the principal roles February 20. On February 23 I paid for a ticket to see Carlo de Lanno and Sofiane Sylve in their second essay as Siegfried and Odette/Odile. I am here to tell you I was glad for each dollar spent on a credit card.

Rita Felciano has written a brilliant commentary for Danceviewtimes on the rationale of the Swan Lake setting, much of which is supported in the programnotes. The physical setting is handsome and, architecturally, more than a little overbearing, clearly the intention. Siegfried isn’t supposed to have many options, and in Act III, the staircase is overpowering and intrusive, diminishing the depth of dancing space.

Inspired by Rita’s observations I went back to Wikipedia’s time line for Russian history and, in particular, Nicholas II, Imperial Russia’s last czar. His marriage as well as the death of his father occurred in 1894. Swan Lake got its Petipa-Ivanov premiere in St. Petersburg in 1895, and the time lines suggest unrest, acknowledged or not in the program. Serfdom had been abolished by Nicholas II’s ancestor, Alexander I, in the 1860’s with not much thought to the ramifications.

In Mongolia or the northern reaches of Imperial Russia there was a tradition of imitating swans. At the 1979 International Ballet Competition in Jackson, Alexandra Danilova urged me to see the second performance of some Chinese guests where the man did a swan dance to boggle the mind at the similarity with Odette’s movements in Act II. Though there is no written verification of Siberian travels, Lev Ivanov may well have seen traveling performers in St Petersburg in this evocative solo and incorporated elements of it into Act II’s haunting Odette solo.

The story is much more medieval and Eastern European than the current production would have you believe visually. With the Queen Mother’s silvery white wig out of Gainsborough and the elegant tones of deep greens and rusty scarlets, as well as the graceful swirl of skirts below Empire bodices, it is definitely early 19th century, quite at cross purposes with the bow bestowed upon Siegfried by his mother. Anita Paciotti gave us an imperious, well-meaning mother, well-meaning in the sense that dynasty must go on.

Paired with Davit Karapetyan and Maria Kochetkova were Daniel Dievison-Oliviera with predartory glances and smouldering postures as Von Rothbart with Gennadi Nedvigin in the pas de trois with Koto Ishihara and Lauren Strongin. For Sylve and de Lanno, their Von Rothbart was an icy, remote Tiit Helimets. the Act I trio included Taras Domitro, Doris Andre and Sasha de Sola.

While dancers are all different, Karapetyan and Kochetkova share the Russian tradition in training, while the Sylve-de Lanno schooling seems more firmly based in Western European lineage with a certain understated directness that nonetheless manages nuance and musicality where the two K’s possess a grander attack. Karapetyan is more clearly the prince receiving homage, de Lanno deferential and vulnerable, both clearly alone facing the maternal demand. Kochetkova dances Odette as a young girl, her Odile a sly vamp, while Sylve’s Odette is youthful if mature, though still trapped, and her Odile focused and calculated.

While I was somewhat relieved not to see six identically dressed princesses dancing the same waltz at the same time, which would beleaguer any young man’s judgment, the choice of transforming four national dancers, with two Russians to make up the roster, struck me as odd. The setting and story implies purity of the prospective brides, but they are partnered and frequently hoisted by their countrymen, scarcely a virginal display in any one of the four styles.

The swan corps, the cygnets and the lead swans were all admirable as was the
level of the production. Swan Lake is clearly a classic; one likes to see what the principals will make of their assignments, but I now find other full length works more absorbing.

Tamara Tabor-Smith at ODC September 24

A lucky break allowed me to see Amara Tabor-Smith at ODC September 24. I met her through Elizabeth Zimmer, who had been her instructor for Smith’s Master Program at Hollins College.and when Tabor-Smith said she had started out with Ed Mock that caught me, along with her vibrant personality.

EarthBodyHOME involved four performers,including Tabor-Smith and co-director Dohee Lee. That further marked the shamanistic qualities of this work based on the brief, turbulent life of Cuban-born artist Anna Mendieta. The power of this ritualistically-strengthened work was assisted by composer/musician Jackeline Rago, Dana Kawano’s costume and set design, the video skills of Eric Koziol and Jose Maria Francos’ lighting.

Entering ODC Theatre’s lobby close to the doors opening, drums were active and the crowd particularly scrunched up. Rita Felciano and I found ourselves behind a woman taking images on her cell phone which enabled us to see the action otherwise lost to view. Plastic bottles of honey were being passed with the admonishment of taking some as emblematic of life’s sweetness. While this was going on a slender woman with extraordinarily beautiful hands, a body of evident agility and muscular proportion, slithered through the crowd rubbing her hands and occasionally gesturing over the length of an onlooker in what seemed to be acknowledgment and a blessing.

Someone spoke as well in phrases intoning a departure from usual theatrical norms, exact wording flitting by me minus any attempting to scribble salient words to remember.

When the audience was admitted to the theater, the audience thinned sufficiently to reveal an oblong shape in the middle of the lobby, scattered over and around with red petals, the object itself a square with a mummy-like indentation lined with grass-like wisps of green. If not sensed before, I knew the 70 non-stop minutes were going to be unusual.

Inside the theater a video image of water completely filled the back of the stage with musicians downstage left; upstage from them a huge hanging, mobile-like construction of what seemed picture frames juxtaposed one against another, hanging almost to knee height. In front of this assembly a woman in white stood, motionless, arms crossed at the waist, her skirt a cascade of gathered ruffles, face obscured by black hair.

ODC’s stage space invites mystery with the audience able to look down on the procedure, and the space between the figure and the mobile-like construction and two figures downstage right, noted but not the focus, lent a pregnant air beginning the seventy-minute performance. An apt phrase for all of a sudden the ruffled creature began of writhe and in a few seconds out from underneath the ruffles and bent knees came a small woman with dark ponytail in lime green trunks rolling forward, confined by a length strip of red ribbon firmly wound around her groin and vagina.

The major action followed, the prolonged release of the ribbon, with the subsequent sense of upbringing and initiation into adulthood. The progress was symbolized from upstage left to down stage right, where the two figures crouched and issued initiatory sounds. Not least among this group was Dohee Lee, Tabor-Smith’s collaborator, clearly sharing affinity for the unseen world of divination.

The seventy-minute work finished with an impassioned chant and departure through a backstage right exit which the audience was invited to utilize, an exit framed completely with a honey brown tone bark and branches; clearly an intensive labor of construction, it seemed criminal the passage would exist for just three performances.

Program VIII SF Ballet’s Romeo and Juliet

May Day, May Day, May Day – San Francisco Ballet opened Helgi Tomasson’s Romeo and Juliet at San Francisco’s Opera House with the incredible costumes and set by Hans Jens Worsae, some stalwarts in their accustomed roles and several new ones, and, of course, that score by Sergei Prokofiev.

I would swear the some of the choreography had been altered; such imaginings the curse of an imprecise memory and seeing a number of same named productions by different companies. Here there are so many wonderful touches, from the Verona town square arousing from dawn to early morning. I do not remember the rose window of the church being illuminated, or reflected either in the scene where Romeo and Juliet are wed by Friar Lawrence, or when Juliet comes rushing for guidance from that pivotal ecclesiastical figure.

When the company first produced the ballet, Rita Felciano and Eric Hellman organized a symposium around the production, mentioning the original production by Vana Psota in Brno, Slovakia just before World War II and the German takeover of the short-lived republic of Czechoslovakia. Juliets then in the company also were interviewed.

The key speaker for me, however, was an historian who had researched the demographics of Renaissance Italy, basing his findings on the data available in Florence, and, presumably, Tuscany. He found a substantial number of
single parent households, the woman in charge of young children, the husband deceased, documents recording his age at least a decade or two older than the widow. The historian, and forgive my failure to identify him at this juncture, concluded that the young men went off to war, the older men, survivors of conflicts, married the dewy young damsels, and that romance, let alone marriage between age-alike young men and women was unthinkable. Ergo, why is County Paris clearly a stripling in the figure of Steven Morse? Why not Jim Sohm or Reubin-Martin-Cintas as more historically accurate, whose name also implies his possession of quite a spread of hectares?

That harangue completed, I have only praise for the pairing of Val Caniparoli and Sofiane Sylve as the Capulet parents, the easy grandeur of Caniparoli and the intense swirling elegance of Sylve were exactly right. Sherri Le Blanc, making a debut as The Nurse, seemed less lusty but equally caring as Juliet’s Nurse, and as Tybalt, Anthony Vincent (heretofore named Spaulding) was elegant, sinister, a calculating figure, clearly frustrated by Lord Capulet’s insistence on politeness within the family palace.

When the House of Montague appeared, Jeffrey Lyons and Lacey Escabar seemed slightly defensive in the power contest, given to spirit more than concerned with tangible spoils. In Mercutio, Taras Domitro seemed to personify this, less an older pal to Romeo than an impulsive intuitive with vast technical gifts. As Benvolio, Hansuke Yamamoto was required to bring some gravitas to the merriment which he did with elevation and elan. In Carlos Quenedit, there was Romeo you might have seen with his gang, sporting a Giants ballcap turned backwards, relaxing around a motorbike or with a group of mechanics, likeable, young, competent, as innocent of poetry as he was on the mark as Basile in Don Quixote.

The role of Verona’s Prince has always been well served by Martin Pistone, cutting a figure of physical power with the will to use it. Dores Andre and Dana Genshaft made slender, spirited, clearly street-wise harlots, Andre’s discovery of Mercutio’s imminent death particularly sharp. The trio of acrobats, Noriko Matsuyama, Francisco Mungamba and Wei Wang were adept in their assignment, Wang’s strength an interesting contrast to Mungamba’s flexibility and Matsyama’s pertness. Mercutio’s death scene gave Domitro the chance to demonstrate dramatic power, combined with his prodigious technique, showing what his dramatic gifts can provide. I wonder if he might make a better Romeo.

Sarah Van Patten first danced Juliet when she was 16 with the Royal Danish Ballet, before joining San Francisco Ballet. Her partner prior to Carlos Quenedit was Pierre-Francois Vilanoba; I confess to missing him. Her interpretation possesses a gossamer dusting of impulse and emotion; the initial meeting and the balcony scenes were explorations to be followed by the culmination in the early morning final pas de deux. Particularly impressive was Van Patten’s fateful behavior in her bedroom with the senior Capulets and Paris. The Capulets’ insensitive ploughing ahead with nuptial plans despite Tybalt’s death, more implacably so by Lady Capulet – the sweep of her skirt as telling here as in the ballroom, Sylve’s face marvelously stoical, her gestures and movements conveying it all, pulling the velvet yardage away from Juliet’s grasp. Helgi Tomasson’s production, visually splendid, is both a challenge to the company and a pleasure to its audience.

NDT 2,San Francisco, Monday February 16

Talk about Under the Radar!

Rita Felciano gave me her spare seat to the sold-out, single performance of NDT II Monday, February 16, sandwiched between two engagements South and north of San Francisco. Margaret Karl, 11 years a San Francisco dancer, was responsible for public relations, abetted by Facebook, accounting for a third of ticket sales to see this eighteen dancer ensemble. At the door of the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre [celebrating its centennial February 20] were individuals murmuring “Ticket for sale?”

For a few, certainly for me, one draw was Benjamin Berends, Santa Rosa native, who studied with Tamara Stakoun and Gina Ness at Santa Rosa Dance Theatre, Richard Gibson and Zory Karah at Academy of Ballet, San Francisco,with Boston Ballet Trainee Program and Andre Reyes, before joining Smuin Ballet briefly, then dancing with the Trey McIntyre Project before it dissolved. With Marc Platt I had seen him as the prince in the Nutcracker one December, witnessing Marc’s approval and injunction to study hard, a treat not often witnessed of a one-time notable exhorting a future notable.

As a trivia collector, I noted that seven hailed from North America – two from Canada; eight from The Netherlands and nearby Belgium and Denmark; two from Japan; one from England, along with the fact that NDT’s artistic directors hail from England and Spain with one of its originals, Jiri Kylian from Czechoslovakia. Similarly, two works came from the artistic directors, one from Israel, one from Sweden. The dancers themselves have equal physical diversity, in excellent condition of course; one or two the women one would expect in the United States to elect dancing in modern dance companies. Hail NDT!

The group, dancing with wonderful ensemble sense,still have arrived fairly recently to their positions, five dancers joining in 2012, four in 2013, eight in 2014 and one just this January.

Johan Singer’s New Then, 2012, introduced half the company to five of Van Morrison’s songs with the expected results of vigorous if unexpected movements – bends, crouches, swivels in the hips, directional explorations in the arms and partnering. Boy-girl relationships scarcely enjoyed length or happy conclusion, though everything was this side of sinister.

Imre van Optsal and Spencer Dickhaus were paired in Shutters Shut, the 4 minute work by Sol Leon and Paul Lightfoot, 2003, set to a Gertrude Stein poem “If I told him: A completed portrait of Picasso.” I found it textually annoying, if the dancers were themselves contrasted in more ways than one. Van Opsal, a robust figured woman, contrasted with Dickhaus, slender to the point of being wispy; they were dressed in black and white swimsuit like leotards with the black on one body in the position of where it appeared on the other, quite appropriate for Stein’s repetitions, declaimed in her own voice.

Sara, created in 2013 by Sharon Eyad and Gail Behar, used seven dancers to Ori Lichtik’s music, and was dressed in skinlike unitards. It was not a work to linger in memory like the final number following intermission.

Leon and Lightfoot also created in 2003 a work to the second movementt of Franz Schubert’s Death and the Maiden String Quartet #14, titled Subject to Change. With four dancers in black suits, Gregory Lau, Benjamin Behrends, Richel Wieles amd Spencer Dichaus, the principals were Katharine van de Wouwer and Alexander Anderson, plus a square of red carpet, which the quarter unrolled before de Wouwer appeared and later manipulated counterclockwise at an appropriate moment, traditionally a symbol of death.

Alexander Anderson, a Juilliard graduate, Princess Grace recipient among other awards, was the death figure, stripped to the waist and graced with a most articulate, well-defined set of muscles, partnered de Wouwer dressed in a short filmy costume, hers a sweet-eyed, warm countenance, compliant in the embrace of the inevitable, if not wholly cognizant of the import. I found myself remembering George Balanchine’s La Valse and an Agnes de Mille work for the Joffrey, A Bridgroom Called Death, also to Schubert’s music. In both these earlier works the same fascination/ambivalence appeared. Anderson disappears; at the end de Wouwer stands alone, stage center on the red carpet, her attitude of wonder, ageless, supplicant and accepting.

Of the five works danced this memorable Monday evening Subject to Change has lingered longest in the memory. And the company? come again soon, please!

Wendy Whelan and Four Choreographers

S.F. Performances presented Wendy Whelan for her first performance in San Francisco in her post-New York City Ballet production and it was a full house. After the brief, no intermission performance of four pieces, the artists lined up, hosted by Christopher Stowell, who shared classes at the School of American Ballet with Whelan, for a Q and A. The two San Francisco performances constituted the first of what was to be an 11-site tour, weaving across the country in the grand old Columbia Concert series road tours. The original production of Restless Creature debuted at Jacob’s Pillow in 2013.

For Restless Creature, Whalen asked four young choreographers to create pas de deux in which they each would dance with her. Spanish-born Alejandro Carrudo, associated with Chicago’s Hubbard Street Dance since 2005, utilized the four composers Max Richter, Philip Glass, Olafur Arnalds and Gavin Bryars for Ego et Tu.. Joshua Beamish, relied on Johann Sebastian Bach as played by Glenn Gould for Conditional Sentences, created this year, apparently just before the tour commenced. Kyle Abraham’s The Serpent and The Smoke, created in 2013, used two works by Haouschka and Hildur Guonadottir. With Brian Brooks 2012 pas de deux First Fall to five pieces by Philip Glass, the program sans intermission was completed.

Apart from admiring the Whelan movement qualities, the looseness of the choreography was my dominant impression with snatches of overall attack; Carrudo’s faintly sinuous flavor; the insistent beat for Beamish’s composition; wonderful, low stretches and weaving patterns with Abrahim’s and the persistent falls Brian Brooks gave Whelan. She clearly gave her all to each movement form, enjoying the variety and honoring her partners, an egoless demonstration if ever I saw one, totally devoted to the work.

Whelan’s body is spare, as one might expect from a ballet dancer, but it also is remarkably square to oblong in its impression, with those amazingly free arms and legs which the choreography used to great advantage. The Whelan profile is handsome; a nose belonging to a family with some obvious ancestry, and a jaw giving evidence of durability. It’s a pity Balanchine never had the chance to work with her.

Rita Felciano remarked, “I’ve never seen so many people stay for post-performance comments.”

David Michalek, Whalen’s husband, served as creative director, the lighting credits belonged to Joe Levosseur and the modest costumes to Karen Young. The two performances, starting at 7:30 p.m., also constituted Whalen’s first visit to San Francisco. Hopefully it will not be her last.

Sasha Waltz at Cal Performances

Sasha Waltz and Guests appeared at U.C.’s Zellerbach October 24, 2014 with her 2004 work Impromptu, featuring seven dancers, a pianist and a singer. They appeared on a stage featuring two tilted dance spaces, the left one tilting down to the physical floor, the right tilted slightly upstage with a large backdrop hung at a slight angle; there dancers emerged and also where they periodically vanished. The pianist was seated downstage right, her back to the audience .The singer appeared mainly on the smaller, upward tilted space next to the piano, exiting behind the pianist. The dancers, incidentally, hailed from Canada, China (2), Israel (2), Madagascar, Spain. Everything, costumes included, were neutral or faintly hued.

Impromptu was created to five such titled pieces plus four songs by Franz Schubert. Unlike colleagues Rita Felciano and Allan Ulrich, this was my introduction to the German choreographer; Rita remarked it was unlike Waltz’ other works which were more “dramatic story telling.” So I had no basis for comparison, knowing her only by reputation. This appearance in itself had to be remarkable; the logistics of transporting the staging must have required a sizeable subsidy. I am inclined to think in terms of salaries and production costs as much as the message and visual impact. The technical cast numbered ten.

That said, the first dancer emerging from the back stage void seemed to be working with a loose interpretation of a renverse attitude turns, joined by the other dancers appearing and disappearing. I thought I was watching a woman copying these turns, following with semi-developpes with lifts looking like casual imitations of a la secondes. There was an aura of the deliberately amateurish, though a slow movement followed, epitomizing controlled balance, with an acrobatic section provoking scattered spontaneous audience applause not only in admiration but also relief that the lengthy exposition was completed.

No attempt was made to blend singer with dancers. When she appeared in a white floor-length column of a dress, she was a vertical, distinct, apart, though not antagonistic, still a pause, a space, almost an interruption as if Waltz’ choreography stopped telling its mysterious story. She first appeared from behind the large off center hanging oblong; later she emerged from stage right near the piano and exited there as well.

The dancers were wonderfully skilled, at times deliberately awkward in the William Steig vein of “My mother loved me but she died,” or “I mind my own business,” executed with devastating simplicity. A trio of women flitted around the stage construction near the piano which tilted upwards, two of them literally bathing in water concealed from one’s view in the orchestra. The two pulled the third backward into the water and calmly rose from their own occupancy, losing themselves in the shadows behind the hanging oblong. All this to the delicate nuances of Schubert skillfully rendered.

Majesty as viewed by Garrett Moulton Productions

Luminous Edge is the latest collaboration of Janice Garrett and Charles Moulton; it was premiered September 18-21, 2014 at Lam Research Theater in the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Complex on Mission Street at Third Street, San Francisco. It should be repeated for serious souls everywhere.

It’s not very often I find myself thinking or uttering the word “Majestic,” but that was my take on the performance shared with Rita Felciano as we left the seventy some minute work. It included songs by Gustav Mahler sung in lushly loving tones by contralto Karen Clark standing upstage left beside seven other musicians.

Why majestic? That implies something special, transcendent. What was it about this clearly contemporary work penetrating that difficult hierarchy of values? Part of the impression rose from the formations – Two lines comprising twenty dancers faced each other from back to front stage center at the beginning; even from orchestra left, the formality registered, reinforced when the three principal couples moved from stage back forward and later danced together with collective movements interspersed.

Moulton, noted for his choir of dancers, stair-stepped, and manipulating objects in fascinating and progressively complicated patterns, here assigned more interaction with the principal dancers. The choir had their moments, then a black out, and a pas de deux, but there were places, as the work intensified, where the principals reached out to them, or a member of dancing choir stepped out of the formation and inter-acted. The feeling of the individual and the collective relating became strong, as well as tender and evocative. The interspered Mahler songs in the haunting tones of Karen Clark’s contralto, not always clear in the sound system, intensified the impression of witnessing something almost baroque in contemporary life.

My impression, a plain if awesome reaction, was like seeing the Golden Eye of God in the Protestant Church in East Berlin just before the 1990 German reunification. This symbol was carefully protected from the pulverizing Allied bombings during the final days of the European conflict in World War II, an emblem of faith, a surviving icon in the face of horrendous outer chastisement.

With the couples vanishing between the lines of the movement choir at the end, the work visually summarized the lines “The captains and the kings depart; still stands thy ancient sacrifice, a humble and a contrite heart.” You have to admit that’s strong stuff.

The principal dancers were Vivian Aragon, Carolina Czechowska, Dudley Flores, Michael Galloway, Tegan Schwabe, Nol Simonse.