Yuriko Doi and The Theatre of Yugen

Over thirty five years ago, Yuriko Doi started The Theatre of Yugen. March 17 Yuriko returned in a poignant comedy rare in the Kyogen dramatic repertoire.

For those unfamiliar with Japanese drama, kyogen is the comic relief to Noh, dating from the Ashikagi shogun period of Japan, also known as the Muromachi, 1336-1573. It gave way briefly to the Momoyama before the Tokugawa shogunate closed Japan to the outside world and solidified many of the practices we so romanticize about Japanese culture. Kyogen shared the same stage as Noh, employs masks, but concentrates on the merriment or mishaps of the common people, quite broad and gutsy, if highly stylized and equally rigorous in its training and execution. The cast usually numbers three individuals and the episode is usually quite small.

Don Kenny, the American exponent of kyogen, translator of the repertoire, and a fellow student with Yuriko Doi under Mansaku Nomura, has described kyogen training as proceeding more or less all at once, speaking, singing and acting rather than breaking down the components. This training proceeds with learning the particular walk used in kyogen which is slightly different than in classical noh, but achieved only with endless practice.

Out of a series of four, March 17 saw two divergent offerings, The Persimmon Mt. Priest, Kaki Yamabushi, and The Headwaters, Kawakami, with Yuriko Doi. The selections mirrored the raucous and the delicacy possible within kyogen style

One can’t exactly blame a thirsty monk for substituting a kaki for water. It’s just that he goes a little overboard, as who wouldn’t with delicious kaki, its shape memorialized in a famous Zen painting – no gooey hachiyas here. The farmer finds him and no amount of accrued power assists the priest.

Kawakami is as elegaic as Kaki Yamabushi is robust. A signal lesson in the price one pays for getting what one wants, a blind man travels to a shrine of Jizo to try to gain his sight. In a dream he is told he will have his desire if he divorces his wife. Returning home, he experiences his sight, but his wife in unwilling to grant him the condition made in his dream, telling him the gods would not be so unkind as to deprive him of the miracle. Convinced and following her, the brief excursion into sight is taken from him, placing him once again in the care of his wife.

Yuriko Doi’s portrait seemed one with Tokugawa era folk life depictions, her face delicately mirroring the emotions of the blind, a recipient of a miracle, the yielding to the deep relationship between husband and wife.

Other program participants were: Sheila Berotti; Sheila Devitt; Alexander Lydon; Karen Merek; Jubilith Moore.

Chiroi Miyagawa’s The Lingering Life is scheduled June 5-14 at Z Space, “a distinctly contemporary Western pay with the intensity of nine classical Japanese Noh dramas at its root.”

Given the careful training and nurturing by Theatre of Yugen, of the Japanese classical tradition, June should be anticipated with excitement.

Joe Goode’s “Hush” at Z Space, September 26

Joe Goode and his company moved into Project Artaud following the death of long-time occupant Pepe Ozan and his space was renamed the Joe Goode Annex.

Project Artaud started out in 1925 as the American Can Company, providing jobs for San Francisco’s Mission residents until the 1960’s. A group of artists formed a non-profit organization in 1971, naming the space after Antonin Artaud [1896-1948]. The city block houses three theaters of varying sizes and some 80 practicing artists, mostly visual artists and designers; their evocative work are displayed in the Gallery section of the Web-site. At the 2013 Isadora Duncan Dance Award Ceremony, the house manager mentioned proudly that it is the oldest artists’ cooperative in the United States.

The Z Space itself seats 229 on riser seating which has been reconfigured in at least three different ways that I personally witnessed. The organization recently added Z Below, with 88 seats, once the home of A Traveling Jewish Theatre. Lisa Steindler is the artistic and Lori Lacqua the executive director.

Hush as a word has familial connotations, namely “shut up.” Here, however, Hush here refers to an individual’s desire not to talk about painful experience or almost pathological hesitation. These interpretations are part of Goode’s on-going focus on the “outsider,” the pangs of isolation for “not fitting in,” or exposition of some monumental personal divide. It reminds me of the family comment “fitting in with the family plans,” to which the retort is “what plans?”

Before discussing the production with its evocative values, I want to state that for the audience to read the program without squinting or resorting to sheer intuition, Z space might install a few more lights for said purpose. I could scarcely make out the letters, with cataracts currently far from ripe. Plus, whoever was responsible for the program format and color choices might remember that the first directive for a program is to be readable physically, not simply an exercise in color contrast and printing obscura. The results may have been striking on the cover, but the interior could not possibly qualify for bon usage, photographs and white text on grey excepted. The characters also were not identified with names of their interpreter. How casual can one get?

The set and sound effects moved the action forward with genuine facility. A door downstage left symbolized the distant domicile of the young woman [Damara Vita Ganley] who was gang raped, and a corrugated sheet on rollers, painted manure hue with graffiti, proclaimed the wall where two male characters lounged; and there was a bar that moved as well a small circular table with a couple of chairs, where Jessica Swanson effectively conveyed an ambitious woman blind to the effect her career comments sound to a man whose sexuality is probably his main calling card in her landscape. The edge was unmistakable.

Jennifer Gonsalves’ costume choices seemed like a near masterpiece on haphazard morning dressing,tee-shirts color-hued monotony standouts.

If I have to rely on physical appearance alone, Felipe Barrueto-Cabello and Melecio Estrella were the two gay men who finally connect in one of the most lyric dancing passages in the piece. Hush primarily seemed to state a situation and then it was acted/danced out, making the “trajectory” loose and episodic,

I have to guess it was Andrew Ward and Alexander Zendzian who slouched or slumped against the corrugated wall with enormous style and cinematic acuity. When the career tirade and the prospect of moving to Salt Lake City arrived in the dialogue, one of them, making pickles, provided chuckles as he plunked green circles into what was intended to be pickling brine.

There is no question that Joe Goode has a laconic wit, is familiar with the drifting, directionless sub-epidemic cloaking many, many American lives, providing it with a theatrical portrait conveying the casual covering desperate interior confusion. As someone emerging from The Great Depression with relief, I, perhaps unfortunately, prefer a brisker beat.

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.

Yuri Zhukov’s Product 4, ZSpace, San Francisco, September 1

Z Space was the vessel of Yuri Zhukov’s Project 4  debuting September 1               for a three-performance run utilizing seven dancers; five men, two women,          some peopling the Zhukov annual productions before.   Prodigiously talented,     Zhukov’s offerings included not only the choreography for the single piece, Dreams Recycled, but also costume design with Tilly Amundson, part of the video work, and five handsome photographs on sale in the lobby afterwards via silent auction. Zhukov’s inventions were seconded by videographer Austin Forbord and Lighting Designer Matthew Antaky.

Project 4 featured third year returnees Christopher Bordenave and Sergio Junior Benvindo de Sousa; second year veterans Kaja Bjorner, Allie Papazian and Darren Devaney.  New to the Zhukov Project series this year were Douglas Scott Baum and Martyn Garside.

Zhukov’s choreography has a generous concept ruling it: making his dancers look good and displaying  their amazing techniques.  What’s not for a dancer to like?  On the flat performing space, the dancers performed in sock like foot coverings, enabling them to execute dazzling turns a la seconde emerging from a pivot, frequently with a contracted torso with arms twined around the head, twisted against each other, clasped behind the back.

In dream-like terms, the men were trussed up, manacled, abused, shot, dying. Yet, for all the extremist positions, no one position was maintained too long; it was as if Zhukov’s classical training at the Vaganova Institute did not allow him to dwell on gore or the grotesque over long; it’s neither good manners nor certainly is not classical.  Therefore, what was seen were sketches, occasional use of males in quartet motion, and the sequences with the spoken word, nothing cohering, more of a troubled mind than a semblance of coherence or narrative.

For program notes, a narrative would appear on the left, followed by one on the  right, six of them, before the unwritten denouement, printed against images of two male performers, some shades of grey almost too dark to read with ease. The spoken narratives were delivered low key, almost thrown away – Katja Bjorner’s was about Seeking, being propelled forward, then an encounter with a man, not clearly perceived, but felt in the body,  a perfect description of the Jungian shadow concept.

Chris Bordenave’s Remembering imagery was a visit to his mother’s room only to discover her face was covered with all seeing eyes, a fascinating cross between the Goddess Tara image and sexual prohibition.

Martyn Garside’s passage held elements of madness in its description of Killing with a cheese-wire, very narrow, very sharp with the fascination of the resulting long, thin red line.

Dream number four was de Souza’s Running, using an extended video of his running along nameless concrete buildings, before Baum’s Petit Prince-like recitation regarding Skiing.

Devaney’s Hallucinating incorporated images of jelly fish projected floating across the large screen.

Somewhere  Garside unrolled a swath of white paper across stage front, scribbling as it unfurled, outlining his body, doodling madly before abruptly tearing it into bits.

Allie Papazian was not given a particular solo, emerging in a short black dress; with its swinging skirt, she moved laterally from stage left to  right with slow, exaggerated developpes  thrusting her hips forward with torso and shoulders almost parallel to the floor.

In a nod perhaps to his native landscape, Zhukov included a woodland scene with Bjorner framed and moving through it, repeating the image of her earlier narrative. There was an encounter with Papazian ending in a kiss; a sudden blackout, again never exploring such an intimacy. Near this  all seven dancers appeared briefly together.

This is Zhukov’s first work to depart from some semblance of narrative; the  rehearsal period  may have left appropriate developments unrealized.  Zhukov repeated visual elements seen before in a new context.  Despite the superb performances given by the dancers, Dreams Recycled needed another two or three go arounds.

Even unfinished, however, Zhukov’s ideas and imagery are something to
anticipate.