Dance

ODC Summer Dance Festival

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ODC Summer Dance Festival
Sunday, August 18, 2024 Matinee

Two Dance Events: Different Perspectives

In my long history of attending dance events, I have pleasant memories of receiving a paper program, learning something about the event and waiting, well-informed, for the curtain up, the lights down. Now, with clever assistance and cell phone, the information appears on the screen held in one’s hand. There’s always too much to read and then…the show starts.

The first event of the Sunday matinee of ODC’s Summer Dance Festival was an extended solo by Jenna Varvara. Varvara is a response to both Alexander Rodchenko’s photograph “PerformingFurniture,” which features his artistic collaborator and life partner Varvara Stepanova, and to Stepanova’s body of creative work. One of the prominent Russian Constructivist artists, Stepanova’s endeavors included textiles, visual poetry, costumes, and set designs. Soviet theater critic Konstantin Rudnitsky wrote, “The human body was perceived as a machine: man had to learn to control that machine.” It was the theatre’s function to demonstrate the fine-tuning of the human ‘mechanisms.’”

So we see the dancer encountering a variety of stage set pieces and costumes which she can successfully maneuver, climb, touch and handle along with an extensive movement vocabulary. She is very successful and deliberate in all this. Finally, reduced to her basic underwear, she rests…and begins again. Varvara îs an extremely powerful performer; her skill is excellent and well executed. But, alas, it is all too much (at least for this member of the audience). She is to be admired, applauded and remembered for this dimension and intention, but the event is too long and somehow it is not extended to the audience. It is as if she is dancing for herself and the constructive ideas.

Then, at the other extreme. Charles Slender White with “Half-Time, Full Out”. The dancers move together, much like a cheer-leading squad, breaking formation only occasionally to go behind a set piece to change costumes. The costumes also reflect the ‘team’ nature of this event; they are bright blue, red and occasionally gold …. and they all wear blue socks! Rah,Rah! The dancers are technically excellent and their ensemble ability is superb. As we accept the solo performer for her commitment and aesthetic, we stand and cheer for “Half-Time, Full Out”

Commentary

Calendar-fu and Fifth Fridays

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No matter how hard you try, you just can’t make a metric year.

We are physically stuck with the fact that the earth goes around the sun once for approximately 365.25 revolutions on its axis. On top of that, our Roman and religious predecessors, noting the subdivision of the year by lunar cycles created months and weeks that not only don’t quite work out, but have the extra burden that the month named after ME has to have more days than the month named after YOU!

So, we have calendars which are not repetitive, and the calendars of other cultures seem to have been run over by ours. Months do not start on the same day of the week from year to year (leaving out the leap year problem/correction) and various power centers would not allow days to exist which were not ‘days of the week.

But, for fun, maybe you would like to plan a repeating event. You easily can specify (in the current calendar system) the ‘First Monday’ or ‘Second Saturday’  or even ‘Third Thursday’.  But what about the ‘Fifth Friday’? That is more fun. How does that work out?

Ignoring the pathetic February, eleven months have 30 days and five have 31 days. So, each month (except February) must have two days of the week that have five instances, and five months have three such days. These do not line up well, but it appears that in a given year one day of the week will occur five times in three of the months, two days of the week will occur five times in five of the months and four days of the week will occur five times in four of the months.

In 2024, Fifth Fridays occurred four times; in March, May, August, and November, so plan ahead, avoid end-of-year rush.

Dance, Performance

Alonzo King Lines Ballet & Peter Sellars

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Alonzo King Lines Ballet & Peter Sellars – THE CONCERT
June 7, 2024 7;30 PM
San Francisco Symphony Hall

Yes…but: Staging and Music Lack Correspondence

The directors listed above, King and Sellars are both noted for their talents and many productions, King in the dance world and Sellars as a dramatic director. To this production conducted by the notable musician, Esa-Pekka Salonen, these notables brought their staging and dramatic interpretation.

The opening night’s event began with Ravel’s Ma Mére l’Oye. (Mother Goose, 1911). The work consists of seven sections, all clearly listed on the program. Eleven dancers (and one soloist) danced in brightly colored (primarily yellow) dresses and pants, some with transparent tops over the upper body. Although the program lists titles for all sections, (e.g. Pavane, Tom Thumb, etc) all the choreography seemed similar, i.e. large fluid upper body gestures, endless turns, extended leg extensions and continual falls and acrobatic activities on the ground. There were a number of beautifully done duets and solos, but the dynamics of the dance remained similar throughout the piece.

Neither the soloists nor unique dancers in the duets had program listing. When musicians have a special solo they are always noted.

In my choreographic training, we learned that there should be variations in style, gesture and certainly dynamic correspondence to the chosen music. Choreographer Alonzo King, though well reputed in the San Francisco dance community, did not seem to find those values in Ma Mére. The audiences was pleased with the dancers energy and skill and gave the dance and music tremendous, well deserved applause.

The notes to composer Arnold Schoenberg piece “Erwartung (Expectation), Opus 17 (1909), tells us that “the Unnamed Woman and the “expectancy” that pervades the work is the intense dread that The Women feels in the face of something that is never quite spelled out.” (Program notes by Jenny Judge.) Yet, in Sellars staging for the brilliant soprano Mary Elizabeth Williams, a stage ‘corpse’ is with her. Willams provides many gestures of love, dismissal, longing and relief. It is Sellars who has made these decisions for the singer, who is an excellent artist in voice and acting. This reviewer would have preferred to hear the singer without the dramatic activity. Brilliant as a vocalist, she did not always accomplish the stage action with ease or dramatic clarity.

It was drama enough to pay close attention to Salon’s superb conducting of the score. This production of “Erwartung” was a first San Francisco Symphony performance. The orchestra is very large and varied in the demands of its sections. It was dramatic to watch each section fulfill its part in this amazing, complex score. Bravo to all!

Conductor Salonen and the Symphony producers are to be highly complimented for the challenge of bringing dance and drama to the stage. Although artists of all dimensions have the right to produce events as created in their imaginations, it is important (to this reviewer) that coordination in style and intention be respected.