It was wonderful to attend a program of contemporary dance in San Francisco without a smidgen of the talk, gymnastics or vaudeville (either new or old) that often impede the flow of structured movement. So, let us heap all praise on the second installment of ODC Theater’s summertime festival at Theater Artaud. This one opened Thursday (July 17) and arrives under the grandiloquent and highly questionable sobriquet of "Local Heroes," a device that may raise expectations impossible to satisfy by the trio of works (two of them premieres) under review. What unites all three choreographers is their erstwhile participation in ODC’s Artists in Residence program.
All three pieces furnish sufficient movement ingenuity and theatrical flair to warrant spending a longish evening in their presence. However, the missteps, musical and structural, in the new pieces suggest a measure of reconsideration is in order, if they are to be incorporated into their companies’ repertoires. First up is Alex Ketley’s ambitious Monument, created with members of Ketley’s company, The Foundry, as well as with the participation of two dancers from AXIS Dance Company and several students from the San Francisco Conservatory of Dance. The work takes a while to get where it should be going, but when it does, in a series of ferocious duets, it hits home in a visceral manner I have not experienced previously in Ketley’s choreography. A very good, small dance is embedded in Monument, screaming to be released from its trappings.
In the central section, willowy Sara Genoves-Sylvan begins deceptively shifting her weight ad infinitum, but suddenly she’s entangled in a scorching encounter with Foundry co-founder Christian Burns. From AXIS, Sonsheree Giles guides Rodney Bell in his wheelchair, and suddenly he lashes out with rage, toppling his vehicle, and it’s something of a heart-in-throat moment. John Merke is all intense, barely suppressed emotion in this section, too; his first partner is the always exceptional Maurya Kerr, erstwhile LINES assoluta. Claire Granier is the second. At one point, Ketley turns off the sound and Genoves-Sylvan accompanies her colleagues by crooning into a hand mike. The theory that dance can express the inexpressible has rarely been so adeptly illustrated.
But, the earlier episodes simply bewilder. Whatever Ketley was doing with Glenn Gould’s recording of the Aria from Bach’s Goldberg Variations, accompanying an 11-member complement of dancers posing mostly as couples, it certainly wasn’t musical. Where was the serenity and unfettered lyricism of the score in the movement? And where was the contrapuntal energy of the Chaconne from Bach’s D Minor Violin Partita? It wasn’t at all reflected in the flashing extensions and arduous lifts in the choreography. Ending Monument with the reprise of the Bach Aria seemed both pretentious and evasive, an attempt to paste a cyclical structure onto a protracted dance that hasn’t earned it.
An overt architecture also seemed appliquéd on to Manuelito Biag’s Ballast, created in collaboration with members of SHIFT Physical Theater. At the start, four dancers (Kelly del Rosario, Norma Fong, Malinda LaVelle, Miguele de Quadros) advance downstage and draw in chalk on the floor. At the end, they augment their scribblings. Between those gestures, Biag pleasures us with some meticulously phrased maneuvers that range from ballet rondes de jambe to circle formations to weighty lifts.
I was not surprised to read in the program that all three women come from a ballet background. Del Rosario, a somewhat stolid presence, seemed to inhabit a different universe, though he partners adequately. Spins, jutting arms, twisted torsos and corkscrewing descents proliferate. The volatility of the exchanges compels the interest, even if there’s an over reliance on floor work. A rhythmically insistent original score by Jess Rowland was performed live by Carrie Jadhe, percussion, and Theresa Wong, guitar, and was, for this performance space, excessively amplified. Is it too much to ask choreographers to possess a pair of working ears?
And, as long as we are in an interrogative mood, why do choreographers keep fussing with their better dances? What prompts the question is the revision of Yannis Adoniou’s Less-Sylphides, officially premiered by the Kunst-Stoff company at ODC Theater in 2006 after an outdoor preview at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Garden in 2005. Eight dancers now perform material originally assigned to 10; they have removed the ballet slippers worn in the earlier version and now dance barefoot. The peekaboo white shifts of the 2006 version have yielded to unisex tomato red jerseys and shorts.
In short, Adoniou has muddied the connection with his inspiration, Michel Fokine’s 1909 Les Sylphides, the first plotless ballet to survive into the 21st century; an old film purporting to be a fragment of Les Sylphides is projected at the beginning and the music remains, as in the model, orchestrated Chopin. Adoniou is offering neither a gloss on the original nor a put-down (he derives from a ballet background). His groupings occasionally reference the original, especially the tableaux on demi-pointe, but here there are three Poets (Nol Simonse, Spencer Dickhaus, Justin Kennedy), instead of Fokine’s sole male.
Less-Sylphides remains a fluent invention, although this time around, one notices the extent to which Adoniou overplays his devices. How many times must we see men carrying women on their necks? How many times must we watch the dancers burrow their heads into the floor in unison and flail their legs in the ether? If, however, Adoniou set out to demonstrate that there are no plotless dances—every movement sequence tells some kind of story—he has succeeded handsomely. The dancing Thursday exuded polish, often at one with the Chopin, despite a couple of glitches in the recording. Dickhaus impressed mightily in his solo outing. The women were Nicole Bonadonna, Kara Davis, Marina Fukushima, Erin Kraemer and Leslie Schickel. The audience, which grew smaller as the evening progressed, applauded lustily.
The program will repeat Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. at Project Artaud Theater, 450 Florida St., San Francisco. For tickets, call (415) 863-9834 or visit www.odctheater.org
