On the upside, the reorganized WestWave Dance Festival, which opened its run Tuesday (Aug. 19) at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ Novellus Theater, is offering paying gigs to 45 Bay Area artists, some of whom will rate as genuine discoveries. On the downside, the curators have broadened the definition of dance more extensively than is probably healthy for the art form. On the downside, too, restricting the running time of dances (all, supposedly, premieres) to less than five minutes (and more than 4 and a half) imposes fatal limitations on more than one worthy choreographer, limitations you might expect to encounter in the commercial sector, but not here.
To be positive, none of the three programs, each of which includes 12 numbers, will run more than 75 minutes. If you find a piece that tantalizes, you can seek out the artist for additional satisfactions during the regular season. If something strikes you as innocuous or inane, it’s over before you finish reading the program note (warning: those notes lean to the pretentious rhapsodizing one expects to find in grant proposals). This 17th festival, which continues through the week, has been co-produced by Dancers’ Group, DanceArt (the erstwhile producer) and YBCA, and the curating process remains mysterious, if not downright arcane. A couple of times Tuesday, it was all too easy to ask oneself, “Is this really the best?”
The good news is that the producers have gone out of their way to present an inclusive portrait of the Bay Area dance scene; at least one-third of the attractions on the first program could be classified as “ethnic” in origin, though the fact that only one number derives from the ballet sector reflects poorly on the curators’ sophistication in programming. First, we must dispense with the works that have nothing to do with dance. That would include the four performers from the Somei Yashino Taiko Ensemble, who, in Indra’s Net, spent a few minutes conjuring a polyphonic mini-drum concert. We can extend the non-dance category to Erika Tsimbrovsky’s Silence of Stones, in the course of which three women, clad in rustling white paper costumes, grovel on the floor, while one of their number spouts aphorisms in English and French, which you strain to hear. And let’s toss in the latest excerpt from Eric Kupers’ Oust, in which a man in a dress bows a violin while women on the floor groan in pain. In what alternate universe is this stuff still considered transgressive, let alone dancey?
In this company, it was a pleasure to encounter Amy Seiwert’s new duet, Air. The work doesn’t strike into new terrain, but this ballet choreographer charts a relationship between her dancers, Tricia Sundbeck and Jay Goodlet (both, oddly, in skirts), that progresses from supportiveness to power plays, all accompanied by a striking 18th century harp score (recorded) by Jean-Baptiste Krumpholtz. The dancing mingled febrile whiplash moves with lyrical decorum. Mary Sano’s Duncanesque Dance of the Flower (set to unaccompanied Bach cello music) looked terribly underrehearsed, as the six dancers seemed to get tangled in their flowing white vestments. One noticed only the most casual relationship with the score.
Charya Burt’s solo Blue Roses impressed with the focus this wonderful artist brings to Cambodian classical dance. A flat palm, in context, communicates volumes, though in this serene number, adapted from an earlier dance, I was hard put to find the connection with Tennessee Williams’ Laura Wingfield cited in the program notes. In Marinera, Luis Valverde and Eleana Coll recreated an Andean courtship ritual, he wearing a straw hat and percussive heels, she barefoot and in luxuriant skirt, which she flounced with considerable élan. Charlotte Moraga of the Chitresh Das mini-empire opened the evening with her mentor’s solo Auspicious Invocation. No denying this dancer’s speed in turns or the rhythmic vivacity she imparts to the Kathak lexicon, but this number lacked a clear trajectory, looking more like a demonstration of vocabulary than a cohesive piece.
Sexyback Dance, signed by Sheldon B. Smith and Lisa Wymore, was, we are told, adapted from an entry on You Tube. Ross Hollenkamp, Megan Milam, Janine Trinidad and Andrew Ward mugged and bounced for five minutes. The nicely done INside, created by the Limbinal atists collective generated tension in the double duets (one of them on a table) performed intensely by Ward, Hollenkamp, Suzanne Lappas and Lindsay Leonie Gauthier. Whatever the 12 supine performers were attempting in Eric Fenn’s murky Water was not revealed in its premiere showing.
Jenny McAllister’s Snap, however, piqued the curiosity. A wry recreation of a wedding party, the number mingled rueful voice-overs with venerable sight gags, all delivered exuberantly by the seven performers. This may be the first dance in history which you are asked to record with flash cameras. In any case, Snap made this viewer eager to see more of this quirky essay. Which, after all, is what this edition of WestWave is all about.
Program One of the WestWave Dance Festival will be repeated Thursday at 9 p.m. at the Novellus Theater, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. For tickets, call 415.978.2787 or visit www.ybca.org. The festival runs through Friday evening.
