good things
Hello!
So, the last time I wrote, I mentioned a performance I was getting ready for, but didn’t actually say much about what we were doing. That was because I didn’t know! When my friend called to see if I’d be interested in a “dance theater” piece that was about sleep and dreams and possibly involved screaming, I thought: well, that seems a bit weird, but it could be fun. There are three of us who are only in the one piece, so it wasn’t until our first performance that we actually grasped what the whole evening is about, whether it would be good or bizarre or awkward.
So… it’s really good. If you’re in SF and have time this weekend or next, head to CELLspace (this weekend) or Yerba Buena (next) and check out Dandelion Dancetheater.
Dandelion is hosting three weeks of physically integrated dance, joined by several artists from Madrid, Montreal, and the (completely awesome) local company, AXIS. The programs are different each weekend, so I’ll only talk about the program I’m in, but I’m sure the Yerba Buena shows will be equally fantastic.
The piece I’m in is called DORS. It’s an excerpt from a longer work by Jacques Poulin-Denis. Here’s a picture of Jacques:
Hm. He looks a bit stern there, but he’s very nice, very funny, and a very, very good dancer. The piece begins with Jacques standing in the dark, holding a small light, and talking about a dream. Quiet disturbances break out and escalate until people are leaping out of the audience, yelling and running through the space, acting out dreams and nightmares. I’m one of three dancers who float across the space like detached sleepwalkers (we improvise with our eyes closed—very exciting when you feel someone race past you at high speed).
Dandelion does this fantastic piece called oust. What blows my mind is how many talents everyone has. People sing and dance and play instruments and speak. It’s like watching some bizarre, slightly cracked, circus that lures you in with a strange spectacle and then suddenly starts talking about all the things that make you uncomfortable.
photo: Hiroki Saito
And a fabulous picture of Eric Kupers, who choreographed the piece (and plays a drum in it…):
photo: Luiza Silva
Nadia Adame does this wonderful duet in a chair in oust. She also dances in and choreographed a piece for her own company called 9 dias y 20 horas a la deriva.
photo: Paloma Parra
My favorite piece though, the one I’m really excited to talk about and really, really want everyone to see, is Les Angles Morts. It’s a duet for Jacques and Melanie Demers. I’m not even sure how to describe it, except to say that it made me cry. It says something to you, but without being literal, without pointing out or explaining. It goes from the eye straight through to a place that recognizes it as both familiar and strange. Melanie and Jacques are both so extraordinary, so committed and honest in their movement, that they shook me all over. Melanie does this solo that ends with her walking backwards with a paper bag over her head, gesturing with her arms, and you are hypnotized by every small move that she makes because they are all so carefully considered… Such wonderfulness!
So, if you’re in SF, come see our show. Or keep a lookout for Dandelion, Melanie, Jacques, and Nadia, and if you get the chance, go see them!
CELLspace
Hello!
This past weekend I jumped into rehearsal for a dance theater piece by Jacques Poulin-Denis. But wait, you say. Aren’t you still gimpy? Why yes I am, thank you very much. I don’t have to do anything too strenuous though, just a bit of improvisation on the themes of sleep, dreams, and discomfort. It’s fun and something different.
We worked at CELLspace, which is this really interesting performance/work space in the Mission. It’s a big warehouse-type building with little self-contained rooms that serve as artists’ studios, and a large, open area for performing artists. It was founded as an artists’ collective, so there are all these quirky touches.
I like the lobby. It has white walls and stuck to all of them are these small, white squares of paper with line drawings on them. The squares are neatly lined up, edge to edge, so that when you look at them all together, they look like one big map.
CELLspace is very close to Theater Artaud where we performed for WestWave, but I never knew it existed. I love discovering new places like this in the city. It’s such a treat to meet a different group of artists and to see how they work.
In other news, I can jump now! Tiny, tiny jumps, but still… Jumps in first position were never so exciting!
shiny and new
Hello all!
Just back from seeing program C of San Francisco Ballet’s New Works Festival. As you can see in my (rather hopeless… my camera and I haven’t yet come to a friendly understanding about nighttime pictures) photos, the opera house is all decked out for the occasion. In celebration of the company’s 75th anniversary, SFB is presenting ten NEW ballets in two weeks. Exciting! Program C has three pieces: “Thread” by Margaret Jenkins, “Ibsen’s House” by Val Caniparoli, and “Double Evil” by Jorma Elo. (If you go to SFB’s website, there are all sorts of interesting goodies: videos, podcasts, interviews, etc.)
There was a surfeit of great dancing in all three pieces, but I had the strangest reaction to the last piece (“Double Evil”). I’m absolutely perplexed by it; I honestly don’t know what I think of it. Watching it made me feel like two separate parts of my brain were colliding. The closest thing I can come up with for a description of the movement is a classical, but abstract ballet given to amazing dancers who also happen to be interesting improvisers. They’re told to go wild with it, to take movements to their logical, but extreme and quirky conclusions, to follow whatever whims and ideas they might have. It’s a ballet fractured apart and pulled inside out, and, for some reason, it really confused me. I enjoyed it, there was so much bright energy and technique flooding the stage; but my brain is pinwheeling over it. I think this might be a good thing. Also, for the first time, realized what weird architecture tutus have. They halve the body onto two separate planes so you consider legs as one thing and upper body as another. Weird.
I think that’s what I like best about seeing new work. Any new piece might make you look at something and consider it from an entirely different angle. Always exciting! Plus, everything is shiny and new.
Now to bed. Good night!
NACHO!!!
Right, now I have something to displace the slightly scary vision of Jack Black in baby blue tights and Luchador cape.
Last Thursday and Saturday I had the good fortune to see Compania Nacional de Danza perform at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. I saw two different programs of work choreographed by Nacho Duato, the first being: Castrati (very educational program notes there; did you know that the male sopranos were considered “on-stage heroes” in 17th century Italy?), Rassemblement, and White Darkness. This is the first time I’ve seen CND and only the second time I’ve seen any of Duato’s choreography (I saw Hubbard Street perform “Duende” several years ago).
This is “Farinelli,” uber-star of opera in the 1700s and a castrato:
(photo from the NY Times, picture from the Royal College of Music)
So:
The dancers are AMAZING! They have particular and individual ways of moving, but they all have the most astonishingly mobile backs. They articulate the entire length of their spines as if they are one long swish of muscle. The movement is very creature-like (Eel? Snake? Sea cucumber? So not the image I’m looking for…), but the effect is more human. It’s as if the dimension and depth that they get at somehow makes them more vividly people.
They can also rock the unison. Everyone on stage moving so fast and so huge at precisely the same time? Thrilling.
I read the program notes before the performance for the first program, which I think was a mistake. All three pieces were very much about something: castration, slavery, and drug addiction, respectively. Once I had that list in my head, I couldn’t get it out and it distracted me from the dancing. The movement is beautiful and interesting, but having all those meanings in my head made me feel uncomfortable with the drama.
Favourite moments:
A lush pas de deux in Rassemblement, danced by (I think) Marina Jiminez and a great man who I couldn’t pick out in the program.
The huge spills of white sand that poured onto the stage in White Darkness (CND has a brief video of this effect on their website).
Program two was Gilded Goldbergs, Gnawa, and Por Vos Mueros. This time I didn’t read the program notes and was much happier. My favourite piece was Gnawa, mostly for the exciting, rhythmic parts that swept all of the dancers across the stage. This was the piece that made me most jealous of the people on the stage. They were all caught up in this amazing dance and I was sitting on my bum in a chair (in an orchestra pit. The pit was covered and filled with more seats. My sister and I felt a bit like we were smashed up on the stage, but we got over it).
Whew. That was a lot of blather.
I don’t have any pics of the fun Yerba Buena theater because it was gloomy and wet, but to make up for it here’s one of Hattie instead:
(more…)
Gifts for Dancers…
As a holiday gift to all of you, (I apologize for it’s lateness)…
A sampling of Winger contributors gave our thoughts on what we (or other people involved in dance) might be excited about for the holidays.
We’ve suggested some things that are useful, inspiring, or just plain cool.
Popular among many contributors were spa treatments (and related goodies), magazine subscriptions, books, music, performance tickets, and the iPhone.
Enjoy!
Also,
LOLAstretch Gift Certificates, which enables the receiver to design their own leotard.
“Give the gift of creative control!”
Another thing I would recommend is season tickets to BAM. - CANDICE
“Look before you leap: an advice guide for choreographers” by Ann Whitley
The description on the back says:
“This is not a book about how to choreograph. It is a practical guide to the negotation, preparation, organization and continuing care of choreographic work. It is intended as a useful source of reference for choreographers, assistant choreographers, dance teachers, managers, administrators, amateurs, movements specialists, composers, designers, technicians and all those who collaborate with choreographers.”
Also,
There is an annual publication in South Africa called “Contacts” - this book contains all contact information for people working in the industry.
A grant to make a work … finding out that my funding applications were successful …. or even just finding a sponsor to support my work;
The completion of my MA thesis.
Spa Treatments for those sore bodies.
Alternative health remedies / tonics to keep us healthy during the intense seasons
Calender with beautiful pics
Funky bag to keep all the rehearsal stuff in
Beautiful journal - to write new ideas in
A subscription to a magazine is always a great gift idea that keeps on giving through-out the year. - MAIA
Also,
Touchstone by Laurie R. King
This book doesn’t come out till Boxing Day, so I guess it doesn’t technically qualify for holiday gift giving status (though I suppose you can always give New Year’s presents… why not?), but Laurie R. King is one of my favorite mystery writers. Her stories are always deliciously smart and satisfyingly precise.
Chocolate
One of those gifts that can very rarely go wrong (though my sister has a friend who likes neither chocolate nor peanut butter! Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups must be like a bad nightmare to him). My recent obsessions are Green and Black’s dark chocolate (really flavorful, but not too bitter) and Theo Chocolate’s “Bread and Chocolate” bar, which is dark chocolate pocked with the tiniest crumbs of salty baugette. This sounds like a really bizarre and unpleasant combination, but it’s addictive and delicious. Plus, the wrapper is a cheerful yellow and has adorable, cartoonish cats on it. - MEGAN
Also,
Tickets to The Nutcracker, Christmas Carol or Passion. - MIKI
Also,
I like all cotton sweats. hate cotton/poly blend. Yuck!
Something like these.
And of course the essential stocking stuffer, We B Girlz. - TONY
Also,
I’d love to be able to design my own ballet-wear somehow… but, like, with a few drags and a click.
…and a puppy. - EVAN
Also,
A subscription to Answers4dancers.com - good website that lists auditions.
And what tops my Xmas wish list this year:
*an iphone or blackberry so I can organize my rehearsal schedule and check emails between running from class to work to where ever! - TAYLOR
Also,
A membership to a museum.
An iTunes gift certificate to purchase some good warm-up music. - MATTHEW
Also,
Always useful - iTunes gift certificates and Starbucks gift cards. (There are four of these within a sic block radius of Lincoln Center).
And warm fuzzy things. - SLOAN
(From Ian, a dancer with Les Ballets Grandiva, who will be joining our family very soon…)
The top on my list are gift certificates for 90 minute massages at the Equinox Spa and 60 minute session gift cards for True Pilates and True Pilates East - anything that soothes aching 35 year old muscles!
Truth be told, I am also a sucker for anything from Hermes in the Hermes orange along with any little Louis Vuitton accessory like the I-Pod case. I guess that’s my two or four cents. - IAN
the siren call of the internet
Hello, all!
Knee surgery happened last Thursday. The very nice Dr. Frederic Bost took a bit of my hamstring tendon and screwed, bolted, and strung it into my knee. They knocked me out for the procedure, so I didn’t get to see the actual process, but he did send me home with some nice photographs of joint interiors and a neat little sketch as a souvenir. I am off my crutches and in PT sessions where I do very difficult things, like bending my knee and then straightening it again. It’s a bit humbling really.
Hang on, let me see if I can scan one of the less gory ones in…
There you go. Here are two images from inside my knee. Doesn’t everything look weirdly white and clean?
And here’s Dr. Bost’s little sketch:
As a result of sticking cameras and sharp implements into my knee, I’ve been at home for an absurd amount of time. My biggest “occasion” of late was a trip to the movies with my friends (we saw Enchanted) where I learned that people are shockingly courteous to you when you are wielding crutches. So I’m spending quite a bit of time on my couch, reading or watching movies, or pretending that I’m doing something edifying by poking round the internet. Lots of Vulture, lots of YouTube, a whole season of Extras (really funny, but lots of those moments when you cringe away from the TV because the characters are doing something so mortifying that it’s almost painful), and some Austen to top it off (Emma, to be specific). Nederlands Dans Theater has put up some nice videos online, if you want to take a look.
The Conservatory also has a new website up, with pretty pictures, shiny new video, and a newsletter that I helped out on a tiny bit. There’s also the announcement that this summer’s curriculum will include the study of “gaga” and the choreography of Ohad Naharin, along with the work of William Forsythe and Jiri Kylian. So, if there are any students out there interested, perhaps I’ll see you soon! I’ve only seen one Naharin piece (Minus 16 danced by Hubbard Street), but I thought it was incredible.
Right-o. I’m off to work on some writing. Hope everyone is enjoying the holidays and fitting in a few Nutcrackers here and there! Hm. I’ve just put “Nutcracker” into youtube and come up with a rather unfortunate looking soccer accident. Definitely time to turn off the computer.
gimpy limpy
A bit of bad news from me… I tore the ACL in my right knee, so I won’t be dancing for some time. It’s not a catastrophic injury, but I do need to get surgery to reconstruct the ligament and the recovery time after that is something around eight months.
I’m not sure why it happened. It was just a little thing. A tiny, pedestrian hop in rehearsal and then there was this loud POP! and that was it. Really painful. It’s always those little things for me. I’ve only ever had minor injuries (sprained ankles… that’s about it, really) before, but they always happen when I’m doing the smallest, simplest things. Maybe I’m tired or distracted or not quite as warmed up as I should be. There’s just something humbling about it. I mean, if I was doing some crazy fall to the ground or a huge grand allegro it might feel, if not justifiable, then at least excusable. But a hop!
I’m doing some P.T. to regain full mobility of the joint before I go in for surgery. It’s a pretty intense workout for my one leg… Maybe after the whole process I’ll be lopsided, with the bad leg stronger than my good leg!
At least they give you your MRI with a pretty picture of the Golden Gate to cheer you up, right?
My doctor told me that I could keep doing barre until surgery, if I was careful. So yesterday I was taking barre, not turning out very much and moving slowly and basically focusing entirely on keeping my knee stable. We were doing something on one leg and between one moment and another my knee collapsed out from under me. I fell flat on the floor. It was the strangest feeling; my leg was under my control and then, suddenly, it wasn’t. It felt like my leg was made up of two blocks balanced happily on top of one another and then something came along and jerked the bottom one away. Bizarre. Also mortifying. If it hadn’t been painful it would’ve been comical. All the little marionettes marching along and then one slips on a banana peel.
I’m trying to find things to keep me occupied during my more sedentary months. I’ve signed up for National Novel Writing Month (50,000 words in the month of November!), I’ve been seeing movies (am utterly obsessed with the soundtrack from The Darjeeling Limited), I finally read Atonement (wonderful), and just today I received my season three DVD set of Doctor Who (who knew pinstripes could be so exciting?). I even started a blog to whinge about my non-dancing time. There are all these things that I can do with the my suddenly empty schedule, but it’s just not the same, you know?
Open house at the Headlands
Chloe on the left, Hallie on the right.
Heather
After the improv, Heather and I wandered around to catch a last minute glimpse of some of the artists’ work. We met Hubert Ho, a composer, and saw some curiously hypnotic video clips of hands by (I think) Ginelle Hustrulid. We also found an old Steenbeck film editing machine:
Fun, huh? That avocado green makes it extra endearing. Can you just imagine someone clipping and trimming away at film reels, tossing all the bits that don’t work out, and sticking the rest together for their masterpiece?
Dancing in… nature!
Hello!
I hope everyone is enjoying the switch into fall. I got excited this week because I got to dig out a sweater and go for a walk in what was definitely an autumn afternoon, complete with cold breeze and bright gold sunlight. Lovely lovely.
Lately, I’ve been working with Alex Ketley on an interesting project which is being performed in November. It’s called ICARUS/RISE and is part of the Iranian Literary Arts Festival. The piece is a collaborative project that combines dance, video, original music, and contemporary Iranian poetry. The Icarus myth is sort of an underpinning that connects the different sections; the director of the project told us that she wants it to serve as a metaphor for both an immigrant’s experience of a new life and an artist’s work for expression. Only without the falling out of the sky and plunging to death ending.
Here’s a photographer capturing an image of the rare Alex Ketley in his natural habitat:
When Alex first told me about the project, I thought: well, that’s a bit weird and I’m not sure how it’s all going to come together. After working on it for a few weeks, I’m still not quite certain how everything is going to connect, but I think something very nice might come out of it. The music is fantastic and Alex says that the musicians are amazing. The dancers are all friends who I love working with, and it’s interesting to hear poetry in a language that’s completely unfamiliar.
My favourite thing about the project so far though is that we get to work out in the Marin Headlands. The Headlands are just across the Golden Gate. There are hills and little mountains and beaches and the area was used for military installations until 1972 (I looked that up on the website where I also learned that the buildings are from 1907). Alex has a residency at the Headlands Center for the Arts, so we get to work in this old building that used to be a gym/recreation area. The main floor where we work has the remnants of a basketball court and downstairs are a couple of fantastically unkempt bowling lanes. When it starts to get dark, the whole place looks like the perfect setting for one of those horror movies where a group of likeable people take shelter from a storm in a ramshackle building only to find themselves vanishing one by one to ominous music… In the daylight however, the place is lovely and we see deer and birds and hikers and even one coyote.
Dancing on picnic tables… I’m the one who looks like a troll shriveling up in the sunlight:
If anyone is in the SF area next weekend and wants to spend some time in the outdoors and see some art at the same time, the Headlands Center is having an open house on Sunday the 14th. People are invited to wander around and peek into different studios to see what the artists are up to. There’s a “Mess Hall” for lunch, or you could bring a picnic and eat overlooking the Golden Gate. We’re going to be rehearsing and improvising for an hour or so at 4 pm.
summer days
This is me, saying hello for the first time in ages.
How is everyone? I hope your summers have been a long parade of beautiful, sunshine-full, happy days (cue some Beach Boys music here… “Do You Want to Dance,” maybe?).
My summer has been FANTASTIC, but very, very hard. I’ve just finished ten weeks of a workshop at SFCD. Most of our days were very long, sometimes going from eight in the morning ‘til nine at night, so I’m only now getting to appreciate the gorgeous summer sun. We spent so much time inside that I started getting vampire eyes and had to shield my poor, light-sensitive eyeballs from the sunlight any time I emerged from the studios.
The work was entirely worth it though. For the first six weeks, we concentrated on the choreography, and improvisation techniques that inform the choreography, of two ballets by William Forsythe. Thomas McManus, who is an incredible dancer and a lovely, lovely person, worked with us. On our first day he taught us a long and tricky phrase inexplicably called “tuna”. The movement is difficult and extreme, but really satisfying to work with. As a base phrase, even without any improvisational filters or tasks applied to it, it is full of material to chew on and it’s ridiculously satisfying to simply punch through the whole phrase. It made me feel wonderfully three-dimensional.
Then Thomas asked us to apply different tasks to the movement. “Change your floor,” for example. Or “isometrize the movement” or “extend everything” or “make illogical transitions”. We had a big piece of paper tacked to the wall with, eventually, 22 improvisational tasks we could use to explore the phrases. I’ve always been a little afraid of improvisation. I thought that doing an improvisation-based work would be a little like a nightmare in which you are dropped, naked, into the middle of a play you don’t know in a language you don’t understand. After working with Thomas, I still think improvising is a little frightening, but it’s also fascinating, and I can see how it can be thrilling and how it can nudge you away from getting stuck in the same habits of expression. Thomas described it as “real time choreography.” He said that it gives you the responsibility to create in that moment and that sometimes you might do amazing and wonderful things you could never think of ahead of time (he also said that sometimes you might feel like you’re making the worst choices and mucking everything up, though it might not be apparent to the audience).
We learned and performed excerpts from two pieces: The Questioning of Robert Scott (which was the improv-based piece) and Enemy in the Figure (which is much more set choreography). Robert Scott was really intimidating to me. There’s a set structure and you get phrases of movement to work with (“tuna” and “the hundreds”), but within the structure you have all these choices to make. I also had to read text into a microphone, a loud, belligerent speech that happens just as the music is ramping up. “And then we said, do you know what you are doing? And then we said, I do what works. And then we said, I use what I know.” On and on like that. It was a bit weird getting coached on how to say something, but after I got over being embarrassed about shouting in rehearsal, it was fun.
I loved Enemy as well. After Robert Scott, it seemed much less frightening and more a rollercoaster ride on really amazing, really challenging movement.
We also danced a movement from Jiri Kylian’s Whereabouts Unknown. It’s the allegro movement so it’s like ten minutes of non-stop big jumps at breakneck speed. Glenn Edgerton, who is one of my favourite people in the world, set the choreography on us. He and Thomas are both so generous with their knowledge and clear about how they express it. Actually, all the teachers at the Conservatory are like that, which is part of why it is such a great place.
Glenn and Chi rehearsing Psalms with Cameo, Kyle, and Victoria.
In the second four weeks we learned part of Kylian’s Symphony of Psalms (a ballet which I am in love with) and worked on new pieces with Alex Ketley and Christian Burns. I feel like the four week session helped me absorb all the information we were submersed in for the first six weeks. In particular, Alex made a very free-form piece with one section leading to the next based on cues that we gave each other and I felt much more comfortable and fluent after having done all the Forsythe work. Instead of being worried about what was going to happen next, I actually got excited about seeing how my choice to do such and such might effect someone else’s dancing. For Psalms we got thorough coaching from Glenn, Chiharu Shibata (ballet wonderwoman!), Alex, and Christian. It was interesting to see how much detail there is to carve out of a completely set piece of choreography… Extreme gear shift! As Christian said though, it’s a masterpiece of choreography set to a masterpiece of music, and the experience of dancing something like that is indescribable.
I feel like I’m exhausting my vocabulary of superlatives.
All this choreographic work came on top of very hard ballet classes (Summer’s, I think, were the hardest. By far. There was a combination she gave that had about 64 temps leves on ONE foot. I wanted to cry!). We even had a technique class that lasted three hours. Hard hard hard. By the end of the program, I was definitely tired out. It got so that every time I sat still for more than five minutes, I started to suffer from narcolepsy. But now that it’s over and I recuperated by spending almost a whole day sleeping, I’m already starting to miss it.
My friend Miguele took this photo. Our running joke was that I should save time and just sleep in some odd corner at the studios.
Anyway, that is what I have been up to lately. And now I’m going to go catch up on all the Winger activities that I’ve missed reading about.
