MEGAN KURASHIGE San Francisco Conservatory of Dance San Francisco, California USA BIO | POSTS
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: Read the rest of this entry »
Glasshouse hosts such interesting events… Started in the UK, their
events are helf at places like soho house, rockell studio and tonight
at the bogardus mansion.
Tonight’s presentation features last.fm founders with a discussion
around the music industry and social interaction online, moderated by
a guy from Rolling Stone who’s name I’ll insert later!
Joffrey is currently performing a trio of ballets by Anthony Tudor at the Auditorium Theater in Chicago; celebrating the centennial of Tudor’s birth. Our winter season opened February 20th and runs through March 2nd. The middle ballet on the program is Dark Elegies, a personal favorite of mine. Set to Gustav Mahler’s ‘’Kindertotenlieder'’ ('’Songs on the Death of Children'’), which are sung by Stephen Salters, the ballet depicts a community in mourning. Yet the nature of the disaster that has struck remains unspecified and one is free to speculate and imagine all sorts of catastrophes. The texts of the songs concern the deaths of children, cradling gestures recur and the dancers resemble devastated parents. It is such a powerful piece with so many opportunities to interpret and reflect upon one’s own life experiences. It is such a joy to watch my fellow peers bring an equal amount of skill and emotion to their dancing. As a dancer, it’s also an amazing experience to have live accompaniment on stage - whether it be vocal or instrumental.
1st song.
Stephen Salters and dancer Heather Aagard kneeling.
Well, the company is hard at work creating a new piece that is set to the “Pelleas et Melisande” suite by Sebelius. We have just two weeks before it premieres! It will be the first time SYREN has worked with live musicians, so we are thrilled and a bit nervous at the same time.
The company has never worked so fast, with only four weeks to get the piece done. Our heads are spinning in 12’s and 3’s, but we are really getting somewhere, and I think that after Thursday’s rehearsal we will have a solid dent in the beast!
Check out what Lynn and Lindsay were rockin with today…
Being the infamous procrastinator that I am I am finally going to write about the amazing experience I had in San Francisco during January. As many of you may know this is a huge year for San Francisco Ballet, it marks the 75th Anniversary of both the company and the school. So, it should be no surprise that the Gala, the kick-off of SFB’s 2008 season, was quite the event.
This Gala was especially different for the school because many of the dancers in the top levels got to perform. Not only did the school have this amazing opportunity and exposure at such a major event, but we all got the chance to work with John Neumeier for a couple of days before the gala. We performed his ballet, Yondering, which was created in 1996 for the Hamburg Ballet School and since has been performed by such schools as The National Ballet School and The Paris Opera Ballet School. This was the first time that any American school was privileged enough to perform this ballet, and I felt honored to be in the premier. I felt even more fortunate because I performed one of the lead parts for the girls.
I have always been a huge fan of Neumeier’s choreography, but somehow I learned to love it even more after working with him. Everything was so meaningful and every single movement had a very specific reason behind it. John Neumeier is a true artist. He understands everything that I believe ballet should represent. I could go on for days about all of this but I am going to talk about one incident that will always stick in my mind. At the end of the ballet there is a section that revolves around the death of a child. In order for us to get the correct feeling of what John wanted he started explaining what was going on. That sounds very logical and simple I guess, but it was so much more than that. While he was explaining these intense emotions and feelings to us he was speaking in a very matter of fact way. During this he paused for a second and while a single tear streamed down his face he continued. There was not one ounce of shame or embarrassment as he began to get so emotional and I admire that so much. Human emotion is a beautiful thing and I feel that too many people are constantly trying to hide those emotions. I respect this man so much and I hope to be able to work with him again one day soon.
From what I got to see in dress rehearsal the rest of Gala was mind-blowing, but there is no surprise there. If you want to read more about it here is just one review from the night… http://danceinsf.blogspot.com/2008/01/sf-ballet-gala-1232008.html
Here are some more pictures.
This one is my roommate and myself in the dressing room after the show.
Here is a picture of the cast of Yondering. Sorry the quality of the picture is so bad.
In the middle from left to right is Lola De Avila (associate director of the school), John Neumeier, and Jean-Yves Esquerre (assistant to the artistic director, as well as the trainee program supervisor)
I’d like to introduce you to Ms. Kate Mehan of SYREN Modern Dance. Kate co-founded SYREN with Lynn Peterson after graduating from SUNY Purchase. She also happens to be a friend of Sean’s from NYCB (who has great taste and is an incredible artist himself) so I’m really excited to learn more about what Kate and Lynn and SYREN are up to. They just finished successful performances of a work called DIG at the Ailey Citicorp Theater and can be seen at the Dance Theater Lab at SUNY Purchase in March.
