back to reviews
DEFINING GROUND
Too Much
Summerfest presents the best and the rest.
By Rita Felciano
TWO-THIRDS through its current run, Summerfest/dance's "West Wave Dance Festival" - San Francisco's annual celebration of local dance - presents an overly familiar landscape that occasionally merits further exploration. An event that has not changed its mission (to offer a representative selection of Bay Area choreography) since its inception 12 years ago, the festival - spotlighting 28 choreographers in three weekends - remains ambitious. But it's also inclusive to the point that curatorial judgment seems moot. On paper the vast programming may look impressive, but on stage it often doesn't.
Was it really such a good idea to open this year's event with a self-acknowledged work in progress (Rapt Performance Group's The Bedroom, which limped along over lumpy pillows)? Or to include in the same program an extended excerpt of Deborah Slater's The Sleepwatchers, which recently finished a second run at ODC Theater after having premiered less than a year ago at Dance Mission Theatre?
Each program's "something old and something new" formula yielded elation and disappointment. Among the hits were three revisited solos, which contrary to their formal restrictions, seemed to stretch their choreographers' imaginations and interpreters' potentials. Della Davidson's 1991 Flying over Emptiness, for Frank Shawl, looked better than ever. In choreography inspired by a Ted Hughes poem (supported by a Jim McKee score that likened storm to heartbeat), Shawl shaped and reshaped his expressive arms into the wings he needed to explore the darkness outside and inside himself. KT Nelson's The Last Hello, which she choreographed on the elegant Brian Fisher, is a rather serious meditation on the menopause travails of a transsexual. Fisher's revealing performance was even more nuanced and vulnerable than it was in the work's unveiling last year (at the Gay and Lesbian Dance Festival). In Maxine Moerman's quirky Lullaby, the statuesque Deborah Miller tentatively ventured into memories that had the potential to overwhelm her and sometimes did. The piece itself had an elusive appeal.
In the ensemble category, Smuin Ballets/SF dancer and novice choreographer Amy Seiwert who impressed with her skillfully crafted Common Denominator at last month's "Pilot 38" confirmed that she has choreographic chops and her own voice. Tripping Through the Historical Present, premiered in May with the Sacramento Ballet, takes stereotypes about ballet (that it is artificial, stiff, and unnatural; that it features uniform bodies) and turns them upside down. The result is musical, well-paced, balletic, and fun. Using movements of Bach's Violin Partita No. 1 in B Minor selected more for their affective qualities than for their intricate structure, Liss Fain's premiere Crossing showcased her six dancers including the lovely Sarah Clagett in ballet-inspired windblown choreography that interspersed restful unisons with a series of fleeting duets and changing partnerships. The performance looked somewhat insecure, though; some dancers had difficulty keeping up with the fast-paced choreography.
Perhaps the most satisfying contribution so far came from a trio of veteran dancers, Joanna Haigood, Sara Shelton Mann, and Mercy Sidbury. Collaborative and partially improvised, Defining Ground spotlighted the strengths and idiosyncrasies of these three remarkable dancers. Each had her own language in a physical environment made up of Wayne Campbell's series of suspended boulders and an aural environment created by Kitundu's powerful offstage playing. Haigood occupied slow-motion dreamtime. Mann revealed vulnerability beneath steely power. A trembling Sidbury seemed to externalize her nerve endings. At one point the uncredited lighting design bathed the stage in sunrise red, and with Haigood looking up from a precarious perch on a swinging rock, the women appeared trapped at the bottom of an immense cave.
Besides being unique, Michael Cole's computer-animated dances were a welcome addition to this year's fest. The Life Form figures of Space Invader not only performed recognizable dance steps but also proved that three (partial) bodies can simultaneously occupy the same space. For Hyper Alarm Dance, Cole entrusted a video of one of his solos to a computer, with a rather Busby Berkeley-inspired result.
