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Fjord Review •

New Direction

Steedle was impossible to miss, too, in Stanton Welch’s “The Long and Winding Road.” Made in 2001 for SUNY Purchase conservatory students and American Ballet Theatre’s studio company, this is a large ensemble ballet that feels like it was made with the goal of helping dancers develop, rather than fulfilling an ambitious artistic vision. (Perpetually amazing, isn’t it, how Balanchine’s “Serenade” did both.) The music is Peter Breiner’s arrangement of Beatles tunes on the “Beatles Go Baroque” albu...
Fjord Review •

Page Notes

But now the former Twyla Tharp Company member, in the middle of a three-year stint as choreographer in residence at PNB, has unveiled “Pages,” a co-commission with Ballet Sun Valley, released online as part of PNB’s digital subscription season. And in this case, her program notes don’t help.“Pages,” Lang explains, was created after a weeklong residency at the home where Ernest Hemingway lived and wrote in Idaho. It explores, she says, “the private landscape of artistic creation” and constitutes...
Fjord Review •

Ode to Authenticity

Remarkably, Ballet22 pulls its annual summer program together in just three weeks, drawing dancers in their off season from companies including Sacramento Ballet and Boston Ballet. (Boston Ballet soloist Daniel R. Durrett is a mainstay performer and now co-artistic director.) Rehearsing in a tiny Oakland studio owned by co-founder and co-artistic director Theresa Knudson, the team has hit upon a winning formula: thoughtful stagings of nineteenth-century variations, followed by a few contemporary...
Fjord Review •

Five Remembrances of a Benefactor

Santa Barbara isn’t exactly the center of the dance world if you’re a college student with the ridiculous idea of becoming a dance critic. But just before my senior year at UC Santa Barbara, while interning at the Santa Barbara Independent, I received a packet of press releases and photos. (Back in 1997, physical photos had to be mailed in, on glossy Kodak paper). I wrote a short article on how a woman named Dianne Vapnek was starting a summer festival, and bringing out a New York choreographer...
Fjord Review •

Liminal Moves

I’d like to say that “Ghost Variations” is the finest thing Lang has done at PNB, except that sadly the recording of this program was unable to include “Her Door to the Sky,” the first ballet Lang made at PNB, in 2016. (Copyright permissions for the Britten music proved too costly.) Notably, though, all the Seattle-based press spent much more attention on “Ghost Variations,” and one can guess why. The ballet, twenty minutes long, is extraordinarily delicate and rewards many repeat viewings and r...
Fjord Review •

A San Francisco Ballet Season

Is this a recipe for forging some of the most physically resilient and stylistically adaptable dancers on the planet, or a sure-fire way to rack up workers’ comp claims? Whichever the case, it makes for a roller coaster ride, followed by an end-of-season tsunami of dancer posts on Instagram, the highlights blurring into one chaotic memory. And yet, while snapshots from “La Sylphide,” “Diamonds,” and “Mere Mortals” crowd my brain, there’s one standout image I can’t forget: Joshua Jack Price as Ba...
Fjord Review •

School Report

Small-boned but not fragile, with the feet, the epaulement, and crisp musicality of a budding soloist, Huang has a lively stage presence—and, of course, she has the turns. For the school showcase’s opening demonstration, Huang supplied the final fouettés: singles alternating with copious triples, all executed with calm shoulders and an unshakeable plumb-line, barely travelling. Given her abilities, the school faculty seemed to exercise commendable restraint otherwise in her casting. Following th...
Fjord Review •

Be Like Water

A tower of three conical speakers, created by sculptor Todd Laby, began to spin. Purcell’s opera aria “L’ascia Ch’io Piana” poured into our ears with each rotation of the sculpture as Sander hugged the plastic jug, made her way regretfully into a shoulder stand, and began to swing the vessel. Faith Elder, with her arresting blonde pixie cut, entered and fastened herself to the rigging, looked sharply at Sander, and started to spin. If my notes and memory serve, Sander then held out another rope,...
Fjord Review •

An Original Giselle

Premiered in 2011, PNB’s “Giselle” is fascinating because of the way its historical sources are laid bare. Comparing it to other “Giselles” is bit like looking at X-rays of old masters’ paintings to glimpse the revisions beneath the top layer of varnish. (Oh, there used to be a dog on the floor in that Vermeer!) To take us closer to the original, historians Doug Fullington and Marian Smith worked with three sources: A violin and cello score annotated to indicate the ballet’s actions, created a y...
Fjord Review •

Ballet in the City with Joshua Beamish

You’re a prolific choreographer, and I imagine you’ll continue to be, but I’m wondering: Does it feel like a sacrifice of your own creative energies to launch this new company? Does it mean scaling back your own work, and does that bother you?At first when I was applying for directorships, I did wonder, “Is this something I actually really want to do? To invest a lot of my time on creating opportunities for other people to choreograph?” And I realized yes, I want to do that. Because I think cura...
Fjord Review •

Simply Red

Determined not to let the trend bypass the West Coast, Pacific Northwest Ballet brought “Firebird” back to Seattle’s McCaw Hall in a loving, company-specific way. For its spring repertory program, PNB revived founding artistic director Kent Stowell’s 1989 production, refurbishing the costumes by Tony-winning designer Theoni V. Aldredge, who designed “Annie” and “A Chorus Line.” Of course, like every “Swan Lake,” every “Firebird” comes with its own accent, if not outright twist. DTH’s boasts a br...
San Francisco Chronicle •

ODC/Dance turns playful and unpredictable in cabaret- and circus-inspired premiere

ODC/Dance has a “house style” that is at once earthy, athletic and virtuosic, with an insouciant air. Despite this consistent movement language, the company’s leaders know the value of bringing in fresh influences to shake them out of their choreographic habits. That inclination reaped proscenium-busting rewards in Gypsy Snider’s new “Caught in the Act,” the centerpiece of the company’s “Dance Downtown” home season, which opened at the Blue Shield of California Theater at YBCA on Thursday, March...
San Francisco Chronicle •

San Francisco Ballet’s William Forsythe ‘Blake Works’ is a nonstop thrill ride

The choreographer is William Forsythe, the American visionary famed for his avant-garde productions at Germany’s Ballett Frankfurt in the 1980s and ’90s. Yes, he is one of the most revered and consequential living choreographers in the world. But that reputation, indisputably well-earned, matters less than his way with dancers. He knows how to bring them fully into their minds and bodies, so that they feel dimensions of time and space with an acuity that supercharges the air around them. In doin...
San Francisco Chronicle •

S.F.’s Black Choreographers Festival turns a block of ice into a dance of defiance

Soon the dress was off and Christian’s bare upper body was draped over the ice block, steaming. Then the pick axe was flying, members of the audience were shouting their own four-letter words against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Christian was dragging the hunk of ice across 24th Street.

Soon the dress was off and Christian’s bare upper body was draped over the ice block, steaming. Then the pick axe was flying, members of the audience were shouting their own four-letter words ag...
San Francisco Chronicle •

In Cal Performances debut, Kyle Abraham proves big stages can hold deep intimacy

A rare kind of freedom permeated UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall on Saturday, Feb. 21, as Abraham took to the stage at curtain and offered his thanks during a standing ovation. His nine-member company had just finished dancing to a spectacular live performance of legendary jazz drummer Max Roach’s “We Insist! — Freedom Now” suite as reinterpreted by Grammy-winning composer Robert Glasper.

A rare kind of freedom permeated UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall on Saturday, Feb. 21, as Abraham took to the s...
San Francisco Chronicle •

After Kennedy Center cancellation, Martha Graham Company shines in Berkeley

More than a decade after its last visit, the oldest dance company in the United States finally returned to the Bay Area. But to say the eager audience at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall got a history lesson doesn’t come close to capturing the occasion’s import.

More than a decade after its last visit, the oldest dance company in the United States finally returned to the Bay Area. But to say the eager audience at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall got a history lesson doesn’t come close to capturing th...
San Francisco Chronicle •

The San Francisco Ballet has landed in a political storm. Its new program isn’t helping

Some, like Balanchine Trust stager Sandra Jennings, repeat the tale that the Russian choreographer borrowed the raised-arm gesture from dancers blocking their faces from the sun. Jennifer Homans, in her thoroughly authoritative 2022 Balanchine biography, offers a different story: that on the first day of rehearsals, the choreographer born Georgi Balanchivadze, newly arrived in the United States, told his fledgling ballerinas how he had survived the Russian Revolution and fled to Berlin, then “ta...
Fjord Review •

Fated Love

“Onegin” marks a homecoming. Possokhov made his first-ever choreographic foray, the surrealist “Magrittomania,” in 2000, while still a muscled, square-jawed principal dancer at San Francisco Ballet. Two years later his take on “Medea” was equally beloved locally, though poo-pooed on tour to New York. Oh, the places Possokhov’s career has taken him since! The Royal Danish, the Bolshoi, the Joffrey (which co-commissioned this “Onegin”)—all have tapped Possokhov to make original full-lengths, with...
San Francisco Chronicle •

S.F. Ballet’s ‘Eugene Onegin’ is ambitious — and worth taking seriously

The title character of Alexander Pushkin’s 1833 novel “Eugene Onegin” might be labeled a “fop” or a “dandy.” San Francisco Ballet Artistic Director Tamara Rojo has even suggested that his modern-day equivalent would be a fashion influencer on Instagram. It's a clever comparison — but it doesn’t get to the crux of why his story still speaks to us.

The title character of Alexander Pushkin’s 1833 novel “Eugene Onegin” might be labeled a “fop” or a “dandy.” San Francisco Ballet Artistic Director Ta...
San Francisco Chronicle •

What does ‘Stars and Stripes’ mean now? San Francisco Ballet’s season opener raises hard questions

George Balanchine’s “Stars and Stripes” is a comic, campy and enduringly brilliant ballet set to the military marches of John Philip Sousa. The last time it appeared on the War Memorial Opera House stage, back in 2009, America had just inaugurated its first Black president. The curatorial message from San Francisco Ballet’s then-artistic director Helgi Tomasson needed no verbal elaboration: Let’s celebrate, his choice said.

George Balanchine’s “Stars and Stripes” is a comic, campy and enduringl...
Fjord Review •

Talent Time

Fortunately, Helgi Tomasson’s “Nutcracker” production, just over two decades old, does an exemplary job of serving both constituencies. The sets and costumes placing us in 1915 San Francisco are tastefully gorgeous and tickle everyone’s nostalgia, while the snow scene, Waltz of the Flowers, and final Grand Pas offer challenging classical dancing that demand top-drawer artistry and technique. By the end of the third show I caught, on a rainy Friday evening, the audience was clapping along with th...
Fjord Review •

Back to the Future

From “AfterTime” to Tharp’s “In the Upper Room” we made a leap less than forty years backwards, and yet what an eon shift it seemed! Perhaps it is showing my age to be so attached to a work that, in many ways, captures the nineteen-eighties, from its commissioned Philip Glass score (composed before his music’s near-ubiquitous use in dance) to the striped Norma Kamali costumes that progress to ever greater pops of bare skin and red (Kamali being the designer of the red swimsuit worn by Farrah Faw...
Fjord Review •

Into the Wilde

This was evident on the second weekend of September, when it seemed nearly all the surviving dance artists in the Bay Area decided to hold their shows all at once. This often happens in September on the Northern California dance calendar, but the recent overload was especially and hearteningly rich. Of four shows I caught on one weekend, two stood out not just for the electricity of the performances, but for the evidence of legacies moving forward. The two dancemakers, Alley Wilde and Mia J. Cho...
San Francisco Chronicle •

S.F.’s ODC, a major hub for West Coast dance, names new co-artistic director and potential successor

The former ODC/Dance company member will join the top leadership team in December, just before the company’s tour to Taiwan, ODC announced Monday, Sept. 29. The move marks a major step towards securing an ongoing legacy for the 54-year-old dance organization, which encompasses an internationally touring company, a school, a theater and a 50,000 square foot Mission District campus.

The former ODC/Dance company member will join the top leadership team in December, just before the company’s tour t...
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About Me

Freelance dance critic writing regularly for the San Francisco Chronicle and Fjord Review