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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...
Fjord Review •

Real Men

After a boot-stomping and occasionally hip-thrusting group number to a song about all kinds of spicy chiles, Lopez himself emerges as the main character, a barrel-chested guy who secretly longs to toss on a flowered silk robe, as he does in a flitting little number to the West Side Story tune “I Feel Pretty.” He meets up for a date with his masked seducer, Josue Oregel, and a memorable duet over a restaurant table to an operatic rendition of “Besame Mucho” ensues.The journey to a new and more co...
San Francisco Chronicle •

Can art heal? This San Francisco dancer makes the case

As Cissoko sunk, her hip hit the ground, then her ribs, then her elbow, and what could have been a rushed collapse became an exploration of architecture. At least that’s how King tried to explain it to a different dancer who hadn’t quite found the idea inside the movement yet. “It’s not just about pain, it has a beauty, a kind of impersonal structure,” King said, precisely describing everything Cissoko had just wordlessly embodied.

As Cissoko sunk, her hip hit the ground, then her ribs, then he...
San Francisco Chronicle •

San Francisco Ballet should refuse to dance at the Kennedy Center. Here’s why

In March, weeks after President Donald Trump purged the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts’ board of members he deemed too “woke” and broke political precedent to install himself as chair, the artistic team behind “Hamilton” canceled the musical’s planned performances at the capital’s crown-jewel arts venue — where San Francisco Ballet is scheduled to perform next May.

In March, weeks after President Donald Trump purged the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts’ board of me...
San Francisco Chronicle •

Review: In seductive ‘Pompeii,’ pleasure masks impending doom

The third floor of the old brick and steel building on 9th Street now known as Storek was for the purposes of the evening, Garcia explained, now the Kit Kat Club. Beneath us was the mezzanine and the Fandango Ballroom, and beneath that, in the basement, was Fernando’s Hideaway. We were free to roam these mysterious spaces for the next two and a half hours, but not to touch anyone “unless there is a crystal-clear invitation.”

The third floor of the old brick and steel building on 9th Street now...
San Francisco Chronicle •

Review: Resilience, resistance and two tour de force solos open ODC Theater’s State of Play festival

In May, the groundbreaking venue lost $15,000 in funding for its annual State of Play Festival when the Trump administration rescinded National Endowment for the Arts grants already appropriated by Congress. Keep in mind that this significant budget item is just a small fraction of the approximately $1 million in total funding the ODC/Dance troupe and its many campus programs have lost as other funders shifted priorities.

In May, the groundbreaking venue lost $15,000 in funding for its annual S...
San Francisco Chronicle •

Ballet22 proves rigid gender norms have no place in dance with electrifying S.F. show

A note inside the program for Ballet22’s 2025 season encourages the audience to “please clap and cheer for the dancers.” But the raucously adoring crowd at Cowell Theater for opening night hardly needed the reminder.

A note inside the program for Ballet22’s 2025 season encourages the audience to “please clap and cheer for the dancers.” But the raucously adoring crowd at Cowell Theater for opening night hardly needed the reminder.

Founded in Oakland in 2020, Ballet22 is a small but ambitious pi...
San Francisco Chronicle •

Review: ODC’s legendary KT Nelson returns with a surreal and compassionate dance of grief

True, this annual “extra” engagement after the troupe’s spring home season gives San Francisco’s leading modern dance company a chance to try out experimental new works and guest choreographers in the low-pressure atmosphere of the black box ODC Theater. But the richly filling triple-bill — on offer Thursday, July 17, through Sunday, July 20 — couldn’t be further from some insubstantial smorgasbord. And Nelson’s premiere was something more than merely satisfying: It was bravely weird, risky, sim...
San Francisco Chronicle •

SFDanceworks’ program of vulnerability is the hot dance ticket of the summer

Over eight seasons, the annual pick-up project devoted to contemporary dance with international avant-garde cred has become not just summer’s hot ticket, but one of the must-see dates of the annual dance calendar. Yes, the triple-bill that opened at Z Space on Thursday, July 10, and continues through Saturday, July 12, is just one hour and 15 minutes long — and yes, I would gladly watch another hour of whatever artistic director Dana Genshaft, with her taste for movement as explosive as it is to...
Fjord Review •

Keeping the Faith

The subject is toxic religion, immediately apparent both in those Catholic school girl uniforms (though Maleta Bukstaff renders them in shades of orange) and in the way an ensemble of 11 dancers frenetically mouths the lyrics of devotions, then doubles over with hands in prayer. A lighting scheme by Julie Ballard of an overhead grid, left exposed and inoperative by the ballet’s end, combines with a sound design by Darryl J. Hoffman of terrifying crumbling audio effects that crash in at irregular...
Fjord Review •

New School

An even greater luxury at these shows, though, was the presence of the full San Francisco Ballet orchestra in the pit. Both of these changes are thanks to Grace Holmes, the School’s new-ish director, and both changes made for student dancing that felt bigger, bolder, and more unleashed than in years past. Even in the opening demonstrations with their exam-style recitations of increasingly tricky steps, the Level 6-8 students were uninhibited and used the language of classicism with a sense of pe...
Datebook | San Francisco Arts & Entertainment Guid •

Peace and strife co-exist in Lines Ballet collaboration with Grammy-nominated trumpeter

In the middle of Alonzo King’s new ballet “The Beauty of Dissolving Portraits” there’s a moment that feels like a gift made for anyone who won’t give up on love and interconnection as the current governmental regime tries to tear our society apart.Theo Duff Grant, dancing a consuming solo, is a torrent of pale musculature clothed in flowing green silk, his head touching the floor when it seems he can’t go on. Suddenly two more men arrive like angels to help him, their velvet skirts flaring into...
Datebook | San Francisco Arts & Entertainment Guid •

In dark times, Margaret Jenkins’ absorbing dance ‘Wheel’ brings us back to the light

Some old lines from the playwright Bertolt Brecht that have been making the rounds lately, for good reason as we pass through this alarming period of mounting authoritarianism: “In the dark times / Will there also be singing?” In their echo, Margaret Jenkins’ absorbing new dance “Wheel” adds pressing new questions: “Will it end? If so, when? Will we resist? What world is this?”Those words come from the poet Michael Palmer, who has worked with Jenkins since she founded the Margaret Jenkins Dance...
Fjord Review •

Box Office Ballet

When it comes to sex, the challenge to shyer sensibilities is not subtle: “Grosse Fuge” is a ritualized copulation for four men and four women, to Beethoven’s Great Fugue. What’s refreshing to this American eye, though, is how it brings us a healthier Dutch attitude towards sexuality. The women stand in the back for the first section of “Grosse Fuge,” dressed in white leotards that look a bit like lingerie; as the music delivers strident phrases driven by the double-bass, the men make fists and...
Fjord Review •

The Right Way

The night began with an excerpt from a work-in-progress, “After the Deluge.” The music was gentle, minimalist-leaning selections from Nils Frahm, Max Richter, and Bach as reinterpreted by pianist Chad Lawson; the costumes, by Kyo Yohena, were pastel pajamas. What emerged most powerfully from the ensemble passages was the repeated image of a dancer holding his or her partner upside down. Jenna Marie and Colton Wall had an especially charged duet, her hand tracing down his body, the crook of her k...
San Francisco Chronicle •

Review: ODC/Dance’s bold 55th season opens with political resistance, artistic audacity

ODC/Dance founder Brenda Way has never been timid about talking politics, but it was a relief all the same to see her take the stage for the company’s 55th annual home season and announce, “Given what the current administration is doing to the country, this calls for a different kind of current speech.” It was a balm to hear Way speak of art as “the tent under which all can resist.”

ODC/Dance founder Brenda Way has never been timid about talking politics, but it was a relief all the same to see...
Datebook | San Francisco Arts & Entertainment Guid •

Review: Alvin Ailey dancers return to Berkeley stage with cryptic premiere, indestructible spirit

Awakening to true joy is a serious business. That thought stayed in mind while watching Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater groove and glide through Ronald K. Brown’s “Grace” as the opener of the internationally beloved company’s 55th visit to UC Berkeley’s Cal Performances.For audience members who come year after year and decade after decade, the Ailey dancers’ annual weeklong spring residency isn’t just entertainment. It’s a religious rite, a practice of communing with bodies channeling a trans...
San Francisco Chronicle •

San Francisco Ballet’s tribute to Hans van Manen will change how you see dance

Those who think they only like blockbuster dance productions built around familiar storylines might find themselves converted by a riveting program that offers no narrative and no literal pyrotechnics — but plenty of drama and musicality, and the fireworks of pure dancing power.

Those who think they only like blockbuster dance productions built around familiar storylines might find themselves converted by a riveting program that offers no narrative and no literal pyrotechnics — but plenty of dr...
Datebook | San Francisco Arts & Entertainment Guid •

Is ‘Frankenstein’ cinematic or a slog? Two takes on S.F. Ballet’s monster hit

Liam Scarlett’s “Frankenstein” is a spectacular ticket-selling phenomenon, so popular that San Francisco Ballet is offering it twice this season, in addition to taking it on tour to Southern California in October. Passionate standing ovations have greeted this three-act ballet based on the Mary Shelley novel ever since its North American premiere here eight years ago. Audiences love the special effects, bold scenery, and familiar gothic story. But the reaction from critics — the late Allan Ulric...
Fjord Review •

A Feminist Raymonda

It’s a matter of personal taste whether the radical re-interpretation of Petipa’s choreography works (I didn’t envy the ballerinas in having to dance it this way), but dramatically the action that follows is indecipherable, and a missed opportunity. Raymonda finishes the solo and walks off arm-in-arm with her new husband, John de Bryan. Nothing seems changed in their body language towards each other; Raymonda socializes among the party guests and all seems well. John de Bryan takes his variation...
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