Cirque Eloize's Nebbia

First of all, I am embarrassed. I missed half of the Cirque Eloize show last Thursday night because I arrived at the theater at 8pm, the usual start time for performances at the Mondavi Center, only to find out that the show started at 7pm. Lesson: check your tickets before going to the theater, even if you're a regular.

I was really looking forward to this show too! As a former circus performer, I always delight in watching different acts of acrobatic derring do, and Cirque Eloize's last show, Rain, mesmerized me with its poetic imagery and innovative displays of skill. In that show, I fell in love with the juggler, Stephane, who deftly maneuvered various objects with the grace of Fred Astaire. I was excited to see him back in Nebbia, Cirque Eloize's latest production, which enjoyed a three night run at Jackson Hall last week.

I am told missed a good act, full of trapeze, aerial silk, clown work and some narrative exposition which might have elucidated why Stephane was in tremors in a tutu at the end. The second act opened with a playful trampoline piece where only a tight space of air between the trampoline and the ceiling was lit. This allowed the dancers to appear continuously in mid-flight - masking the work done on the bed of trampoline. It also allowed one dancer to go missing from time to time as he bounced out of the frame and clung to a trapeze. Slowly, the frame was widened, allowing us to see more and more of the action, and eventually revealing how this dancer was able to defy gravity.

In another vignette, two performers performed a duet on the xylophone, reminiscent of a Daffy/Donald Looney Toons piano battle. At one point, multi-colored balls started to fall from the sky. Dropping sparsely at first, they eventually became a deluge, until the performers were slipping and tripping on them as they attempted to continue playing. This was probably the most beautiful image of the show – more striking than the final snowfall it foreshadowed. Unfortunately, nothing happened with the balls afterwards – a few characters just came on and swept them away. By contrast, in Rain, after a deluge of rain, the performers slip and slide in merriment and glee across the wet stage.

Several other vignettes were sprinkled into the work, including hula hoops, an aerial apparatus (way too brief), and clowning, but one of the most memorable acts was the contortionist. Now, I’ve seen many contortion acts, but I’ve never seen anything like this. The best way I can describe it is extreme yoga. Rather than bending in half and touching his head to his butt (as most contortionists do), This performer twisted himself into binds I never thought possible. The situations he got himself into were so intense, many audience members were groaning in agony just from watching. I had to laugh.

Overall, the show was beautiful, but it didn’t capture my imagination as much as Rain.

Shameless plug: Come see Oklahoma! This weekend and next at Jackson Hall – I’m coming out of retirement to do a little singing and dancing.

Fire and Glass: Contrasting Nights at the Mondavi

Last week I took in Tango Fire and Philip Glass at Jackson Hall. The shows, which couldn’t be more different, both drew full houses and earned deserved standing ovations from the appreciative crowds.

In Tango Fire, five pairs of dancers, a singer and an orchestra recreate a smoky Argentine dance club. The performers slink, strut and twirl their way into and out of relationships in a rough narrative that is secondary to the movement and the energy of the smoldering dance form.

The couples, each with their own flavor, take turns one-upping each other with their impressive technique, intricate footwork, dazzling acrobatic lifts and increasingly entangled displays of affection. Occasionally, the pairs come together for ensemble work, or break up into solo expressions. Singer Javier “Cardenal” Dominguez provides needed breathers between the choreography.

After intermission, things really heat up. If the first act, with its considerable sensual energy, is the mating dance, the second act’s overt sexuality represents a “third date” consummation. There are more musical interludes in this act, as if the directors recognized we would need a break from the visual pyrotechnics provided by the dancers. The music, now dominated by Astor Piazzolla, is richer, more aggressive and drives the bold choreography. The dancers are truly remarkable in some of these duets - displaying exciting phrasing choices and nuances along with their more ambitious “tricks”. However, I did have to laugh and agree when my date for the evening commented, “Tango is such an interesting dance form…the men treat the women like little dolls, throwing them around, but then the women (appear to) keep kicking the men in the balls.” I wonder how an ethnographer would describe our more American dance form of the Lindy Hop.

Philip Glass was a delight in a completely different way. Mostly, it was a treat to see a legend live! I have to admit that when I first heard Glass’s music (about ten years ago), I found it to be inaccessible, repetitive and overly cerebral. I’m not sure if it’s because he’s become more mainstream, more popular, or more copied, (or if my tastes have changed), but on Wednesday, I was engaged and moved by every piece.

Glass was personable and engaging as he introduced each piece. Sometimes he gave us little snippets about the context in which he composed something, and other times he humorously laughed off the fact that he couldn’t remember the details of what he had composed.

The concert was simple – just him at the piano, Wendy Sutter on cello, and Mick Rossi on percussion. But the program was so satisfying because it was basically his “Greatest Hits” from the last few decades. His work, which spans commercial film score work to collaborations with international artists and symphonies, has never felt so honest yet nuanced. In his signature style, the compositions start slowly and repetitively, then evolve gradually into a lush and complicated score. The order of the program mirrors this structure. He first takes the stage alone on piano, then Sutter performs as a solo voice on cello, then Rossi joins Glass, then the three play together. As he moves from his classic “Metamorphoses” towards his more contemporary compositions, the music grows more visceral and evocative.

Glass has been busy creatively in the last year, and he unveiled several new works on stage, but if you didn’t make it to the show, look for his score in Woody Allen’s recent Cassandra’s Dream.

Pretty Pretty Princess

This Friday, I joined dozens of princess-clad little girls at the Mondavi Center for the State Ballet Theatre of Russia's production of Cinderella. As a special treat, the Sacramento Philharmonic Orchestra, under the direction of Michael Morgan, brought Prokofiev's score to life. The house was filled to capacity, with a line of people outside waiting for cancellations.

The company's dancers seemed to be having fun with the familiar fairy tale. The stepsisters had wonderful comedic timing and boldly pushed their technique to the edge to fulfil their bold and irreverent characters. Their mother, performed by a man in drag, also got several laughs with her physical absurdity and antics.

But it was Valeria Antisiferova, as Cinderella, and Ivan Alekseyev, as the Prince, who wowed the audience with their grace and poise.

As expected from a "story ballet," Vladimir Vasliev's choreography drew heavily on pantomime, but he managed to make this sometimes contrived "acting" seem more natural and accessible to today's audiences. And his movement had a wonderful breath and flow. While I am more familiar with the more formal neoclassical ballets of Balanchine (I grew up watching the New York City Ballet), it was great fun to get lost in the elaborate sets, the richly colored costumes and expressive dancing.

Young Dancers from ABTII Tackle the Classics

Tonight, New York City-based American Ballet Theatre II (ABII) treated the Mondavi Center audience to some of the most legendary ballet choreography in existence. ABII is a classical company of young dancers (age 16-19) handpicked from around the world. It serves as the training ground for the full ABT company, which has been home to ballet superstars like Mikhail Baryshnikov, Gelsey Kirkland, Natalia Makarova and Robert La Fosse.

First on the program was George Balanchine's classically perky "Allegro Brillante" to the music of Tchaikovsky. The dancers handled Balanchine’s precise construction of pure lines, neoclassic technique and group formations with aplomb.

The jubilant "Interplay" by Jerome Robbins was a perfect vehicle for this young company’s strengths. With flicks of flexed hands and feet, the capable dancers mixed their stunning technique and facility with a jazzy flair and sassy personality.

Marius Petipa’s Swan Lake and the Don Quixote duets provided the highlights of the evening. ABT is known for its interpretations of “story ballets” such as these, and its future looks bright if these dancers are to go on to dance with the full company.

The female soloist in the Swan Lake pas de deux was mature beyond her years. She invested her movements with exquisite emotional weight and had a remarkable sense of musicality and phrasing.

Meaghan Hinkis and Joseph Gorak nailed the virtuosic Don Quixote pas de deux with impressive bravura. Hinkis awed with her confident displays of pirouettes and footwork, while Gorak channeled the athleticism of Baryshnikov in his leaps and turns through the space.

The program concluded with Petipa’s “Carnival of Venice,” a solid display which brought back the full ensemble to enliven the stage.

Poetic Fantasy in Motion: Shen Wei Dance Arts

Last Friday, the renowned Shen Wei Dance Arts, under the direction of Shen Wei, presented two richly textured and emotive pieces at Jackson Hall. Re- (Part One), a quartet created in 2006, was co-commissioned by the Mondavi Center, while Folding, a more epic production, was originally created in 2000 for the Guandong Modern Dance Company.

Re- (Part One) features hauntingly stark lighting by the legendary designer, Jennifer Tipton. The costumes and stage design, by Shen Wei, are similarly simple, but effective. A layer of light snow confetti carpets the floor, giving way/moving with/trailing behind the dancers as they move. The soundscape alternates between traditional Tibetan Chants and silence, and the four dancers move seamlessly, silently and organically. Slow and meditative at first, their movements seem sourced from internal impulses. As the piece evolves, the dynamic shifts as the dancers begin expanding their use of space, sweeping across the stage, and fully inhabiting their own kinespheres. Even as their movements sharpen and crystallize, the dancers retain a remarkable sense of lightness and ease in their actions. They fold themselves into and out of the floor, kicking up the confetti snow and leaving tracers in the air as they drag the particles along with them – a record, however fleeting, of their movement through space. This imagery is reminiscent of the sand art Tibetan monks meticulously create, then leave to blow away in the wind – a reminder to invest fully in the beauty of an image even while accepting its impermanence.

If Re - (Part One) is an exploration in movement sourced from internal impulses, Folding is the opposite. In this piece, Wei uses the set, costumes, dancers and music to create a grand, almost operatic vision bigger than any of the individual dancers. All the design elements come together to evoke surreal, poetic images that are at once very Chinese and universally mythical. The dancers wear “coneheads” (think SNL in the 80s), which distort your sense of where their bodies end, especially when they turn backwards and contort. Their costumes consist of nude (or, for the women, nude-colored) tops with either black or red “monk” pants. The backdrop is a traditional, yet fantastical Chinese painting (by Wei), and the lighting is bright and vibrant. The movement, rather than being organic, is idiosyncratic and functional in the way it services Wei’s grand fanciful vision. The dancers skitter across the stage which, because of their balloon-like pants, gives the impression that they are floating through space. They form surreal creatures by stacking person upon person inside of the red and black fabrics to create 2-headed forms that ooze and move about the space in a slow butoh-esque style. They create illusions of height, depth, mass, and, in the end, appear to climb a “stairway to heaven”.

Both pieces, while different, were lush with imagery and made for an enjoyable and contemplative evening.

St. Petersburg Ballet presents "Russian Seasons"

The Mondavi Center was packed on Friday night for the St. Petersburg Ballet Theatre’s presentation of “Russian Seasons”. The company opened with “Chopiniana,” choreographed by Mikhail Fokine, which first premiered in St. Petersburg in 1908. At first, it took me awhile to adjust my eye to the pace of the romantic ballet and to the style of the company in general, as I have become accustomed to the “Western” ballet style dominated by Balanchine’s neo-classical aesthetic of precise athleticism, or more recently by William Fortsythe’s pyrotechnic articulations. Set to the music of Chopin, the piece consists of a series of gradually shifting tableaus, or frozen scenes that come to life slowly and subtly. The corps moves as a unit in architectural formations while several soloists emerge to portray “a young man’s dream”. But, it is far more abstract than the program notes led me to believe, and is best appreciated as a stylized movement poem of evolving landscapes, and a historical glimpse into the style of the world renown Russian Ballet company.

The next piece, “Scheherazade” with music by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and choreography by Yuri Petukhov is based on the tale of a sultan, his wife (Scheherazade) and the story she weaves to escape her execution and win the sultan’s heart. Relying heavily on pantomime, the ballet follows the star-crossed lovers of Scheherazade’s fairytale in a series of pas de deuxs. The young couple is fierce and spunky in their movement vocabulary, while Scheherazade and her Sultan are portrayed with a more lush, luxuriant movement style. The dancer portraying Scheherazade, while exhibiting impressive flexibility and facility, did not carry the emotional weight or phrasing depth I wished for in such a role. The young couple and the executioner infused the ballet with a shot of adrenaline, and displayed the great technique and energy I expected from the legendary Ballet Company.

The highlight of the evening, however, was Petukhov’s “Bolero” set to Maurice Ravel’s famous score. The dancers start hunched over and bunched tightly in a dim pool of light. A cappella, they circle slowly while beating out the familiar opening rhythm with their feet. As the melody begins, a single male dancer breaks away from the group. He is barely distinguishable at first, but his solo becomes more clearly defined as the ever brightening downward spotlight highlights his presence. More dancers begin to break away in a reverse circle, creating a whirlpool effect. The corps maintains the rhythm and the weight of the music on the perimeter, while the soloists articulate the melody with their fluid and dynamic movements on the interior. The back curtain slowly opens throughout the piece, revealing a bright red backdrop as the dance and music builds, culminating in a mass unison flourish. The original soloist exuded a clear charisma coupled with a powerful technique that was not seen from the company until this point. He took his superb technique a step further to transcendence. His phrasing choices and intense focus left me feeling energized and inspired.

"Collapse": Behind the Scenes

Sideshow Physical Theater’s “Collapse (suddenly falling down)” kicked off the Mondavi Center’s Creativity Project on Thursday October 25 and ran through this Sunday November 4. In the spirit of the project, which is meant to explore how artists create work (and, by doing so, to make contemporary art more accessible to audiences), I thought I’d use this space to reveal my experiences as a dancer/collaborator in this performance, and to explore different interpretations for this show.

The Creative Process
I began work on this project in the beginning of September, and at that time director Della Davidson was already juggling many creative activities. She had been exploring movement ideas with dancers Jane Schnorrenberg, Kegan Marling, Kerry Mehling, and Victoria Terrell-Carazo for about a month (Sara Zimmerman, David Orzechowicz and I came into the project around the same time, and Victor Toman came in a few weeks later). She had enlisted Ed Gaible (the script writer) as a collaborator, who had begun some initial scenes inspired by Jared Diamond’s “Collapse,” and who had interviewed the dancers on their ideas about “collapse” and about their rational and irrational fears. She had also begun discussions with several scientists who were hard at work on the LIDAR scans which would become our stunning 3-D scenery.

We began rehearsals with a lot of big societal questions. Diamond’s question, “What were the Easter Islanders thinking when they cut down the last tree on their island?” was a major point of departure. We asked, “How might this question relate to our current concerns about environmental sustainability and cultural priorities?” We sourced images, ideas and events such as the collapse of the twin towers and major bridges (both the physical collapse of the structures themselves and the impact these collapses had on individuals and society); the bee crisis; animal poaching in Africa; social upheaval in Rwanda; the collapse of the human heart from heartbreak; and the collapse of long term relationships.

After discussing many of these ideas, we began physical dance explorations. Davidson set up various improvisation structures where we attempted to wrap our heads (and bodies) around some of these questions through the process of staging and acting them out.

At the heart of the creative process for the dance were the questions:

• What does collapse actually mean, and how can this be expressed physically?
• What are different ways in which you personally collapse (i.e. how is the physical expression tied to emotion – how does being tired, depressed affect you physically)?
• Why do systems collapse: from your body, to relationships with loved ones, to ecosystems, to societies?
• Can we acknowledge the paradox of collapse: Can collapse be positive? (It creates the need to rebuild, rearrange, reinvent, and rebound.) Can it be energizing?
• What does this have to do with us (personally and as a society)?
• What happens to a group when one of its members begins to collapse? How do we support each other? What happens when we chose not to?

The Material
We used these improvisations to create material, which Davidson then shaped and pieced together into the final product. A section of the group dance material which we called “Prayer” dealt with social ideas about what happens to a group when one of its members collapses. The physical manifestation of bodies collapsing can be read literally and metaphorically. The section we called “Falling Man” dealt with our impressions of and reactions to big disasters. We referenced images from Don DeLillo’s book (by the same name) about 9/11, but the collapse of the boxes at the beginning of this section and our reactions to it can refer to any kind of disaster or feeling of Armageddon. Solos emerged from the questions “What are we afraid of?” “What do we do when we get depressed?” and “How do we cope with upheaval in our lives?” They represented our personal responses to some of these questions. The duets were often sourced from the questions “Is there a shelf life to relationships?” “Why do relationships collapse, what do we do to stop that from happening?” “Do those things make a difference?”

The Production Collage
In the spirit of the Creativity Project and Merce Cunningham, we didn’t have much contact with the other collaborators until “tech week” – the week preceding opening night when everyone arrives in the theater to put together the show. The show is therefore the product of multiple artists working simultaneously, but not necessarily collaboratively on the same material. Each artist approached the idea of collapse according to their own interests. Davidson used the above methods to explore her interest in the subject of collapse through movement. Gaible used Diamond’s book and his interests in anthropology, economics and sociology to imagine a scenario where two characters discuss their options given that they are the last people on an island with only one tree left standing. When an anthropologist (Toman) arrives on the island, hilarity ensues as he and the islanders make (often erroneous) assumptions about each other. The scientists used their visual research on natural disasters to create a backdrop for the production. Some of the LIDAR scans (3-dimensional snapshots of landscapes) included imagery from landslides, dam failures, debris flows and sink holes.

The flow of the show ended up feeling a bit like a Greek tragedy where the narrative is advanced by the actors; the emotional content and physical expression of the ideas are articulated by the dancers; and the set, costumes and other elements support these actions.

During tech week we experimented with several different order sequences for the material – some more linear than others, while Davidson tried to create the best possible version which would illustrate our ideas about collapse as a kaleidoscope. Merce Cunningham, a famous modern dance choreographer, used ideas of chance, choice, collage and probability in his work. His practice of collaboration through parallel creation inspired Davidson and “Collapse’s” structure.

FAQs
Some common questions emerged from discussions I had with friends who came to the show: “What’s with the Black feathers?” “Why did you keep walking towards the light?” “What’s with the repetition?” My friends, annoyed that I threw these questions back at them (“What do you think it meant?”), should be comforted – there are no right answers when looking at art. Images and symbols can be interpreted in many ways (maybe the repetition represented non-linear time or a sense of history repeating itself), but sometimes a feather is just a feather.

Let me know what you thought! What are some of your interpretations?