January 1, 2003

By Rita Felciano

THE PAST YEAR has proven that wherever the population moves, dance follows. No longer can local dance fans count on the East and West Bay to fulfill cravings; dance-going has become a commuter activity. And BART or a bike are not enough – a car is required. A few years ago, when a Los Angeles-based colleague complained to me about routinely traveling an hour or more to dance performances, I thought the idea monstrous. Yet two days before Thanksgiving I drove to Davis to see the Ballet Nacional de España, and trips to San Jose for the Ballet San Jose Silicon Valley have become routine for me. The year 2003 should require even more travel: the Perm Ballet (in April) and the Joffrey Ballet (in June) are set to perform at Cupertino's Flint Center, and the Marin Center and Stanford Lively Arts each offer a steadily improving dance series.

Such developments are good for those who live in the suburbs, but frustrating for those of us who consider San Francisco a cultural nexus. This past fall the Trisha Brown Dance Company performed in Davis – just how major is the Bay Area if major dance companies routinely bypass it? For inveterate urbanites, UC Berkeley-based Cal Performances has become the only presenter to offer an easily accessible major program with a fair number of national and international ensembles. (San Francisco Performances offers an intelligently selected season, but a small one.)

Cal Performances' ongoing relationships with the Mark Morris, Alvin Ailey, and Merce Cunningham companies limit who else it can program, and the sheer size of Zellerbach Hall (more than 2,000 seats) also restricts the selection process. One ray of hope is Cal Performances' budding relationship with Berkeley Repertory Theatre, whose Roda Theatre – an effective, more modest space for dance – hosted the North American debut of Grupo Krapp (Oct. 31) from Argentina. Grupo Krapp's absurdist romps through the terrain of sex, violence, and power pushed boundaries and established that sophisticated dance theater thrives. While dance is not only, or even primarily, about touring companies, their fleeting engagements create an appetite and set standards. Presenters who bring in (mostly) large, established groups may not directly foster homegrown artists, but they do fortify and broaden local perceptions about dance. Eventually – at least one hopes – local groups benefit from this increased awareness.

What did you recently miss if your dance thinking was still running along an East Bay-West Bay axis? Courtesy of Stanford Lively Arts, Ronald K. Brown/Evidence (Oct. 26) realized an extraordinary meditation on conflict and reconciliation in Walking out the Dark, which fused African, urban, and Caribbean dance styles. Full of yearning and unafraid of rejection, the work also promised redemption, as the dancers arose from the earth that had buried them. Earlier in the month, the Australian Dance Theatre created a completely different tone with its fast-paced and witty Birdbrain (Oct. 11), a fractured but affectionate homage to Swan Lake. Thanks to the cues printed on their T-shirts, the techno-savvy dancers not only interpreted the characters, they also represented the sets. (Unfortunately, Birdbrain also included a brain-deadening, overamplified horror of a score.)

At the handsome Mondavi Center in Davis, Nacho Duato's three dances for his Ballet Nacional de España (Nov. 26) pitted individual against group. Community as both comfort and confinement is an idea the Spanish choreographer has explored in other works. In the case of Castrati, he explored areas that weren't far removed from recent headlines. With lush and sweeping choreography, the work showed a youth's initiation into a secret priestly society. The half-naked boy's angular torment conveyed that he was struggling with his sexuality; a cassock-wearing, incense-swinging brotherhood of males encircled him ever more closely until a bloody coup de theater took place.

At the Marin Center, the politics of the Shanghai Ballet's White Haired Girl (Nov. 17) were naive, but the fast-paced and clear storytelling was superb. The piece showed a young man joining the revolutionary army to fight against invading Japanese forces while his girlfriend endured untold hardships fleeing from a capitalist pig of a landlord. Performed in an athletic but stripped-down fusion of Soviet-style ballet and Chinese popular theater, the ballet was pure melodrama, excellently presented.

Welcome as these touring companies are, a community without a strong local dance component isn't one in which I would want to live. And the East Bay-West Bay axis still boasts unique strengths. Jess Curtis's Gravity Physical Entertainment company may be headquartered in Berlin these days, but the disparate episodes of Fallen (Feb. 10) coalesced into a piece that convincingly explored issues of vulnerability and integrated movement into a rich theatrical context. Curtis's companion in dance, Keith Hennessy (who recently moved back from Europe) has also taken his circus experience and distilled it into physical poetry. His Circo Zero (June 6) was quite unlike anything else I saw onstage this year – and rumor has it that the piece may return.

The big three – ODC San Francisco, Joe Goode Performance Group, and Alonzo King's Lines Ballet – all had good years. Having completed the final movement, ODC now has a glorious triptych in Part of a Longer Story to Mozart (Feb. 21). With American Boy, the company's Brian Freeman launched himself into more theatrical territory. ODC's loss of lanky Silfredo La O Vigo was Cuban dance's gain, as he debuted his Emese company at the Ethnic Dance Festival. For his Olympus-based Mythic, Montana (May 31), Goode had the opportunity to double his ensemble, adding beautifully trained students – a positive aspect of his having joined academia. In the spring King made the witty Splash and collaborated with master koto player Miya Masaoka (in Koto); in the fall the company celebrated 20 years of survival.

In addition to the big three, there were noteworthy performances by three "nearly big" (i.e., solid, established) companies, each with a distinct profile. AXIS Dance Company continued to surprise with the range of its programs, including this year's guest appearance by Homer Avila and Andrea Flores in King's Pas (Oct. 6). The Savage Dance Company, now in its 10th year, performs to live jazz like no one else. Robert Moses's Kin is another one to watch – it's certainly been a pure joy to witness Moses' (and his dancers') year-by-year growth.

And then there were the times when I went to a concert without any expectations and walked away excited by what I'd seen. The best surprises were provided by choreographers such as Christy Funsch, Sue Roginsky, Erica Shuch, and Lea Wolf. Veterans Joanna Haigood, Sara Shelton Mann, and Mercy Sidbury shared the spotlight at Summerfest; Michael Schumacher and Shelley Senters stole it at Dancers' Group Summer Dance Festival. Outdoor dance continued to thrive, thanks to the hip-hop show at Stern Grove and Jo Kreiter's wall-climbing in the Mission District. Ann Carlson's dreamy Night Light lit up the gardens of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and a few weeks later the Paul Taylor Dance Company embraced the afternoon sky at the same location.

But the best – the most consistently satisfying – tickets to have held this past year were those to see San Francisco Ballet. With premieres of Jerome Robbins's Dances at a Gathering and George Balanchine's Jewels, SFB acquired masterpieces; with Yuri Possokhov's Damned and Christopher Wheeldon's Continuum, the company looked toward the future. All four works are returning for the 2003 season, which will also introduce world premieres by Julia Adam, Alexei Ratmansky, and Stanton Welch. SFB's dancers come from around the world. They dance locally but they think globally. The men in particular are dancing magnificently these days.