San Francisco Ballet – Nutcracker – San Francisco
★★★★✰ I’m a Nutcracker fan. And I’m a fan of San Francisco Ballet’s current production, choreographed in 2004 by Artistic Director and Principal Choreographer Helgi Tomasson…
ODC/Dance – The Velveteen Rabbit – San Francisco
★★★★✰ As November fades away and December’s bustle begins, an enchanting Bay Area dance favorite returns for its annual two-week run at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.
Aura Fischbeck Dance – DUSK – San Francisco
★★★✰✰ DUSK had a lot going for it. First was the overall concept. DUSK challenges the viewer to not only acknowledge the idea of transformation, but to consider what lies beneath.
Sasha Waltz & Guests – Körper – San Francisco
★★★★✰ In English, körper means ‘body’, and so, as one might guess, the ninety-minute tour de force, directed and choreographed by Sasha Waltz, turns its eye to the body in space.
Liss Fain Dance – A Recomposition: I Don’t Know and Never Will – San Francisco
★★★✰✰ Liss Fain Dance knows how to set a mood. As I walked into Z Space on Friday night for the opening of “A Recomposition: I Don’t Know and Never Will”, I was completely transfixed by the environment – both visuals and sound.
Alonzo King LINES Ballet – Handel, Common Ground (world premiere with Kronos Quartet) – San Francisco
★★★★✰ For those dance fans who are also music devotees, this bill is a must see.
Mark Morris Dance Group – Pepperland – San Francisco
★★✰✰✰ Cal Performances patrons were clearly entertained on Friday evening. I, too, wanted to like the piece, but it didn’t really resonate with me.
Smuin Contemporary Ballet – Dance Series 01 bill – Walnut Creek
★★★★✰ A winning first program, one with the range and breadth that Smuin is famous for.
FACT/SF Summer Dance Festival including works by Simpson/Stulberg, Fog Beast and Joy Davis – San Francisco
★★★★✰ The evening definitely delivered a broad swath of dance performance – a very strong debut and a great addition to the SF dance festival circuit.
ODC/Dance – Summer Sampler 1: Head in the Sand, Something About a Nightingale, Giant – San Francisco
★★★✰✰ A solid program overall, there were moments that satiated my craving for lightness and moments that challenged it.
Amy Seiwert’s Imagery – SKETCH 8: Origin Stories – San Francisco
★★★✰✰ Whether walking through space, cycling through a gestural sequence or dancing a technically demanding phrase the dancers were a real joy to watch. The choreography on the other hand, was more of a mixed bag.
SFDanceworks – Season Three: Snap, Homing, The Old Child, Jardí Tancat – San Francisco
★★★★✰ SFDanceworks is going places. Formed in 2014 by longtime San Francisco Ballet soloist James Sofranko, the relatively new company already finds itself in a season of expansion.
Capacitor – Left To Her Own Devices: 20 Years of Sculpture in Motion – San Francisco
★★★✰✰ Artistic Director and Founder Jodi Lomask describes Capacitor as a “dance, cirque, sculpture company that often works with scientists…” The program excerpted seven works created from 2000 to 2014.
Interview – Alexander Ekman & T.M. Rives on dance and film
“I think you’ve just got to dare to go there. It’s hard, it’s scary, but creation is always kind of scary in one way or the other. So I think you’ve just gotta have guts and go for it anyway.” Alexander Ekman.
AXIS Dance Company – Historias rotas, The Reflective Surface, Radical Impact – San Francisco
★★★★✰ Brew describes physically integrated dance as “dancers of different physicalities uniting together as equals, colleagues and collaborators to create high-caliber art that is relevant and reflective of the world we live in.” And each offering on the program embodied that spirit and sentiment.
San Francisco Ballet – Unbound Festival Program D: works by Edwaard Liang, Dwight Rhoden, Arthur Pita – San Francisco
★★★★★ A hundred monkeys might eventually type out Hamlet, but only a herd of unicorns on Ecstasy could come anywhere near Arthur Pita’s Björk Ballet.
San Francisco Ballet – Unbound Festival Program C: works by Stanton Welch, Trey McIntyre, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa – San Francisco
★★★★✰ Program C’s offerings spanned the choreographic spectrum, from pure movement to narrative threads to inventive theatricality. Every work on the bill impressed with its freshness and ingenuity.
San Francisco Ballet – Unbound Festival Program B: works by Myles Thatcher, Cathy Marston, David Dawson – San Francisco
★★★✰✰ Snowblind is a great narrative ballet – the source material is striking and Marston’s interpretation of it, equally so.
San Francisco Ballet – Unbound Festival Program A: works by Alonzo King, Christopher Wheeldon, Justin Peck – San Francisco
★★★★✰ If Helgi Tomasson was hoping that Unbound: A Festival of New Works would generate heated debate on the state of ballet today, his wish has already been fulfilled just one night into the massive festival…
Smuin Contemporary American Ballet – Dance Series 02: Falling Up, If I Were a Sushi Roll, Oasis – San Francisco
★★★★✰ A title like “If I Were a Sushi Roll” suggests that some whimsy may be in store, and indeed, Caniparoli’s new nine-part dance suite had whimsy to spare…
