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"Dominated this year by belly dancing, the Spectrum version of 'The Nutcracker' uses little Clara's Christmas dream as an open-ended structure allowing a wide range of local companies to present their specialties.
In its best moments you get a sense of L.A. diversity superimposed on the Spanish-Arabian-Chinese-Russian matrix of the original 1892 ballet. And sometimes a contemporary artist will rethink a "Nutcracker" concept and come up with something as distinctive as Mark Morris and Matthew Bourne did in their radically revamped stagings.
That happened at the Ivar Theater on Saturday during Holly Mistine's "Spanish (Chocolate)" solo in Act 2: a thoughtful, inventive conversation between ballet and flamenco sensibilities.
Ken Morris' doll solo for the intense, versatile Micah Mock as well as Nina McNeely's eccentric doll duet for herself and Marlon Pelayo had some of the same creativity matched with strong performance skills.
Though it suffered from several false endings, Hilary Thomas' modern-dance 'Flowers' for the women of her Lineage Dance Company did achieve a sense of buoyant, serene femininity -- maybe not what Petipa, Ivanov and Tchaikovsky had in mind 113 years ago but a glowing millennial equivalent.
Otherwise, most of the evening's choreographers simply pasted 'Nutcracker' titles onto the kind of divertissements they present all year long. Kenji Yamaguchi, for instance, is never shy about showing off his phenomenal technique -- but one Slavic squat-kick wasn't nearly enough to justify calling his flamboyant rock solo 'Russian (Trepak).'
Nor did Aleya's torso gyrations atop a pedestal drum, garnished by quivering houris of the Aleya and Negma Dance Ensemble, credibly evoke 'Sugar Plums,' though their costumes were at least plum-colored.
Shirley Martin's 'Chinese (Tea)' suite for the Martin Dancers looked more Afro-Caribbean than Asian, shuffled groups and soloists onto and off of the stage with no evident purpose but did boast a number of vibrant performers.
Arguably the most bizarre lapse came in what was listed as 'Clara and the Nutcracker Prince' but turned out to be a high-speed, hard-sell nightclub adagio created by and for Ruby Karen and Ruben Enguio. Although in other scenes Karen played Clara conventionally as a wide-eyed child, here she performed gymnastic contortions while lifted and flung in the air, stripped to the legal limit. If they existed in this version, the Sugar Plum Fairy would be shocked and Mother Ginger would faint dead away.
Tchaikovsky's music most often turned up as transitional underscoring on Saturday, but John Castagna supplied a graceful, if under-danced, 'Snow' ensemble for his Ballet Collective women.
Choreography by Paula Present, Dani Lunn, Shelley Montgomery Puente (Everything Celtic Dance Company) and Juliette Arroyo (Arabesque Dance Company) completed the program. Spectrum producer Deborah Brockus appeared as the harried mother in Act 1, and Ken Morris contributed expert cape-swirling as Drosselmeyer."
In its best moments you get a sense of L.A. diversity superimposed on the Spanish-Arabian-Chinese-Russian matrix of the original 1892 ballet. And sometimes a contemporary artist will rethink a "Nutcracker" concept and come up with something as distinctive as Mark Morris and Matthew Bourne did in their radically revamped stagings.
That happened at the Ivar Theater on Saturday during Holly Mistine's "Spanish (Chocolate)" solo in Act 2: a thoughtful, inventive conversation between ballet and flamenco sensibilities.
Ken Morris' doll solo for the intense, versatile Micah Mock as well as Nina McNeely's eccentric doll duet for herself and Marlon Pelayo had some of the same creativity matched with strong performance skills.
Though it suffered from several false endings, Hilary Thomas' modern-dance 'Flowers' for the women of her Lineage Dance Company did achieve a sense of buoyant, serene femininity -- maybe not what Petipa, Ivanov and Tchaikovsky had in mind 113 years ago but a glowing millennial equivalent.
Otherwise, most of the evening's choreographers simply pasted 'Nutcracker' titles onto the kind of divertissements they present all year long. Kenji Yamaguchi, for instance, is never shy about showing off his phenomenal technique -- but one Slavic squat-kick wasn't nearly enough to justify calling his flamboyant rock solo 'Russian (Trepak).'
Nor did Aleya's torso gyrations atop a pedestal drum, garnished by quivering houris of the Aleya and Negma Dance Ensemble, credibly evoke 'Sugar Plums,' though their costumes were at least plum-colored.
Shirley Martin's 'Chinese (Tea)' suite for the Martin Dancers looked more Afro-Caribbean than Asian, shuffled groups and soloists onto and off of the stage with no evident purpose but did boast a number of vibrant performers.
Arguably the most bizarre lapse came in what was listed as 'Clara and the Nutcracker Prince' but turned out to be a high-speed, hard-sell nightclub adagio created by and for Ruby Karen and Ruben Enguio. Although in other scenes Karen played Clara conventionally as a wide-eyed child, here she performed gymnastic contortions while lifted and flung in the air, stripped to the legal limit. If they existed in this version, the Sugar Plum Fairy would be shocked and Mother Ginger would faint dead away.
Tchaikovsky's music most often turned up as transitional underscoring on Saturday, but John Castagna supplied a graceful, if under-danced, 'Snow' ensemble for his Ballet Collective women.
Choreography by Paula Present, Dani Lunn, Shelley Montgomery Puente (Everything Celtic Dance Company) and Juliette Arroyo (Arabesque Dance Company) completed the program. Spectrum producer Deborah Brockus appeared as the harried mother in Act 1, and Ken Morris contributed expert cape-swirling as Drosselmeyer."
"Sometimes ballet is all about longing for the divine, without being the least bit divine, which does not make for a good evening of dance. If you think of the latest offering of mixed works by the ballet-oriented local company La Danserie as a gathering place where the hopeful came to worship, it was one that provided only the outline of a dance sanctuary. Saturday at the Japan America Theatre, there were diligent performers, chiffon, unitards, pointe shoes and big, important music, but no holy spirit to animate the proceedings.
The program, 'Jamais Vu,' included works mostly by artistic director Patrick R. Frantz, opening with 'Valse From Eugene Onegin' and closing with 'Golden Jubilee,' both, curiously, featuring dancers costumed in the same black and gold short tutus. Each featured formal, shifting patterns for a female corps, using steps that varied so much in style and changed direction so awkwardly that they looked like puzzle pieces that never came together. The youthful dancers were fairly advanced in technique, yet they seemed to have had the excitement schooled out of them, an unforgivable transgression.
In Frantz's 'Over the Top,' a delicately jazzy romp of sorts danced to Jelly Roll Morton tunes, Andrea Thompson managed to vamp with creative exactitude and personality, but even in this ostensibly fun piece, the corps looked too careful, as if it had never been allowed to find itself in the dancing.
Holly Mistine in 'Farruca' and Jennifer Wilson in 'Point de Depart' looked accomplished in Frantz choreography, which translated music into a series of high-drama phrases, the latter work enhanced by Chopin, played onstage by pianist Darrin Blumfield. Frantz seems to hear music in bursts, and constructs steps and impressive shapes to fit these phrases, without having a style or architectural design to create substantial ideas.
Armen Ksajikian played moody cello music by Zoltan Kodaly onstage for 'Celsius,' while Ariana Lallone and Olivier Wevers bent and stretched around each other, stern of face and limb, in steps that asked for no more than the stately concern of their opening stares. In another duet -- Kent Stowell's 'Hail to the Conquering Hero' -- the poised couple, who were from Stowell's Pacific Northwest Ballet, did much the same thing, with more poses and a stalking, serious walk, to Handel's famous Largo from 'Xerxes.'
Judy Pisarro-Grant's 'Blink of an Eye,' while not much more than a stylish solo, had a welcome, different look, and it was well-danced by Rei Aoo."
The program, 'Jamais Vu,' included works mostly by artistic director Patrick R. Frantz, opening with 'Valse From Eugene Onegin' and closing with 'Golden Jubilee,' both, curiously, featuring dancers costumed in the same black and gold short tutus. Each featured formal, shifting patterns for a female corps, using steps that varied so much in style and changed direction so awkwardly that they looked like puzzle pieces that never came together. The youthful dancers were fairly advanced in technique, yet they seemed to have had the excitement schooled out of them, an unforgivable transgression.
In Frantz's 'Over the Top,' a delicately jazzy romp of sorts danced to Jelly Roll Morton tunes, Andrea Thompson managed to vamp with creative exactitude and personality, but even in this ostensibly fun piece, the corps looked too careful, as if it had never been allowed to find itself in the dancing.
Holly Mistine in 'Farruca' and Jennifer Wilson in 'Point de Depart' looked accomplished in Frantz choreography, which translated music into a series of high-drama phrases, the latter work enhanced by Chopin, played onstage by pianist Darrin Blumfield. Frantz seems to hear music in bursts, and constructs steps and impressive shapes to fit these phrases, without having a style or architectural design to create substantial ideas.
Armen Ksajikian played moody cello music by Zoltan Kodaly onstage for 'Celsius,' while Ariana Lallone and Olivier Wevers bent and stretched around each other, stern of face and limb, in steps that asked for no more than the stately concern of their opening stares. In another duet -- Kent Stowell's 'Hail to the Conquering Hero' -- the poised couple, who were from Stowell's Pacific Northwest Ballet, did much the same thing, with more poses and a stalking, serious walk, to Handel's famous Largo from 'Xerxes.'
Judy Pisarro-Grant's 'Blink of an Eye,' while not much more than a stylish solo, had a welcome, different look, and it was well-danced by Rei Aoo."
"It's a toss-up as to who works harder: dancer-choreographer-producer Deborah Brockus or the dozens of dancers who perform in her award-winning "Spectrum Dance in L.A." series. In any case, it's the dance community that benefits, as evidenced Saturday night at the Ivar Theatre when Spectrum #15 played to a packed house.
And while not all 17 choreographers triumphed, hits happily outweighed misses. Allan McCormick's jazzy septet, "Thieves in the Temple," showcased McCormick's bravura balancing and athleticism in the work's premiere. In a similar vein: Olivia Gaugain's new "Elements" featured a female quartet in tribal mode; Pat Taylor's latest, "Acknowledgment," saw four women vamping to John Coltrane; and Brockus Project Dance Company's "Blue and Orange Is the Reason" surrealistically forayed into fabrics and oranges.
Patrick Damon Rago's new "Four Inches to the Left" proved fresh and funny, with Rago occasionally partnering two women. Stellar solos included: Michael Mizerany's premiere "Feral," stealthily danced by Jose Carcamo, a fount of agility; and Holly Mistine, all passion - on pointe - in Patrick Frantz's flamenco-inspired "Farruca." Also pointe-driven: Stefan Wenta's elegant premiere, "In D Minor," with six women moving in unison to Bach.
Neo-cheerleading gave Mandy Moore's "Shy" a spunky gloss, while Paige Porter's "Jolene" rocked as a dozen women preened, jungle-like."
And while not all 17 choreographers triumphed, hits happily outweighed misses. Allan McCormick's jazzy septet, "Thieves in the Temple," showcased McCormick's bravura balancing and athleticism in the work's premiere. In a similar vein: Olivia Gaugain's new "Elements" featured a female quartet in tribal mode; Pat Taylor's latest, "Acknowledgment," saw four women vamping to John Coltrane; and Brockus Project Dance Company's "Blue and Orange Is the Reason" surrealistically forayed into fabrics and oranges.
Patrick Damon Rago's new "Four Inches to the Left" proved fresh and funny, with Rago occasionally partnering two women. Stellar solos included: Michael Mizerany's premiere "Feral," stealthily danced by Jose Carcamo, a fount of agility; and Holly Mistine, all passion - on pointe - in Patrick Frantz's flamenco-inspired "Farruca." Also pointe-driven: Stefan Wenta's elegant premiere, "In D Minor," with six women moving in unison to Bach.
Neo-cheerleading gave Mandy Moore's "Shy" a spunky gloss, while Paige Porter's "Jolene" rocked as a dozen women preened, jungle-like."
"Home-Grown Classical Ballet Gets a Chance to Shine; The director of Dance Kaleidoscope turns his attention to another dance form with BalletFest 2000, which highlights the quality of Southland performers."
"One night a few years ago, Don Hewitt--sometimes called L.A.'s "Ambassador of Dance" for his artistic directorship of the annual Dance Kaleidoscope series--was washing dishes when he heard something lovely and classical coming from the television in the next room. Discovering it was a ballet video on cable, he sat down to watch.
"I was very impressed," Hewitt remembers, sitting in his office at the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, where he is acting chair of the dance division. When the credits showed that the dance was by L.A. choreographer Francisco Martinez, something passed through Hewitt's mind that he's almost embarrassed to disclose: "I thought, gee, that's so good, I can't get over it--he's local."
Hewitt laughs at his own knee-jerk reaction, which mirrors the stereotype that Southern California is still all desert when it comes to home-grown classical ballet.
But for Hewitt, such ah-ha moments kept coming. Last year, for instance, when he saw Inland Pacific Ballet's "Giselle" at its home theater in Claremont, he started thinking that L.A. might be able to produce a major ballet company after all. And maybe it was time to give such quality ballet a bit of the Dance Kaleidoscope treatment.
That series, which has run every summer for more than a decade, showcases mostly local modern and world dance scene. But why not create a separate event for toe-shoe troupes?
This week marks the launching of BalletFest 2000, a gathering of five local troupes and a guest company from Northern California, plus a mini film festival. Organized with Cliff Harper, the director of the Luckman Fine Arts Complex at Cal State L.A. (one of Dance K's main venues and the site of the arts high school), the festival will not only call more attention to ballet in the Southland, it will serve a Luckman audience that, according to Harper, always requests more ballet on questionnaires.
Hewitt and Harper chose the second act of Inland Pacific's "Giselle" as the traditionalist anchor for the new ballet festival, and it wasn't hard for them to decide what else would be included. Invitations were issued to companies the two considered the area's most prominent: Los Angeles Chamber Ballet, Pasadena Dance Theatre, Francisco Martinez Dancetheatre (all from L.A. County), State Street Ballet (Santa Barbara) and Ballet Pacifica (Orange County). When Ballet Pacifica dropped out, it was replaced by Diablo Ballet, based in Walnut Creek, near San Francisco.
With a modest budget of $50,000, most of which came from the Luckman, the festival offered the companies from $2,000 to $4,000 (depending on size and need) to bring whatever works they had available to the event. Since those fees won't cover most of the companies' expenses, BalletFest bargained on the desire of the troupes to be seen in a festival context and to heighten the profile of local ballet.
"The money probably doesn't go very far," Hewitt admits, "but I don't see anybody else in Los Angeles doing anything. You have to start somewhere."
The mood surrounding this first BalletFest might best be described as "cautiously enthusiastic."
"People have been saying, 'Oh, that's great--if it works,' " says Cynthia Young, artistic director of Pasadena Dance Theatre, which will contribute "Etudes" by Laurence Blake to the festival. The doubt, she says, is the result of so many failed ballet efforts in L.A.
"But," Young adds, "I think using the energy of so many different companies in a festival will be great. You're so busy running your company and your school, trying to stay ahead of the bills, you don't have time to get together. I hope the camaraderie will read through in the performances."
Pasadena Dance Theatre keeps afloat in a traditional way--with revenues from an annual "Nutcracker" that then finance a short fall and spring season.
Could the festival change attitudes about supporting local dance? "It might be a first step," Young allows.
"I'd like to see things change in my lifetime," Martinez says ruefully, on the phone from his Valley Glen home. "Just so I can see that the 30 years I've been doing this haven't been for naught."
Martinez has managed to keep a small company together intermittently over the years, subsisting mainly on grants for outreach programs. From September to July, his dancers perform in schools once or twice a week, only occasionally staging an evening concert.
"For the last four years, I haven't been able to afford to use pointe work," he says, citing the $50- to $80-a-pair cost of a pair of pointe shoes, which ballet companies are expected to provide. For BalletFest, his seven-member, all-female company will do "Miniatures," based on the paintings of Modigliani."
"I was very impressed," Hewitt remembers, sitting in his office at the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, where he is acting chair of the dance division. When the credits showed that the dance was by L.A. choreographer Francisco Martinez, something passed through Hewitt's mind that he's almost embarrassed to disclose: "I thought, gee, that's so good, I can't get over it--he's local."
Hewitt laughs at his own knee-jerk reaction, which mirrors the stereotype that Southern California is still all desert when it comes to home-grown classical ballet.
But for Hewitt, such ah-ha moments kept coming. Last year, for instance, when he saw Inland Pacific Ballet's "Giselle" at its home theater in Claremont, he started thinking that L.A. might be able to produce a major ballet company after all. And maybe it was time to give such quality ballet a bit of the Dance Kaleidoscope treatment.
That series, which has run every summer for more than a decade, showcases mostly local modern and world dance scene. But why not create a separate event for toe-shoe troupes?
This week marks the launching of BalletFest 2000, a gathering of five local troupes and a guest company from Northern California, plus a mini film festival. Organized with Cliff Harper, the director of the Luckman Fine Arts Complex at Cal State L.A. (one of Dance K's main venues and the site of the arts high school), the festival will not only call more attention to ballet in the Southland, it will serve a Luckman audience that, according to Harper, always requests more ballet on questionnaires.
Hewitt and Harper chose the second act of Inland Pacific's "Giselle" as the traditionalist anchor for the new ballet festival, and it wasn't hard for them to decide what else would be included. Invitations were issued to companies the two considered the area's most prominent: Los Angeles Chamber Ballet, Pasadena Dance Theatre, Francisco Martinez Dancetheatre (all from L.A. County), State Street Ballet (Santa Barbara) and Ballet Pacifica (Orange County). When Ballet Pacifica dropped out, it was replaced by Diablo Ballet, based in Walnut Creek, near San Francisco.
With a modest budget of $50,000, most of which came from the Luckman, the festival offered the companies from $2,000 to $4,000 (depending on size and need) to bring whatever works they had available to the event. Since those fees won't cover most of the companies' expenses, BalletFest bargained on the desire of the troupes to be seen in a festival context and to heighten the profile of local ballet.
"The money probably doesn't go very far," Hewitt admits, "but I don't see anybody else in Los Angeles doing anything. You have to start somewhere."
The mood surrounding this first BalletFest might best be described as "cautiously enthusiastic."
"People have been saying, 'Oh, that's great--if it works,' " says Cynthia Young, artistic director of Pasadena Dance Theatre, which will contribute "Etudes" by Laurence Blake to the festival. The doubt, she says, is the result of so many failed ballet efforts in L.A.
"But," Young adds, "I think using the energy of so many different companies in a festival will be great. You're so busy running your company and your school, trying to stay ahead of the bills, you don't have time to get together. I hope the camaraderie will read through in the performances."
Pasadena Dance Theatre keeps afloat in a traditional way--with revenues from an annual "Nutcracker" that then finance a short fall and spring season.
Could the festival change attitudes about supporting local dance? "It might be a first step," Young allows.
"I'd like to see things change in my lifetime," Martinez says ruefully, on the phone from his Valley Glen home. "Just so I can see that the 30 years I've been doing this haven't been for naught."
Martinez has managed to keep a small company together intermittently over the years, subsisting mainly on grants for outreach programs. From September to July, his dancers perform in schools once or twice a week, only occasionally staging an evening concert.
"For the last four years, I haven't been able to afford to use pointe work," he says, citing the $50- to $80-a-pair cost of a pair of pointe shoes, which ballet companies are expected to provide. For BalletFest, his seven-member, all-female company will do "Miniatures," based on the paintings of Modigliani."
"Most of the pieces by the locally based collective La Danserie end just as they're getting interesting. With splashy generative concepts and basic theatrical ploys on the table, there's a need for imaginative development--not the fast fade-outs on view Thursday at Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica.
In Vanessa Jue's trio "Fake Heels," women in pointe shoes and lingerie dance sinewy laments, eventually going barefoot and topless as an act of liberation. But what then? Will they kill their boyfriends, as in Lisa K. Lock's large-scale insect fantasy, "Shedding"? Or will they merely slump into chairs and wait for gravity to take its toll, as in Lock's postmodern theater piece "I've Heard It All Before"? No way to tell because we don't know who these characters are.
Lock needs lots more time to develop both the sexual metaphor in "Shedding" and her promising use of long plastic sheets as cocoons. But her pieces do have a distinctive shape and purpose, just as her dancing dominates the program with its intensity and mastery of detail. In Sayhber Rawles' clever etude "R.E.M.," she endows the jazz-based tossing and turning sequences with a special urgency and in Jennifer McDonald Wilson's intriguing "Variegated," she plays the outsider with great conviction.
On one level, "Variegated" functions as dance criticism: a put-down of old-fashioned music visualization, with five dancers efficiently executing formula unison choreography to the opening movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony and only Lock noticing that modern life is infinitely more complex and threatening than what they're suppose to dance. Unfortunately for McDonald Wilson's thesis, the program ends with a very artful example of old-fashioned music visualization: Patrick Frantz's "Pointillism," set to a Martinu cello sonata with great sensitivity--and equally astute about the capabilities of the six-woman cast. Using diagonal paths to get more dancing onto the small Highways stage, Frantz builds tension inventively and then releases it in sunbursts of group motion--a fine achievement in every way."
In Vanessa Jue's trio "Fake Heels," women in pointe shoes and lingerie dance sinewy laments, eventually going barefoot and topless as an act of liberation. But what then? Will they kill their boyfriends, as in Lisa K. Lock's large-scale insect fantasy, "Shedding"? Or will they merely slump into chairs and wait for gravity to take its toll, as in Lock's postmodern theater piece "I've Heard It All Before"? No way to tell because we don't know who these characters are.
Lock needs lots more time to develop both the sexual metaphor in "Shedding" and her promising use of long plastic sheets as cocoons. But her pieces do have a distinctive shape and purpose, just as her dancing dominates the program with its intensity and mastery of detail. In Sayhber Rawles' clever etude "R.E.M.," she endows the jazz-based tossing and turning sequences with a special urgency and in Jennifer McDonald Wilson's intriguing "Variegated," she plays the outsider with great conviction.
On one level, "Variegated" functions as dance criticism: a put-down of old-fashioned music visualization, with five dancers efficiently executing formula unison choreography to the opening movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony and only Lock noticing that modern life is infinitely more complex and threatening than what they're suppose to dance. Unfortunately for McDonald Wilson's thesis, the program ends with a very artful example of old-fashioned music visualization: Patrick Frantz's "Pointillism," set to a Martinu cello sonata with great sensitivity--and equally astute about the capabilities of the six-woman cast. Using diagonal paths to get more dancing onto the small Highways stage, Frantz builds tension inventively and then releases it in sunbursts of group motion--a fine achievement in every way."