Jenny Lyn Bader is one of our best contemporary playwrights. Her newest effort, None of the Above, just completed a six-week run at the Lion Theatre on Theatre Row in Manhattan.
Describing Jenny Lyn’s work as witty, literary, and hip is a good beginning, but even more compelling is the depth of her understanding of the human heart. Jenny Lyn’s characters are seekers of truth and beauty, engaged in an ongoing quest for authentic personal relationships, honest communication, and the elusive grail of love.
The setup for None of the Above involves classic Bader misdirection and unfulfilled expectations. A nubile high school senior is expecting the arrival of her drug connection. The young man who appears is, in fact, her brand-new SAT tutor, hired by her father in a last-ditch effort to get his daughter into Princeton. Confusion, hilarity, and multiple-choice questions ensue.
Halley Feiffer plays Jamie with great freedom, athleticism, and exuberance. She personifies teen-age bursting-at-the-seams energy in a high-octane performance. The actress is presented with many difficulties in the depiction of a complicated 16-year-old, and she succeeds brilliantly in a brave, inventive performance.
None of the Above is an entertaining, enjoyable evening at the theater. Literary allusions, plays on words, and thought-provoking dialogue abound. We eagerly look forward to Jenny Lyn Bader’s next show.
December 6th, 2007
I had the extraordinary privilege of attending last night’s performance of THE MOVEMENT at the UCSD Wagner Dance Studio (June 17, 2007).
This terrific evening, amazing from top to bottom, was produced by grace shinhae jun, CRW Enterprises, and Rebecca Bryant and Don Nichols [past)(modern performance duo].
THE MOVEMENT was an evening of dance theater. Or was it poetry dance? Or was it a play, masquerading as dance-poetry-slammin’ hip-hop? THE MOVEMENT was all of these, featuring a Greek chorus of twenty-something urban poets, rhythm sections of dance duets, trios, and quintets, heart-stopping and gut-wrenching poetry monologues, full-on jazz choreography, and a percussion soloist (Don Nichols) who could comfortably have shared the stage with the Duke Ellington Orchestra, Miles Davis, or Muddy Waters.
I’ll begin at the beginning – “In this piece, something will be revealed and something will stay concealed” – choreographed and performed by Rebecca Bryant. “In this piece … ” is a brilliant theatrical creation, combining dance, graphics, sound effects, narration, film-like cuts and transitions, a treasure-hunt sense of adventure, and a killer postmodernist story line. Wow!
Onstage, Rebecca informs us she is investigating “how people construct reality”. I straightened up in my seat and took notice. Then she regales us with a cautionary tale of a fifth-grade production of “Macbeth”, letting us know this is when she became a postmodernist. “Reality is subjective” Rebecca declaims, and proceeds to exit stage left. A moment later a new performer appears, dressed as Rebecca was dressed and continuing the dance and monologue as if she IS Rebecca, but “reality is subjective”. This was a great moment.
Throughout “In this piece … ” Rebecca was contrasting, for our edification and delight, the objectives and goals of the “Performer” and the “Audience Member”. A chart takes shape on the scrim, with axes and labels. We’re told that audience interest is based on how well the performer tells her story, and Rebecca concludes forcefully, “by good I mean effective, and by story I mean lie”. My jaw literally dropped.
What about the choreography? Well, in such a dance event − really performance art − the actual dancing is a sidebar. Not inconsequential, certainly not, but serving the overall design, purpose, and message (subjective, of course) of the performing artist. The dancing was strong, graceful, supple, and attractive, and most of all, extremely intelligent.
“In this piece … ” incorporates a lot of script. The performer has a lot to say, all of it provocative and of great interest. Importantly, Rebecca Bryant is a very well-rounded stage artist, both a terrific dancer and a terrific actress. When she speaks, she speaks truthfully. She is in and of the moment. What she has to say may not be the “truth”, but that’s the whole point, isn’t it?
(more…)
June 18th, 2007
City Ballet of San Diego presented “BALANCHINE” at Spreckels Theatre on May 11-13, 2007. This gorgeous program is the highlight of the Spring 2007 San Diego dance season, and would be a peak dance-lover’s experience in any city, including New York, San Francisco, and Chicago.
City Ballet is a top-tier dance company. The Artistic Director, Steven Wistrich, and the Resident Choregrapher, Elizabeth Rowe-Wistrich, really know what they’re doing. And the company dancers and apprentices – all of them – really know how to dance.
City Ballet of San Diego dancers are well-trained and well-disciplined, and as a group are very musical. They dance with flair and élan. They dance with grace and great energy. And when the dancers appear as a corps de ballet, they work seamlessly, beautifully, and with magnificent precision. No dancer lags behind in the phrasing. Everyone is where they’re supposed to be, when they’re supposed to be there, doing what they’re supposed to be doing at every musical moment.
Watching the City Ballet corps dance is very, very satisfying.
BALANCHINE presented three outstanding masterpieces from the Balanchine repertory – “Serenade” (1934), “Agon” (1957), and “Divertimento No. 15” (1956). “Agon” of course is one of the iconic Balanchine works.
George Balanchine. Martha Graham. Merce Cunningham. These are the giants – the geniuses – of 20th-century choreography. As it’s been famously said of Homer, all dance language is based on what Balanchine, Graham, and Cunningham have done. They are the founders of all that we know as dance.
I was forcefully reminded of this during “Serenade”. The music is by Tchaikovsky, and yet in one surprising moment, Balanchine introduces a jazzy, syncopated movement. Three women are upstage center, their arms over their head in fifth position. Suddenly their arms open in a staggered sequence – one, two, three – in phrasing that would be right at home in any jazz dance class. 1934! My jaw literally dropped – I’d never known that these jazzy arms – a move I’ve done hundreds of times over the years in class and on stage – were originally introduced by George Balanchine in 1934. Remarkable.
So, being in the audience at a Balanchine performance is always like being present at living history. It’s as if Picasso’s Les Demoisells d’Avignon came to life before my eyes. Or Seurat’s La Grande Jatte. Or Pollock’s Full Fathom Five. It’s very much like meeting – in person – Ernest Hemingway or John Coltrane or John Ford – and witnessing their process as it’s unfolding. (more…)
May 14th, 2007
City Ballet of San Diego presented “Tchaikovsky Spectacular” at the David & Dorothea Garfield Theatre in La Jolla on Friday, March 30th and April 1st, 2007. This well-conceived, beautifully executed, thoroughly entertaining evening of ballet was enthusiastically received by the lucky audience, which included, of course, former professional dancers who are now dance reviewers. :-)
“Tchaikovsky Spectacular” included “Swan Lake, Act II”, “Black Swan Pas de Deux”, and the world premiere of “Tchai Celebration”.
Presenting “Swan Lake, Act II” and the “Black Swan Pas de Deux” could be a daunting task for any ballet company that is not American Ballet Theatre. The tradition is so rich, the music so iconic, the sense memory so strong of Margot Fonteyn and Natalia Makarova and Rudolf Nureyev and Tony Dowell, and all the other beloved premiere danseurs and prima ballerinas, that dancing these ballets seems almost pointless. How could a company succeed when the renowned comparisons leap immediately to mind?
Well, City Ballet of San Diego succeeded marvelously. “Swan Lake, Act II” in 1996, with staging by Kimberly Roberts after the original choreography by Lev Ivanov, featured a radiant Ariana Samuelsson at Odette, supported by her excellent partner, Ivan Bielik, as Prince Siegfried.
Ms. Samuelsson dances with beautiful precision and terrific focus. She is very strong on pointe, the line of her legs is long and clean, and her arms are light and lovely. She embodied the essence of a swan, even in human form. Ms. Samuelsson’s liquid arm movements reminded me of Maya Plisetskaya’s “Black Swan” and “The Dying Swan”. Ms. Samuelsson’s technical mastery – her arabesques, extensions, and crisp petit bourées − combined seamlessly with her superb musicality. Her Odette was magnificent. (more…)
May 14th, 2007
4X4 kicked-off the New Year with a bang! There was dancing. There was singing. There was martial-arts-as-performance-art. And there were special guests from L.A. who brought down the house.
Let’s start with the special guests, Casebolt & Smith. In its initial few moments, “After Words” looked like two actors breaking down a scene or performance, giving notes to each other. It became clear they were actually dancers, and they’d danced a dance that was supercharged with sex, relationship angst, and concerns about identity-in-the-world.
There were layers-upon-layers in this richly metaphorical piece. And, it wasn’t all words. Intervals of dynamic dancing, recreating extended moments from the work they were rehashing, provided a powerful counterpoint to the dialog. The partner work as dancers and actors was strong, complex, erotic, and at times, very funny.
Liz Casebolt and Joel Smith are intelligent and talented dancers-actors-performance artists. “After Words” presented a marvelous aesthetic and thought-provoking worldview, offering terrific dance-theater insight into the human condition. And, the piece was tremendously entertaining with laughing-out-loud humor. For me, “After Words” was very much like a movie, with all the elements of motivation, character, conflict, and resolution. Watching a “movie” as a live performance piece was a remarkable experience.
Leslie Seiters presented “Incidental Fear of Numbers”, danced by herself, Amanda Waal, Dina Academia, and Justin Morrison. Although described in the 4X4 program notes as “an early-in-progress showing”, this deeply satisfying piece could stand proudly on its own as a completed work. (more…)
January 14th, 2007
Keturah Stickann is a talented artist, working as a dancer, choreographer, filmmaker, and director. In Time — Stage & Video Works, presented an evening of original dances and two short films, at the Arts & Entertainment Center, San Diego, CA.
“Utazó (The Traveler)” is a beautiful experimental dance film shot in Budapest. A traveler explores the timeless European capital, creating a stream-of-consciousness tour of ancient passageways, vistas, and architecture. The visual contrasts are strong and compelling, as the archetypal American student weaves her way among the daily rituals of a much older culture. But Utazó is not a typical student — she is a dancer, and her movement echoes, reflects, and interprets the ancient messages of this Magyar land.
“Utazó” has many stunning scenes, most powerfully when the organic movements of the dancer provide a rich counterpoint to the structural dynamism of the city’s bridges and parapets. “Utazó” was directed and performed by Keturah Stickann and edited by John Menier, with music by Zachary Stickann.
“They’ll Devour Me Too” is a full-length dance performed by Kimberly Jensen and Molly Terbovich. The piece explored relationship dynamics — attractive and repulsive — and offered thoughtful, insightful, and provocative images of how a once-good thing can go bad, and possibly become good again. A great deal was required of the dancers in the work’s physically demanding choreography, and Ms. Jenson and Ms. Terbovich danced with concentration, beauty, and grace.
The film “Weiblich Ist?” is a humorous inquiry into male-female identity. A young woman thinks she wants to go to a singles event that evening, but can’t decide what to wear. This familiar human situation is turned inside-out, literally and figuratively, as her wardrobe and costuming become a metaphor for sexual role and transformation. “Weiblich Ist?” was directed and performed by Keturah Stickann and edited by John Menier.
“What’s In Store” is dance as political commentary. A street-cleaner, an employee of “Karmic Sanitation” (identified by a logo on her cap), has a lot of work to do. There’s newspaper trash, heralding the grim news from the Middle East. Other headlines bear the fatuous slogans of American party hacks. No news is good in this bare-bones Godot-esque landscape. The worker’s strong, brusque, angry movement is swept along by the driving score, “God’s Gonna Cut You Down”, by Johnny Cash. We feel her pain, because it’s our pain, too.
It’s clear that, as an artist, Keturah Stickann has a great deal to say. We the audience were privileged to share in an art-event of creativity, vision, and intelligence.
January 12th, 2007
The 4X4 performance series at the Bluefoot Bar & Lounge in North Park (San Diego) is simply the best thing since chocolate chip cookies. Liam Clancy and Jeremy Gaucher of SUSHI Performance and Visual Art have cooked up a slate of evenings in which the entire event is a continual surprise. And, having staged only three shows, 4X4 is the hottest place to be in town.
The December 12th 4X4 spectacle was the third in the series, and you couldn’t have crammed one more body in the beyond-packed back room at Bluefoot. The November 14th event was very crowded with about 120 people (at the time the room looked filled), and last Tuesday’s show was seen by possibly 170 dance-and-performance lovers — people who knew what they were there for. Thunderous applause followed each of the ten acts.
And exactly what were these I-don’t-care-how-long-I-stand-as-long-as-I-see-a-great-show viewers viewing? Only the most vibrant, compelling, dynamic, alive, and fearless dancers and performers anywhere. Period.
Guts. It takes guts to be in a dance class. It takes guts to sing or write or act or play an instrument. And then, it takes more guts to go to an audition or submit your work, guts to go to a callback, guts to lay it all out there, guts to rehearse and do it over and do it over again, and then even more guts to perform for an audience. Guts are what’s on view at 4X4.
And much more than guts. Creativity with a capital C. Talent with a capital T. Fun with a capital F. And joy with a capital J. (more…)
December 17th, 2006
I attended ONE TO ECHO at San Diego State University on Saturday night, December 2nd, 2006, the second of two performances. ONE TO ECHO was curated by Jillian Chu, Founder of BOUNDcontemporaryDance, and Alicia Peterson, Founder of A.S. Peterson Dance.
Jillian Chu and Alicia Peterson created an extraordinary evening of dance theater, presenting a wide range of events, pieces, and styles. ONE TO ECHO was a tremendously entertaining production. For me, the overriding qualities of the evening were invention, intelligence, and vision.
“everyone turns into birds”, by Amanda Waal, was a startlingly original creation, a compelling symphony of mixed media. This kaleidoscopic, encyclopedic piece included, at various times and in various combinations, dance, music, voiceover narration, film, stroboscopic lighting effects, and little white parachutists falling from the flies.
It’s not that “everyone turns into birds” was so good because it contained all these elements — merely dripping paint on a canvas doesn’t result in a “Jackson Pollock”. The piece is brilliant because of the talent, taste, and vision of the creator, Amanda Waal.
For me, “everyone turns into birds” was a continual surprise. It began prosaically with a single dancer upstage right, and yet interestingly, because the dancer had a red strobe attached to her left shoulder blade. Unusual. The assault on the viewer built gradually. It became clear during the first film segment that what was being offered was deep and rich and suggestive, relating strongly to some pretty important aspects of human experience, such as “how do you tell the living from the dead?”. And, what is living? and what is dying? (more…)
December 5th, 2006
LaDiego Dance Theater presented Nutcracker—Land of the Sweets on Saturday night, November 18th, choreographed by Daniel Marshall (LaDiego Artistic Director and Founder), Aliyah Hassan, and Natasha Ridley. The Educational Cultural Complex in downtown San Diego was packed — all 275 seats were filled and additional seating had to be added in the back.
This was a completely reinvented Nutcracker, with music by Duke Ellington rather than Tchaikovsky. LaDiego’s Nutcracker is a modernized, bluesy reinvention of the late–19th century ballet, and provided a thoroughly enjoyable evening of dance.
The LaDiego Dance Theater Nutcracker creates a wonderful 1940s and 1950s nightclub atmosphere, reminiscent of Harlem’s Apollo Theater and the legendary Cotton Club. A full-scale ballet, presented in two acts, LaDiego’s Nutcracker delighted the lucky audience with more than a dozen wildly diverse pieces. (more…)
November 26th, 2006
Last Tuesday night I had the extraordinary good fortune to attend 4X4, presented by Sushi Performance and Visual Art at the Bluefoot Bar and Lounge in North Park (downtown San Diego).
This wildly thrilling rollercoaster ride was the second in a projected monthly series of 4X4 performance events at Bluefoot. More than 120 dance/theater/performance art fans crowded into Bluefoot’s back room. It was like a rave, but with structure. 
People were standing three deep at the edges of the room. I felt like I was at the Lapin Agile in Montmartre on a particularly busy night. Attention was rapt, everyone drinking in the vibrating shared energy between the performers and the audience. For me, this 4X4 evening was one of those life-affirming moments.
Eight acts were presented (I say “acts” because they weren’t all dance). In addition to the creativity, inventiveness, and showmanship each performer brought to the very small stage, the overriding quality was bravery. All performers need a healthy dose of courage, and yet performing on a four-foot by four-foot stage with audience members a mere two feet away (truly redefining up-close-and-personal) requires courage of a wholly new variety.
4X4 defines in-your-face performing. Exhilarating. Exciting. Intimate. Personal-in-the-extreme. (more…)
November 19th, 2006
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