It’s a whole lot of dance for not a whole lot of dollars, with tickets at just $12. Catch these rising stars on Saturday, March 10, at 8 p.m. and Sunday, March 11, at 4 and 7 p.m., in Studio B at ODC Dance Commons, 351 Shotwell St., San Francisco.

Tickets are available on the ODC website and through the box office at 415-863-9834.

“If André Malraux was correct, and ‘an artist discovers his genius the day he dares not to please,’ then San Francisco choreographer Robert Dekkers has clearly found his. Supremely talented and trained, he could easily have built a career on conventional movement set to conventional music. Instead, Dekkers followed his quirky muse away from the establishment and toward dance that is meticulously crafted, finely structured, decidedly daring and always beautifully performed by his two-year-old company, Post:Ballet.

Photography by Natalia Perez, Post:Ballet dance artists.

“To be sure, Post:Ballet is pleasing; the widely hailed troupe was named San Francisco’s ‘Best New Dance’ of 2010 by 7×7 Magazine, and Dekkers made Dance Magazine‘s coveted ’25 to Watch’ list this year, a nod to his distinctive mix of impeccable technique and boundless imagination. His unique signature stamps all four pieces that Post:Ballet will perform during its sophomore home season, Seconds, in July.”

Check out the complete article at SFArts.org. Best wishes to Robert and Post:Ballet for continued success!

Brave is the person who sits in the front row at a FACT/SF show. One has to be prepared for unsettling touched-by-a-stranger encounters, like when dancer Maggie Stack put her hand on my shoulder, then on my hand—and then on my note-taking pen!—during Entertaining Victoria, which had its world premiere during the company’s recent two-weekend run of Home Season 3.0, a retrospective on the company’s first three years, at The Garage in San Francisco.

That’s the thing about FACT/SF: they don’t let you relax in your seat watch the show; they draft you into it. The dancers might get on the floor and slither closer and closer to you, and just when you’re thinking that it’s time for them to stop or they will slide right under your seat, they indeed slide under your seat and out the other side. If you aren’t paying attention, well, who knows? No word on whether the company has a contingency plan in the event that someone doesn’t get their feet out of the way.

FACT/SF in "The Consumption Series." Photo: Tawnee Kendall

Artistic director Charles Slender had to get creative to adapt the in-your-face mood of the original Consumption Series, a site-specific work created for the intimate, decidedly non-proscenium (and, sadly, defunct) Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory, to the Garage’s boxy space and bleacher seating. The Frog Pocket/Arvo Pärt soundrack, aggressive movement and decadent post–Marie Antoinette corset-and-tube-socks costumes remain, but this time nobody danced with a bucket on their head; instead, they caravanned down the aisle and into the lobby, and danced there for a few minutes, mostly out of sight. Was anyone wondering if the piece was over? Will those of us who couldn’t see them never understand the work because we missed that part? A few front-row sitters got the extreme-close-up treatment from dancers Erin Kraemer and Catherine Newman; was it awkward or were they into it?

And that’s what makes FACT/SF so intriguing (beyond the high quality of the balletic contemporary dance—let’s not forget that, by all means): the answers don’t matter. Resolution is boring. Wondering if the dancers are ever going to come back and, if they make it back, whether they’ll do anything but wiggle their toes (the punch line of the ultraminimalist Pretonically Oriented v.1, a work in progress that premiered earlier this year through ODC’s Pilot Program), or if they will touch you—again—now that will put you on the edge of your seat, and make you giggle, and keep you guessing.

So when the lights dim for the next piece, you say to yourself, During this one, I will be ready. And then the mood turns. In an update to his 2007 solo …is all that an(n)a sees.09 & .10, Slender dances to one of Bach’s partitas for solo violin. Slender has an intellectual bent and a sardonic wit, so one naturally anticipates unalloyed assertiveness when he’s free to have his way with a captive audience. But in …is all, he taps a vein of vulnerability, revealing something raw and guileless, such that I wanted to look away but couldn’t. Slender, like all his dancers, moves fluidly, bending and extending, twisting and falling to the floor with precision and deliberateness…but that’s not the point, either. It is simply moving when an artist trusts his audience to watch him dance, lit by only a single uplight, no makeup and no façade, to music that touches him.

FACT/SF in buckets. Photo: Tawnee Kendall

The show closed with Entertaining Victoria, inspired by the waltzes of yore and set to Strauss’ Blue Danube, which Slender illustrates by interlacing all five dancers (Daniel Arizmendi and Jona Mercer, along with the three women) in arcs that trace the rise and fall of the music. Slender can’t resist inverting the contemporary vocabulary, so arms are thrown, dress hems are tugged, dancers hop hither and yon and whip out 180-degree penchées, and then crowd into each other blankly, like the band that goes up the alley at the end of Animal House. As Strauss’ iconic melody streams overhead, Mark Morris’s Waltz of the Flowers comes to mind, and at the same time one fears end is nigh. How they pull it off with straight faces, I’ll never know.

Home Season 3.0 also included the ironic Before this we weren’t here and Eine Kleine Kitschen, Nein? In the first, Slender and dancer/manager Jeanne Pfeffer slouch stock-still in chairs while Peggy Lee wonders “why don’t we just end it all?” in “Is That All There Is?” (Lee’s version was a Top 40 hit in 1969; evidently mainstream America was into existential inquiry back then.) Kitschen sends up modern-dance self-seriousness in choreography, spoken word and snotty attitude. These two pieces were amusing, but with FACT/SF’s potential for multilayered work, they could take a backseat to new challenges and new surprises.

©2011 Claudia Bauer. Reprints only with advance written permission.

Artistic director Mikko Nissinen introduces the 45-minute class, which is taught by Boston Ballet School director and former NYCB principal Margaret Tracey.

Thanks to the Boston Ballet for making this available. Click here to watch!

ODC Dance Jam. Photo: Claire Gilbert

Participation in Dance Jam is by invitation only, and the fourteen co-ed members, who range in age from 13 to 18, train and rehearse five days a week in modern, ballet and other dance forms under the supervision of ODC co-artistic director KT Nelson and ODC School director and associate choreographer Kimi Okada. Along with performing in professional venues, Dance Jam takes part in school outreach and nonprofit fundraisers—quite an after-school commitment.

For Make the Road, the teens perform a big-time rep that includes works by Okada and Nelson along with esteemed choreographers Bliss Kohlmyer-Dowman, Greg Dawson, Kim Epifano and 2010 Izzie Award winner Nol Simonse, plus Brenda Way’s John Somebody.

Check it out and give them a hand:

ODC Dance Jam’s 4^th Annual Home Season
Make the Road by Walking
April 16 at 8 p.m.
April 17 at 4 p.m. & 7 p.m.

ODC Dance Commons
315 Shotwell Street, San Francisco

$12 general admission
www.brownpapertickets.com/event/166923

ODC Dance Jam. Photo: Claire Gilbert

AXIS in Joe Goode’s "The Beauty That Was Mine Through the Middle Without Stopping." Photo: Trib LaPrade

The official announcement:

Physically Integrated Dance Summer Intensive
July 31–August 6, 2011
10 a.m.–4 p.m. (daily)
1428 Alice St., Suite 200
Oakland, CA 94612
www.axisdance.org

$500 tuition; limited AXIS scholarships available (does not include room, board and travel)

Dancers, choreographers and teachers with and without disabilities from the U.S. and abroad are invited to attend AXIS’ annual Summer Intensive, located within a thriving dance and disability hub. This weeklong creative laboratory is guaranteed to push your limits and break new ground as you experiment, collaborate, and create. Attendees will participate in a creative exchange alongside AXIS’ talented dancers as all share their knowledge and experience.

Come see and be seen as AXIS searches for strong, athletic dancers/movers to join our dynamic company in this rewarding and exciting career that is changing the face of dance and disability forever.

Application deadline is May 3rd. Contact Christy at 510-625-0110 or info@axisdance.org.

IT’S BROUGHT US SCHEMING Survivors, sadistic restaurateurs and women intent on marrying millionaires they’ve never met. And reality TV is now dance’s biggest venue, with shows like So You Think You Can Dance, Superstars of Dance, America’s Got Talent and Dancing with the Stars consistently at the top of the ratings. If there’s no such thing as bad publicity, then reality TV is the greatest thing that’s ever happened to dance: millions of people see ballroom, contemporary, Bollywood, hip hop and more on So You Think You Can Dance (SYTYCD) alone, and after seven seasons it’s still going strong.

The shows usually start with open calls in cities across the country, and the young hopefuls, usually no older than 30, include goofballs who show up on a lark and professionals raising their profiles. Over a roughly three-month season, the judges narrow several thousand contestants to ten or twenty finalists, who perform work by noted choreographers (on SYTYCD) or produce their own material (on Superstars of Dance and America’s Got Talent). The TV audience votes for their favorites, and the eventual winner receives anything from SYTYCD’s $250,000 cash to the $1,000,000 and headlining Las Vegas show awarded by America’s Got Talent (AGT).

Money, fame, connections…it’s all good, right? Well, the essence of these shows isn’t dance, it’s drama, which is what keeps viewers (like me) tuning in. That means promoting conflict over craft—judges dish out often-humiliating criticism; the fast-moving format pushes dancers hard enough to weaken their defenses along with their bodies; and crafty editing fabricates arguments out of unrelated lengths of footage. So what’s to be gained from these shows, and what’s the cost?

Read the rest of this article at DancersGroup.org.

A new dance company is like a box of chocolates: You don’t know what to expect, so you have to just give each piece a try and hope it’s a tasty one. So it was with Graham Lustig’s The Nutcracker, a bonbon-themed version that marked the eagerly anticipated premiere of the newly reincarnated Oakland Ballet Company. We all showed up and hoped for the best; happily, Lustig and Oakland Ballet delivered a sweet treat for all to enjoy.

Artistic director Lustig sets his Nutcracker in 1915, a time period that lends refinement to the Act I party. Hewing to tradition, the party features pastel Edwardian costumes, formal dances and buttoned-up kids who are required to wait patiently as gifts are stacked before them. Naughty Fritz torments his sister, Clara, with a dead rat and, of course, breaks her Nutcracker doll, laying the groundwork for her dream. And it’s in the dream where Lustig works some very enchanting magic.

Children dressed as rats wield forks and knives against the toy soldiers in a battle that leads not to massive rodent carnage, but culminates in an act of mercy by Clara (beautifully danced and acted by professional ballerina Stephanie Salts), who earns the esteem of all by sparing three mice from the Nutcracker’s sword. Clara’s reward is a handsome cavalier (Connolly Strombeck) and a trip to the Land of Sweets by way of the Frozen Forest, a snowy stand of birches inhabited by Snow Maidens and fluffy dancing snowballs who stole the show (surely to the great pride of the children who leapt around in those impossibly plump costumes).

Graham Lustig's The Nutcracker. Photo: Ron Lessard

But Lustig’s Act II is still a girl’s paradise, a brilliant and joyous world inhabited by dancing peppermints, frolicking bonbons, clowns and confectioners. Children play all of those roles, adding their natural, unwitting wit to the performance. Professional adults take on the Spanish, Arabian and Russian dances, as well as an elegant German pas de trois that substitutes for the familiar French/Shepherdess/Marzipan dance.

Complementing the festive mood Lustig has created, Zack Brown’s sets re-create a sunny garden with a stone wall (just right for the little ones to peek over and around), and his ruffled, sparkly costumes surprise and delight the eye as pastels of the party give way to petal pinks, leaf greens and baby blues, vibrant red, turquoise and gold. Music director Michael Morgan led the Oakland East Bay Symphony through a smooth performance of the score.

The party scene would benefit from more dynamic storytelling, but Sarah Bukowski, as Mrs. Stahlbaum, enlivened it with her lyricism and charisma, which were also put to good use in her acrobatic Arabian dance. Jekyns Pelaez squired Rachel Speidel Little as the Sugar Plum Fairy, while Oakland Ballet Company veteran Denise Schmalle was a standout in the Spanish dance and the Waltz of the Flowers.

As Clara, Stephanie Saltz was tasked with carrying the entire story, and she came through with her superb technique and equally fine acting ability. When she was onstage, the eye was drawn to her, and she projected the emotions of her character clearly without miming (which kids without ballet training wouldn’t understand anyway). Thanks to excellent chemistry, she and Strombeck conveyed delight in each other’s company, so vital to making the story fly.

It is something of a logistical miracle that the bicoastal Lustig (who has other projects going in New Jersey as well) was able to pull this production off at such a satisfying level after joining the company only in fall of 2010. As he gets to know the Bay Area dance community, he will be able to develop a company of consistently superb dancers who can bring every aspect of his production fully to life. Judging from the cheers of the audience, the community will be thrilled to see Oakland Ballet Company back on stage soon.

© 2010 Claudia Bauer/SpeakingOfDance.com

Contra Costa Ballet's Story of the Nutcracker. Photo: Marty Sohl.

A twenty-year tradition, Story of the Nutcracker has introduced a generation of little ones to the holiday tale. Clocking in at one hour, with no intermission, this production honors the classical tradition with waltzing parents (mercifully shortening that pesky party to a few minutes), a full mouse battle, the international dances, the Waltz of the Flowers, and the grand pas de deux. The taped score is necessarily whittled down as well; musical transitions could be smoothed out here and there, but all of the famous passages are included.

Few, if any, families read E.T.A. Hoffman’s original story to children, so a guiding hand is a big help in identifying the characters and making Victorian culture relevant to today’s youngsters. Narrator Marlene Swendsen, herself dressed in period flair, ably leads children into the story (the narration doesn’t introduce the cultural dances, so parents may want to tell kids what they’re seeing) and wrapping it up at the end.

Most of the roles are danced by Contra Costa Ballet students, notably the talented and charismatic Alicia Wang as this year’s Clara. The school’s youth company performs the Ribbon Candy and Flowers ensembles, with the statuesque Kristen Isom in the plum role of the Rose. Superb local professionals play lead roles and cavaliers: this year, it’s John Segundo as King Mouse and Chinese Lion, Katarina Wester as the maid, Diablo Ballet’s Tina Kay Bohnstedt as the Sugar Plum Fairy, and from Company C Contemporary Ballet, Robert Dekkers as her graceful Cavalier, Taurean Green as Toy Soldier and Trepak, Edilsa Armendariz in a beautiful turn as Arabian Coffee, Kristen Lindsay as the Ribbon Candy lead, and Company C’s artistic director, Charles Anderson, as the mysterious Drosselmeier.

Across the Bay, Mark Foehringer Dance Project brought its Nutcracker at Zeum back for a sophomore run after a successful premiere in 2009. Fresh, colorful and inventive, this version gets a lot done with a cast of just 17 dancers, who manage miraculously quick costume changes in order to pull off multiple roles.

Nutcracker at Zeum. Photo: Rob Kunkle.

Condensing the story into a fast-moving 50 minutes, Nutcracker at Zeum makes a few tweaks for the sake of silliness and celerity: Mother Ginger and her rambunctious Kinder bring Drosselmeyer a gingerbread house; when the Mouse Queen sneaks in and nibbles on it, the annoyed toy maker and his nephew ship her off to Siberia. Naturally, the Mouse King comes looking for the missus, and the ensuing chaos sweeps up everyone from little girls with cupcakes on their heads to Clara in her pretty pink dress and Chinese Tea in a rainbow unitard.

The small stage at Zeum, a popular children’s museum near the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, demands inventive staging, and Foehringer uses every inch of the house, including the aisles, to his advantage. Fortunately, the space is large enough to include the eight-piece Magik*Magik Orchestra, playing Tchaikovsky’s score as orchestrated by Oakland East Bay Symphony music director Michael Morgan. As energetic as the performance, the live music enriches the show—and kids’ theatrical education—immensely.

A superb cast lays a foundation of fine dancing beneath the lighthearted fun. Brian Fisher, Chad Dawson, LizAnne Roman, Taylor Ullery, Juan de la Rosa, Jetta Martin and Jaclyn Stryker play the major characters (and some of the minor ones); as a group, they’ve danced for some of the world’s best ballet and contemporary companies, and it’s easy to see why. Young dancer Thomas Woodman plays supporting roles, and two casts of kids charm alternate as sweets and soldiers. This is just the beginning for Nutcracker at Zeum, so we may well see them in the grown-up roles someday.

Story of the Nutcracker runs for one weekend
each year; look for tickets in autumn 2011.
Lesher Center for the Arts, 1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek
LesherArtsCenter.org or ContraCostaBallet.org

Foehringer Dance Project’s Nutcracker at Zeum
continues through December 19:
Saturdays 11 a.m., 2 p.m., 4 p.m. and Sundays 11 a.m., 2 p.m.
Zeum, 221 Fourth Street (@ Howard), San Francisco
$25  BrownPaperTickets.com or mfdpsf.org

© 2010 Claudia Bauer/SpeakingOfDance.com