ArtsSF

The Fresh Festival, which plays at the Joe Goode Annex in San Francisco every Friday and Saturday evening in January, proposes a series of performances that show a “bold, wild, vulnerable willingness to try something new in front of your eyes, have the power to change your mind, your day, your life,” according Kathleen Hermesdorf, the Festival curator. The Festival is celebrating its tenth anniversary around the theme of “Reckoning,” a political ambition, in which “we are . . ….

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Dance concerts in which dancing is incidental or secondary to some larger idea of dance performance have become common in postmodern dance culture. Bill T. Jones (b. 1952) has become one of the most successful advocates of this aesthetic. But one can trace the origin of the aesthetic back to the Judson Dance Group, a collection of dancers associated with experimental performers like Yvonne Rainer, Steve Paxton, and John Cage, which in New York City, between 1962-1964, explored the potential…

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ODC’s Dance Downtown Program Postmodern aesthetics emphasizes inclusivity, the value of difference and the “beauty” of the mundane. Translated into dance, the aesthetic tends to imply that all bodies are lovely, all movements are to be treasured and all moments are equal. This thinking supposedly produces a sense of optimism, since all that is excluded is conflict, struggle, drama, differences that cannot be reconciled, or incompatibilities that cannot be resolved through the simple exchange or interchangeability of movement. The idea…

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In Troupe’s Posthumous Tribute to Chitresh Das BERKELEY—The idea of “modern” Indian dance is perhaps difficult for many spectators to grasp, because the concept of “Indian” dance has become so intensely associated with a notion or memory of India from a pre-modern era. Indian dance means for the most part preserving “traditions” from pre-modern times rather than breaking with them. Teacher and choreographer Pandit Chitresh Das (1944-2015) exemplified throughout his life an inclination to adapt traditional Indian dance forms, particularly…

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3D viewing of movies is nowadays commonplace, just as a “cutting edge” idea of “the body” is commonplace in postmodern dance culture. But what happens when postmodern dance embraces 3D technology? The Company Wayne McGregor, from England, tries to answer this question with its production of Atomos (2013). Wayne McGregor (b. 1970) is the founder of the company and the choreographer of Atomos, and he has acquired considerable international acclaim for dances that involve the use of video and digital…

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Via the International Festival By Karl Toepfer artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area dance Weeks starting June 15, 2015 Vol. 17, No. 74 SAN FRANCISCO—From May 21 to June 7, Fort Mason hosted the San Francisco International Arts Festival. This extravaganza presented more theater, dance, and music groups than anyone can sanely absorb. Most of the performers came from the United States, but several groups came from faraway places like Iran, Poland, Kurdistan, Ireland, Taiwan and Argentina….

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Starting Multi-City California Tour The Smuin Ballet Company holds a unique position in the dance world for pursuing an idea of ballet that is more heterodox than the aesthetic perspectives of more high profile, traditional, and heavily institutionalized ballet companies. With his extensive experience on Broadway and in Hollywood, as well as in ballet, the company’s founder, Michael Smuin (1938-2007), believed that a prosperous future for ballet involved the incorporation of elements from popular culture, with music, movement, and mood…

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