Barak Marshall wins first 'A.W.A.R.D. Show' with Body Traffic at REDCAT [Updated]

Choreographer Barak Marshall and Body Traffic won the first prize at “The A.W.A.R.D Show!” at REDCAT Sunday night. The honor includes a $10,000 grant to develop new work.

Performing excerpts from Marshall’s zany and affecting “Rooster,” Body Traffic garnered the most audience votes out of the 12 local entries over the four-day dance competition.

An acronym for Artists With Audiences Responding to Dance, the 6-year-old program, now administered by New York’s Joyce Theater Foundation, delivers audience feedback directly to dance makers. Cal Arts performance space REDCAT partnered with “The A.W.A.R.D. Show!” in the first-ever Los Angeles staging of the populist showcase.

Body Traffic’s six men and six women whipped through Marshall’s dance version of Yiddish writer I.L. Peretz’s shtetl tale of romance, marriage, and an egg-laying peasant. Yemenite singer-dancer Margalit Oved, Marshall’s colorful mother, figured prominently in his “Fiddler on the Roof” update.

Dancers Lillian Barbeito, a Juilliard graduate, and Tina Finkelman Berkett, a founding member of Baryshnikov’s Hell's Kitchen Dance, formed Body Traffic at the end of 2007. In three short years, the company has surged to the forefront of the Los Angeles dance scene, pairing sophisticated choreographers, often Europeans, with top-rung local dancers. Body Traffic's Cal State L.A. Luckman Theater performance on May 14 will feature a premiere by Belgian dance maker Stijn Celis. [For the record: Berkett was misidentified as a veteran of the White Oak Project in an earlier version of this story.]

Finkelman Berkett says: “This [prize] shows what a gem Los Angeles has in Barak. Body Traffic has served as his laboratory, but [the completed] works always get produced in Israel, because there is no funding in the U.S. We hope to use the award to bring to fruition a Los Angeles performance of a new Barak Marshall work.” UCLA Live will present Marshall’s “Monger” at Royce Hall, April 15-16, with Israeli dancers.

Lucinda Childs among choreographers for OCPAC-Bolshoi partnership

Lucinda Childs wants less from her dancers. Commissioned to create a 10-minute solo to composer John Adams’ “Book of Harmony” for “Reflections,” opening Jan. 20 at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, the choreographer is working with top-caliber ballet technicians Anastasia Stashkevich of the Bolshoi Ballet and Olga Malinovskaya of the Estonian National Ballet.

She’s been teaching the gloriously hyper-trained Russian ballerinas to walk, skip, run and luxuriate in time and space, American-style.

That’s the point of impresario Sergei Danilian’s new co-production with OCPAC and the Bolshoi Theater of Russia, a gender-swapped version of his prior “Kings of the Dance.” “Reflections” introduces seven prima ballerinas, all hothouse products of Russian training, and matches them with eight top, hip Western choreographers -- plus Balanchine.

Childs’ bare-boned repetitive steps, accruing power en route, riveted the gang of Russians, including the ballerinas and four men, rehearsing in Costa Mesa last August. Scattered around the dance studio warming up with torturous stretches, they practically gawked, seemingly fascinated that this simple patterned stuff could be performance material. 

New website offers comprehensive dance calendar for Los Angeles and Orange County

The highly dispersed Southern California dance community moved a step toward cohesion with the launch of a comprehensive online event calendar covering Los Angeles and Orange counties. The one-stop-shopping site augurs well for all parties in the dance food chain -– from presenters to patrons and those in between.

The site, SoCalDance.org, currently lists 300-plus performances of more than 100 unique events for the 2010–2011 season, providing summaries and photos, with links to the performance web pages.

Sponsoring the site is Sonnet Technologies, an Irvine corporation providing video storage systems for film, video and broadcast industries. The website was fostered by Sonnet Chief Executive Robert Farnsworth as part of an Irvine Barclay Theatre initiative to “raise the artistic profile and significance of dance in southern California.” 

Irvine Barclay Theatre President Douglas C. Rankin chatted with Culture Monster about what’s going on.

“We’re calling it a ‘dance initiative,’” said Rankin. “It’s a nebulous thing, still a little fluid, but we want to kick up the number and variety of our dance offerings. Right now they have to be of a certain level; we want to create a platform to present more experimental companies.

"[The new website is] at least as important. We want to motivate, sustain, or nurture the local dance community. Robert Farnsworth is a Stanford-educated engineer and a dance geek. He saw a simple need, saying, ‘Sometimes I want to see what dance is on this weekend and I cannot get information usefully.’ So he set his hounds on it,” explained Rankin.

More than 40 performing arts centers' dance calendars have been consolidated, including the most significant dance presenters: Los Angeles Music Center, Orange County Performing Arts Center, REDCAT, Ford Amphitheater, Royce Hall UCLA, Irvine Barclay Theatre, Cerritos Performing Arts Center and Carpenter Performing Arts Center. Performances of 40 regional plus 45 visiting professional dance companies are included on the 2010-2011 calendars. Also in the database are Southern California’s 15 college dance schools.

The simple on-line calendar allows dance companies and artists to submit events themselves.

-- Debra Levine

Dance review: Ballet Preljocaj at Irvine Barclay Theatre

Angelin Preljocaj’s “Empty Moves,” presented at Irvine Barclay Theatre on Thursday night, was a dance quartet for five. Joining an ensemble of four on-stage performers in sound and in spirit was the composer John Cage, who accompanied the French choreographer’s pleasing hour-long dance-deconstruction.

Cage’s landmark recorded score memorialized a 1977 Milan performance of “Empty Words” in which the mushroom-loving minimalist intoned nonsensical text culled from Thoreau’s journals. Behind him was the sound of Teatro Lirico’s audience losing its mind, first as disgruntled individuals catcalling, then, astonishingly, when group chanting arose, like at a soccer match. But Cage plodded on, undeterred.

Reversing the geographical pattern, the European, Preljocaj, brought a challenging work to the infinitely better behaved Orange County. (A French speaker did cry out at the evening’s end, “Come back again, but next time change the music!”)

Dressed in colorful, well-fitting panties, boxers, and T-shirts, two women (Gaëlle Chappaz and Yurie Tsugawa) and two men (Fabrizio Clemente and Julien Thibault) formed a roving quartet, delivering with pinpoint precision Preljocaj’s nonstop output of primarily adagio movement. Entangled duets, group mash-ups, and the rare solo gathered feeling as the movement language constantly replenished, particularly in juxtaposition to the score’s dramatic waves of audience protest.  

Dance review: Pilobolus Dance Theatre at Carpenter Center

 

The Carpenter Performing Arts Center kicked off an adventurous 2010-11 dance season Friday night with Pilobolus Dance Theatre on the bill and Parsons Dance and David Dorfman Dance upcoming. The sold-out house –- its well-raked comfortable seats affording excellent sight lines -– buzzed with community energy anticipating a fun evening.   

Then, alas, the show began. Pilobolus, the versatile and zany, rough-and-tumble modern dance troupe now nearly 40 years old, strayed so far from its mission that if it were a corporation it would need to hire a branding consultant. Promising an evening of “imaginative and athletic creative collaboration,” the feisty company’s endearingly strong performers toiled well but ineffectually. Choreography was the main culprit, but so-so production values also contributed to the tepid dance journey.

Of the five pieces, only “Megawatt” (2004), the program closer, attained the high-voltage (pun intended) physicality hearkening Pilobolus of yore. The primary architect, troupe founder Jonathan Wolken (who died in June at age 60), dug deep for ingenious invention to reflect the seductive, percussive rock score by Primus, Radiohead and Squarepusher.

“Megawatt” blasted off with six dancers, regressed to convulsive inchworms, marching on stage fully prone on their backs: a parade propelled by gluteus maximus. Flipping like sausages to their bellies, they pressed forward with youthful energy. Their occupation of the stage's ground space then exploded into jagged jumps.  

Bolshoi-trained beauties bolster ballet in Orange County

Ethereal Bolshoi Ballet star Natalia Osipova, arguably the world’s prima ballerina, slipped into a rehearsal studio at Orange County Performing Arts Center looking tired. Lightly grasping a ballet barre, she plunged suddenly to the floor, her torso descending like an express elevator, her legs separating into a startling split. In this grueling position, she nested contentedly.

The porcelain-skinned, raven-haired beauty recently received standing ovations and rose bouquets in both London and New York for her classical roles. On Friday, she rehearsed in Costa Mesa alongside five fellow Bolshoi Ballet Academy alumni, all top-caliber international ballerinas featured in the upcoming “Reflections” ballet spectacle.

Co-produced by the Bolshoi and OCPAC, “Reflections” premieres in Costa Mesa Jan. 20-23, and then repeats in Moscow Jan. 27-30. The vision of impresario Sergei Danilian (“Kings of the Dance,” “Diana Vishneva: Beauty in Motion”), the production follows his proven formula: Showcase classical ballet virtuosos in contemporary dance, with the accent on technique. “Reflections” packs particular sizzle because the dancers are spectacular, and because the choreography roster includes three strong female names at a time when a dearth of women in power positions – both management and creative – characterizes the ballet world.  

The show’s in fast-track development. “Today is very difficult,” said Bolshoi star Yekaterina Shipulina bravely, her long blond pony tail mirroring her shapely legs. “Last night we work till 10.”

Gazing at the six dancers, OCPAC Executive Vice President Judith Morr said, “I’m in love with all of them.” But she indicated a favorite: the sinewy, muscular Polina Seminova, whose steely legs stem from Berlin Staatoper Ballet’s contemporary repertoire. 

Dance review: ABT's 'The Sleeping Beauty' at the Music Center

 

The “Glorya Kaufman Presents Dance at the Music Center” season that delivered artistic epiphanies with two important historic reconstructions – the Joffrey Ballet’s marvelous staging of Frederick Ashton’s “Cinderella” (1948) and Merce Cunningham’s brilliant “Roaratorio” (1983) – drew to a deeply disappointing conclusion with American Ballet Theatre’s vastly flawed 2007 restaging of the ballet classic, “The Sleeping Beauty.” ABT, its brand seriously tarnished as standard bearer of the 19th century story-ballet repertoire, must decide whether to prolong the ballet’s life (the $2-million investment, a pittance in our local industry, constitutes big money in the ballet world), or somehow repurpose it.

Despite a valiant effort, effervescent American ballerina Gillian Murphy proved at Thursday’s opening of a five-performance weekend stint at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion that a single woman, even as superlative a classical dancer as she, could not salvage a full-evening ballet.

But boy, she came close. A 31-year old redheaded vixen of a dancer with a peaches-and-cream complexion, a bow-tie mouth and sturdy American legs, Murphy was raised in the Carolinas — she’s Scarlett O’Hara on pointes. She took to the stage after 40 minutes of story exposition so hopelessly muddled, over-populated, and over-costumed in such poor taste that the ballet’s “Prologue,” which revealed the evil fairy Carabosse’s curse on baby Aurora, was a hard act to follow.

Talking with Dance Theatre of Harlem's co-founder Arthur Mitchell

“I didn’t want to be a ballet dancer. My motivation was the musicals,” says Arthur Mitchell, one of the 20th-century’s noblest classical dancers, who grew up in New York City in the 1940s enamored of Broadway.

“Vaudeville was incredible. The Apollo, fantastic. Fred Astaire? When I auditioned for the High School of the Performing Arts, I rented top hat, white tie and tails, and sang “Steppin’ Out With My Baby.” They took me not because I was good but because I had so much nerve,” he says.

Memories flow freely, and with laughter, from Mitchell, 76, visiting Los Angeles to mark the July 4 closing of California African American Museum’s “Dance Theatre of Harlem: 40 Years of Firsts.” The exhibit celebrated the multiracial ballet troupe, which disbanded in financial insolvency in 2004. (The Dance Theatre of Harlem school still operates at 152nd Street and Amsterdam Avenue.)

Courtly in his demeanor and with noble carriage that screams “prince,” Mitchell seems born to entrechat-six. In reality, this son of a Harlem building superintendent was a plucky street kid, sneaking into Lucky’s nightclub to watch hoofers.

“I took over running the family when my father left. I was 12. I shined shoes and delivered meat for a butcher. He paid me in meat for my family. I ran errands for the girls in a neighborhood bordello. Growing up on Sugar Hill, attending Harlem’s incredible annual Easter Parade, I saw ‘class’ all around me.”

A huge contributor to American dance, Mitchell has offered more than 50 years of valiant service to two voracious dance organizations. He was one of New York City Ballet’s sparkling principal dancers during George Balanchine’s prime productive years. His peers: Allegra Kent, Suzanne Farrell, Edward Villella, Jillana, Violette Verdy, Patricia McBride and many more. After retiring from City Ballet in 1966, Mitchell co-founded Dance Theatre of Harlem, and for four decades ran the pioneering troupe. (He still advises DTH as artistic director emeritus; ballerina Virginia Johnson holds leadership reins).

Performance review: Gregorio Luke’s 'Frida, a New Look' at Ford Ampitheatre

Beguiling Mexican painter Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) is easy to love, and further, to fetishize. Her distinctive color-drenched canvases, crammed with autobiographical lore from her tragedy-strewn life, tug the eye and the heart. This well-seasoned mix has spawned Kahlo cult-figure status.

We depend on experts like Gregorio Luke, former director of Long Beach’s Museum of Latin American Art, to provide dispassionate insight to temper the hype, and distinguish the artist from the myth.

Viewers had no such benefit from the art historian’s illustrated lecture, “Frida, a New Look,” at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre on Friday night. (The program repeats on Saturday.) Designed as a “living memory of Frida Kahlo, to bring her alive,” Luke’s latest edition of his giant-screened revamps of the stodgy art talk canonizes the woman he admiringly calls “that most Mexican of artists” who “in spite of her suffering, built an art that was authentic and came from the hearts of the Mexican people.”

“There are art historians who never consider the artist’s life. I cannot separate her life from her work,” says Luke, somewhat defiantly, and these words guide his ambitious presentation to its detriment. Luke’s hybrid form of entertainment – neither annotated art lecture nor cathartic evening of fun – suffers from over zeal for his subject.

Dance Theatre of Harlem's tights of another color

Every little girl likes to go to ballet class dressed in pink tights and slippers.

Isn’t that right?

But what if you’re a girl of color and your skin isn’t pink?  And so your ballet tights, rather than mirroring your skin tone and elongating the line of your leg, well, they just jar?

This mundane problem became symbolic for pioneering black ballet star Arthur Mitchell when he launched Dance Theatre of Harlem in 1969. Under Mitchell’s instruction, the ballet company’s costumers dyed lycra tights and spray-painted pointe shoes with hues of brown, honey and cinnamon, dyeing the satin ribbons too.

Out marched a parade of leggy ballerinas garbed for the real world. Now a common practice, this “reality” skin tone trend began at DTH.

Tights and shoes occupy only one small corner of a comprehensive historic exhibit, “Dance Theatre of Harlem: 40 Years of Firsts,” on view until July 4 at the California African American Museum in Exposition Park. The show, a must-see for dance lovers, tours the vibrant troupe’s artistic history, which showcased the work of the most important American choreographers of the 20th century. This tour of DTH’s deep footprint spurs hopes that the company, dismantled in 2004, may soon be revitalized.

At an exhibit-related colloquium on Saturday eight DTH alumni dancers shared their personal histories dancing with the company. Read about it here. 

-- Debra Levine

Photo: Tights and shoes on exhibit at “Dance Theatre of Harlem: 40 Years of Firsts.” Credit: Gene Ogami