San Francisco Ballet -- March 12 -- and some words on Creative Growth

A week ago last Saturday I went to the Ballet with Kristin. She always takes me out on the best dates! The performance included 3 pieces:

SQUARE DANCE: This is choreography from the late 50s, and according to the program it has evolved a lot since then. It no longer strongly resembles the traditional social dance. However it is very symmetrical. The dance style was tradition ballet with tension in the legs and a kind of forced relaxation of the upper body. The leaps were beautiful.

One interesting thing about the ballet for a person (me) who is used to the symphony is that there is music and there is dance and you can't really space out like you do at the symphony, following the music like water in a creek. You have to watch the dance. Sometimes that music seems to be at least as much the point.

Another thing I'd like to talk about is body image. These dancers, both male and female, have, by definition, amazing bodies, and yet their thighs are huge, their bodies thick with muscle, not at all like the "perfect" bodies we see on TV. I have always despised the sight of skinny calves, but now I see the strong body differently. Hopefully I can hold onto that.

GROSSE FUGE: "(van Manen, the choreographer) makes dance dramas that somehow unfold without a story -- and always, they are about dance, and human interaction. Fuge is without plot. Although the work got four men and four women explores the relationships, it seems to convey, as the Larousse Encyclopedia of Dance so aptly puts it, a male-female "attraction-repulsion duality" rather than love. The dancers pair up, but it would be misleading to describe them as couples, which suggests a warmth and intimacy that Fuge's formal belies."
"His designs -- bare-chested men in ankle-length, black skirts and women nearly colorless in leotards -- are intended to make the women appear vulnerable, and again reveal the influence of Graham: 'I was always sure I wanted to have the men in skirts -- Martha Graham had men in skirts and I was intrigued. [The music] is aggressive. Beethoven was largely deaf then. Skirts double the expression of the legs, make them seem more aggressive. Since the boys were covered, I wanted to have the girls uncovered, defenseless." As the roles reverse, however, the men take off their skirts, revealing their own vulnerability and leveling the playing field.
"Van Manen, who has long been fascinated with painting, sculpture, and photography, has a strong visual sense that Tomasson admires. "[This work is] almost sculptured at times, at least to me. I find it interesting how he groups people, how he moves them. The imagery is wonderful, and I think that comes from his being a very good photographer. When I watch his work, I can see that eye behind the lens, making those images."

The light designs shadows. In the shadows, the women look like trees, their hands are straight. The men in their skirts move with great angularity and masculinity. He lies on the ground and she slaps him, audibly, as if it were part of the music. The motions are extremely sexual. After the men shed the skirts, they lay, like additional characters, in the background on the stage.

As a slight aside, I wonder about the artist vs. the intellectual. This is a tired, old discussion that I was through with back in College, but it seems to have come up again. I visited the Creative Growth center today on my "lunch break". The artists are "clients", people with disabilities. They are NOT intellectuals, and their individual artistic visions, missions, vary substantially from low-wattage to Judy's high-level of dedication. We visited her once, and she refused to stop working because... I interpret... because her work was going so well, and maybe she was on a "deadline". I really believe that being an artist is the highest form of being.

REFLECTIONS: This one is contemporary. It had its world premiere at SF Ballet just a few days before I saw it. "(Possokhov, the choreographer) understood that imagination is limitless. 'Sometimes you think everything's been done -- no, people are doing new things all the time, and it’s good to know this. You have to try new things, because there is so much you can show.'"
"'I think that different forms of art make more of a difference to me, in ideas and imagination than ballet itself,' he says. "Movies, singing, painting, the symphony, opera, and music have the biggest influence on me as a choreographer. Of course it's very important for me to know how to make steps. But the ideas don't come from ballet -- they come from another form.'"
The ballet is based on Cries and Whispers (Ingmar Berman). "'It's a very tragic movie about three sisters; it's about cancer, and one sister dies. It's done in three colors, white, black, and red -- the strongest combination I ever saw in my life.'"
"You could be a great dancer, a great teacher, but nothing compares to being a choreographer. It's the top level of the art form. Choreography is unique -- if you did it, no one can repeat it. It's a piece of art -- bad, good, it's yours." Isn't that true of everything?

The clients at creative growth were making beads. My aunt Judy stole them and put them in one of her pieces. Art doesn't belong to anyone. It belongs to its viewer. Just like anything, people, flowers, trains. They belong to the people who love them. You can love a thing in just a minute. Judy made art with these beads and lots and lots of other materials, she loved those beads, that piece, and she's gone, but someone will pay thousands of dollars to enjoy that piece on their own terms.

But back to Reflections... It included traditional dance and costumes but contemporary use of the stage and set design. At one point the stage looked like a beach. At another a couple danced between 2 mirrors. At the end, all the dancers in red, black and white, danced with mirrors and men in child's pose (a basic yoga pose) on the floor as the women moved around them. (I could be remembering this wrong.)