The review is in from the opening night for SoulForce at the West Wave Dance Festival at the Yerba Buena Theatre. I have included the review of the entire show, not just SoulForces' blurb.
Love and Respect-
Micaya
Beggars’ Banquet
WestWave Dance Festival 2008, Program 2
August 21, 2008
By
ALLAN ULRICH
allan@voiceofdance.com
© VoiceofDance.com 2008
The great San Francisco tapas banquet of dance continued Wednesday (Aug. 20) at the Novellus Theater, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, where the producers of this year’s annual WestWave Dance Festival unveiled the second and third programs (DanceWave 2 and DanceWave 3) of the summer. Because of the five-minute time limitation on these commissioned premieres, the ones you don’t favor, much like the curried oysters on the tapas platter, pass out of your reach in an instant. Again, the menu was comprehensive, so, herewith a check list with notes of the 12 dances (in order of presentation) that comprise the second program, which repeats on Friday.
Alayna Stroud’s My Shoes was the almost obligatory aerial number. The performer removes her shoes before climbing a dangling, vertical steel bar. Stroud’s routine aloft is less exciting than watching firemen shinny down a pole on their way to a conflagration. Local aerial specialist Jo Kreiter has nothing to fear.
Robert Sund’s Our steps will always rhyme is the evening’s bow to ballet. The choreographer, a former dancer at the San Francisco Ballet, fashions a male solo, a female duet and a perfunctory trio, all to recorded songs by Leonard Cohen. The vocabulary is academic, the dancing by Ryan Camou, Robin Cornwell and Olivia Ramsay is superior. But the tension you should get with this mix of genders in a ballet is almost completely absent, and the mirror unisons wear out their welcome in record time.
Vakratunda Mahakaya by Guru Raitkant Mohapatra is a short essay in the Odissi style of classical Indian dance, set to music by the legendary Hariprasad Chaurasia and arranged for seven women. The orange skirts and headdresses overwhelm with opulence, the clasped hands and lovely symmetries fascinate, although the lead dancer’s balances are a mite shaky.
Wan-Chao Chang’s There traces a trio for three women in flowing white as they invade a shadowy landscape, mostly in unison. Too opaque in intention and too brief to make much of an effect.
Cocktail Hour by Cynthia Adams and Ken James (of Fellow Travelers Performance Group) is dominated by an enormous wheel, which, fastened to a dancer’s back, revolves like a mill and, alas, suggests Jerome Robbins’ Watermill. The remaining five performers stage a cocktail party around the wheel, constantly ducking to avoid the axle’s revolutions. A one-gag number well dispatched; physical comedy lives.
Christy Funsch’s Dapper Indiscretion Blues finds this excellent Bay Area dancer sidling and shrugging her way through a quirky solo that signifies a distinctive sensibility. One suspects the piece is too introspective for its own good.
Deborah Slater’s Gone in 5 offers three women of big hair and of a certain age cavorting around pieces of ordinary furniture, while a recording wails about somebody’s demise. The number features more choreography than many of this artist’s “dance” pieces, but the sell-date of these knockabout shenanigans has long past. A segment of the audience audibly disagreed with my assessment.
Lifting the Mist of Illusion by FatChanceBellyDance, performed by six members of the company (including director Carolena Nericcio) proved diverting for those who delight in literal navel gazing. Undulations galore.
Then came How many presents/balls/chips/scarves/books/hearts/circles can you wrap/catch/win/throw/read/cut out/make in four minutes thirty-two seconds? Faced with a severe time limit, Amy Lewis proposes a tableau vivant, adorned with 32 souls in various states of game-playing and love-making, all quite disarming. A woman reads fractured fairy tales. The number resembled one of those “How many wrong details can you spot in this picture?” feature that used to run in newspapers. I could have lived without the performers’ cheesy descents into the audience, dispensing dolls and candy, a theatrical ploy much older than Ms. Lewis.
Micaya’s To the Rear…March, performed by SoulForce Dance Company, was five minutes of pure hip-hop delight. The energy, musicality and high spirits displayed by these 10 young dancers should shame their elders. Even Nutcracker gets teased a bit. The highlight: the human bowling alley Micaya conjures from thin air. Wow! Encore! This one you gotta see!
In One Tuesday Afternoon, Kara Davis provides a sketch of what, if expanded, may emerge a memorable dance. It starts and concludes with a physical demonstration of the domino effect and moves on to a potent duet, alas delivered by dancers in socks (hideous) and ordinary costumes. The piece deserves better trappings; no complaints about the dancing by the 11 participants.
Hi’iakaikapoli’opele (A Goddess) choreographed by Kumu Hula Kawika Alfiche ends the program on a buoyant note. A hula spectacular without a grass skirt in sight, this narrative fragment from the life of the deity Pele suffers a bit from being torn from context. But this excerpt is both imposing and charming and it extended this viewer’s perception of what traditional Hawaiian dance is all about.
Well last night was the SoulForce auditions. We all had a very good time. A lot of great people showed up. We taught a choreography to them and they danced their hearts out. Afterward we talked some more and that was that. 
