A Bay Area Dance Resource

Review of Natasha Carlitz Dance Ensemble

January 30, 2010

A dance performer since childhood, Natasha Carlitz' credits include performing for several Bay Area choreographers and with High Release Dance. Her choreography has been performed by ODC San Francisco, Dance Visions, sjDanceCo, Dancin' Downtown in San Jose, the Retail Dance Festival, and San Francisco's Dancing in the Park. In a natural progression, in 2005 she founded her own company, the Natasha Carlitz Dance Ensemble. However, despite her experience and accomplishments, Carlitz supports herself not as a full-time dance professional, but in a hi-tech job at Google. You wouldn't know it by watching her choreography.

The Ensemble's performance on Saturday the 30th consisted of an ambitious collection of seven works performed by ten barefoot young women. In Time, Running Out, six dancers' rapidly pulsating and rigid steps mark the passage of time. Arms sway and reach, as if for a goal. It took me a while to get in touch with this work, I think because the beginning is overlong. After awhile I found it engaging, although it could have benefitted from costuming, rather than dance workout attire.

In Tightrope, dancer Tiffany Glenn dances on an imaginary tightrope, costumed with a whimiscal skirt and parasol, to the song Heatwave. It's a brief, but enjoyable fantasy.

Context is a thougt-provoking piece. Melissa Gordon-Wollin and Annie Thatcher-Stephens sit on chairs, one chair from a 1950's chrome and vinyl dinette set, the other a straight-backed, traditional wooden chair. The dancer on the vinyl chair rises and dances to Suzanne Vega's voyeuristic Tom's Diner. From the wooden chair, the dancer performs to Andrew Lloyd Webber's piously-toned Pie Jesu.

Line Transformations was one of the most creative and enjoyable works of the evening. It is dedicated to a mathematician, and may have been inspired by Carlitz' hi-tech career. Divided into four parts, with names such as Solid Geometry and Matrix Theory, the work features ten dancers in jump suits of various bright colors (not unlike the Google logo?). Solid Geometry opens with four dancers spinning out of their wrappings of brightly colored sashes. When unwound, the sashes stretch across the stage, roping it off.

Catulli Carmina was serious and stately, with the dancers performing lifts that are usually done by men in both modern and classical dance. A repeating movement was a gesture with the right hand moving first slowly in front and then quickly behind the back. With no apparent meaning or purpose, this gesture gradually became a distracting annoyance. In all fairness, I've seen something like this in one of Mark Morris' works; I didn't like it there either.

Current is an easy-going, pleasant work performed by three limber dancers to the song Reef Suring.

The evening closed with Tempus Fugit, with music by Beethoven. In a creative use of props, the work opens with legs and arms protruding into the air from behind black boxes. Later, the boxes are moved about the stage and turned around to reveal dancers inside in various positions. This is a serious and graceful work.

One of the really successful features of Carlitz' work is that the selected music and choreography fit so well together. Another is Karen McWilliams' creative costuming. It is too bad that some of the evening's works did not make use of this creative advantage, instead using ordinary workout clothes and sports bras, which seemed to give the works a feeling of ordinariness. Maybe I'm just missing the point.

Despite some small rough spots, Natasha Carlitz Dance Ensemble displays creativity and talent that are worth seeing. Upcoming performances are listed in the BayDance.com February and March calendars.

News and Cues

• Bay Area National Dance Week registration ends January 30, 2010.
• Linda Nahat, mother of Ballet San Jose Artistic Director Dennis Nahat, died on January 13, 2010 in Phoenix, Arizona. She was 93.
• Alonzo King LINES Ballet will perform a World Premiere Collaboration with San Francisco Opera Adler Fellows April 16 - 25, 2010, continuing LINES' tradition of collaborating with noted composers, musicians. Adler Fellowships are performance-oriented residencies for the most advanced young singers and coach/accompanists.
• Ballet San Jose audition tour begins Feb. 7 and concludes May 16. Cities include San Jose, LA, New York, and Chicago. For details see the BayDance.com Auditions page.
• SF Ballet School’s 2010 Audition Tour began Jan. 9 in Santa Monica and concludes on Feb. 20 in San Francisco. The auditions are for admission to the School’s prestigious five-week intensive Summer Session. Additional audition sites include Irvine, CA; Carlisle, PA; Washington, DC; Boston; New York; Seattle; Chicago; Boca Raton, FL; Winston-Salem, NC; and Fort Worth, TX.
• The Stanford Dance Research Working Group held its first meeting of the winter quarter on Jan. 15. Katherine Hawthorne presented "Fell," her current practice as research work. This is a working group designed to be a supportive structure for students working at the intersections of dance practice and academic research.
• This year's Black Choreographers Festival theme is “Honoring the Legacy – Celebrating the Next Generation”. February 12-26 in Oakland and San Francisco.
• Fridays at the Ballet: SF Ballet again offers a series of special events, targeted at young professionals and first time ballet-goers that includes access to the pre-performance Meet the Artist interview; an 8:00 p.m. ballet performance at the War Memorial Opera House; and a post-performance reception with hors d’oeuvres, wine, and cocktails. www.sfballet.org/fridays

San Francisco Ballet's Swan Lake

A Review by Michael Phelan

The magic of a special occasion begins as the audience arrives. Most people dress up; men in suits and ties, women in long dresses or gowns. A pair of drag queens in stunning evening gowns were briefly the center of attention at the Dress Circle bar. On Saturday night San Franciscans came out in style for one of the City's special occasions: the opening night of SFB's Swan Lake. It was not a disappointment.

San Francisco Ballet has been performing the full-length Swan Lake since 1940. Although the Company has revised the production periodically over the years, last year Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson refreshed the Swan with a more robust budget and a new set and costume designer, Jonathan Fensom. The costumes, for example, are tailored not only to flatter the shape of the dancers, but to emphasize the movements of their dances. A major change was Tomasson's creation of a prologue, in which Von Rothbart casts the tragic spell over Odette that turns her into a swan. In an innovative twist, Odette's transformation is shown in silhouette projection, as she falls to the ground, changes shape, and flies away. Tomasson introduced other improvements, such as replacing a corps dancers' waltz with the Grand Pas de Deux between Sigfried and Odette in the Ballroom scene of Act III.

The lead role of Odette/Odile this evening was danced by Maria Kochetkova, who was lithe, quick, and graceful, yet displayed a relaxed comfort. I found Kochetkova easier to watch in this role than Yuan Yuan Tan, who in the past has seemed to impart a tension to Odette that is out of character with the graceful swan creature. Davit Karapetyan danced the role of Prince Siegfried with his usual strength and stunning leaps and turns, but conveyed his character's mercurial emotions with conviction and clarity. The role of the evil Von Rothbart was danced by Damian Smith with the boldness and force typical of his performances.

It is difficult to find fault with the polished dancers of San Francisco Ballet. Newly-promoted Principal Dancer Frances Chung, with Principal Vitor Luiz and Soloist Elizabeth Miner danced a pas de trois that was a highlight of Act I.

In Act II, the Dance of the Four Cygnets was performed in traditionally precise style by Soloist Elizabeth Miner, Corps de Ballet dancers Clara Blanco and Stockton native Margaret Karl, and Bryn Gilbert, a student of the San Francisco Ballet School and native of Huntington Beach.

The Spanish dances of Act III were performed by Corps dancers Lily Rogers and Bret Bauer, and Soloist Anthony Spaulding. Elizabeth Miner danced the role of the Neapolitan Princess with Soloist James Sofranko. Frances Chung and Soloist Nutnaree Pipit-Suksun performed the Russian Princess dance with Soloists Garen Price Scribner and Hansuke Yamamoto.

For me, the real stars of Swan Lake are always the Corps de Ballet, who give this classic the grace and beauty for which it is famous. The sight of thirty precisely choreographed ballerinas in white as the Swans is beautiful, but SFB's Corps makes it a stunning and unforgettable sight, especially when viewed from above the Orchestra in the Dress Circle or Balcony.

Some productions of Swan Lake end with an elaborate send-off of Odette and Siegfried. Dennis Nahat's ambitious production in recent years, for example, had them flying away together in a boat. Tomasson has taken the opposite tack; the lovers end their lives tragically and are replaced by a projection of a pair of silhouetted swans flying in the moonlit night. It is a very simple scene, yet has such emotional force it gives some people goosebumps.

I know some ballet fans and dancers who have seen Swan Lake so many times they can't bear to hear the score once more. They should see SFB's latest production to make it fresh and new again.