Live Dance, Live Music
“Simple Symphony” “Another Time” “Like an Ox on the Roof” “Concerto Grosso”
Mark Foehringer Dance Project/SF
Cowell Theater, Fort Mason Center for Arts and Culture
San Francisco, CA
March 23, 2019
Though partially raised in Brazil, and having performed with Brazil’s Cisno Nero Company for a decade, Mark Foehringer has been a respected local educator and choreographer for close to a quarter of a century. Some years ago, he choreographed “Diadorim”, a sprawling full-evening length work, based on a popular Brazilian epic. Its quasi-operatic ambition and production costs probably doomed its chance for longevity. But at a time when audiences seem to be eager for story ballets, and the paucity of dance with Latin American roots is so evident, “Diadorim” might deserve another chance. Today Foehringer is primarily known for his wonderfully crafted mini-holiday “Nutcracker Sweets”, performed to live Tchaikovsky by a mini-orchestra.
Foehringer may not be the most revolutionary choreographer, hooked into the latest fashion and what passes for common concerns, but he is a serious, competent artist who engages professionals able and willing to embrace an open-faced approach to dance. This latest concert, under the moniker of Like an Ox on the Roof and other dances, offered three world premieres, performed on point and in slippers with an ensemble of eleven.
The program finished with his 2000 octet “Concerto Grosso,” to selections from Ernest Bloch concerto grossi. Given the choreography’s strong geometric impulses to this robust score, one might have wished some additional rehearsal time for the many unisons, mirrors, canons and doublings.
Personally, this evening's most welcome gifts were the three world premiers to music by Benjamin Britten, Franz Liszt and Darius Milhaud. These scores were performed live by the Friction Quartet and two pianists, Tamami Honma and Daniel Glover. What a delight it was to hear acoustic instruments resonate into the auditorium. With all the electronica beaming at us from stages these days, it is so easy to forget that live music and dance for many centuries depended on and enhanced each other. So more it is a pity that on opening night musicians and dancers had so very small an audience.
When I first encountered Britten’s ‘Simple Symphony’ it seemed obviously derivative from classical form, not an inviting piece. Then I learned that the Symphony was ‘No.4’, and I had to give composer credit; he had written it at the ripe old age of 24. Foehringer’s choreography for a quintet seems to have picked up on the music’s youthfulness, and echoes of what sounded like folk tunes.
The choreography was clean but too “simple” in the way the dancers engaged in skips, soft lifts, moderately sized stretches, and the way they shadowed each other. “Simple” almost seemed a piece set on students. Performers were Danielle Serio (stepping in all evening for the injured Emily Hansel) Jamelyn Duggan, Theresa Knudson, Calvin Thomas and the excellent Logan Learned.
Danced in slippers and carried along by the lush romanticism of Liszt, “Another Time” looked like two perspectives on one piece of music. The first of two duets (by Sarah Cecilia and David Calhoun) was pure adagio. Beautifully performed, the dancers at first were strangers as they spiraled, turned and stretched, looking for new spaces to get to know a partner. Some of the lifts -- wrapping around the waist, a back to back pedaling lift -- looked a little awkward. But nothing could interrupt this choreography's cantilena like lyricism. In the second duet, Allie Papazian and Adonis Damian Martin Quinones engaged each other on a slightly more earthy plain. Sitting side by side they got started by a robust hip-to-hip bump but then expanded their responses in pull and push to the floor and overhead. Theirs was a less ethereal encounter but still within the music's frame.
Of “Le boeuf sur le toit”, Milhaud’s response to Paris nightlife and his years as a consular officer in Rio de Janeiro, the composer is supposed to have called this evergreen “a glorious mess”. Much to his chagrin, it remained by far the most popular of his over one hundred scores. This two-piano version sounds more modest than the one for orchestra, but this is the way it would have probably sounded in the club that gave the music its name.
Foehringer’s “Like an Ox on the Roof” is a mess. But what a glorious, infectious mess this is. So what if some of it looked a little like Massine, this "Ox" is noisy, it’s jazzy, it’s pure fun. You can catch the Charleston, Tango and Samba steps. In the past Foehringer has shown a sense of humor, maybe it’s time that he further explores this side of his dance making.
This party is in full swing (in every sense of the word). You have same-sex couples, brawling men, a hapless barkeeper (Denis Adams) trying to keep order and, of course the femme fatale (Cecilia) who knocks the guys on their behinds. Adams almost gets her if it weren't for the cute-as-a button, soft-shoe stepping Logan who walks off with the piece. Doing double-duty also as a dancer, Duggan’s costumes for most of the show were good. Matthew Antaky’s lighting design, a couple of times however, appeared unnecessarily dark.
copyright © Rita Felciano 2019
