Last night we went to see Loose Change‘s Human Nature show at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in SF. Loose Change is a SF based dance company directed/mainly choreographed by Eric Fenn. Their style is Hip-Hop rooted, but incorporates also Lindy Hop, martial arts and modern dance.
The style is refreshing, narrative, profound and entertaining. I have been to a number of “big name” dance shows, like Mark Morris, Pilobolus, Momix, Stefen Petronio, Alvin Ailey, Lines Ballet, and found myself walking out often with a hint of (or more pronounced) disappointment. And last night, I walked out with a big smile on my face, saying “finally!”.
It got me thinking…why do I find “big” companies boring? Loose Change’s dancers weren’t as incredible as Momix or Petronio or Lines, but there was something about it that made me a lot more satisfied.
And there it was, in the title: “Human Nature”. Eric Fenn reminded us that dancers are indeed humans and that they can express very humanly matters. I find that the “excellent” companies produce incredible dancers/athletes, but such that they become inhuman, robots of beauty, muscle control gods. So rarely do I see emotion, so rarely do I see purpose anymore. Choreographers! What are you doing? You’re just showing off your dancers, and how fast they can move for how long!
And so Loose Change breaks that rule and keeps everybody sane. The movement breathes, is creative, there’s concepts, patterns, play, a story, interaction, floorwork, a group vibe, flow, and most…some fun for goodness’ stake!!!!!
So thank you Eric and your dancers for bringing to a big stage the humbleness of just being human (I take a deep breath and smile).
02.21.07 |Comments Off on Des raquettes?…non, pas de tennis!
(For the english version of the story and more pics, check out Justin’s posts)
Le week-end dernier, était un week-end de 3 jours, et croyez-moi, on en a profite!
On ne savait pas trop ce qu’on voulait faire…la seule certitude était de sortir de la ville, et voir un peu de verdure. Voici donc le résultat…
Samedi: Très grasse matinée + lunch avec Julie, Pat et Eva dans notre restaurant Thai prefere, Chai-Yo + ils nous ont gentiment proposes de nous amener a notre voiture (qui est a Sausalito, un peu au nord de SF), donc on s’est vite dépéché a empaqueter des vêtements chauds pour aller au Sequioa National Park. Nous avons donc pris la route pendant a peu près 4 heures direction sud-est. Nous nous sommes arrêtés dans un village juste avant le parc (Three Rivers) pour y passer la nuit.
Dimanche: Lever, 9h (moitie de grâce mat), petit dej’, quelques achats au marche du coin pour le lunch et en route pour le parc des grands arbres. Ca grimpe, ca grimpe et la neige devient de plus en plus abondante… On arrive finalement au musée des “arbres géants” (sequoias), et la, on entend quelqu’un demander de faire une réservation pour une randonnée guidée en raquettes de neige. Hmm…il m’a semble avoir vu quelque chose de ce genre sur le site web du parc, mais sans trop de détails. Alors, moi aussi, je demande. En effet, ils offraient une randonnée guidée d’a peu près 1 mile (1.8 km) et nous fournissait les raquettes …et tout ca gratuit! Alors, biensûr je demande s’il y a de la place pour une rando le jour même, ce qui était le cas et nous voila partis pour essayer les raquettes!
Une demi-heure après, nous voila avec un groupe d’une dizaine de personne a vadrouiller dans les bois avec des raquettes en bois aux pieds! Trop cool! Franchement c’est un peu dur, mais vraiment pas autant que j’ai entendu auparavant. C’est un peu dur a manoeuvrer parce-que c’est long, et il faut faire gaffe de ne pas piquer du nez en descente (mais ca c’est vrai même avec des chaussures). Mais marcher dans de la poudreuse fraîche, c’est le vrai pied!
Vers la fin de notre ballade (2 heures plus tard), la guide nous montre la direction d’un chemin a prendre qui amené a une cascade a demi gelée… A ce moment la, on ne savait pas trop si on allait rester dans le parc la nuit, si on allait partir et aller ailleurs…bref, pas tellement de plan. Mais l’histoire de la cascade gelée nous travaillait un peu.
Nous décidons quand même d’aller voir le plus grand/gros/volumineux arbre du monde, le “General Sherman” (qui est sensé être le plus gros “organisme” vivant de la terre).
Justin a une panoplie de photos sensationnelles de cet arbre, specialement un collage de 3 photos pour montrer tout l’arbre et puis une de nous au pied…énorme!!!
Bref, ce petit tour autour du géant nous a aide a nous décider: on veut voir cette cascade! Alors nous conduisons jusqu’au chalet principal du parc, espérant qu’ils aient des chambres libres. En effet (on a de la chance) ils en avaient une (un peu plus cher qu’on aurait voulu, mais ca valait le coup).
Quel bonheur de se retrouver au milieu de la neige dans un chalet confortable et un délicieux dinner (avec une bouteille entière de vin a nous 2).
Lundi: réveil 9h, moitie de p’tit dej’ (fruits et noix)…on se préparé, on remballe nos affaires et on va louer de raquettes pour la journée. A nous la cascade!
Mais cette fois-ci, les raquettes étaient modernes…beaucoup plus courtes, en plastique dur avec des crampons dessous pour plus de traction en montée et en descente…plus légères aussi.
Et nous voila partis sur le petit sentier au milieu des bois qui longe la rivière pour nous amener a l’eau gelée promise. Franchement on a peut-être croise/passe 3 personnes pendant toute notre randonnée. Parfois on se demandait même s’il y avait des ours aux alentours, car o etait pas mal seuls!!! Ca nous a pris 1 heure et demi pour monter.
La fin était étroite, au bord d’un ravin (pas trop dangereux, mais assez si on glisse). On se demandait combien de temps dans ce passage étroit il fallait endurer pour enfin arriver “au bout”…en fait, pas longtemps. Et sur la montagne d’en face, on voit cette masse d’eau sur la falaise, qui était…gelée! C’est la première fois que je vois quelque chose comme ca. La glace était bleue!…comme quoi l’eau est bien bleue. Et sur un autre flanc de la montagne, on voit aussi un bout de cascade allant dessus et dessous des petits ponts de neige….magnifique! (tres difficile a photographier). On s’assoie, on mange un peu et on repart. Il commencait a faire brouillard, il faut rentrer avant qu’on n’y voit plus rien!
Si vous avez l’occasion d’essayer, franchement ca vaut le coup, et il n’y a pas besoins d’apprendre pendant des heures a se servir des raquettes, comme le ski ou le surf. Petit conseil? Ayez de bonnes chausses de randonnée imperméables avec des chaussettes épaisses…ce sera sur ma prochaine liste de Noël.
Donc en milieu d’apres-midi, on en a pleins les basquettes (et pleins la mémoire de souvenirs fantastiques) et décidons de rentrer a la maison. Une longue route nous attendait, mais le voyage était tellement dépaysant, que conduire pendant presque 6 heures est passé tres vite.
On a bien dormi!
(Je vous demande pardon pour les accents qui manquent…je n’ai pas encore trouve la bonne solution sur mon clavier anglais)
San Francisco offers many cool sights by just walking around, making turns and stumbling upon stuff…
So, yesterday, I took advantage of my last free afternoon (I’m temping at Federated Media…yey!…just gotta beware for the Justin-Stephanie overload!) to take a long city walk from Nob Hill to Pier 39, longing the water and grabbing the Powell-Hyde cable car back. I had a lot of fun!
On the left, is a street corner I thought had interesting architecture and colors.
Below left, the good ol’ seals at Pier 39 with their buddies the seagulls.
Below right, the Fisherman’s Wharf crab stands (with not too many crabs that day…)
Weird man dressed up as a dog, owning a few dogs looking like his suit and taking pictures of people with the dogs…WEIRD!
Above, a spray painting artist…incroyable! Below, some freestylin’ break dancers.
Time to go back home…what a great little impromptu adventure!
(En Francais…regardez plus bas) Yesterday, we went to see the acclaimed New-York based company of Stephen Petronio. He is described as the “NYC’s bad boy” as his choreography is known to be innovative and provocative.
He presented 3 pieces: Bud Suite (2006), Bloom (2006) and The Rite Part (1992)
Bud Suite was the piece which led him to appear on Dance Magazine and all his current promo pictures are based on this piece. Let’s face it. His dancers are gorgeous and the costumes (by Tara Subkoff and H. Petal) are exquisite. The opening male duet definitely grabs the attention! C’mon, 2 beautiful men dancing closely together, feeding off of each other’s energies, with a practicly romantique under-layer…Very sexy! Plus, one of them had the most amazing male extensions/flexibility!!! However, the rest of the piece didn’t impress me that much. Don’t get me wrong, the dancers are incredible athlete and technicians, the costumes are jaw dropping, the energy level was high…but that’s the problem…it was too high. So high all the time that we didn’t have time to breathe! I also noticed the absence of emotions in this work, which made me even more confused as far as what it was about. So, really, the initial duet made the whole piece!
Bloom had the great privilege to be partly accompanied by the San Francisco Girls Chorus. It really added an extra dimension. The piece was generally in the green tones with little dresses that pooffed out when the girls turned. Again, in my taste, there was so much movement that it lost me. I was even confusing it with the previous dance. It got my mind wandering and imagining the dancers with their previous costumes on, and didn’t really see a difference in style. The emotion was also pretty absent, and the story a bit hard to read. The dancers? Amazing, for sure! Thank goodness for the girls’ beautiful voices to keep me into it.
The Rite Part was an interpretation of Stravinsky’s famous and much choreographed on Rite of Spring. It was also one of Petronio’s older creations, and in my opinion, far more interesting!!!! There was definite effort in building relationships, creating visually stimulating staging, and for goodness’ sake it was breathable! There were pauses, slow parts, woohoo! The accents were well defined and designed. I could sense the purpose of it all, finally! Maybe was it beause the piece is so famous and so many world renowned choreographers have done their own version, that Petronio reached deep down into his creative senses to meet up to expectations? I don’t know…Oh and also, weirdly, his white unitard solo closing the piece made me think very much about Maurice Bejart.
So, Stephen, why did you lose the sense of exhaling throughout the years? Why is more movement better? Where did human emotions go? It’s not true that in our very fast paced lives emotions have disapeared! Your dancers have incredible technique and abilities, but they are almost machines!
Maybe I need to see other pieces to be demonstrated that Petronio’s choreography’s got soul. Right now, I only see intricacy, technique, leg extensions, jumps, turns, arm swings, some patterns, and lots and lots of all that over and over again.
The Word Pirates put on a reading last night and they kicked ass!
The short stories were awesome, the food was great, the artists were talented and the Phoenix Theater was weirdly very charming!
I served as the guest pirate to challenge Marcia in a cruel duel… It took a few rehearsals and a lot of makeup…
Les Pirates des Mots (Word Pirates…un group d’ecrivains) ont fait une lecture hier soir et ils etaient au top! Les petites histoires etaient geniales, la bouffe etait bonne, les artistes etaient talentueux et le Theatre Phoenix etait bizarrement tres charmant!
J’ai servi d’invite pirate pour engager Marcia dans un duel cruel… Ca a pris quelques repetitions et pas mal de maquillage…
Voila le produit final…amusez-vous bien!
Si vous n’arrivez pas a voir la video, cliquez ici.
This is the new face of my blog, all red and yummy with a hint of freedom. I’m definitely not done with all the details, but I’m loving it already!
Lately I’ve been very busy and lots of great changes have occurred in my life!! What’s new? Well, I’ve been working on this blog (and having a lot of fun with it), I quit my job and I’m looking at new inspiring directions and yesterday, my Dad became a U.S. Citizen.
So let me inaugurate this new blog, with pictures of this long awaited day and well deserved status.
The official ceremony took place at the Nob Hill Masonic Center. I’m so happy to have had an opportunity to go inside this formerly mysterious building.
Why mysterious? Well because of the not so clear happenings/role/existence of the Freemasons. It just seems like an underground highly influential “brotherhood” which is very spooky (in my world)… but wikipedia describes them a bit better… But the Masonic Center itself turns out to be primarily a performing arts/concert hall…what does it really hide?
There were many people at the ceremony! Exactly 1,234 future new Americans from all over North California, and their families and friends. All the applicants were on the bottom floor, and we got to see everything from above. 91 countries were represented and were individually called, asking everyone of the called country to stand up. Of course a big standing up human “wave” happened when China and Mexico were called.
After only about 2 hours of speeches, videos, singing, more speeches, translations and official document hand out, we all got out with a smile, the sense of relief ( it’s been almost 6 years since he applied) and a great hunger!
A quick picture to immortalise the happy day and off we went.
We changed our shoes (pretty shoes hurt!) and cabbed down to fisherman’s wharf hoping to get a glance of the Queen Mary 2…of course, we didn’t know it was already gone.
Post lunch we zoned in the extremely overwhelming mega-packed cheap jewelry store accross the street. Too much to look at, so we rewarded ourselves with a little square of Ghirardeli chocolate.
Last night we went to see Loose Change‘s Human Nature show at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in SF. Loose Change is a SF based dance company directed/mainly choreographed by Eric Fenn. Their style is Hip-Hop rooted, but incorporates also Lindy Hop, martial arts and modern dance.
It got me thinking…why do I find “big” companies boring? Loose Change’s dancers weren’t as incredible as Momix or Petronio or Lines, but there was something about it that made me a lot more satisfied.
And so Loose Change breaks that rule and keeps everybody sane. The movement breathes, is creative, there’s concepts, patterns, play, a story, interaction, floorwork, a group vibe, flow, and most…some fun for goodness’ stake!!!!!
Une demi-heure après, nous voila avec un groupe d’une dizaine de personne a vadrouiller dans les bois avec des raquettes en bois aux pieds! Trop cool! Franchement c’est un peu dur, mais vraiment pas autant que j’ai entendu auparavant. C’est un peu dur a manoeuvrer parce-que c’est long, et il faut faire gaffe de ne pas piquer du nez en descente (mais ca c’est vrai même avec des chaussures). Mais marcher dans de la poudreuse fraîche, c’est le vrai pied!
Bref, ce petit tour autour du géant nous a aide a nous décider: on veut voir cette cascade! Alors nous conduisons jusqu’au chalet principal du parc, espérant qu’ils aient des chambres libres. En effet (on a de la chance) ils en avaient une (un peu plus cher qu’on aurait voulu, mais ca valait le coup).
Mais cette fois-ci, les raquettes étaient modernes…beaucoup plus courtes, en plastique dur avec des crampons dessous pour plus de traction en montée et en descente…plus légères aussi.
La fin était étroite, au bord d’un ravin (pas trop dangereux, mais assez si on glisse). On se demandait combien de temps dans ce passage étroit il fallait endurer pour enfin arriver “au bout”…en fait, pas longtemps. Et sur la montagne d’en face, on voit cette masse d’eau sur la falaise, qui était…gelée! C’est la première fois que je vois quelque chose comme ca. La glace était bleue!…comme quoi l’eau est bien bleue. Et sur un autre flanc de la montagne, on voit aussi un bout de cascade allant dessus et dessous des petits ponts de neige….magnifique! (tres difficile a photographier). On s’assoie, on mange un peu et on repart. Il commencait a faire brouillard, il faut rentrer avant qu’on n’y voit plus rien!
San Francisco offers many cool sights by just walking around, making turns and stumbling upon stuff…
Yesterday, we went to see the acclaimed New-York based company of Stephen Petronio. He is described as the “NYC’s bad boy” as his choreography is known to be innovative and provocative.
Bud Suite was the piece which led him to appear on Dance Magazine and all his current promo pictures are based on this piece. Let’s face it. His dancers are gorgeous and the costumes (by Tara Subkoff and H. Petal) are exquisite. The opening male duet definitely grabs the attention! C’mon, 2 beautiful men dancing closely together, feeding off of each other’s energies, with a practicly romantique under-layer…Very sexy! Plus, one of them had the most amazing male extensions/flexibility!!! However, the rest of the piece didn’t impress me that much. Don’t get me wrong, the dancers are incredible athlete and technicians, the costumes are jaw dropping, the energy level was high…but that’s the problem…it was too high. So high all the time that we didn’t have time to breathe! I also noticed the absence of emotions in this work, which made me even more confused as far as what it was about. So, really, the initial duet made the whole piece!
Bloom had the great privilege to be partly accompanied by the San Francisco Girls Chorus. It really added an extra dimension. The piece was generally in the green tones with little dresses that pooffed out when the girls turned. Again, in my taste, there was so much movement that it lost me. I was even confusing it with the previous dance. It got my mind wandering and imagining the dancers with their previous costumes on, and didn’t really see a difference in style. The emotion was also pretty absent, and the story a bit hard to read. The dancers? Amazing, for sure! Thank goodness for the girls’ beautiful voices to keep me into it.
The Rite Part was an interpretation of Stravinsky’s famous and much choreographed on Rite of Spring. It was also one of Petronio’s older creations, and in my opinion, far more interesting!!!! There was definite effort in building relationships, creating visually stimulating staging, and for goodness’ sake it was breathable! There were pauses, slow parts, woohoo! The accents were well defined and designed. I could sense the purpose of it all, finally! Maybe was it beause the piece is so famous and so many world renowned choreographers have done their own version, that Petronio reached deep down into his creative senses to meet up to expectations? I don’t know…Oh and also, weirdly, his white unitard solo closing the piece made me think very much about Maurice Bejart.
So, Stephen, why did you lose the sense of exhaling throughout the years? Why is more movement better? Where did human emotions go? It’s not true that in our very fast paced lives emotions have disapeared! Your dancers have incredible technique and abilities, but they are almost machines!
