Dance: 2010 in review
December 26, 2010|By Allan Ulrich, Chronicle Dance Correspondent
High: Canadian ice dancers Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir in their exhilarating, gold medal-winning exhibition at the Vancouver Olympics. Performers who validate one's belief in an art form move to the top of any year's list. And not since Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean in Sarajevo in 1984 has any team so convinced the world of the musical possibilities of ice dancing. Check Virtue and Moir's transcendent take on the Mahler "Adagietto," compare the pair's sleek sensuality with any of the tortured ballet versions you've seen, and you will understand everything.
Low: The chronic shortage of superior dance performance spaces in the Bay Area, a dilemma that is not improving. Just the opposite: With extended closures over the next four years of the Palace of Fine Arts Theater, the Cowell Theater and the Herbst Theater, our diet of theatrical dance will be severely circumscribed. That Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall, a terrific dance venue, remains dark for most of the summer months only makes matters worse.
Most improved: "In Dance," the monthly publication of Dancers Group, may have begun as a house organ and calendar for the local dance community, and there's still too much navel-gazing within its pages for my taste. Yet, better and more extended writing on a variety of dance subjects seems on the rise. You need not be a professional to enjoy reading "In Dance."
Most valuable player: No contest. When ODC Artistic Director Brenda Way opened the renovated ODC Theater in September, thus completing the 36,000-square-foot ODC Campus, she assured herself a permanent place as a prime mover in the Bay Area dance community. As for the airy, audience-friendly theater, if only we had three more like it.
Top 10
Shantala Shivalingappa (February). This exquisite dancer introduced many of us to the wonders of Kuchipudi, a South Indian classical dance form rarely seen in the Bay Area. The solo performer of the year, Shivalingappa transformed the Herbst Theater into an arena where the mysteries of the universe were unveiled.
Dancing Spirit (March). Occasionally during the Judith Jamison era, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater has commissioned a work of choreographic stature. Most, like this one, have come from Ronald K. Brown, whose ritualized representation of African American culture proved compelling.
