Having enjoyed last year's DanceWright Project show so much, I looked foward to this year's performances in Sept. and I was not disappointed !
Thinking back now, a few weeks later, a couple of things have stuck in my mind about the evening:
The excellence of the DanceWright dancers was impressive !
One of my former Jazz Dance teachers, Zafra Miriam, had remarked that Jazz was hard because one moment you can be doing the most contorted off-balance thing and then suddenly in the next moment you have to be as centered and balanced as a Ballet dancer. Well, the DanceWright crew had THAT for sure. Not only going from a 'crazy posture' to suddenly being centered and balanced, but all the way up onto full pointe (tips of toes) to boot. All of that while actually 'dancing' as in 'art vs. a gymnastic-like-technical display'.. wow..
Kat Worthington's piece 'Portals of Grace' with her group 'Copius Dance Theater' was lush/flowing and expressive. I don't know how else to put it. It really has to be seen as words can't convey it (or rather, I can't convey the feeling). The SFgate reviewer described the piece (later performed at the WestWave performance) as 'curious'.. hmmm.. I and the many sitting near me on the night that I say it thought that it was enthralling !
Lastly, the 'Adhesive Dance Theater' of Dexandro "D" Montalvo did some contemporary dance theater pieces (and they did adhere !). One of them 'Ride the Muni' was the comical transition of a very uptight (as in ska-way-yer conservative) MUNI rider letting it all go after being trapped in a MUNI trolley during a 'service outage'.. The confined MUNI car became the 'Club MUNI' disco hall with our hero loosening his tie and shakin' it (madly)... 'Club MUNI' became my personal theme of the week that followed :-)
I'm looking foward to DanceWright Night #3 next year !
Part of me wished that this recent Night #2 could have been experienced by a larger crowd. I ran into someone later who had also been at Night #2 and we agreed that if the show moves to a larger venue, that venue might be the kind of place where the audience would not be allowed to hoot n' holler (and we were hootin n' hollerin' mightly during night #2) and that that might be a loss... life's trade-offs...
