As with all MCASB events, the guests are double good-looking objets d’art. Noted in high fashion were MCA Board president Jacquelyn Klein-Brown’s designer manicure in the color “Feed the Rich” by Smith & Cult, dress by Alice & Olivia, Jimmy Choo shoes, and her fab new fringe hairstyle; Frederick Janka’s crisp white Cuban linen suit and musician Prince hairstyle; Eileen Rasmussen’s gold-threaded and limegreen embroidered Prada midi-coat with matching skirt; and Nancy Wall’s ever-elegant Yves Saint Laurent ensemble. Guests attending included Josh Blumer co-vice president, Georgene Vairo co-vice president, Laurie Recordon, secretary, Mary Lynn Harms treasurer, trustees Cindy Bermant, Mary Blair, Nancy Gifford, Laura Macker Johnston, Jenn Kennedy, Debby Peterson, Nancy O’Connor, and Lea Sindija. Extra-special VIPs at the soirée included SB County Arts Commission executive director Sarah York Rubin with her chief curator Maiza Hixson, Finola Hughes, and Russell Young, Nancy and Tony Wall, Dr. Michael Trambert, Sherry Hlavaty (event co-chair), Amy Holbrook, Elizabeth Mc Govern, Elisabeth Fowler Stephanie, and Dewey Nicks, Nanette and Jeff Giordano, inventor and founder of SBCAST Alan Macy, artist Hugh Margerum, art dealer John C. Connelly, Salud Carbajal, Monika Molnar-Metzenthin, and Brooke Kellaway. For more fabulous upcoming art events, visit www.mcasantabarbara. org.
SB Dance Theater’s Anniversary
Santa Barbara Dance Theater (SBDT) artistic director Christopher Pilafian has most certainly reached the pinnacle of his lifetime in dance in this role, and his company’s most remarkable evening performances May 4 and 5 at the Lobero Theatre. The program show-cased works by guest choreographers Emily Schoen [New York City] and Joshua Beamish [Canada]
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12 – 19 May 2016
Christopher Pilafian with choreographer Joshua Beamish, SBDT rehearsal director Brooke Hughes Melton, and dancers backstage after the performance
in the first half, and Pilafian’s works in the second half. Dancers in the company are Tracy R. Kofford, Christina Sanchez, Nikki Pfeiffer, Carisa Carroll, Thomas Fant, Daniel Alejandro Burgueño, Natalia Perea, Shelby Lynn Joyce, Robin Wilson, and Malcolm McCarthy. I highly recommend everyone to experience this company under Christopher’s direction, for he has mastered the manner in which dance is a medium of artistic expression beyond one’s basic appreciation of dance as a traditional art form. There are those who dance the choreography technically perfect, those who are the dance, and those who use both to deliver the message. Pilafian’s piece titled Strange Attractor, a choreography in 11 movements, delivers all three aspects. The movements are comprised of single and double pas de deux, classical ménage à trois, and full company dance-shorts that change into the next movement by leaving the observer suspended on a piece of thin air waiting to exhale, which does of course happen once the next movement begins. Translation: breathless yet able to breath, levitated yet balanced. Christopher brilliantly matches the architectural nuances in original music by Ryan Beveridge with dance movements to create dynamic line, shape, and form across the entire stage that interplays with a digital video projection backdrop and shadows cast
and arabesques, Hindustani hand and feet angles, and flirty head movements, a briefly engaging piece. Next, the ensemble collected on stage for Beamish’s Salt, a new work for SBDT based on his observations of the impact of drought in the world. Using terse duets, repetitive fetal-floor movements, and changing of partners, one notes the influence of British choreographer Wayne McGregor, specifically in what appears to the viewer as counterpoint movements while partnering, the use of aggressive angular dance lines (see McGregor’s “Thinking With The Body”), and the starkness of a Mad Max episode.
International choreographer Joshua Beamish performing Concerto
by the dancers as they move and pause during the piece. The video backdrop is of constantly moving shapes that form tunnels, circles, and essentially a flowing 3-D space, which literally extends the portal of the stage. The dance ends in an up-surge of tension with the ensemble forming displaced horizontal lines across the stage, backs to the audience, and finally blending into a chartreuse psychedelic digital projection before fading to black. Choreographer Beamish performed his solo repertoire titled, Concerto with music by Johan Sebastian Bach. The avant-garde performance in his minimalist costume of bare chest, gray pants, and white socks reflects on a similar strength by Baryshnikov in 1960. The dance mixed elements of modern jazz, ballet attitudes-en-face
In Schoen’s piece, A Jointed Affair, we find similar McGregor techniques and tensions, yet we question if we just saw modern love mixed in a mosh pit of multiple rapid fish dives, back kicks, body pushes, rushes, moving one’s partner’s head and arm for them while moving away from the dance partner, and overload of dance lifts. The work was created last year with Emily’s Company based in New York City and premiered at Jacob’s Pillow, music by Project Trio, though best executed by the SBDT thus far. The combined impact of the four choreographies in one evening raises the bar on professional dance performance in Santa Barbara, as well as the pushing the boundaries of its audiences. Bravo, Christopher and company, bravo! •MJ
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