Bobby McFerrin and Friends with and presented by Moving People Dance Santa Fe, Lensic Performing Arts Center March 14, 2009

by Janet Eigner

It was All-Bobby-Bopping-and-Scatting-All-the-Time with young Santa Fe artists. McFerrin did the major lifting for two joy-filled concerts, March 14 and 15. Elaine Hausman, past Executive Director of Moving People Dance Santa Fe (MPD), now Finance director, spearheaded inviting McFerrin back for a second dynamic fund raiser. The first, in 2003, set the model for the present concert, involving his rehearsing and performing with local, vocal and orchestral students, as well as the MPD students and staff.

This whimsical fund raiser for music and dance education lifted spirits in the Lensic audience, since the singer-conductor involved the sold-out audience as well as the young jazz and classical musicians, choirs, dancers and professional dancers. MPD Board of Directors member, Larry Goldstone, gave a heartfelt justification for supporting music and dance, and mentioned that MPD would soon be moving to a new and larger dance studio to continue the school’s growth.

The coordination required a well-organized program, to keep track of the disparate groups– the concert was more a ride on an unpaved road than a silky smooth interstate, but McFerrin interacted as the charismatic and whimsical umbrella that sheltered and electrified three groups: musicians, chorale and dancers, the Moving People professional dancers, and with Moving People Too!, MPDSF’s youth company.

McFerrin scatted and bopped from his quiet, resonant baritone to his gentle falsetto, to his his one-man, syncopated “Voicestra” that leaps from low to high and back like a solo ping pong game. Then, there were the chest beating echoes and the South African clicks that accompanied his vocables, the calls and responses, and the occasionally discernable word songs made popular by him.

He brought interactive smiles to the faces of the Santa Fe Youth Symphony Association’s excellent Miles Davis Jazz Ensemble conducted by David Parlato, then with the Santa Fe Youth Choir, who sang what stood out as the mantra of this entire concert, “How Can I Keep from Singing.” Cora Harms Choir Director with Santa Fe Public Schools, conducted.

McFerrin performed solo three times through the concert. His most dancerly and wildly creative work divided and taught the audience its vocal parts. Then he used his own body, taking small jumps on stage, right, left and center, to signal which vocal segment needed to chime in. It worked as well as the earlier concert segments where he’d gestured with one finger.

McFerrin added dimension to the two Moving People dance segments, the professional company, with choreography by Curtis Uhlemann, and the youth company, all four levels of it, choreographed by Echo Gustafson.

For the company dancers, (Kate Eberle, Erica Gionfriddo, Echo Gustafson, Ariel Johnson, Genoveva Sistos, and Curtis Uhlemann), McFerrin sat in a formal chair, center stage, as each small group or individual performed a movement: stepping, running, joining hands. Eberle and Gustafson’s lovely syncopated movements together stood out; as well as Gustafson and Uhlemann’s nymph-like whirling, while McFerrin continued his delicate and rhythmic Voicestra.

For Moving People Too!, McFerrin scatted in the background as one boy and many girls simultaneously rolled, executed splits, cartwheels, ran and kicked. He varied the kind of music he generated, from jazz to blues to classical, as he hummed Bach. He played statue with the younger children, as they moved in jazzy positions, froze, then moved again. He got them to loosen their limbs and do undulations before they ran offstage.

The older girls used more diagonals, arms swaying, arabesques. One girl whipped her arm, then sank like a melting ice flow. Twelve young women on stage began a meditative conclusion, as McFerrin added a riff of quiet, percolating sounds, the dancers ending with a simultaneous and lovely grapevine that sank slowly as light dimmed.

Interacting again with McFerrin was the Santa Fe Youth Symphony Association’s Con Vivo!, conducted by Benjamin Klemme, performing a Scandinavian light classical work, then a folk tune and a fiddle dance.

Commissioned for this concert’s finale, a poignant and delicate work, “Variations on a Northern New Mexico Dance Tune (Tecolote)”, was introduced by conductor James Hausman, a friend of McFerrin and son of Elaine Hausman, and sung by the Youth Choir. (Only Ellie, Elaine’s daughter and former dancer with MPD, now away studying dance at the University of Arizona, was missing from that family’s participation in the concert.) The dancers returned to circle the singers and musicians as “Tecolote” concluded.

McFerrin is an especially good match for the newly-constituted MPDSF. Without the explosive and charismatic energy of Ronn Stewart, on sabbatical for the year until May 2009, though back to help the company rehearse, the company and its students needed to see a model of a more quietly charismatic performer, though McFerrin is of course not a dancer and not consistently involved with the company.

Maybe it was without Stewart’s polish and organization that the children’s dance performances lacked a certain confidence, skill and coherence, or maybe with the reorganization and immanent move, time wasn’t available for enough rehearsal, or maybe sharing the evening with so many groups, there wasn’t enough time to rehearse with McFerrin, but the concert’s Main Man, McFerrin, who carried the evening and satisfied the audience, provided a hypnotic and expansive energy that could instruct and suit MPD just fine as they grow into the future.

The translation, transcribed from Cleofes Ortiz recordings, included in the program from New Mexican Spanish for the dance song, “Tecolote” could inspire MPD as it moves into its new phase: every company needs all the extra magic and imagination it can generate as it moves into its second decade:

The owl (el tecolote) can’t dance because he has no shoes (zapatos), pants (calzones), or hat (sombrero.) So in the morning he will make these items from cats, mice, calves.

The song rhymes in Espanol:

Ya el tecolote no baille (2x)

Porque no tienes zapatos (2x)

Por la manana le haremos (2x)

Del cuerito de los gatos (2x)

Ya el tecolote no baille (2x)

Porque no tienes calzones (2x)

Por la manana le haremos (2x)

Del cuerito de los ratones (2x)

Ya el tecolote no baille (2x)

Porque no tienes sombrero (2x)

Por la manana le haremos (2x)

Del cuerito de los becerros (2x)

Shen Wei Dance Arts (SWDA) at the Lensic Performing Arts Center, March 31, 2009

by Janet Eigner

Appearing like a drift of extraordinarily well-disciplined winter leaves lifting and blown by a spring zephyr, the 15-member, Eastern-inspired Shen Wei Dance Arts performed “Rite of Spring” from two perspectives, first, more Western, to Stravinsky’s composition, then, more Eastern, in the post-intermission version. Of course, fitting with the yin-yang Asian mood, as the dancers silently and slowly gathered their dignity on the Lensic’s darkened stage, one audience youngster screamed an oppositional acapella.

The first perspective, writes Artistic Director, Shen Wei, in the program notes, matches “…the quality found in the music” to “several body systems and movement ideas” that he found in Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” as played by Fazil Say’s four-hand piano version. The dance, abstract, devoid of the traditional story line, uses “the melodic and rhythmic qualities of the music” that inspire this muscular, graceful and abstract creation.

East meets West as the company follows Stravinsky’s taped “Rite”: the piano melody provides waves of intimacy, exuberance, crashing power–many moods–yet there’s the sense of silence and rest built in with pauses and breath, Shen Wei’s meditative aesthetic.

The artists work with a precision and simultaneous movement that contrasts with their fluid, nearly boneless limbs that quietly fling and swirl. A cluster of dancers, for instance, tilts a bit backwards, arms tight to their sides, heads held rigidly, and run swiftly backwards with small, skittering, exacting steps until they halt on a dime. Modest shirts and slacks of neutral gray added to the quiet mood.

The second perspective, “RE-(Part 1)”, contains Shen Wei’s abstract and exuberant impressions of the Tibetan, as he writes, of “…land, the people, the religion and the culture.” Traditional Tibetan chants accompany this petal-strewn mandala of a creation. Both works evidence a love of spring’s generative body and her continual cycles of rebirth.

RE-(Part 1) again began in silence, broken briefly, probably by the same child, screaming “I AM being quiet!” (Coyote moves in mysterious ways!) Dancers moved to the deep sounds of Tibetan trumpets and gongs, along with a swishing sound made by the dancers’ feet churning through a carpet-mandala’s large paper confettis in red, white, blue and gold drifts. The dancers accumulated these spheres on their clothing as they rolled and rose, dripping the rounds. The choreography became a bit repetitious toward the end of this part, in a way that pulled at the definition of an art work and began to give a feeling of a yoga class.

SWDA’s movement goes down like a delicious fruit smoothie, though it might seem hard to imagine how the choreography produces such a creamy blend: they combine a tai chi-like martial art form with modern dance’s low center of gravity, a modified form of East Indian torso contortion, and even break dancing’s low-to-the-ground-propeller-like leg swings and folds. One tall, stately androgynous woman stood out among the dancers, all of whom twisted their extended arms and shoulders on shifting diagonals that look both silky and muscular.

Keeping with their abstract aesthetic throughout, the dancers, like the weather, embody impersonal, universal forces, expressing with their whole bodies the moods that Stravinsky’s music suggests, unlike humans who make eye contact, interact and register a range of emotions in their faces.

The Olympic level of discipline and technical skill of these dancers never abates. Most of the company shone in solos embedded within ensembles. Stillness is a partner in SWDA’s choreography: dancers shift among groupings and soloists in quietly masterful designs.

One way a company warms your heart is that it whispers or shouts something that inspires awe or relaxes or tickles or riles you up. Another way is that they inspire gratitude–that so large a company presents tableaus with a choreographic organization that makes watching a joy rather than a dizzying vortex of too many designs to register and absorb.

While Shen Wei dancers took their bows, receiving enthusiastic applause, on one side of this reviewer, a couple thought the choreography got boring and resembled an old, repetitious contact improvisation style. On the other side, a woman sat, still breathless with excitement, watching and praising the company–the predictable yin-yang of aesthetic taste.  Bouquets to the presenter, Santa Fe Concert Association.

Carlos Carbonell Comes to New Mexico

by Janet Eigner

Carlos Carbonell was born in Cádiz Spain in 1979 into a family of artists.  At an early age he took to dance with great interest leading him to the dedicated study of Spanish Dance and Flamenco with great artists such as Israel Galván, Alejandro Grandos, Mario Maya, Antonio Canales, Eva La Yerbabuena, Antonio y Manuel Reyes, and Fernando Romero.  Additionally he has also studied singing, modern dance and acting.  He began his professional career with Charo Cruz.  He has performed in many of Spains most important festival such as El Grec (Barcelona), Festival de Jerez, and Festival de Granada.  And in many of Spain most important tablaos including El Lagal en Jerez, Los Gallos, El Arenal and la Sala Casa Carmen in Sevilla, Las Carboneras, El Corral and El Café de Chinitas in Madrid and El Cordobés in Barcelona.  Since a young age he has performed in the productions presented by Spain’s most celebrated artists such as Manuela Carrasco’s Adonai, Sara Baras’ Juana La Loca and Rafael Amargo’s Amargo, Poeta en Nueva York, Amor Brujo y Enramblao and Eva La Yerbabuena 5 mujeres 5. He has also danced as an invited artist with Joaquín Grilo, Carmela Greco and Rafael Amargo in the production of Los Tarantos which toured Japan.  He has performed in the United States as part of Carlota Santana’s production of Bailaor. Carlos performed along with Merecedes Ruiz and Andrés Peña in the 1st edition of Japan’s Bienal.   In 2006 he also performed in the first bienal of flamenco in Switzerland.   In 2004 Carlos presented his first production, “Tríos” in collaboration with Olga Pericet and Marco Flores.  In 2005 he again toured Japan with David Lago performing along with Masami Okada in Amor Brujo. In 2006 Carlos was invited to perform in Jueves Flamencos in Cadiz and 2008 was invited to Viernes Flamencos in Jerez.  He has also performed in the Festival Torre Guzmán, Festival La Palma de Plata and Festival La Liviana.  In 2008 he choreographed and performed the lead male role in Carmen for the Ballet Flamenco de Jerez de la Frontera which toured Italy for two months.   In March 2009 he will presenting his current show Acompasa2 at the Festival de Jerez.