fact/sf audition workshop

[from facebook invitation]

Audition Workshop

FACT/SF, brain child of dancer and choreographer Charles Slender, seeks dancers for the 2009/2010 season.

Host:	FACT/SF
Type:	Music/arts - Audition
Network:	Global

Date:	30 May 2009
Time:	12:00 - 17:00
Location:	CounterPULSE
Street:	1310 Mission Street
Town/City:	San Francisco, CA
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Email:

factsf@gmail.com

FACT/SF opposes the idea that dancers should pay to audition, but we do require all attendees to RSVP their intent to participate by writing to factsf@gmail.com. Participants must also bring a résumé and be prepared for five hours of technique, improvisation, partnering, and repertory. Hired dancers will be paid for both rehearsals and performances throughout the season, which begins August 1st, 2009. Though our specific schedule for the year has yet to be finalized, dancers should expect to attend company class and rehearsals approximately 3 times per week, 20 weeks per year.

Described as “witty…and razor sharp” (Independent Weekly), Slender works to incorporate the classical with the contemporary in choreography that blurs the line between dance and theater. FACT/SF productions are rigorously crafted, physically demanding and asks dancers to both feel intensely and think critically. Before creating FACT/SF in 2008, Charles Slender toured internationally as a member of Tatiana Baganova’s Provincial Dances Theatre, and created commissions for both universities and professional dance companies throughout Russia. Charles has also presented work and taught master classes in Hong Kong and the US. He is an honors graduate from UC Berkeley, and looks forward to mucking things up.

Please visit http://www.blogger.com/www.factsf.org to learn more about the company prior to auditioning.

music > choreography (a review) pt. 2: second half > first half

Equal Footing, post-intermission, appeared more polished than its earlier half. Annie Rosenthal Parr’s “Window” greeted the audience from their 15-minute dance break, and immediately I felt apprehensive. There were two large white projection screens set high up, behind the dance space; I thought to myself, “Oh, great, a multimedia piece. That’s never been done.” Just when I was ready to mentally check myself out, I noticed a crackly, varnished, antique piano implanted with a small laptop-sized LCD screen. From afar, I could see that the screen was displaying music-playing software that I later learned assisted the pianists in distorting the timbre of the piano’s tones. The pianist, Sheldon B. Smith, provided a unique synergism between the analogical and digital I haven’t yet seen among a sea of poorly executed multimedia compositions. I had seen a piece a few years ago, "Random Generator," that Smith had danced and choreographed at CounterPulse, and I distinctly remember applauding the humor and simplicity of the work. With that said, though his back was to us, I could sense a humor in his playing that told me this piece wasn’t striving to be more than it was. The choreography was streamlined and eloquent. It wasn’t too difficult for the dancers, and some of them appeared quite natural with the physical vocabulary of the choreography. Overall, "Window" was the triumph of execution over hackneyed premise.


The final work of the night, “Softly In My Ear,” choreographed by Joe Goode, was—as anticipated—a crowd pleaser. Goode has a keen eye to making dance theater accessible to any audience with his usage of style and text. Maura Tang (also a dancer in this piece and two others) costumed the dancers expertly, blending casual fashion with movement-centered sensibilities, and in true Goode manner by using muted primary colors and khaki basics. Again, the music not only grounded the piece, but elevated the performance. Live dance music has a particular way of informing a performance, and the virtuosity of Joan Jeanrenaud, of Kronos Quartet notoriety, supplied a dazzling amount of breathing, organic pulse. The dancing in this piece, like the one prior, was also much cleaner than the first two. Though dancers embraced the satirical tone of the piece, much of the text delivery was miscalculated. There is a fine line between parody and replication. If the camp and kitsch aren’t carried out with deliberateness, the comedy falls flat and the audience only reads the copy, not the critique. Nonetheless, it was a bright and weightless pleasantry to end an evening peppered with flagrant faux pas.