CriticalDance Forum

Out of this world
Ethnic Dance Festival
Groups from around the globe will perform in the 3-weekend event

Reyhan Harmanci

Thursday, June 8, 2006

Now in its 28th year, the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival has been extraordinarily successful at doing two things that seem to be at odds: preserving tradition and innovating dance.

For instance, this year's festival will feature Izumi Sato, a Japanese woman who has mastered Bharatanatyam, an Indian dance form that dates back to the 10th century. According to the festival's executive director, Julie Mushet, there are two dozen performers in the Bay Area who have conquered forms that are not in their cultural traditions.

Festival showcases folk, modern traditions
By Jaweed Kaleem
Mercury News

From break dancing accompanied by American-brewed hip-hop to the ancient kathak classical dance tradition of Northern India, the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival spotlights the cultural wealth of the Bay Area.

More than 500 professional Northern California dancers will perform at the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre over three weekends to exhibit traditional and contemporary dance from their countries and cultures.

JAPAN-BORN ARTIST EXPLORES DANCE FROM SOUTHERN INDIA
By Jaweed Kaleem
Mercury News

Thousands of years ago in Hindu temples, devotees would perform dances with intricate hand movements to pay tribute to gods and goddesses. In South India, these tributes developed into the complex dance tradition of bharatanatyam.

For the past 11 years, Izumi Sato of Sunnyvale has mastered this classical technique. This weekend, she'll perform a packed five-minute piece in her first appearance at the festival.

Fleet feet, cultural beats glory in universal spirit at Ethnic Dance fete

Janice Berman, Special to The Chronicle

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Although this year's San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival has aimed to create artful ways of tying together the disparate strands of 32 dance companies, you can experience the festival's cross-culturalism in a far less contrived way than last weekend's overwrought between-acts narration, simply by wandering through the lobby at intermission and talking to the audience on Saturday afternoon.

Marvin Fulgencio of El Sobrante and Wilma and Ray Juachon of Hillsborough had their special reasons for attending. Were they at the festival to catch the fabulous Kariktan Dance Company, with a traditional Mindinao-style kulintang orchestra, whose "Sarimanok," about a gorgeous bird, is based on a tale that prefigured Michel Fokine's 1910 ballet, "Firebird," by many centuries? Well, no.