I hadn't heard anything about West Wave, so I was under the impression it wasn't happening this summer. Seems they changed venues (and press contacts). Anyone going?

For Immediate Release
Media Contacts: David Perry & Associates, Inc.
David Perry & Barbara Webb
David Perry • 415.693.0583 • news@davidperry.com
Barbara Webb • 415.453.9678 • barbara@davidperry.com


THE WESTWAVE DANCE FESTIVAL CELEBRATES ITS 15TH ANNIVERSARY SEASON AT PROJECT ARTAUD THEATER, JULY 11-30, 2006
For tickets call 415.863.9834 or click here

SAN FRANCISCO, May 30, 2006.
The WestWave Dance Festival celebrates its 15th anniversary season at San Francisco's Project Artaud Theater July 11-30. This year's Festival features 21 world premieres and more than 48 West Coast choreographers including: Lisa Townsend Company, Manuelito Biag, Deborah Slater Dance Theater, Amy Seiwert/im'ij-re, Kate Weare, Martt Lawrence, EmSpace Dance, Kerry Mehling/Talismanic Physical Theatre, group A and Dance Ceres among others. The 2006 Festival runs for three weeks.

In its 15 years, the Festival has showcased more than 500 choreographers producing new and emerging work. Speaking of last year's Festival, Rachel Howard, SF Chronicle, says "The (WestWave Dance) Festival has long been the mainstay of the summer dance calendar, tiding fans over 'til fall with works by local luminaries and fresh faces alike, giving new audiences a crash course in our region's panoply of styles."

Program 1:
Tuesday, July 11, 8 pm at Project Artaud Theater - OneNightOnly!
WestWave Dance Festival’s 2006 inaugural program features two world premieres: Drained by RAWdance and Driven to This by Cathleen McCarthy. Program 1 also features Fellow Travelers Performance Group presenting Warning Signs, Sean Dorsey / Fresh Meat Productions with a duet, In Closing, EmSpace Dance presenting You and You and You, and Kyoungil Ong with Flower Tears 11, an expression of love and longing for the loved one symbolized by a flower.

Program 2:
Thursday, July 13, 8 pm at Project Artaud Theater - OneNightOnly!
On Thursday July 13, the Festival continues at Project Artaud Theater with three world premieres: the debut of Conversion by Amy Lewis in which five dancers perform to the music of J.S. Bach, Face It by Alena Odrene Cawthorne, and a new piece by Rebecca Wender. Program 2 will also feature Spinning Yarns Dance Collective's Traveling Companions, danceNAGANUMA's Faeries, and Trope of Seuss by Apryl Renee.

Program 3:
Saturday and Sunday, July 15 & 16, 8 pm at Project Artaud Theater
On Saturday and Sunday, July 15 and 16, the program features two world premieres: Two Close by Roginski & Funsch with two dancers performing to music by Elizabeth Cotton, and Before the Storm by Anna Dal Pino and John LeFan. Program 3 will also feature Company Chaddick with an excerpt from Landslide, Kerry Mehling/Talismanic Physical Theatre presenting Just a Little One to the music of The Hot Club of San Francisco, Huckabay McAllister Dance, presenting Only in Fairytales, and Leyya Tawil's Dance Elixir with Breakdown to Now (Part 1).

Program 4:
Tuesday, July 18, 8 pm at Project Artaud Theater - OneNightOnly!
On Tuesday, July 18, the Festival continues with two world premieres: Absence/Presence by group A performed by nine dancers, and Ceiling Zero by Martt Lawrence which depicts women's roles in aviation history. Program 4 will also feature Patricia Banchik-Bell / Kinesis with two pieces: In Between and Dream Realm, Carmen Carnes / CCDE with Ma Kali:Fierce Mother - examining the wild dance of destruction and creation symbolized by the Hindu goddess Kali, Aura Fischbeck choreographs five dancers in Land/Sea/Sky, and Vanguard Dance Company presents The Birthday Suit, in which dancers perform to five variations of a popular tune.

Program 5:
Thursday, July 20, 8 pm at Project Artaud Theater - OneNightOnly!
Two world premieres will be featured on Thursday, July 20: Running Through My Mind by Monica Marks/UDance Electra performed by seven dancers, and a new piece by Katie Faulkner / little seismic dance company performed by six dancers. Also performing on the program are Linda Bair Dance Company with 16x24, Pappas and Dancers with Undergrowth, Vispo Dance / Claudia Hubiak presenting Obpulsion, and Ross Dance Company with Serenity, a dance which envisions our inner voices wanting to speak for us.

Monday, July 24, 8 pm: All Dance/No Tech at ODC Theater, 3153 17th Street at Shotwell, San Francisco
On Monday, July 24, a special single night performance opportunity for Bay Area choreographers will be curated by Anna Dal Pino and John LeFan. This unique opportunity offers choreographers the chance to show their work on stage in a setting where the focus is on the dance itself without the theatricalization of the usual technical elements available - lighting design, sets, costumes. Each dance will be presented in its most essential form without benefit of fancy lights and sets (No Tech) and performers will have only an hour in the theater before curtain time. It's All Dance/No Tech.

Program 6:
Saturday and Sunday, July 22 and 23, 8 pm at Project Artaud Theater
WestWave Dance Festival continues Saturday and Sunday, July 22 and 23. Highlights of this two-night show include SIX world premieres - Without Time, Without Place by Deborah Slater Dance Theater, Passion, excerpted from The Shape of Poison by SHIFT>>>Physical Theater, Weather by Dance Ceres, performed by five dancers to music by Michael Gordon, Fan Dance #1,#2,#3 by Facing East Dance + Music / Sue Li-Jue, in which six dancers use "Iron Fans" as martial arts weapons, Need and More, excerpted from Shiver, by Alma Esperanza Cunningham Movement performed by five dancers to music by Ravel, and a new piece by Amy Seiwert / im'ij-re, a dancer with the Smuin Ballet.

Program 7:
Thursday and Friday, July 27 & 28, 8 pm at Project Artaud Theater
On Thursday and Friday, July 27 & 28, WestWave Dance Festival will present three world premieres: Reversible Solo by Kate Weare danced by Adrian Clark, Careless by Alex Ketley / SF Conservatory of Dance Performance Company, performed by five dancers to an original score created by Tar@JMB, and a new piece by Janice Garrett & Dancers. Program 7 will also feature Heidi Schweiker presenting Come Rain (2005), AXIS Dance Company, pioneers in "physically integrated dance," and LEVYdance with Violent Momentum, in which four dancers excite emotional currents in themselves.

Program 8:
Saturday and Sunday, July 29 & 30, 8 pm at Project Artaud Theater
The final two nights of the Festival, Saturday and Sunday, July 29 & 30 feature one premiere with five dancers by SPOON (Jane Schnorrenberg and Kegan Marling). Also on the program is Duet, a San Francisco premiere by Viktor Kabaniaev, Burn, a performance for four dancers by Randee Paufve / Paufve Dance, three tango-inspired works by Navarrete & Kajiyama (Debby Kajiyama & José Navarrete), a special guest appearance by ODC Co-Artistic Director KT Nelson, and a body of work by Lisa Townsend Company.

Brittany Brown Ceres, Associate Director, WestWave Dance Festival, 2006, says, "The WestWave Dance Festival has been a launching pad for my emerging dance company. Now presenting for the fourth year, I believe that the Festival has supported my choreography to a new level of both artistry and professionalism. The multi-artist bill both pushes me beyond standards for perfection and facilitates the extraneous production process. I am further committed to Bay Area dance with every experience in this celebratory summer event!"

Performance Information
Tickets for all performances are $20 General Admission; $18 for Students/Seniors; $16 for a DancePass (3 or more ticket purchase); and $90 for a FestivalPass/half price tickets (1 ticket to each of the 8 programs & All Dance/No Tech). Single All Dance/No Tech performances are $10. Tickets may be purchased by calling 415.863.9834 or online. All performances are at Project Artaud Theater, 450 Florida Street between l7th & Mariposa Streets, in the Mission District of San Francisco, except for All Dance/No Tech performance Monday July 24, 8 pm at ODC Theater, 3153 17th Street at Shotwell, San Francisco.

About WestWave Dance Festival
WestWave Dance Festival is a dance festival presented in a shared program format in San Francisco each July. The Festival's mission is to provide veteran and newly-established choreographers of all cultures and disciplines, in and beyond the Bay Area, an opportunity to present their work in a professional venue in order to experiment, develop, and refine their repertories, and to build audiences without the burden of self-producing.

WestWave Dance Festival, 2006 is a project of DanceArt, Inc.. WestWave Dance Festival and DanceArt, Inc. gratefully acknowledge support for 2005/2006 programs from Grants for the Arts/San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund, The San Francisco Arts Commission, the National Endowment for the Arts, Fort Mason Foundation, ODC Theater, The Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation, The James Irvine Foundation, The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, The Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation, The Zellerbach Family Foundation, The Fleishhacker Foundation, and The Bernard Osher Foundation.

I'm going to program 4 mostly because I have costumes onstage. I am not in love with any of the line-ups and this is the anly program I will go see.

Rachel Howard went to see it though. Here's a review from the SF Chronicle.



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My sentiments exactly. This festival needs much more curating and directing. I think I understand why the directors take a hands off approach but it's not working. It's time to try something else.

My other issues with this festival is that I have seen some of the WORST work by very good choreographers end up on WestWave stages. What's up with that? And when a choreographer is successful at WestWave, i.e. I don't want to kit while I watch their piece, that choreographer is prominantly missing the next year and we got schlock taking it's place again. Again, what's up with that?

I know it takes a lot of hard work to put on a festival of this magnitude but can't SOMETHING be tweaked? Would a change in the application process make the necessary improvements? Would a more mediated rehearsal process be helpful or even possible? I wonder....

There is a cute picture of friends of mine on the site page. It's always fun to see your friends in the paper.

OK, so I went last night and had a prime seat behind Rachel Howard and Allan Ulrich. Apparently Rita Felciano was there too, but I didn't see her.

This was a pretty typical WestWave program: inconsistent. There were two really dismal pieces. One was the same crappy element based college student fare with adequate dancers rolling around in pajamas purchased at Old Navy. The second was a little more ambitious with a badly done film that had nothing to do with the dancing and white badly custome made pajamas and barely adequate dancing. Sigh.

The next tier of dances were an overly long group piece with actually decent costumes (but learn how to sew in lingerie straps people!) that combined Indian classical dance and modern dance and explored the goddess Kali. It started out badly put significantly improved once a lithe and fierce redhead took the stage. I have no idea who she was, but she was the best dancer all evening. She made mediocre choreography look like fabulous choreography. Let's see more of her, whoever she is.

Also in the "2nd tier" was another group piece also with a vaguely oriental feel. It was not terribly memorable but nicely danced and midly well structured.

The two best pieces of the night were a duet for Private Freeman and a partner and a trio by Martt Lawrence. Martt's piece was well danced and costumed by me so I have a hard time being objective on this one. It actually had transitions which were a novelty among the choreography last night. The duet was also well danced but it was unclear if the quality of the piece was derived from the choreography or the dancers. The lifts were at least innovative and interesting.


I am feeling a bit snippy this morning about my experience last night. Disappointment can do that, and I apologize to anyone I may offend with my indiscreet manner this morning. Know that I thought all the dancers danced to the best of their abilities, varied as they were, and the choreographer should be proud to be involved in such an important Bay Area festival.

From the Contra Costa Times.



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Another review. This one from the SF Bay Guardian.



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