There are those who think of San Francisco’s four week, eight program West Wave Dance Festival as a marathon, but I prefer to consider it an investment in the future. It’s true that with works by 48 different choreographers — and not all of it good — it can seem like a bit of a slog. And I must confess that amongst the 24 that I saw at the Project Artaud Theatre, the dances ranged from seriously absorbing, to “Are you kidding me?” Still, West Wave’s summer festival represents a bargain of a chance to sample a broad variety. If you tried to see all these dance-makers in their individual shows during the year you’d have — well, you’d have a fulltime job as a dance critic.
In this year’s lineup, many of the choreographers were new-ish to the San Francisco scene — many of them look fresh out of college, and so do their dances. (I hope they still teach form and structure of choreography in school — it wasn’t always apparent.) But the festival also intersperses works — often in progress — from more experienced hands, and hopefully the opportunity to cross-pollinate and watch other work will be an education in and of itself.
On one of the hottest days in recent memory, Program 6 opened with one of the stronger pieces of the festival, Brittany Brown Ceres’s intriguing Simultaneous Solos. Although the title implied abstraction, the dance for five women performing movement phrases seen from different angles — called to mind a forward motion, like mechanized cogs in the machine or train wheels on the start of a journey. The carefully considered arrangements were highly organic, and just unbalanced enough to give the piece a drive that kept me on the edge of my seat.
The rest of the program was, unfortunately, hit and miss. Alma Esperanza Cunningham’s absurd Parade found a be-tutued Ashley Taylor swanning about to the music of John Philip Sousa. There was obviously some humor meant to be implied, but it missed the mark. Striking funny poses on the count isn’t in itself inherently funny. And in Cunningham’s More, which followed, the pair of dancers moving vaguely about on a non-specific wide-eyed quest, reminded me of nothing so much as the two aliens in the recent dairy TV ad looking for a magic wonder tonic.
Kerry Mehling, whose hilarious Just a Little One was one of the more impressive entries early in the festival, made a strong soloist in Deborah Slater’s Without Time, Without Place. Mehling, who danced with Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company, has a beautiful way of elongating her movement, and her dancing lent an exacting tension to a prop-heavy exercise. Unfortunately Without Time, Without Place, like many of the festival entries, was a little overlong, only emphasizing that it took a lot of time, in a very hot place.