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Flash Dispatch, 10-5:
Spectacle at City Hall
S.F. Dancers Unite but Fail to Ignite
By Christine Chen
Copyright 2000 Christine Chen
SAN FRANCISCO -- At 10
a.m. yesterday, a small crowd began to gather around the steps of
City Hall. The faces were mostly familiar -- recognizable as members
of the S.F. dance community, with the few that were not familiar
carrying little notebooks and tape recorders. Some wore wigs and
boas, others, lingerie and masks. There were people in veils, formal
wear, show costumes, suits, jeans and sweats. Protest signs were
erected, banners unfurled, flyers handed out, and sound systems
checked.
Taiko artists began drumming
and filled the air with a steady, infectious, energetic pulse. Contact
duets emerged among members of the crowd; ballet dancers, fully
costumed in tutus and skirts, ritualistically went through a barre
warm-up under a sign that read, "No Space to Dance." Stilt-walkers
and jugglers roamed the sidewalk while an aerialist climbed, danced
and maneuvered up and down a vertical pole (actually a light boom).
Across the street at the far end of the plaza, a group of people
covered from head to toe in white clothing and veils started a snail's
pace processional journey towards the building. On the steps, two
women in long black dresses rooted their feet to the ground and
desperately gesticulated -- conjuring images of pain and suffering.
Curious onlookers paused at the spectacle long enough to be bombarded
with political literature. Then, Dance Brigade's Krissy Keefer stepped
to the mic and began the rally.
The rally, organized
by the Artists Eviction Defense Coalition (AEDC) and charismatically
led by Keefer, preceded AEDC's meeting with the finance committee
of the city's board of supervisors in which it proposed specific
solutions for the arts crisis in SF. The main thrust of the rally:
Vote Yes on L (a local ballot proposition written by the artists
outlining solutions for the space crisis) and No on K (a proposition
written by Mayor Willie Brown addressing the same issues but leaving
loopholes for businesses).
In my Flash
Review 2, 9-17: Celebrating the Margins, I reviewed "Artists
in Exile," a documentary about the history of modern dance in the
Bay Area. The film celebrated Bay Area artists, but it also pointed
to the grim realities facing this arts community in the wake of
the flourishing economy, escalating rent prices, and disheartening
evictions of SF dance meccas. Inspired by the film, I went to the
rally at City Hall to see, first hand, the dance community in action
-- uniting and performing to bring awareness to the economic emergency
in the arts.
I appreciated the variety
of the performances at the rally (Flamenco, dance-theater, sketch
comedy, poetry readings, physical movement, minimalist movement,
chanting, rants, installations, guitar sing-a-longs), the careful
orchestration of all these elements (Dance Brigade reached a climax
with its Salt n' Pepa, in-your-face style energy just as the aforementioned
processional group in white arrived at the street and shut down
traffic), and the seamless melding of the dance work with the political
issues. I was, however, generally disappointed that the rally did
not involve a more diverse crowd (i.e. non-dancers) and that the
energy of the crowd did not reach a very high level overall.
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