Rachel Howard, Chronicle Dance Correspondent
San Francisco Chronicle

The experimental postmodern ballet troupe Kunst-Stoff instantly became one of San Francisco’s most promising companies when it appeared in 1998. Much has changed since.

This past weekend’s 11th annual home season trumpeted “Yannis Adoniou’s Kunst-Stoff,” as co-founder Tomi Paasonen and the longtime dancers have left. Yet, with a cast that has been pared to four relative newcomers, this was some of Adoniou’s most engaging work in many a season. Saturday’s two world premieres felt like a return to the playful and bold Kunst-Stoff of yore, enriched by experience.

Setting was key: After uneven attempts to make dances for large proscenium stages, Adoniou has returned to intimacy. He arranged the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Forum with the audience on four sides, only two rows deep and on ground level with the dancers.

From the east front row rose violinist Paul Festa, crossing the floor in red pencil skirt and false eyelashes, playing two slow repeating notes. The two notes are the foundation of the mournful Alfred Schnittke string quartet (arranged for solo violin by Nathaniel Stookey) from which “(Where) Every Verse Is Filled With Grief” adapts its title.

The dance had a beautifully clear, propulsive form. Justin Andrews and Marina Fukushima shared a duet in which they were constantly touching, yet emotionally distant; then Spencer Dickhaus and Suzanne Lappas took the floor in jeans and swaths of red for a swirling dance in which they never touched but felt always connected.

Dickhaus has a long, adolescently lean body and can rise from Adoniou’s vocabulary of slinky crouches and broken-angled limbs into an exquisitely turned-out retire position or a classically pristine arabesque turn. Lappas does not have the finesse of extensive ballet training but brings a punk intensity.

Both spent a lot of time with hands planted to the floor, legs waving above, building to a climax of side-by-side synchronicity. Festa’s live performance contributed immeasurably.

Adoniou collaborated with dramaturge Talal Al-Muhana on “Rags al Moza,” a free-associating piece of absurdist dance theater that falls short as cultural commentary, but succeeds as a framework for bits of beautiful movement experimentation.

An interesting elbow-pushing duet was set to Radiohead, and a looser duet to Tom Waits; David Petrelli DJ’d the score live, also mixing original music by Alex Davis. Fukushima was gamely but never too cute, whether asking an audience member to feed her a banana or flailing in Dickhaus’ arms.

Kunst-Stoff tours Europe this summer before returning for a residency at CounterPULSE. The troupe is clearly in a groove.

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Laughing and crying, you know it’s the same release
-Joni Mitchell

May 2004 – San Francisco CA Yannis Adoniou’s KUNST-STOFF heads into its 11th San Francisco home season with two world premieres both choreographed by Adoniou: (Where) Every Verse is Filled with Grief and Raqs al Moza. While Raqs is a collaboration with dramaturge Talal Al-Muhanna, Grief will feature violinist Paul Festa performing live, the music of pioneering European composer Alfred Schnittke, arranged by Nathaniel Stookey.

When: June 12 & 13 @8pm; June 14 @ 7pm
Where: YBCA Forum 701 Mission St @ 3rd San Francisco, CA 94103-3138
415.978.ARTS (2787)
Tickets: $18-22 @ YBCA Box Office

Stage as Boxing Ring?
Each of the dances will be performed in YBCA’s Forum, set up boxing-ring fashion, i.e. the audience seated around the perimeter of a 50 x 50 square at the same level as the dancers. This allows for four very different views of the action and accelerates the impact of the dancing on the audience. The purpose, says Adoniou, is to bring the viewer as close as possible to the dancers so he or she can sense the confusion, fear and emotional journey taking place inside the ring. Much like an audience at a real boxing match has the opportunity to do.

Juxtaposing Grief and Humor
Grief is not an uncommon emotion expressed in dance. Humor is both rarer and trickier to pull off. The slate of Raqs and Grief juxtaposes these thematically challenging to work with opposites into a single evening. Adoniou wants to shake assumptions, customs and apathy. Its important, he says, to remember how crucial laughter and humor are in maintaining perspective.

Raqs al Moza (40 minutes)
In Arabic Raqs al Moza means Banana Dance. About love during wartime, Raqs can almost be seen as a silent movie comedy featuring a boy, a girl and a single table. More theater based than Grief, it uses black outs, scene changes and timing in order to answer questions like, what makes us laugh? Or, why is someone falling down sometimes funny and sometimes not so much?

Work on Raqs al Moza began in March 2008 when Mr. Adoniou was in residence at the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography. Together with Talal Al-Muhanna, he found himself wanting to explore a theme often absent from the intensely introspective act of choreography: humor.

Original music featured in Raqs is the work of Florida-based composer and sound designer Alex Davis, with whom Adoniou collaborated during his recent MANCC residency, in addition to music from Tom Waits and Radiohead.

Dancers are: Marina Fukushima, Spencer Dickhaus, Justin Andrews

(Where) Every Verse is Filled with Grief (10 minutes)
(Where) Every Verse is Filled with Grief is an amplification and personification of the energy and expressiveness of the music being played live by violinist Paul Festa. Starting with a small prologue, it moves onto a larger canvas of surrender and abandonment, driven by the waves of energy that make up sadness, anguish and despair.

Grief will feature a male and female duet danced topless. The purpose is not to expose the woman as much as reveal the vulnerability of the male torso.

Grief is set to the haunting music of pioneering European composer, Alfred Schnittke. Arranged by Nathaniel Stookey, of The Composer is Dead fame among other things, it will be played live by violinist Paul Festa. The score, says Adoniou, is stunning. I am thrilled at being able to work with artists of Nathanial and Paul’s abilities.

Dancers are: Suzanne Lappas, Spencer Dickhaus, Marina Fukushima, Justin Andrews

In the end, reiterates Adoniou, I want to create work that juxtaposes heaviness and sorrow with lightheartedness and vitality. And leave an audience feeling a sense of catharsis and freedom. That we’ve told a tale with true emotional scope.

About Yannis Adoniou and KUNST-STOFF
Yannis Adoniou’s KUNST-STOFF is a San Francisco-based, Goldie award winning, contemporary dance company that has been creating eclectic movement-focused art experiences in the Bay Area for the past 10 years. Under the artistic direction of Yannis Adoniou, the company will celebrate its 11th Anniversary Season with two world premieres at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts main stage in June 2009. These premieres are a continuation of more than a decade-long dedication to creating conceptually driven work that challenges and expands the boundaries of our perception. With themes that reflect upon and respond to contemporary society, KUNST-STOFF’s work reaches across cultural and social boundaries in search of that which resonates on a universal level. Visit KUNST-STOFF.org for more information

About Paul Festa
Paul Festa (musician) studied violin at the Juilliard School before studying English at Yale, from which he graduated with honors. His award-winning fi lm Apparition of the Eternal Church has been screened at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis, London’s Barbican Centre and the Library of Congress. He is the author of OH MY GOD: Messiaen in the Ear of the Unbeliever, an adaptation of that fi lm. His essays appear in three Best Sex Writing editions, Nerve: The First Ten Years and online at The Daily Beast, Salon and other publications. He premiered Messiaen’s Fantasie in Boston, New York, San Francisco, L.A. and Washington DC. As a violinist and actor he has appeared with the Stephen Pelton Dance Theater and the North Bay Shakespeare Company. Residencies include the MacDowell Colony, the City of Paris/Centre des Récollets and ODC Theater. For more information visit paulfesta.com.

About Nathaniel Stookey
Composer/arranger and San Francisco native Nathaniel Stookey has collaborated with a remarkable range of artists from The Mars Volta to the Philadelphia Orchestra. At age 23 he was awarded the first Hallé Orchestra Composition Fellowship, serving as resident composer under Kent Nagano 1993-96. In 2000, having returned to the US, Stookey received a three-year New Residencies award from Meet The Composer to serve as composer-in-residence with the North Carolina Symphony. That partnership yielded five new works, including Big Bang for the opening of Meymandi Hall, Wide as Skies for the centennial of the first manned flight (a co- commission with the Dayton Philharmonic) and Out of the Everywhere for the final subscription concerts of retiring music director Gerhardt Zimmermann. In 2006 the San Francisco Symphony premiered their commissioned work, The Composer is Dead, with libretto by Lemony Snicket, which was immediately taken up by the Toronto Symphony’s New Creations Festival and has since been programmed by orchestras across North America including the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chicago Civic Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Dallas Symphony.

Opera News Online
May 2009 , vol 73 , no.11

Although it took 247 years for Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice to reach Palo Alto, it was worth the wait. The West Bay Opera audience had every reason to cheer. The care and imagination that company general director/conductor José Luis Moscovich and stage director José Maria Condemi lavished on their ostensibly low-budget production made for a marvelous evening of theater and music.

Set and video designer Jean-François Revon worked closely with lighting designer Robert Ted Anderson and costumer Maria Crush to create magic from simple sets. The key was the lighting: brilliant colors and oft-changing patterns projected on simple curved partitions and backdrops made the journey through the Underworld and out again visually captivating. Another innovation was the use of every inch of the Lucie Stern Auditorium’s backstage, at one point extending the set way beyond the back curtain to depict Euridice’s entrance from another plane.

Seen on opening night, February 20, the production managed to balance Gluck’s rather static musical tableaux with constant movement. Between Amore’s entrance on a balloon-festooned bicycle, sporting a pink tutu, ridiculous pigtails and a leather “AMORE” backpack, and the highly effective choreography of Yannis Adoniou’s five-member KUNST-STOFF Dance Company, attention was diverted as much by the visuals as by the high quality of the singing.

In Sarah Barber (Orfeo), Moscovich presented a rich-voiced, imaginative artist who, with androgynous slicked-back hair and baggy clothes, actually looked the part. Tall, strong and capable of holding her own in a balletic pas de deux, the mezzo was a major find. Only in striving for extra pathos in “Che faro senza Euridice” did she push her voice beyond its limits. Soprano Maria Alu (Eurydice), making her WBO debut, proved lovely in voice and appearance. That she could move gracefully in ballet slippers and interact with KUNST-STOFF’s dancers made her ideal for a production in which the line between singer and dancer was intentionally blurred.

Soprano Shawnette Sulker was a joy as Amore. Although her voice shines most in the upper range – Olympia, Oscar, Adele and the Queen of the Night are among her roles –  her innate joie de vivre carried the day. While the beautiful singing from eighteen choristers was not a surprise, their ability to interact seamlessly with the dancers was. Condemi and Adoniou worked wonders in transforming their former ragtag appearance into something vital (although he could do only so much with the plethora of larger-bodied older men). At least one of the three first violinists made far too many intonation slips, but the delightful winds at the start of “Che puro ciel! Che chiaro sol!” more than made amends.

JASON VICTOR SERINUS

Just in case you’ve got a hankering to see the classic French ballet Les Sylphides, originally intended to be performed in moonlight, we’ve got the next best thing: ODC’s Local Heroes/Big Picture festival is staging choreographer Yannis Adoniou’s contemporary version, cheekily called Less Sylphides, at the Project Artaud Theatre on July 17. If you can imagine that phosphorescent lightbulbs are an adequate substitute for moon glow, then consider your craving satisfied.

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KUNST-STOFF:
Highly emotive and athletic pieces mine the traditions of classical dance while cunningly undermining them as well.
Out Magazine, June 2008

San Francisco Bay Guardian
By Rita Felciano

Over Feb. 14 to 16, Yannis Adoniou and Tomi Paasonen’s oddly named offspring, KUNST-STOFF, celebrated its 10th anniversary. The company had its first performance during the dot-com bubble at what was then San Francisco’s most in venue, Brady Street Theater – where you couldn’t find a parking place but did get some of the edgiest performances in town. You wouldn’t dare miss KUNST-STOFF’s total concept theater, in which multimedia reigned to suggest high-tech, futuristic fantasies. Performers donned bubble wrap or stuffed body stockings with shape-altering balloons.

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San Francisco Chronicle
Rachel Howard

Most dance companies start out quietly: a humble performance, a friends-and-family audience. Not so for KUNST-STOFF, the intellectually challenging, Euro-hip troupe that began in the Mission District in 1998.

“It started at 4:30 with the gallery openings – we had art in three rooms. Then for the actual show we had two evening-length pieces,” says choreographer Tomi Paasonen. “It was megalomaniac. Ten films until midnight. Then a DJ party. We had to add an extra performance, and it sold out.”

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SF Weekly
By Bonner Odel

“Experimental” is a favorite term in the dance world, one too many dance-goers have learned to equate with “amateur” So when KUNST–STOFF, a company of highly trained dancers founded by two former members of the stunning LINES Ballet, readily describes its work this way, we’ve got to applaud the risk. Not content to dazzle audiences with the sheer technical merits of the eight members (which, trust us, they could), choreographers Yannis Adoniou and Tomi Paasonen layer the dancing into multitiered, multisensory art experience. In past shows, photographic imagery, video design, and sculpture by Paasonen (among the most memorable being a translucent tube resembling a birth canal from which dancers emerged naked) have frequently studded the stage.

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indance – January/February 2008 issue
By Michael Wade Simpson

You can pronounce KUNST-STOFF with a little Germanic ‘sh’ added to the stoff and a very oo-sounding kunst and you’ll still only be half-way in the know. Part-two is its rather multi-layered definition. KUNST-STOFF means, well, something rather mundane according to director Yannis Adoniou. It has to do, in German, with plastic and recycling. However, the word kunst also means art. Plastic, recycling, art. This is the dance company Yannis Adoniou formed with Tomi Paasonen ten years ago. They were two European ballet dancers picked by Alonzo King to dance in San Francisco for LINES Ballet (Adoniou stayed with the company for seven years). And they were both interested in making their own dances.

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Featuring Three World Premieres with Original Music Performed Live by Jethro DeHart and Korean Artist, Dohee Lee

10th Anniversary Season
February 14, 15, 16, 2008 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – January 7, 2008 – Yannis Adoniou’s KUNST-STOFF is pleased to announce that it will celebrate its 10th Anniversary San Francisco home season with a gala celebration and a three performances on the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts main stage in February 2008.

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