DANCE / EILEEN SONDAK : This Year’s Neofest Reflects Changing Scene

Experimental dance and interdisciplinary performance have an unlikely guardian angel on the local scene: visual artist Lynn Schuette, founding director of Sushi.

Although other major presenters bypass local innovators, Sushi includes home-growns along with high-profile imports in its annual salute to the best in “new” arts.

“We’re trying to encourage San Diego artists to produce more work and hopefully tour it,” Schuette said. “When we began commissioning local artists for Neofest three years ago, it was an attempt to present them in an international context. I don’t think anyone else is doing that.

“I’m a painter, but I’m interested in art across disciplinary lines,” she said. “The form is not as important as the issue or content. Now we’re seeing more dance artists in the forefront, and this year’s Neofest reflects those changes. We even have a world premiere by Joe Goode. But one of the older and more unique roles we have to play is to help local artists.”

Sushi’s seventh annual Neofest, scheduled for Saturday through June 3, will offer local aficionados a microcosm of cutting-edge, cross-disciplinary art forms.

The six-week festival (a week longer than last year’s) will feature seven separate events at three different sites, including Sushi’s downtown loft studio. Three of those showcase local talent. With 19 performances in all, Neofest represents the largest concentration of avant-garde dance and theater activity on the local horizon.

Sushi will start the ball rolling Saturday night with a site-specific collaboration by San Diego-based Carla Kirkwood and Deborah Small. Titled “Woyzeck and Maria on East 94,” this off-the-wall performance piece integrates moving automobiles into its multimedia study of freeway shootings.

David Keevil, another San Diego-based artist, will present his Sushi-commissioned work, “Really Seeing Bert,” on Monday and May 8 and 15, followed by the local debut of England’s Kaboodle troupe. Don Victor (who worked with Whoopi Goldberg during her San Diego years) will unveil his new solo, “Picture Postcard,” May 11-13.

Goode, a four-time recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Choreographers’ Fellowship, will debut his “The Disaster Series” on May 18-20, and New York writer Holly Hughes brings the West Coast premiere of “World Without End” to Neofest later that month. The highly acclaimed Stephen Petronio Company will dance “An Amnesia and Other Works” at Sherwood Auditorium on June 2 and 3 to wrap up the series.

Beginning in the fall, San Diego State University will become the first university in the area to offer a bachelor of arts degree in dance. And, as SDSU Professor George Willis said, it could be a windfall for the entire dance community.

“We have the potential for 75 students, and this program could help us develop dancers that will stay here through their careers. Our graduate program was never approved (and will be scrapped this year), but it made an important impact on the dance community,” Willis said. “Cate Bell (president of the San Diego Area Dance Alliance), Terry Sprague and all three dancers in the Malashock Company were our students.

“Now we’re increasing our units in ballet, but modern and choreography are our strong areas,” Willis said. “We’ll also have ethnic and dance notation classes, and we intend to really work on the craft of choreography.”

SDSU showcased some of the work by faculty, students and leading alumni last Saturday in conjunction with the university’s “Creative Arts Showcase.” The ambitious concert played to a capacity crowd and featured choreography by Patricia Sandback, Jean Isaacs, John Malashock and Willis--some of the most respected names on the local scene--as well as nationally known Bill de Young and Richard Burrows. The result did more than commemorate SDSU’s dance past. It also bodes well for its future.

Malashock and Company performed its own pair of concerts last weekend at the Lyceum Space. And once again the ex-Twyla Tharp dancer garnered critical acclaim and a rousing response from local dance buffs for his emotion-charged choreography and the slick theatricality of his presentation. He could be the dance maker to watch in the ‘90s.

The California Ballet is readying its full-length “Romeo and Juliet” for a three-performance run at the East County Performing Arts Center, beginning tonight. The company’s resident ballerina, Denise Dabrowski, and guest artist Mark Lanham will dance the leading roles, while Patrick Nollet lends support as Tybolt. Karen Evans gets a crack at Juliet during the Saturday matinee.

The Ecological Life Systems Institute will team up with the Centro Cultural de la Raza to host a dance for the benefit of local conservation efforts. With live music from two bands, Club of Rome and Fresh Reggae, the dance is part of “Gaia Pacifica, The Art of Activism,” a three-week exhibition at the cultural center. The fund-raiser begins at 9 p.m. Saturday.

Mieczyslaw Morawski continues his association south of the border with Gloria Campobello’s dance company and her guest artist from the Cuban National Ballet, Rolando Sarabia. Morawski will stage the Kirov version of the “Black Swan” pas de deux and other works for them in Tijuana in late June.