Q: What kind of reaction did you get to the first show [in November 2007]?

Hannah: People were very excited, and inspired, and wanted to be a part of it. I'm really proud of us. It was a valiant, successful show, considering all that we were going up against. We were putting on a full evening's production, and making a point of getting out of our comfort zone, which made it very challenging.

Q: What is "Eve's Elixir"? Would you call it a dance company?

Holly: It's a platform for choreographers of contemporary world dance to workshop and collaborate on pieces and grow. It's not one company with the same people, but rather a company of continuously changing artists. The idea is that each year we'll have different artists, or if people really like the experience and it inspires them to do more, then they can of course keep doing it, but we'll rotate people in and out. I want it to be a place where people can come in and create something new, as long as they're open to the experience. Criticizing other people constructively is not something that everybody is good at, or that's easy to do without offending people, but I think it's a valuable skill set to learn. I think the art is there to talk about, and if done constructively can only make it better, so that's my personal mission.

Q: Are you going to be doing any of the same pieces you did in the first show, or is it going to be entirely new material?

Holly: We've chosen to use entirely new material. People loved pieces of the old show, and I could do "Jupiter" again, work on it, make it even better; but maybe I'll do that five years down the road. Right now I feel like a writer who needs to write five pieces in order to write one that's good. I feel like I need to make a hundred, two hundred dances, and maybe I'll come out with a few that are good. I don't always want to go back to the same story. I feel like I won't grow as much. So this year it's all going to be new material. Maybe in a few years we'll revise some of the old things.

Q: You have an almost entirely new cast this year, too. Tell us about them?

Holly: Yes, it's very exciting. We have Ramon Ramos Alayo, a Cuban modern dance choreographer; Wan-Chao Chang, a choreographer of modern Chinese and Indonesian dance; Tom Mayock, a modern dance choreographer; the Riquezas Flamenco company, who I've worked with before -- I've known some of the members for quite a long time; and Hannah Romanowsky, who's returning from the first show.

Q: So you have a lot of modern dance this time around.

Holly: Yes, I find it interesting this year to have a lot of modern dance. I think that modern dance can use a lot of the heart and soul of ethnic dance. In flamenco, just this way you look up at a certain moment can mean so much, and I think that that could be translated more into modern dance. I'm finding this interesting in working with Ramon.

Q: Ramon, tell us about your background and training, and how you got involved in the show.

Ramon: I'm originally from Cuba. I went to school to study dance when I was eleven years old, and studied for eight years. I came to the United States in October 1997 to teach dance, to do a workshop with a company called Caribbean Music and Dance. That was a long time ago. I stayed here, and in 2000, I started doing my own work. Now I'm the director of the Alayo dance company, and I run the Cuba Caribe dance festival. This year's festival, April 17th through May 3rd, will be our 5th anniversary. I've been teaching in San Francisco for 11 years. That's how I met Holly, in one of my classes; she invited me to choreograph and start working with her. I love choreographing, I love creating movement and making stories.

Q: You're choreographing a piece set to flamenco music -- is that something different for you?

Ramon: I've heard flamenco a lot before. In Cuba we learned a lot about Spanish culture. We have a dance that's kind of like flamenco, the rumba -- the rumba in Cuba is flamenco in Spain. So I have an idea of what flamenco is, I know the culture.

Q: Azriel, tell us about the Riquezas Flamenco dance company.

Azriel: We formed Riquezas dance company about four years ago. The idea was to take a group of people who aren't full-time artists, but who have a strong pull towards flamenco, and a lot of experience, and who want to be involved in the creative aspect, and form a company that allows us to be part of the creative process, instead of just following a choreographer or a teacher. We use the help of Melissa Cruz, an amazing flamenco dancer and choreographer, as our main choreographer. She's been great, because we throw her ideas, and we go back and forth.

Q: Who are the members of the company?



Azriel: There are five of us; myself, Damien Alvarez, Andrea Anderson, Patrizia Meunier, and Paulina Tapia. The two pieces that we'll do will be to recorded music -- one is going to be recordings by famous artists, the other I think we're going to work on the track ourselves, with a little bit of singing on my part, and guitar and cajon.

Q: Hannah, what's your part in the show this time around?

Hannah: I have the pleasure of working with a number of wonderful choreographers in this show. I'm a principal dancer with Ballet Afsaneh, a classical Persian and Central Asian dance company, and I met Wan-Chao there. Her background is quite varied; she has a strong background in Chinese and Indonesian dance. I'm also working with choreographer Tom Mayock, who is a contemporary modern choreographer. He choreographed a duet that also incorporates element of classical Persian technique, which is my background. It's called "Lover's Kiss". It's a very intimate, very personal piece.

Ramon: How's it been for you working with Tom, with Wan-Chao, and with me, since we come from three different backgrounds?

Hannah: Good question! My background as of late, which has been in Persian dance, is a very delicate, soft style. and Wan-Chao's material, the Chinese and Indonesian material, is very delicate: soft, refined, gentle, subtle. There's a lot of strength involved, but you're not showing brute strength, it's a sense of control and holding. It's so in contrast with Ramon's material, which is very physical, really working off the ground, rolling on the ground, which requires a great deal of strength. And then Tom's material is very lyrical, which is in keeping with my style, so it feels more natural to me. It's a wonderful experience, to be able to have these extremes, and to be able to appreciate all the different ways that people move in the world, and how they relate to the ground, the earth, and their environment.

Q: Does the show have a particular theme this year?

Holly: I wanted to have people start off from a common starting point in hopes that we can bring the show together, because it's such a varied show, with many different choreographers, many different dance styles. We're doing that in a couple of ways -- one way is by having a basic theme of 'perspectives', which is obviously an extremely broad theme.
We're also bringing it together by children's voices. Children have an interesting and special perspective on things, so we're going to use their voices to weave through the different pieces and narrate the show.

Q: How did you come up with the different perspectives of each piece?

Holly: We all have our own approach to that. When I've tried to dig into perspectives, I've been thinking about how everybody has their own perspective, how everybody has their own truth. I'm always about truth, expressing your truth on stage, living on stage, being in the moment. I went to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and there was this sculpture that goes all the way from the bottom to the top. You can see it on every floor, but as you go up, it looks totally different from each new perspective. And I thought, our perspectives can be so easily manipulated, and yet people take them for the truth. So I'm finding that interesting, looking at how you can manipulate your perspectives. I'm working on a piece right now about a muse who's sort of trapped in this ideal world. But she's not really ideal -- she's just a person -- but she's trapped in this painting.

Azriel: The way we've been thinking about it, we want to have a theme for each of the pieces that we're doing, a topic, a subject, not just abstract dancing, to convey either an idea or a feeling. The perspectives are coming to light from having those kids' voices at the beginning giving their perspective on general topics, for instance, love, or work, or being busy, with their fresh look, their less censored and more natural perspective.

Q: How did you get the idea for using children's voices?

Holly: That was a group idea. A lot of us have kids: Patrizia and Azriel have two kids now, Ramon has two kids, I have a kid, Hannah works with kids -- we're all surrounded by kids. They provide one perspective, a very fresh perspective. I have a son who's stage-hungry, and he gives me a lot of good ideas. He doesn't approach dance from any particular style; we jam out in the living room, and it seems like I get half my ideas from him. Kids do exactly what Eve's Elixir strives to do; we're trapped in these genres, or these roles in life, and kids aren't, and they just flow easily between, so that's a really beautiful thing about kids being involved in this show. And kids are very honest. That's something I always go back to, honesty.

Hannah: The idea about kids, and play, is something I think is important. As ethnic dancers, rooted in a particular form, we feel like we're breaking the boundaries, breaking new ground by producing something that goes beyond these traditional forms, which is an important component of Eve's Elixir. But it's harder for us adults to break out and to let our creativity come from an organic place, a true, heart-felt place. I direct a youth dance program called Danceversity, a month-long summer camp in the East Bay, where a number of different world dance teachers come in and work with children, and give them a fantastic experience of being introduced to a number of different dance forms. When I teach ethnic dance to these kids, they are so inspiring to me. I put on music and I tell them to choreograph something, and they start mixing up all this stuff, and creating these cool ideas, and they're not limited by all these mental trappings that we have a tendency to put on ourselves. That's something I'm exploring and rediscovering at the stage I'm at as an artist -- the importance of turning off the critical mind and just playing, just having fun for the sake of it. A perfect example is my duet with Tom -- it's been a fun process of play for us, there hasn't really been a plan; it's been a organic and enjoyable experience.

Q: In addition to the children's voices, you're also going to have some younger dancers in the show?

Holly: Yes, I'm working with three teenage boys -- actually, one of them is 12 -- they're 12, 14, and 16. I've been taking capoeira class with them at the Ken Pitts Martial Arts Academy in Oakland, and they're amazing movers; they're so graceful, they can do amazing things with their bodies. They don't *know* they're dancers -- they maybe don't want to accept that they're dancers, but they are -- and I got this idea for a piece using them. I typically don't choreograph political things, but I thought, these guys could go off to war in a few years. So the piece is about youth, and beauty of youth, and the beauty of young men, and the disgusting element of being able to send them off and kill them off just like that.

Q: Any last thoughts?

Holly: I don't think "Eve's Elixir" could exist anywhere but the San Francisco Bay Area, because we have such a diverse and talented ethnic dance community, as you can see with the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival. [To Azriel] Would you say there's a high bar for ethnic dance?

Azriel: Getting higher, for sure. Eve's Elixir is kind of the next level, where you take what's ethnic and put it in a real contemporary context of other cultures and modern life around it. It makes it present-day relevant, as opposed to a museum piece.

Salvadora Galan at La Peña Cultural Center

Salvadora Galan is a singer/guitarist born in Olvera, a small town near Ronda in Cadiz, Spain. At the age of nine she moved with her family to Utrera. Salvadora grew up in a Flamenco family as her father was a singer. Her brother, now retired, was a very well known dancer in Utrera who performed in the Carmen Amaya movie, Los Tarantos. By the age of 13 Salvadora won her first flamenco singing competition in Utrera. At 17 Salvadora began her professional career as a professional singer traveling all over Spain and Portugal. She later sang in tablaos in Madrid including Las Brujas where she worked with flamenco icons La Fernanda and Bernarda de Utrera. She has also performed throughout Mexico and in the US. The uniqueness of her talent is that she not only sings flamenco but also accompanies herself on the guitar, unheard of in the flamenco world and much less for a female artist. Salvaora@aol.com

Hands-On Flamenco and Classical Guitar Making Workshop

Alfredo Caceres, visiting San Francisco!

Carolina Lugo & Carolé Acuña