Dance innovation in the Summer of Love
Visiting the Summer of Love exhibition at the de Young Museum, choreographer Carlos Carvajal, co-artistic director for the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival, was transported back 50 years. He was struck, he said, to see that the show “focused primarily upon the poster art and the rock scene. There was no mention of the performing arts community, where there was a lot of innovation happening.”
Carvajal was ballet master and associate choreographer for the San Francisco Ballet at the time. His ballet, “Genesis ’70,” was performed to Terry Riley’s avant-garde (now classic) “In C.” Carvajal describes its opening in an autobiography he’s been working on: On opening night, probably due to “a personal involvement with Chet Helms and other cultural community members ... (it) seemed like the entire ‘Flower Power’ community was there, fringe, bells, paisley, long hair, patchouli and all, dressed to their very best. It was a hippie invasion to the usual ballet attendee, and many were offended by this manifestation of the youth culture at their staid opera house.”
Carvajal was informed, after the opening, that the Ballet Guild “just didn’t enjoy” the work, “and they did not want ‘that’ audience to come to our shows. It was a stunning reproach.” Soon after, he formed his own company, Dance Spectrum.
Carvajal sent along a few reviews of the show, and I checked The Chronicle clips. Dance magazine’s Russell Hartley noted that although people usually wear black tie to ballet openings, “this evening the audience truly rivaled the performers.” Many audience members left during the performance, wrote Hartley, and the curtain call drew both boos and wild applause. Seeing how the work had aroused emotional response, the critic said he left “with great hopes for the future of the San Francisco Ballet.”
Chronicle critic Robert Commanday called the performance “an extraordinary demonstration of ensemble discipline, dancer memory and a fantastic traffic plan. It was also terribly tiring.” (That Monday, April 27, 1970, review appeared on an arts section page, and I couldn’t help noticing some of the ads and stories about other performances in the Bay Area. Miles Davis, Cannonball Adderley, Roberta Flack and Charles Mingus had performed at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley the Friday before for the fourth annual University of California Jazz Festival; Jerry Garcia was to perform that night at the Matrix on Fillmore Street; and Beverly Sills was to give a series of concerts at the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House. Not bad.)
And as to the question of whether Eventbrite “tickets” (free) are needed for the Wednesday, June 21, Surrealistic Summer Solstice Show in Golden Gate Park, Dawn Holliday, who is presiding over the show, says that tickets are not needed, and everyone who wants to be there is invited.
That concert will rub shoulders in the park with that night’s adjacent lighting ceremonies for the Conservatory of Flowers. I am grateful to have been invited to a VIP reception for that (about which I’ll write in a future column); at the same time, that invitation made me wonder whether the original Summer of Love had any VIP sections.
So I asked Peter Coyote, who had been a Digger in the Haight during the era. He said that at the Be-In, Allen Ginsberg, Lenore Kandel, Michael McClure, Suzuki Roshi and Gary Snyder were onstage, which naturally separated them from the crowd. But the Be-In was not a Digger event. “The Diggers specialized in big frames like the Summer Solstice, which made everyone equal under the sun, the main reason why we never had any violence. The stage tended to make high-status and low-status territories,” not in accordance with Diggers principles.
(When Altamont festival organizers asked the Diggers for help in creating an event for the Rolling Stones, the Diggers suggested a multistage event, to give all attendees access. “They thought the Rolling Stones were too important to share space,” and they called it a free concert to attract a huge audience they could use to film as extras in a Rolling Stones doc, emailed Coyote. “That duplicity set the tone, and the entire world saw what occurred.”)
As to the Diggers and the spirit of the Summer of Love: “No,” he wrote, “we ain’t got no VIP sections.”