"as rigorous as it is attention-demanding...shimmering"
East Bay Monthly
"intelligently crafted and musically astute work"
Lonely Planet, San Francisco city guide, 2006
"This is one of the most innnovative modern dance troupes in San Francisco. The dancers have solid classical training, yet they look for ways to crack, if not actually break, the mold. Their movement is very precise, but imbued with an athletic physicality that is not only very American, but very Western American. And performances don't rely only on movement and music. Visual design is given an importance rarely matched elsewhere. A performance by Liss Fain is a feast for the senses."
Ballet.Magazine
"I was fascinated by Fain's approach to the score (which was Ligeti's Piano Concerto), the way she can at times follow the complex rhythmical patternings, the violent explosions of sound which boom out of the quiet pianissimi, the way the spinning patterns of the piano's cadenza-like passage are matched by a helter-skelter of bubbling movement and the way her dancers seem to treat dance as contemplation of musical score…we see a whole series of pas de deux that range from the intimate and sensual (the use of the collpase/catch motif) to the violent and brutal." -
read entire review
Critical Dance
"At the Edinburgh Fringe, attending a dance performance can be a hit or miss experience. However, in Liss Fain Dance at the Southside Theater, Edinburgh dance fans have a rare chance to see a professional modern dance company with superb dancers and quality production design on a spacious stage. Fain has gathered together a group of dancers with an impeccable grounding in classical and modern dance…there was a power intensity in the dancing and a complete devotion to every move. This was definitely a fine evening and a wonderful way to start the Fringe. Fain's choreography was always engrossing and dynamic, and her dancers exceptional."
The Scotsman - August 12, 2006
"There is a real urgency to both the music and movement. Splitting up into groups of two or three, the nine dancers fill the work with high leg extensions and energetic leaps… Cat-like stretches convey the music's sense of yearning, while the imaginative costumes give the work an almost heavenly feel…her style has a real sense of flow which is beguiling to watch, and her dancers' technical ability and musical awareness makes this triple bill one of the better examples of pure dance at this year's Fringe." -
www.scotsman.com
Ballet.Magazine
"The gentle introspective choral music of 'When Still' and the flowing, spiritual movement that it inspires, offsets perfectly the anguished images of a disintegrating civilisation in turmoil that characterises 'The Line Between Night and Day'....the mature professionalism, fliud movement and poetic musicality of an excellent little company which stands neatly at the apex of contemporary and classical dance." - read entire review
DanceViewTimes.com
"Fain designs her choreography with space in mind. Her nine dancers flow in and out of the wings with an ease that suggests that a dance is much larger than what we actually see in front of us. Once on stage, they fill it with long extensions and voluptuous lunges that thrust the energy beyond the body's physical confines… (It is) beautifully flowing work full of eloquent arms and billowing encounters that suggest both permanence and changeability…glistening with a cool and intelligent appeal…airy, with wonderful upward thrusts, and sculptural impulses… Her latest world premiere, When Still, glows with burnished intensity."
Voice of Dance.com
"But, here at last, is a choreographer who takes the chances—with extremely important and difficult scores and with an expansive vision of movement—that matter... Fain is about shape, expression, flow and musicality; those qualities are not always considered virtues in the hermetic Bay Area scene, but they are the qualities that may ultimately prove immune to the ravages of time and fashion."
"To accompany The Unknown Land, she chose a substantial contemporary work, Gyorgy Ligeti's Piano Concerto (on tape)... The choice spurred the choreographer to deliver a nine-dancer, ballet-based piece that wanted nothing in ambition. Fain juxtaposes soaring ensembles with intense, off-balance duets. A sense of foreboding is in the air, as Fain offers a disorienting vision of the world, starting with an ensemble turned upstage. Contemplative episodes vie with more muscular forays."
DanceViewWest.com
"Work whose intelligence and scope has been never less than intriguing."
"Liss Fain's River at the end of the Land, to Hamza el Din's Escalay, was also "about" the flow of life; and Fain's dancers...sustain themselves in a slow, exquisitely sensuous flow of shapes across the floor. It was a muscled, sinuous sort of continuity, that suggested a trance-like state. Difficult, gorgeous, peaceful ."
San Francisco Chronicle
"The lifts were adventurous—inverted and angular—and contrasted with deliberative walking by others in the cast. There was always something new to look at."
"What gave Thursday's program...an obvious range and depth was the formal logic that Fain applies with such surety.... The state of flux that Fain presents ends with an all—out and no-holds-barred physicality."
San Francisco Examiner
"Liss Fain Dance stands at the forefront of performance groups who realize the artistic possibilities when dance and film are combined. Frames of Light 2003 incorporates the work of Fellow Travelers Performance Group, Flyaway Productions (aerial dance), Douglas Rosenberg (video artist) and visual/lighting artist Matthew Antaky. The combined eye of the dancemaker and filmmaker produce an entirely new image of seamless staging."
"Liss Fain would stand out from the pack even if her steps weren't crafted with such unswerving authority.... Fain is a choreographer to remember. Phrasing and rigor of the kind witnessed in this concert require a level of concentration, commitment and experience few dancemakers permit themselves."
SF Bay Guardian
"The concern is with the sculpting of space, with movements that are fresh and always surprising...a deliberateness that is simply beautiful. Her choreography has impressed with a strongly articulated kinetic sense."
The Times, Martha's Vineyard
"Fain's extraordinary choreographic style, coupled with strong and concentrated dancing from herself and three of the company's dancers created a moving and ever-transforming sculpture of deftly angled positions. They are a dance company of unusual measure, transcendently beautiful at times, their poise in positioning seemingly effortless."
