photo: Marty Sohl
The dancing was precise, intimate, and odd, combining intricate gestures and whole body contact. The show was entertaining and funny … and did not lack a crucial pathos or poignancy. [Ken] James recalls a silent film star. His face is plastic, allegedly neutral until the eyebrows seem to shift and we’re laughing or sighing, aahhh. Oh and they sang and it was terribly real, exciting, touching, and human.
Keith Hennessy - Movement Research Performance Journal
The Adventures of Cunning & Guile radiated waves of pure pleasure... I kept thinking Buster Keaton as much as Hanna-Barbera.
Alan Ulrich - Voice of Dance
If there was any justice in the world, Fellow Travelers Performance Group would have enough funding to take its fresh and appealing choreography around the country. Cynthia Adams and Ken James' programs are something to look forward to: you're just about guaranteed an evening of sophisticated dance...props, music, language, and movement combine to make iconic little pieces of dance theater. Different as these two choreographers are, what Adams and James seem to have in common is a respect for craft and a vision that is both gentle and witty.
Rita Felciano - San Francisco Bay Guardian
While eroticism and mystery often infuse her imagery, Adams is not content to stop there; she subverts the images by attaching a Beckettian silliness to them.
With an expressionist's facility for juxtapositions, James creates an effect that is passionate and sensuous, yet as off-hand as its maker. The cumulative vision is of a familiar world in which the mask of the banal has been pulled away to reveal a zone of strange, ridiculous puzzlement.
Ann Murphy - SF Weekly
...a keen sense for juxtaposing images and forging surprising correspondences....
FTPG's triumph rests in managing to tell a story in a different way. Take its work as an opportunity to flex you synapses, or sit back and allow the rich imagery to unfold in all its visual wit. ]
Sima Belmar - San Francisco Bay Guardian
[ Fellow Travelers] concocted 'The Guardian Angel' as though they'd squeezed avant-garde Pina Bausch through the sweet, offbeat personalities of Charlie Chaplin and the Marx Brothers.
Ann Murphy - Oakland Tribune
'Cynthia Adams and Ken James have' gone their own way and it seems a path strewn with good humor, gently whimsy, sharp observation and genuine personality.
...a postmodern "Laugh-In"...
...Professional in approach and technically accomplished...
Alan Ulrich - San Francisco Examiner
Grounded in the anarchic spirit of Dada
Douglas Rosenberg - 20th Century Music
Listed as 'One of the Twelve Best of 2000' in the end of the year picks
San Francisco Bay Guardian
Goog extersizing. good shaking. Good Jumping. Good Arm up good feet up good nec up good job Stretching is good. good Floting. good tiptowing walk good tiptowing back good circle good flol exiting skiping exiting skiping back. exiting teacher exiting skiping back and front. good dansing GOOD STOF TECHER
by child in the Museum of Children's Art program, Oakland