danceview
a quarterly review of dance

Reviews

San Francisco Ballet

by Rita Felciano
copyright © 1997 by Rita Felciano
Summer 1997

If, this past May, I had not seen Christopher Wheeldon's take on Ravel's Pavane performed by an unexpectedly vulnerable Darcey Bussell and Jonathan Cope of the Royal Ballet in Costa Mesa, I might have come to agree with the pessimists who keep lamenting the absence of new quality ballets. Wheeldon's had what is lacking in much today's ballet choreography; subtle and expressive phrasing, clean lines which set into relief the geometry of the body, a sense of placement that keeps the body open and balanced, no matter its position. But maybe even more importantly, his perspective on form--in this case the pas de deux--had a clear trajectory and a contemporary, non-sentimental point of view--here, a delight in ambiguity.

Sadly the programming of San Francisco Ballet's last out-of-the Opera house season, confirmed that this beautifully dancing company has as much trouble as anyone else to find first rate new choreography. To be fair, the limitations of small stages with which the company has to cope for the last two years during the Opera House's refurbishing, may have unfairly handicapped Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson. Still, what can one say if the best of the new works (four world and three company premieres) was presented by a former Taylor dancer, Lila York? Or that two of the three most emotionally satisfying pieces were also created, and quite sometime ago, by modern choreographers, Paul Taylor (Sunset, 198) and Mark Morris (Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes, 1988)? The third being Balanchine's edged-in-crystal, Theme and Variations.

The major disappointment was the San Francisco premiere of Ben Stevenson's Four Last Songs to Richard Strauss' s setting of poems of passage. The super-lush music gave rise to choreography so overripe and redolent with nymph-inspired imagery to make Maxwell Parrish look like a gutsy constructivist. Somewhat more satisfying though still awfully lightweight was Christopher Bruce's wistful Sergeant Early's Dream. A pleasant innocuous excursion into the folklorically inspired dancing of swinging skirts and skippy steps, it sported a group of eight dancers, led by a fleet-footed pied piper, (guest artist Erica Johnson), on a journey across the stage. The idea was to capture the experience of emigration from Ireland to America. Bruce's modern, Irish step dancing flavored vocabulary produced little vignettes in which dancers brawled, courted each other, lamented the loss of a lover and competed with each other for the favor of the local beauty.

More substantial, because richer in movement ideas, was York's El Grito, inspired by struggles for freedom in Latin America and elsewhere. Based on a collage of primarily Latin American composers, this was a thoughtful, well-crafted work which made its points in terms of dance, not politics. Quasi-narrative, it follows and intertwines four proto-characters, a tortured working man (Antony Randazzo), an eager and scared would-be revolutionary (Christopher Stowell), a passively resisting mother (Sabina Alleman) and a surging icon of freedom (Joanna Berman). Each of them calls out alternating waves of hope, defiance and despair among the ensemble's shadowy common people.

El Grito evocatively uses a recurring gesture of fists raised, opened and tied behind the back as kind of leitmotiv. It also smoothly alternates folklorically inspired lines and circle material with balletic extensions. York can't deny her Taylor heritage, particularly in the way she energizes ensembles for men, but she is her own woman. She layers her movements intelligently and has a fine sense of phrasing even though she is not always able to quite stay in control of the forces set in motion.

Opening the El Grito program was a stunningly performed Theme and Variations. Detailed and spirited with clean executions all the way around, it was joy to watch even with a cool Katita Waldo who, I had the feeling, was not at ease in the more soupy aspects of the music. Her partner, new principal Roman Rykin from Ufa, Russia, danced with considerable ardor and an inclination towards the dramatic so they looked temperamentally somewhat out of tune with each other.

In the other cast, Elizabeth Loscavio was dancing as if there was no tomorrow. And in some way there isn't; starting next season Loscavio will be a soloist with John Neumeier's Hamburg Ballet. Partnered by a caring and ever so courtly Stowell, Loscavio's dancing was breathtaking, throwing away those intricate beats and repeated jumps with almost casual abandon. Every detail was shaped by her breathing response to the Tchaikovsky until by the end of the Polonaise, in that final, grand progression, she pulled everyone, musicians and audience included, into realms usually reserved for angels.

New to me, though it was performed by SFB last year, was Mark Morris' delicious Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes for an ensemble of twelve. Set to splendidly witty piano vignettes by Virgil Thompson, this is Morris at his best; at work and at play, paying homage to and affectionately skewering balletic convention.

Mirror image lines get broken, pas de deux sport women who smile at each other instead of their partners; dancers bourée as if lined up on a string or pirouette as if on top of a music box; waltzing solos turn into a fleeting circle dance; people in passing pick up movements the way you grab a towel on the way to the shower. David Palmer's incongruously dramatic and assertive Russian style would have pleased its progenitor Mikhail Baryshnikov. Drink to Me bubbles with imagination and wit; surely it is one of Morris' most enchanting accomplishments.

It was strange to see Sunset after Taylor's more recent Company B which also deals with men off to war. This is a much more somber work. Sunset's melancholy starts enveloping you as Taylor slyly introduces discordances into his sunny park setting of khaki-clad soldiers on leave picking up young women in summer white frocks. The boys are lanky and a little awkward, the girls all twirls and giggles. But Taylor almost immediately undercuts these flirtatious games of skip and chase with a long, self-absorbed duet for two men (Peter Brandenhoff and Val Caniparoli). They shadow each other's every move and seem to be of one body even though they never touch. When another dancer (Eric Hoisington) stumbles and a woman (Julia Adam) cradles his head, you first think of it as a game, until their stillness becomes iconographic. In the central section, to the haunting sounds of loon, that stillness becomes time suspended, as if to hold off the inevitable. Using the backs of the men like a mountain to be conquered, Loscavio was ebulliently triumphant; Julia Adam touching in her unease and fear of what was to come.

Sunset was paired with Val Caniparoli's annual contribution to SFB's ballet; this year, it was Ciao, Marcello. Using a collection of film scores by Nino Rota, who had worked closely with Federico Fellini, the work intended to pay tribute to the recently deceased Marcello Mastroianni and Fellini. It didn't do much honor to either of these splendid artists. Caniparoli sometimes can be verbose but he has a flair for ballroom-inspired vocabulary and partnering but neither of them saved this operetta dansé despite the spiffy dancing by, among others, Evelyn Cisneros in a wig of Anita Ekberg proportions and Berman in one borrowed from Anouk Aimée.

Seven males in floppy hats danced Marcello with Possokhov, as the main Marcello, pretending to be an amiable drunk when he wasn't slapped around by his jealous spouse (Berman). Supertitles, with quotes from the films, I suspect were meant as a commentary on the stage action. They didn't make much sense. For the most part the women slid their legs out of their skirts, the men slunk around café tables. Berman and Cisneros danced a cheek to cheek tango.

Caniparoli does have a good eye for bringing out the unexpected in lesser-known dancers. A Harlem-inspired number gave two corps members, Yolonda Jordan and Askia Swift, a much welcome opportunity to shine. A duet for Cisneros and Chidozie Nzerem showed this young dancer as developing some real strength and control. The lovely, vulnerable Julie Diana, who popped up all over the place this season, was given a chance to indulge in comedy.

Artistic director Tomasson presented two world premieres. The short Pandora Dance featured the company's two long-legged ballerinas, Muriel Maffré and Yuan Yuan Tan. An angular, stretchy Forsythian excursion into off-balances and pretzel entanglements, it alternated on the program with a company premiere, Shogun by Ivonice Satie. This martial arts-inspired duet for two males, paired two unlikely partners, young firebrand, José Mart’n and the company's iron technician, David Palmer.

Tomasson's other premiere, Criss-Cross, seemed to make a virtue out of necessity. It was performed on the small Yerba Buena Center stage which, however, which has one advantage. It affords close proximity to the dancers so Tomasson chose to focus attention on SFB's excellent corps. In each half of the piece he presented ten corps members each, led by a lead couple of principals, a springy Tina LeBlanc with a rather heavy-footed Rykin for the first; inspired partnering for the second, Berman and Possokhov.

Criss-Cross is an odd concoction, made up of two distinct parts and two sets of music: Charles Avison's transcriptions of Scarlatti concerti grossi and Arnold Schoenberg's glossing of a Handel concerto. The first section shows Tomasson in his most neoclassical mood, frothy, but tasteful and restrained. When the second ensemble takes over, literally invading its companion group, the accents become sharper, the balances more angular. Criss-Cross is a decent workman-like piece, greatly aided by elegant beige-on-beige costumes (Carmen Allie and Denis Lavoie): frilly baroque bodies for the first, apron-like vests for the second group.

An early June visit to Seattle afforded the unexpected pleasure of seeing SFB's Christopher Stowell as Oberon in Pacific Northwest Ballet's breathtaking new production of Balanchine's Midsummer Night's Dream. The part gave him a range he rarely is offered at SFB. Technically impressive, with good ballon in his jetés and pas de chats, he made an impressive Oberon, angry, amused, regal and patient. Patricia Barker, less spoiled than dreamy, gave Titania a glowing rich womanhood. I cannot think of a better Puck than Seth Belliston's totally impish take.

Luminously lit by Randall G. Chiarelli and sets and costumes that were both rich and diaphanous by Martin Pakledinaz, this is a inspiring production that will serve the company well for years to come. It takes a first-class company to do justice to this Balanchine treasure. PNB's is luminous in the lightness of its touch, detailed down to the last little bug. My one gripe is that Pakledinaz substituted the second act's original background with a blue on, which set off the gold and white costumes effectively. However, a centered circle of stars makes that background look like the flag for the European Union.