danceview
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Reviews

San Francisco Ballet
New works, good dancing, and visitors from Paris—the company’s 67th season

by Rita Felciano
copyright © 2001 by Rita Felciano
Summer 2001

San Francisco Ballet, the country’s oldest ballet company, finished its 67th season by hosting the Paris Opera Ballet, the world’s oldest, in two glorious productions which book ended the extremes of what ballet companies stand for today. It was a fabulous finale for what has been an bumper crop of good dancing, and some new decent choreography at SFB. Mark Morris’ A Garden was his latest and maybe finest piece for SFB yet. Yuri Possokhov’s fascinatingly enigmatic Magrittomania and Julia Adam’s dream-filled Night valiantly proved themselves during a second look. Both of these choreographers will create works on the company next year.

New-at-SFB works, like Hans Van Manen’s Black Cake, Nacho Duato’s Without Words and Roland Petit’s L’Arlésienne, opened windows into European dance making. They also made you wonder about the future of classicism. The slick and sleek Black Cake showcased duets, with Lorena Feijoo and Roman Rykine in high melodrama, she clinging to him, he dragging her along the floor; Julie Diana and Possokhov in a head-snapping clockwork comedy with him on his toes, her in fondus; and Tiekka Schonfield and Benjamin Pierce in an alternately petulant and swooning (the music here was Massenet’ “Thais”!) lovers’ fight.

Duato’s four couple Without Words, though originally created for ABT, did not look balletic. Yet its lush phrasing, the quiet intimacy Duato brings to the six Schubert songs (transcribed for cello and piano) and the sheer beauty of these grounded yet evanescent pas de deux would have melted even a ballet purist’s heart. Particularly telling were the Feijoo/ Pierre-Francois Vilanoba and Katita Waldo/ Parrish Maynard duets. The first featured angularity with flying overhead lifts; the latter foldings and unfoldings, punctuated by sharp accents and unexpected shifts of direction.

L’Arlésienne, however, proved a disappointment, particularly since Petit’s ballets, except for his Carmen perhaps, are such a rarity on American stages. This was a grim and protracted affair, in part because the dancers were so clearly insecure and uncomfortable in rather monolithic choreography that asked for swayed backs, parallel feet and odd kick lines. Petit has an intriguing take on unison movement and its power to create a sense of oppression. He uses it with some effectiveness in his early Carmen and Le Loup. But here the immov-ably autocratic community supposedly responsible for the couple’s (Lucia Lacarra and Vilanoba) tragedy never materialized. Maybe by next season Petit’s sense of high drama as well as his idiosyncratic vocabulary will have better settled into the dancers.

As for Balanchine, there was the early Prodigal Son, with a melodramatic Boada who may think that the work is about high leaps, and a nuanced Guennadi Nedviguine, heartbreaking in his crawl-home. Prodigal was complemented by the two superb ensemble-challenging Symphony in Three Movements and Symphony in C, both of them performed musically and with great élan. Joanna Berman (who was out because of injury for some of the season and who is rumored to retire next year) and Pierre-François Vilanoba made their debut as the first movement couple in Symphony in C; Berman serene in lacy pointework, supported by Vilanoba’s courtly generosity. Also new to the role was Possokhov in the adagio movement; all ardor when floating Lucia Lacarra, who still has a tendency to over-emote in almost everything she touches. Nedviguine and Kristin Long, well paired in their spirited approach to allegro dancing, soared through the third movements jetés and other airborne delicacies.

Tomasson, who was brought to this country by Jerome Robbins and who has always claimed a special affinity for his work, has finally begun to introduce the Robbins rep to Bay Area audiences. This year brought Fanfare and the San Francisco premiere of A Suite of Dances; next year will introduce Dances at a Gathering and the return of Glass Pieces. Together with Fanfare this will be SFB’s first all-Robbins program.

Fanfare is not wearing its age all that well. Its humor looks bland. The tying of the choreography to the music is too overtly literal, though perhaps unavoidable given the nature of the score. Some blame also must be put on the frumpy and distracting costumes, particularly the head pieces which should be burnt. Since the work was originally commissioned for the crowning of Queen Elizabeth II one wonders whether designer Irene Sharaff was not making an uncomplimentary comment on the state of British fashion at the time. None looked more uncomfortable than super tall Benjamin Pierce in his duet with Leslie Young as the violas. Still there were some memorable moments with Long and Boada exuberantly flitting through as clarinets, Damian Smith’s articulate bass and Katita Waldo’s tongue-in-cheek harp, starting with stately grand battements and sliding into the final split with a big grin on her face.

Vadim Solomakha sailed through Suite’s low skips and skimming runs like a bird across a lake, circled the stage with port de bras that seemed to push open windows. This was a performance in which every flopping arm, hiccupping hip, and arabesque penchée spoke of deep musicality on the part of choreographer and interpreter alike.

Not unexpectedly, The Sleeping Beauty opened opportunities for dancers and surprises for the viewer. This year’s sensation, however, was not to be found in any of the Auroras that I saw—there were six of them, of whom I saw three—but in Muriel Maffre’s Carabosse. A cross between Snow White’s stepmother, Gloria Swanson and Medusa, Maffre’s low-to the ground whirls and sky-scratching arms were all fulminating fury and haughty grandeur. Since she also danced her distanced, slightly imperious Lilac, she excellently illuminated the complementarity of these two roles which palpitate at the heart of Sleeping Beauty.

Feijoo, a powerhouse performer, knocked off the Prelude’s finger variations with an in-charge no nonsense attitude. That was expected, as were her pillar-like balances as Aurora. What did surprise was the delicacy and sweet innocence that emanated from this young princess. A practically melting Roman Rykine was her wooing prince, more arduous and supportive in his partnering than I have ever seen him.

Sometimes soubrettish, Diana’s Aurora also short-circuited my expectations. She wore her sixteen-year-old’s sweetness like a new dress, somewhat stiffly even timorously. But then surprisingly, she blossomed into glowing serenity and a mature calm, both in her variations and in the arms of her Prince Desiré, an unfortunately rather stiff Vilanoba. Tina LeBlanc’s characterization was technically secure and the most consistently developed. She was partnered by a solicitous and self-effacing Maynard whose drag queen Carabosse (at another performance) was way off the mark.

In minor parts Garcia and Nedviguine’s impressed with the effortless ease and elevation of their individual Jewels variations. Soloist Catherine Baker’s gossamer technique illuminated her Fairy of Serenity and the Silver Fairy variations.

Of the two new commissions, Morris’ Garden and Val Caniparoli’s Death of a Moth—the season was rather stingy in terms of world premieres—Morris’ Garden was close to sublime. Intelligent, transparent and yet ineffably mysterious, the work did what Richard Strauss accomplished in his Tanzsuite for Orchestra in which he orchestrated a set of Couperin keyboard pieces: it illuminated baroque gesture through a contemporary lens.

Set on twelve dancers, Morris opened the piece with the dancers standing perfectly still, heads cocked, arms slightly angled away from the body. They looked like statuary in a French Garden or Sèvres figurines except that their forward leaning torsos spoke of movement. The dancing was lively, yet contained; a sense of decorum and symmetry prevailed. An odd sense of stiffness every once in while intruded into fleeting encounters. Dancers in twos, their bodies flattened into silhouettes, exited in measured paces, except for their wrists flicking as if enveloped by lace cuffs. The Pavane balanced a hand-holding quartet of ronds de jambe down stage left with a quadrille pattern upstage right. In the Carillon, Garcia’s cloud-born diagonals first called out two partners with echoing leaps, then three nimble-footed women whose steps seemed to come out of one body. Garden’s highlight was the Minuet’s front-oriented pas de deux for a folded-over-each-other Berman and Smith in which the two, in sweet melancholy, moved apart, then together, trying to find common ground. At one point they knelt in front of each other, having their heads doing the exploring. In the end they sped off in opposite directions.

Caniparoli’s penchant for hobbling pieces together out of duets is well known. In Death of a Moth, set on five couples and a quintet of thigh-slapping, barrel-turning males, he put that expertise, and an ability to cast dancers in roles that will stretch them, to good use. This was a stark, tightly structured work of constant swirling agitations. Spiraling might start on the floor, move into cartwheels or vertical figure-8 swings, and end in overhead propeller twirls. Feijoo, ready to devour Vilanov, was both domineering and yearning in the way she flung herself at his waist and arms. Diana, displaying unknown power and strength, and Peter Brandenhoff, an egalitarian give and take, were nfused with a fury that threatened to tear them apart. Set to the strident, just barely echoing its Spanish origin Concerto for String Orchestra by Carlos Surinach, the choreo-graphy was enhanced by Sandra Woodall’s long skirts that whipped through the air suggesting that the dancers just might take to the air.

In addition to Tomasson’s Tuning Game, his abstracted interpretation of John Corigliani’s Concerto for Oboe and Orchestra, the season also introduced his lovely but imperfectly performed Prism, Tomasson’s New York City Ballet commission to Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1. I had seen the work in New York and this is one of Tomasson’s finer accomplishments even though the close setting—runs in the piano equal bourrés on stage, orchestral crescendos call up overhead lifts, solos piano means solo ballerina—at times seemed a little too easy.

Musically somewhat robust and a rather Haydn-esque affair, Prism’s first movement featured a trio of dancers, Zachary Hench, Solomakha and a radiant Long who luxuriated in the music, almost taking the piano solo along for a ride. The trio’s ebullience and vivacity were playfully echoed by three other sets of trios. In the second movement Lacarra and Pierre gradually emerged out of a set of supporting couples who gradually disappeared. Lacarra was all liquid lines with large ronds de jambe, cambrés like bending reeds and piqué turns as even as you would want to see them. Still, I much preferred Maria Kowroski’s NYCB performance. Unlike Lacarra, for all of her serene languidity, Kowroski put authority into each step. Garcia as the leader of a band of lusty youth—more lusty than NYCB’s but not as discip-lined—had an off night. He forced his turns and put on melodramatic accents on less than pristine finishes.

Nureyev’s brocade and tapestry laden Bayadère for the Paris Opera Ballet received sumptuous perform-ances with Fanny Gaida, substituting for the injured Isabelle Guérin, as a pliant and heart-breaking Nikya—her arms would have floated away if they weren’t so solidly anchored in the middle of her spine—and an at first surprisingly docile Aurélie Dupont as Gamzatti whose whip-lashing fouettés, however, revealed the steel under all that sweetness. Manuel Legris was the impeccably styled, if slightly cool, Solor.

This being my first live encounter with a full-length Bayadère, I was struck with how the entertainments opened a window into life beyond the complications of life at court. Their “exoticism” may have been designed to entertain and amuse a sophisticated audience both on stage and in the theater but they also suggest a nostalgia for a time when societies were made up of modest maidens, fierce warriors and the simple pleasures of fetching water at the well.

POB’s second offering was a more daring—and controversial—choice. With not a toe shoe in sight—the women danced in slippers, heeled shoes or barefoot—Anjelin Preljocaj’s Le Parc ripped the rug from under balletic convention even as it embraced its formality with daring and passion. The ballet has been criticized for being too long. I thought its leisureliness and the dwelling on episodes mesmerizing. Stylized and erotic, artificial and hip, Mozart would have loved this physicalization of the mind at play.

Musically the season was uneven. This is the fourth year that the dancers and musicians have had to contend with an ever-changing cast of guest conductors (Patrick Flynn, Neal Stulberg, Scott Speck and Paul Haskins) in addition to acting musical director Emil de Cou. It is a discouraging state of affairs. De Cou clearly thought so too. At the end of the season he quit.