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Bay Area Report

Helgi Tomasson’s new production of Giselle for San Francisco Ballet, two new works by Mark Morris and Stanton Welch, and a favorite ballerina retires.

by Rita Felciano
copyright © 1999 by Rita Felciano
Summer 1999

To put last things first. The end of the 1999 San Francisco Ballet season saw the retirement of Evelyn Cisneros, SFB’s senior ballerina. During her 27 years with the company Cisneros not only saw SFB evolve from a good regional ensemble to one with aspirations toward international status. She also underwent a rather remarkable transition of her own. Always beloved for her radiant stage presence, the advent of the Tomasson years sent Cisneros back to the drawing board where she remade herself into a dancer with greater expressive range and a much stronger technique. While she never became one of Tomasson’s favorite dancers, she held her own more than honorably among the bevy of new dancers who kept arriving every year. Hers is a remarkable achievement, and the ballet sent her off with a splendid gala performance. It closed with Cisneros, surrounded by her colleagues, dancing Aurora’s wedding pas de deux with her husband, Stephen Legate.

Principal Sabina Alleman also put away her pointe shoes at the end of the season. Often performing in second casts of the classics, there was a womanly quality about her dancing which these days is not too fashionable. It may have kept her career from getting the attention it probably should have had. While her technique was clean and solid, she never created the kind of sparks which excites an audience’s enthusiasm. But her performances had wonderful depth to them whether in comedies such as the Cowgirl in Rodeo and the Rich Girl in Filling Station or this season as The Wife in MacMillan’s The Invitation and as Emilia in Othello. During her last performance longtime partner Ashley Wheater came out of retirement to dance with her “The Man I love” duet from Who Cares, a role which she almost had made her signature piece.

The high point of the season, which was otherwise more noteworthy for the quality of its dancing than for the flair of its programming, was Helgi Tomasson’s Giselle. Since SFB has never had Giselle in its repertoire (the company danced the ensemble numbers of Anton Dolin’s 1940 version with the choreographer and Alicia Markova in the title role), it seemed reasonable that the dancers would get the opportunity to tackle one of the canon’s great masterpieces. Tomasson had done his homework in researching Giselle’s early performance history. From that basis of knowledge and his own experience in the ballet, he created a convincing version which reflects his respect for tradition but also put a personal stamp on this treasured romantic ballet.

Best of all is Tomasson’s restoration of much of the first act’s mime which filled in details and fleshed out the story. It does make Act I a little drawn out but the tradeoff is more than worth it. Hilarion, (generously performed by Damian Smith in the first cast) for instance, in his interaction with Berthe (Giselle’s Mother), after she discovers the hares he brought her, comes across as a courteous young man who is a little shy and respectful of his elders. It immediately makes it clear why Giselle might have fallen for him before Loys came along. Berthe’s (SFB veteran Anita Paciotti) large scale detailing of the curse of the wilis finally gave body to that ominous music. Tomasson also made a valid attempt to treat the peasants as more than picturesque groupings but the dancers have a long way to go to come up to the liveliness and expressivity of Ballet Nacional de Cuba’s villagers.

There are also some good structural changes, particularly in act I. Tomasson added a pas de deux for Giselle and Albrecht right before Hilarion’s exposure of Albrecht. The music-with imitation bird sounds-apparently, was found in Adam’s original manuscript. The duet was modestly conceived but dramatically convincing; it put into relief the fully blossomed love between the two principals, adding additional poignancy to the subsequent tragedy. Giselle’s arabesque leaning on Loys’ shoulder also eerily prefigured that in the second act with the kneeling Albrecht’s. Tomasson also substituted the peasant pas de deux (with some additional music by Burgmuller) with a fleet-footed pas de cinq that ended in a picturesquely arranged group picture that called out “Bournonville.” Stylistically, it didn’t make any sense, but in best divertissement fashion, it showcased some of SFB’s upcoming dancers, above all Kristin Long, whose sunny musicality illuminated the whole season. Guennadi Neviguine shone with his perfect alignment and wonderfully tight tour en l’air while Gonzalo Garcia drew the spotlight with a spectacular full-bodied turn inside of a barrel turn. In the second act Tomasson went back to the 19th century in giving us glimpses of a flying wilis. It was a risky move that worked. At the end, when Albrecht collapses onto the tomb, Tomasson also repeated some of the music heard a few minutes earlier. It felt like an exhalation, impressing finality. It worked very well.

As for the production values, designer Mikael Melby seems to have compensated for limited imagination with an overly generous budget. The first act was about as conventional and non-descript as it could be, with the two “real” houses flanking a view of the castle and some vineyards in the distance. But this Giselle didn’t live in a modest little cottage but in a sumptuous two-story chalet which could easily take in borders. The second act opened on a Freudian nightmare. Dark gnarled tree branches overlapped to gradually pull back into the wings for the forest’s opening. Poor Hilarion could hardly be seen stumbling through these thickets. Most bothersome and inappropriate were the costumes for the ladies and gentlemen of the court. All ten of them. There was so much velvet, lace, puffed sleeves, enormous trains and huge hats that it would have made the inhabitants of the Spanish court look like paupers. It was nouveau rich conspicuous consumption of the worst kind. No wonder this Giselle cost close to $800,000, and dramatically it certainly was inappropriate for a hunting party by a minor German duke even though they paraded in with the pacing of a royal court going to high mass. The peasant costumes, on the other hand, which included white gauze skirts—a nice allusion to tutus—and aprons for the girls (who dance on point), were nicely color-coordinated with a good balance between verisimilitude and make-believe.

But then we love Giselle for the quality of its choreography and its dancing. And what they tell us about love and treachery, honor and revenge, compassion and forgiveness and the myriad ways that beautifully trained dancers can express all of the above. It might worth noting that none of the principals had any experience dancing Giselle.

Of the four Giselles I saw (I missed the fifth one, Kristin Long), I found Joanna Berman’s the most convincing. Hers seemed conceived in two parallel arcs. At the beginning of the first act, her very first ballotés were buoyed by an eager innocence that gradually opens into an awareness and acceptance of just much she is in love. She almost swoons at that first physical contact with Loys when she backs into him. Her outburst at Bathilde and her despair were thus dramatically motivated. Berman’s technique-her hops on pointe feel like pearls on a string and her balancés as if rocked by a breeze-has never served her better. She also seemed most comfortable in that slight forward carriage of the upper body that is part of the style. In the second act she never lets you forgot that she is a spirit whose presence is at once precarious and indomitable. Fragile and airborne, she becomes almost imperial in her confrontation with Myrtha in front of the tomb. Deep luscious arabesques acknowledged the earth as much as her floating jumps embraced the air. But her focus remains inward and otherworldly until right before the end, when just before she slips through Albrecht’s arms one last time, you get a glimpse of the girl she once was.

After all these years at SFB Berman also finally also seems to have found a partner in Pierre-Francois Vilanoba who responds to her musicality. Arm in arm they sailed through the whole ballet. Vilanoba is possibly SFB’s most promising danseur noble today. Here is a dancer who only a few weeks ago had stumbled through *Othello* as if he didn’t know what hit him, doing his first Albrecht as if he had been born to it. With impeccable technique--his entrechats should be preserved in gold-and long elegant lines, Vilanoba’s Loys was young and impetuous but with a solicitude that electrified the very air in which Berman breathed. Tall, elegant and beautifully refined Vilanoba’s second act variations seemed to grow and grow, with crystalline jetés and cabrioles that didn’t want to land.

Of the other couples, the biggest disappointment was Lucia Lacarra’s on opening night. She not only fumbled her first act hops on point (which she took on half point), she had serious problems with balances. She may have suffered from a bad case of first night jitters, but beautiful, long-limbed dancer that she is, innocence may not her forté. Her first act Giselle looked mannered, not unlike that of an also, though very differently, betrayed girl in MacMillan’s The Invitation on the season’s first program. So far Lacarra has made her strongest impression as the Novice in Robbins’ The Cage. Her Albrecht (Yuri Possokhov) was all youthful ardor and playful courting in act I. When he approaches the tomb at the beginning of act two, however, he looked shrunk, so heavily was he weighted down by grief and guilt. He wielded his cape like a mantle of sorrow that pulled him into an almost melodramatic penché.

Yuan Yuan Tan’s Giselle (Vadim Solomakha was her Albrecht) seemed unfinished while Tina Le Blanc’s crisp first act Giselle didn’t quite carry over into the more ephemeral second act. Le Blanc also was clearly hampered by the technically strong Roman Rykine but who is a wooden and self-absorbed partner.

Muriel Maffre and Allemann shared the role of Myrtha. Maffre’s hopping arabesques had a slightly nervous edge to them while Allemann simply used them to calmly survey her realm. Maffre’s best moment came at the grave site when the sight of Giselle protecting Albrecht with her body seemed to stir something inside. Just for a moment she remembered that once too she had loved. Alleman also portrayed a not ungenerous but this-is-my-station-in-life-so-what-is-the-problem Bathilde. In addition to Smith’s Hilarion, who seemed to react more out of hurt than mean-spiritedness, the role was also performed by Peter Brandenhoff and Jorge Esquivel. Brandenhoff’s was best in his first act mime but faltered technically in his “death dance” confrontation with the wilis. Esquivel’s was pure lout to the point of becoming a parody of a community outcast.

SFB also offered two world premieres, Mark Morris’s Sandpaper Ballet to bonbon music by Leroy Andersen, and Taiko by Stanton Welch to percussion (on tape) by Australia’s Synergy ensemble. Sandpaper was a whirligig pattern dance, clever and fast and mildly amusing. Morris used the SFB dancers as one big community in which individuals would pop up for brief moments of solo brilliance. The work sported some of SFB’s more unforgettable costumes (by Isaac Mizrahi), unitards which were white with blue clouds up from below the chest. The rest of the body stocking, which included shoulder-length gloves came in one solid color. A blindingly bright lime green. The twenty-five dancers looked like dancing popsicles.

Welch’s Taiko was a major disappointment. His mix of classical and Asian-influenced movements never jelled, and the nervous energy—supposedly reflective of modern life—looked like wheel spinning. The work did have one innovative touch borrowed from contemporary modern techniques. Welch had given the dancers a half dozen everyday gestures—listening to a telephone, brushing your teeth—from which they chose at will. It gave a nice, quasi improvisational texture to that section of the work. A mysterious goddess figure (Muriel Maffre) who emerged and receded at various points looked lost. And who can blame her.

Every season also has its surprises. The biggest one for me was not from a new comer but how beautifully Stephen Legate performed all season long. He seemed relaxed and settled into his roles with great ease. With a newly found assurance and yes that wonderful abandonment that we treasure in dancers, he filled such roles as Cassio in Othello, partnered Katita Waldo in Glass Pieces, Claudia Alfieri in Val Caniparoli’s Slow. Legate doesn’t get cast in the classics very much. But as his partnering of Cisneros at her farewell performance showed that maybe he should be given a chance in a more traditional suit of clothes.