San Francisco Ballet in San Francisco

San Fransico Ballet
February 10, 2007, 2pm
Program 1: Divertimento No. 15, Aunis, Artifact Suite
February 11, 2007, 2pm
Program 2: Blue Rose, Dance House, The Firebird
War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco, CA

On my weekend trip to the City-by-the-bay, San Francisco Ballet provided fun of a different sort from the delirum that was Legally Blonde (see that review here). SF Ballet was so frickin’ good that it was just as much fun being serious. They are truly one of the best ballet companies in the US right now (I enjoy watching them even more than American Ballet Theatre, gasp!) The dancing is always of such a high quality, and the dancers project such interesting personalities on stage that it’s always a joy to watch. And the rep is always at the very least interesting. Not everything worked, but the main one that did made the entire trip worth it.

The highlight was Artifact Suite , a very ultra-modern looking ballet by William Forsythe. From what I understand, this work is a selection of dances from a longer ballet he created about two decades ago – this suite premiered as Suite from Artifact with the Scottish Ballet two years ago. Ballet companies are now getting really into Forsythe (note the Kirov's new obsession with him), but only now, something like 20 years after he began creating these nifty hyperkinetic neoclassical ballets. The works that the major ballet companies are bringing into the reps – Artifact, Steptext, Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude – are all Forsythe's earlier works, namely the ones that involve pointe shoes and some version of classical technique. Forsythe moved on from this awhile ago, as shown with the new work that Ballett Frankfurt showed on its last US tour. This was stuff that was decidedly off point, very introspective and very random. (I enjoyed the visceral thrill of watching that very athletic new stuff, but also enjoy the comfort of more ballet-based pieces. Seems ballet companies do too, though of course one might acuse of being stuck on classicism while Forsythe has long sinced moved on.)

Anyway, Artifact Suite was fabulous to watch for two reasons: Forsythe's visual inventiveness and the fabulous dancers. The two-part ballet opens on a tableau of a big corps de ballet, two principal couples and one solo woman dressed in goldenrod yellow leotards. The couples perform insanely fast pas de deux, darting this way and that way across the stage, while behind them the corps does basic ballet steps really fast. It’s fun to watch and everyone is having a grand old time until a black fire curtain suddenly falls from the sky and hits the stage with a loud thwack. A few seconds later, the curtain goes back up and we’re looking at an entirely different stage picture: the corps is arranged in a differnet place, one couple has disappeared and the woman is alone in a corner. This fire curtain business happens several times: everytime it looks like Forsythe is tired of one idea, instead of finishing it off choreographically, he just cuts off the action by dropping the curtain. It's kooky, but, I thought, pretty witty and oh so rebellious and anti-convention. I found it funny watching the curtain drop from the sky and hearing the audience gasp when it smacked the floor.

Part II was all corps de ballet, dressed this time in blue-green leotards under dim lighting. They start out doing basic classroom combinations, then spin off into faster combinations – then alternate groupings in all male, all female, female dominated, male dominated… then they walk around the stage clapping out rhythms with the atonal piano score. That sounds like a jumble but it was all kind of hypnotic (the dim lighting helped the feeling).

The best part of it all was that the company performed everything with conviction and perfection. The audience went along for the quirky ride because they demanded that we did... and so we did. Muriel Maffre and Pierre-Francois Vilanoba made all that athletic partnering in Part I look like it was the easiest thing in the world. And the corps strode through Part II so skillfully that it all looked both spontaneous and planned. I really enjoyed watching.

On the same program, the company also did Divertimento No. 15, a Balanchine ballet in tutus set to Mozart. I love this ballet: it was one of the first pieces that introduced me to Balanchine (via Suzanne Farrell’s staging of it with her own company), and it had me hooked ever since.

At the performance I saw, the ballet sat a bit strangely on SF Ballet. The casting of the five ballerina roles included young up-and-coming soloists as well as seasoned ballerinas – and you could tell the difference. There’s a section where each gets a solo, and it went from youngest to most experienced: the first solos were shaky, not quite musical, not quite effortless – in variation 2, Frances Chung tore into her variation enthusiastically but didn’t quite finish all of the choreographic sentences, and in variation three Nutnaree Pipit Suksun, a Thai-born dancer who trained at the Royal Ballet School and was hired straight into SF Ballet as a soloist (NEAT), showed off her beautiful dancing body – long legs and a fab arabesque – but she really needs to work on phrasing the motion between the poses and get into the music more. When the seasoned ballerinas did their variations, there was a noticeable difference: the last variation was danced by Tina LeBlanc (whose quicksilver feet in Square Dance two seasons ago will live forever in my memory), and her effortless musicality, phrasing and panache illuminated the music in a way that the younger ones have yet to do.

Still, the company does Divertimento as well as can be expected. There were a few quirks: the costumes aren’t really that pretty, and the staging is odd – when the curtain goes up, there’s a moment when two soloists dance with the music while the corps forms a tableau behind them. I suddenly noticed at this performance that the girls were smiling big cheesy grins and nodding back and forth with the soloists in a weird concert-chorus way… I’ve never noticed this detail before, which makes me wonder if it’s unique to this staging. Either way, I didn’t like it: it made the opening really silly and doesn’t ever get repeated later. Strange.

Aunis, a short filler piece for three men rounded out Program 1. It gave Rory Hohenstein, Garrett Anderson and James Sofranko a fantastic opportunity to show their stuff, not only technically but charismatically. But the piece didn't have much to offer choreographically. I think I was more amused because the front curtain didn't go all the way up. They made an announcement afterwards apologizing because they "experienced a malfunction with the main curtain." Tee hee.

Program 2 was just as well danced as Program 1, though the repertoire wasn’t nearly as interesting. Blue Rose is an entertainment ballet set to some Russian rags played by an onstage pianist and violinist. It was pointless pas de deux for four couples, all going ‘look aren’t we great?’ Yes, dancers, you are – no, choreographer, you aren’t quite so interesting. Choreographed by SF Ballet’s artistic director Helgi Tomasson, the piece seems like something he made so that those particular dancers would have something new to dance. Great, good for them, but it still wasn’t all that interesting a ballet.

David Bintley’s Dance House was the middle piece on the program, the slot in mixed repertory bills generally given to the more ‘serious’ of the ballets. This one was fairly serious: set to Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 2, it is Bintley’s homage to a dancer who died of AIDS. Bintley’s comments on the work indicate that it the piece is more an homage to AIDS & HIV’s larger effect on the dance world at large. Seeing the ballet itself, it certainly does a great job at portraying loss, and the dancers’ very emotional performances were touching and human. Particularly, there’s a gorgeous pas de deux in the second movement that was thrillingly performed by Molly Smolen and Tiit Helmits. Unfortunately, the last movement is a bit too literal with the music: when the music goes crazy, so do the dancers, and for no discernable reason. They just start jumping around – the choreographic inventiveness from the first two movements abandoned.

The final piece on the program was perhaps the most newsworthy: Yuri Possokhov’s new version of The Firebird. The ballet comes to most well-known from the Mikhail Fokine version, and Possokhov uses the same Stravinsky score to tell his own version of the same basic story. I liked some of Possokhov’s ideas: the choreography is now on pointe for all of the dancers, not just the Firebird character, and much of it is pretty neoclassical and fast, too. A Firebird for modern ballet aesthetic. Some of the ideas for the characters were interesting too: the ruthless Katschei, a weird old king type character in the original, becomes a kind of space alien with supernatural powers over his gang of space aliens; the Firebird is now a rather sexy mystical creature with flowing, bright orange hair and a leotard; the Princess has not been captured by the Katschei from the beginning as in the original, but is instead a rebellious young girl who falls into the Katschei’s clutches when she and her girlfriends venture too far.

So, great ideas, but ultimately it all seems incomplete. Mostly because Possokhov cut big chunks out of the score: did he run out of time and just didn’t want to choreograph those important dramatic moments in the score, or did he really think those parts were unnecessary? And in the final scene, there’s way too much movement on stage: he has villagers running around rejoicing, jete-ing and being merry, while the music grandly pronounces triumph. I suppose I prefer to let the music carry the triumph, and have the dancers do something a bit more… orderly.

Yuan Yuan Tan was just fabulous as the Firebird. Mysterious yet powerful, she exuded a real fire in the role. In other roles I’ve seen her perform, she’s kind of cold, so it was fun watching her step it up here.

Another thing I loved about watching San Francisco Ballet in San Francisco was the audience. I watched both of this weekend’s performances from the standing room section of the Opera House. (It’s a fantastic deal: $10 on the day of the show, just arrive early to stake out a spot along the banister at the back of the theatre.) It’s wonderful the audience that San Franciso Ballet has: everyone was just so into it and knowledgeable about the company and the repertoire. People were comparing notes about different casts, and bantering about the ballets and things that were coming up. At a talk-back session with principal dancer Gonzalo Garcia before Sunday’s performance, people were genuinely excited to be talking to the dancers. A marked contrast to the way audiences react in Southern California: people seem generally dead to what’s happening on stage. They’re at the ballet because it’s pretty – who cares who or what is performing. The San Francisco audience was an intelligent one, really into the ballet. I liked that environment.

Production photos by Erik Tomasson, courtesy San Francisco Ballet. (1) Artifact Suite, Part I with Muriel Maffre and Pierre-Francois Vilanoba. (2) Artifact Suite, Part II with the corps de ballet. (3) Yuri Possokhov's new version of The Firebird, with Yuan Yuan Tan and Tiit Helmits.

Some camera phone photos:

(1) The beautiful War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco. (2) The view from the standing room seats, about 20 minutes before the performance begins. (3) Curtain call for Artifact Suite, and the beginning of a standing ovation. (4) Gonzalo Garcia giving a talk-back session with Mary Ellen Hunt, before the Sunday Afternoon performance.