The Wall Street Journal-20080206-San Francisco Ballet Begins A Diamond of a Celebration
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San Francisco Ballet Begins A Diamond of a Celebration
Full Text (1003 words)SFB's 75th Anniversary Season
Through May 6.
Go to sfballet.org for a full schedule of programs.
San Francisco -- All was seemingly quiet on the western front of U.S. ballet during the latter half of 2007. Except for its annual run of "The Nutcracker," San Francisco Ballet was offstage and behind closed doors as it prepared to celebrate its 75th anniversary in 2008. With its beginnings in 1933 as the San Francisco Opera Ballet, today's 78-dancer-strong SFB lays claim to being the country's oldest professional ballet troupe. Several different celebratory programs will have been offered here at the War Memorial Opera House by the time the festivities, which began late last month, are over. The ambitious celebration culminates in a "New Works Festival," which will be shown from late April through early May, when three programs of world-premiere ballets by 10 different choreographers will be offered. Thereafter, the company will take its anniversary selections on the road, touring in the fall to Chicago; Costa Mesa, Calif.; New York; and Washington.
On the strength of the two well-balanced programs already in the anniversary mix, SFB's preparation time was well spent.
The kicker of the first mixed program qualifies as the anniversary's one solid link to the company's beginnings in the 1930s. Lew Christensen's "Filling Station" is a seldom-seen piece of ballet Americana, even at San Francisco Ballet, where Christensen from the late 1930s through the early '80s variously served as dancer, choreographer and artistic director. It proved itself to be both a period piece and a showcase for the kinds of dancing only ballet dancers can display. Set and costumed here by somewhat tempered versions of Paul Cadmus's original comic-strip designs in the painter's distinctly precise "magic realism" manner, "Filling Station" is the precursor of a whole genre of dances that hoped to make ballet American by incorporating the music, the look and the narratives of America.
The charming result, which I'd never seen live before, and which has music by Virgil Thomson and a libretto by Lincoln Kirstein, reveals a strong underpinning of athletic ballet moves, especially in the role of Mac, the guileless gas-station attendant originally portrayed by the god-like Christensen himself. Too often today, realism is likely to weigh down a ballet of similar aims, with the choreographer all but neglecting the very steps that ballet dancers practice and perfect.
Rory Hohenstein, San Francisco Ballet's Mac, performed happily in the showcase, even if he didn't quite radiate the heat emitted by photos of Christensen, or by Jacques d'Amboise's sweet-smiling and highflying Mac, whose 1954 New York City Ballet performance was captured on film. The little story, with its local yokels and eccentrics, is a cartoon of a particular time and place, but its action is inventive, clear and often astutely theatrical -- the segment with a thug menacing a scene lit only by flashlight beams is a gem of visual drama.
George Balanchine's "Diamonds," a magisterial evocation of Russian ballroom grandeur, danced to Tchaikovsky, closed program one; his "Divertimento No. 15" -- a limpid showcase of filigreed ballet moves that are set to Mozart and as lively as they are decorous -- opened program two.
In the key ballerina role of "Diamonds," San Francisco Ballet's Yuan Yuan Tan acquitted herself more memorably in the ballet's often mercurial scherzo and in its onrushing finale than in its central and luminous adagio. As her princely cavalier and dancing partner, the handsome Ruben Martin proved poetic and accomplished.
"Divertimento No. 15" is a bouquet of female roles, with five ballerinas presented as different facets of Mozart's felicitous music. Amid the various SFB casts I saw in this ballet, there emerged some women of distinction.
Leading one cast was the ever-remarkable veteran ballerina Tina LeBlanc. She is a dancer of such assurance and musical acumen that even if -- at this stage of a 12-year tenure with SFB -- she isn't at her full physical strength, she can still offer amazements that are as beguiling as the unaffected smiles she beams while executing some fiendishly intricate choreography. The younger SFB ballerinas for whom Balanchine's challenges also looked more like treats than tricks were Rachel Viselli, Elizabeth Miner, Frances Chung, Vanessa Zahorian, Elana Altman and Sarah Van Patten.
As the men who attend Balanchine's ballerina quintet, the dashing Nicolas Blanc, the precise Gennadi Nedvigin and the forthright Mateo Klemmayer all stood out.
Helgi Tomasson, the Iceland-born dancer who has been San Francisco Ballet's artistic director since 1985 and who performed prominently with Balanchine's New York City Ballet before that, has consistently shown his troupe to be one of especially fine male dancers. That aspect of his tenure at the helm of SFB was clearly evident in the troupe's performing of Mark Morris's both playful and poetic "Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes." Set to 13 Virgil Thomson Piano Etudes that were played by a pianist at center stage, "Drink" sends 12 dancers on, off and around the stage -- and once, literally, around the piano -- as so many embodiments of the music's mood, momentum, rhythm and color.
Once more, Messrs. Blanc, Martin, Nedvigin and Hohenstein stood out as each confidently romped, loped and bolted through the virtual hoops and hurdles that distinguish Mr. Morris's fresh treatment of ballet's steps and accents. But as was true in the garden of delights of Balanchine's "Divertimento," in Mr. Morris's "Drink" the women also made their marks. In addition to several of the women already mentioned here, the pixie-like and pristine Maria Kochetkova took to Mr. Morris's almost giddy-making ballet like a swallow to free and open skies.
Mr. Tomasson's own Bach-inspired "7 for Eight" was placed in the middle of program one more as filler than as fine art; Yuri Possokhov's confused and only intermittently effective "Firebird" (to Stravinsky) closed program two as energetic, if not coherent, theater. But these lesser works could not extinguish the overall radiance of the diamond-anniversary doings now under way in San Francisco.
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Mr. Greskovic writes about dance for the Journal.
