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San Francisco Ballet
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A dance is just a few moments in time, but a dance performance is
colliding events, dancers coming together on a stage, what happens then. At a San
Francisco Ballet performance on March 10, there were moments to be relished. There was the
excitement of a World Premiere, Reflections, a big group piece by Yuri Possokhov,
the former Bolshoi danseur who has been with San Francisco since 1994, lately building up
a resume as a choreographer.
Another momentous occurrence was actually the performance of the entire
company in Square Dance. Light and fast, young, confident, the corps in
particular was looking the way perfection might look on a 21st-century version of a
leading ballet company.
Possokhov, with nine pieces under his belt since he began composing
duets for ballerina friends in 1997, takes a big step forward in Reflections, the
boringly named, exciting to watch, black, white and red extravaganza choreographed to
Mendelssohn’s Symphony No 1.
This is Possokhov’s first big full-company work, and the first time he has attempted
to work within a strictly classical framework. Claimed to be based on Bergman’s film Cries
and Whispers but looking more like a dancerly expression of moving to music,
Possokhov works well with the group sections, creates delightful designs and in the solos,
some wonderful opportunities for dancing.
Sets and costumes, by Sandra Woodall, featured flimsy, paper-thin tutus
for the women, black tank suits for men, and a black and white, piano-key backdrop
upstage, which peeled away to reveal mirrored sections and the possibilities for infinity.
The delicious lighting by David Finn played up the eye-popping effect a bunch of
red-tutu’d dancers can create, when suddenly dancing onto a stage full of white and
black.
The Symphony features four movements, and Possokhov, like Helgi
Tomasson, Possokohov’s boss, clearly enjoys choreographing for men. The Third
Movement is an all-male affair, lead by Nicolas Blanc. San Francisco has riches in
danseurs, riches and talent, and the across-the-board excellence from the twelve men
holding the stage for Blanc was impressive. Possokhov has a real knack for creating
kinesthetically satisfying movement, fleeting perfect moments and athleticism always
moving towards release, ease, not more steps. The Russian is talented, he is playful and
open, he clearly loves the creative process, and he comes up with enjoyably crafted works.
In Reflections, as in the Balanchine curtain-opener, Square
Dance, the chorus looked absolutely top-notch. The premiere featured a cast of 35,
and there was not a missed placement, jump, turn or finish. The one misstep in the piece
was Muriel Maffre’s casting, or at least the choreography for her in the Second Act
pas de deux with Damian Smith. The movement is either designed to be ungainly, or Maffre
has determined to perform it that way, which is not the usual case with this dancer.
Without a narrative clue, one can only blame the dancer, Maffre kept throwing herself into
the steps, almost literally while everything else about this piece has more finesse. It is
true, the leading female in Cries and Whispers does die, but making a ballerina
look bad is not a sound decision when there is no other expression of the narrative
circumstances to which Possokhov may be alluding. And the relationship with Smith was not
really a relationship, more a cool, classical partnership, all business.
Lorena Feijoo was meant to be a red tutu in the First Movement, just as
Kirstin Long looked right in white. Although there are multiple casts, it is a pleasure to
see Possokhov respond to and explore personalities here. The form may be classical, but
like the best of Balanchine, it is clearly a relationship between each dancer and the
choreographer that drives much of the invention, at least in the leading roles.
Square Dance (1957), was stripped of its Americana touches
during Balanchine’s lifetime, in order to discover the purely classical dance
underneath, which, along with the Vivaldi/Corelli score, had always seemed like a joke.
The dance that is left behind is vintage Balanchine, but the faultless feet and soft and
quick facility of the San Francisco dancers made the piece seem fresh and new. Vanessa
Zahorian and Gonzalo Garcia are required to pay their dues in several fiendishly difficult
passages. The piece is more petite than grand allegro, thus calling for nimble rather than
dramatic dancers. Still, Garcia had something round-around-the-edges about his phrasing
that almost brought to mind boots, jeans and scratchy fiddles. Less deliberate, perhaps,
were the scratchy violins, having an off night down in the pit. Gary Sheldon conducted.
Gross Fuge, seen last season, is Hans van Manen’s very
European, modern dancey battle or exploration of the sexes, composed originally for the
Nederlands Dans Theatre in 1971. Van Manen, a widely-presented choreographer on the
continent, has been less commonly represented here, but San Francisco Ballet artistic
director Tomasson, has ideas to change that. As seen here, Van Manen avoids the austere,
abstract, Cunninghammy aspects of modern dance and sticks to the musical visualization
basics. The music is Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge Op 133,
a string quartet, and, particularly in the Alpha men (in skirts) opening it could have
been a Bach organ prelude.
Although the piece seems dated with its 1970’s sexual mores, and
the groin kissing and skirt swinging, the stripping and belt swinging were almost funny,
there is still a lot of interesting dancing. Moises Martin lead the quartet of men and
danced with near abandon, while among the women, three lesser lights of the company were
unable to outshine Lorena Feijoo, who overacts and seems egotistically unable to fit into
an ensemble. Too bad--she can sure dance.
March 12, 2005 – Michael Wade Simpson
