Still Looking Beyond Seventy-Five

San Francisco Ballet
“New Works Festival,” Part Two
April 22-May 6, 2008
War Memorial Opera House
San Francisco, California
by Rita Felciano

copyright © Rita Felciano, 2008

Given the task to create a piece for San Francisco Ballet’s New Works Festival, the culmination of the company’s 75th anniversary season, Val Caniparoli, Jorma Elo, Stanton Welch and Christopher Wheeldon chose to work with the pas de deux as their basic unit. No surprise here, given the role that the pas de deux has played in Classical Ballet. Audiences love them because they showcase dancers individually and suggest natural climaxes. Besides, everyone understands the difference between xx and xy. The drama is built in.

But only Caniparoli used the occasion to open up new perspectives on SFB dancers. His, perhaps Tudor-inspired, “Ibsen’s House” focused on the suffocating relationships in five of the playwright’s period dramas. The choreography is too limited to more than sketch the protagonists but Caniparoli’s sweep suggests something of Ibsen’s gloomy vision. The work was set to an excellent musical choice, Dvorak’s intimate but sugary Piano Quintet in A Major.

Sandra Woodall’s beautifully appropriate costumes had the men in gray frock coats and narrow pants, the women in voluminous ankle-length skirts and tight bodices. This was dance costume design at its best, allowing for the dancers to move freely while enhancing thematic intent.

“Ibsen’s” was strongest in the first half in which Caniparoli introduced characters through movement and limited but incisive gestures. He is an expert at creating airily swooping and flowing pas de deux's but in this case they did not build on the expressive potential of those initial portraits. The ballet eventually lost its thrust. In one part, in particular, the women momentarily returned—maybe in a moment of hesitancy, maybe as a memory—but the section looked undermotivated.

While Caniparoli focused on the women, two of the men--the down struck John Rosmer (Anthony Spaulding) of “Rosmersholm” and Tiit Helimets’ desperate Torvald Helmer in “A Doll’s House”—were given some meaty choreography.

Lorena Feijoo’s Hedda Gabler’s frozen heat SFB’s fiery spilled hate in every backward skip and peremptorily thrown arm. Towards the end she even allowed herself the smallest of a smirk to penetrate the mask. Young Dana Genshaft gave that stiff-necked general of a mother, Mrs. Alving (“Ghosts), an almost incestuous hunger for passion. The tenderness in the relationship between Courtney Elizabeth’s Ellida (“Lady of the Sea”) and Pierre-François Vilanoba as her former fiancé, was the only one which  implied tragedy in the classic sense. Nicole Grand partnered Spaulding in “Rosmersholm.”

“Ibsen’s” finest performance came in Molly Smolen’s portrayal of Nora. Smolen, who joined the company in 2006 as a Principal, so far has not made much of an impression in the roles I have seen her dance at SFB. But she looks like she might grow into a fine interpreter of Tudor. I could practically see her as Hagar. Nervous like a scared rabbit, she listened to the critical voice inside her as she straightened out that skirt one more time. As her husband, Helimets, usually cast in Prince roles, also revealed a weighty dramatic potential.

Christopher Wheeldon created his “Within the Golden Hour” on the easy pitter-patter of selections by Italian composer Ezio Bosso and some Vivaldi. It’s a likeably enough work for three principals and a corps of eight. Wheeldon used the talents of these conventionally cast dancers for distinct pas de deux's with particular emphasis on a rich panoply of lifts. Ensemble sections provided an airy context, among them a chugging tug of war with a nicely blurred focus. Still I was left uneasy by the almost slick ease with which Wheeldon used his impressively polymorphous language.

The opening mirroring duet for Rory Hohenstein and Jaime Garcia Castilla seemed like an announcement of what we were about to see: pas de deux’s though not in the way we might have seen them before. And indeed, each of had its own flavor whether companionable, mysteriously sensual or elegantly formal.

Witty and insouciant Damian Smith swooped and swirled Katita Waldo into spidery overhead extensions only to send her with considerable aplomb into skating slides. A waltz, picked up by the corps, had a skippy swing to it. Waldo looked perfectly at home with one foot pointed, the other one flexed.

Vilanoba partnered Sarah Van Patten, who danced lusciously throughout the Festival, in a languorous duet. Initially he seemed to restrain her as some invisible force threatened to pull her away but then she settled into his embraces. On the floor, he gently stepped over, rolling her like a rug. Somehow theirs seemed an egalitarian give and take even when she allowed herself to be carried sitting on his outstretched arms. But if and how this pas de deux bore a relationship to the Scotch-sounding music, I wasn’t able to tell.

Petite and pristine Maria Kochetkova and Joan Boada approached each other from the opposite end of a diagonal, she sinking odalisque-like into his embrace. This was a duet of soft, molten lifts even if the ballerina ended on her partner’s back and her tiny beats came from unexpected directions.

Except for the fact that Holly Hynes dressed both men and women in flesh-colored tights and tutus, Stanton Welch’s “Naked” is oddly named. Set to Poulenc’s popular Concerto in D minor for Two Pianos, Welch choreographed it for two main and three subsidiary couples. It’s a solid, workman-like, piece of work that almost slavishly sticks to the surface of Poulenc’s score.

“Naked” has to be enjoyed for the quality of what these dancers do well. In the fast passages, Kristin Long’s running bourrées rolled like marbles down a hill; Pascal Molat’s blindingly feathery beats blurred the eye. We have seen them do those moves dozens of times; they are still a thrill to watch. More gratifying, however, was to see how they infused pedestrian material with a genuine allegro spirit.

More lyrical encounters for Frances Chung and Brett Bauer, an increasingly confident partner, alternated with Long and Molat. Their slow turns dissolving into a penchée for her were beautifully timed, and he brought her down from an overhead lift into a perfectly rolled spiral descent. This was a pas de deux of soft floats and deep dives but also of playful crouching togetherness.

The Concerto’s famous center movement featured Yuan Yuan Tan and Ruben Martín. He doesn’t seem to be that much at ease in classical work; maybe elegance cannot be learned. But Tan’s way of taking phrases beyond where in reality they really can go that is getting richer by the season. As her dancing has become softer it also has become airier. Here she looked regal even when precariously perched on her partner’s hip. From a shoulder lift, she calmly unfolded a leg as if an eagle’s wing. It seemed like the most natural thing to do.

Maybe the title of Elo’s “Double Evil” referred to the rather mediocre music, Philip Glass’ Concerto Fantasy for Two Timpanist and Orchestra and Vladmir Martinov’s “Come In.” The latter is not half-bad, but the Glass is more than forgettable.

Set on four couples, (Elana Altman/Vilanoba, Van Patten/ Hohenstein, Molat/Vanessa Zahorian, Pauli Magiereck/Castilla)  “Double Evil” –to the Martinov—started out promisingly. Stiff, angular encounters looked like an inquiry into the mechanics of motion. Encounters went stop and go as if controlled by switches. A woman got pushed up onto pointe. A man simply walked away from a partner. Hohenstein nuzzled up to a stiff-legged Van Patten like a curious puppy. Plopped on the ground he kicked her leg. Later something like a side-to-side scissor jump came out of nowhere. All of this material had potential but Elo apparently changed his mind.

With the advent of the raucous Glass, the dancers broke into the kind shrill athletic encounters, realized at top speed that encourage thrill-seeking balletomanes into ecstasy. But these dancers looked ever so joyless. Hohenstein, in the end, was showered with flowers. It was, apparently, his last performance with San Francisco Ballet.

Photos by Erik Tomasson
Photo No. 1 Molly Smolen and Tiit Helimets in Caniparoli’s “Ibsen’s House”
Photo No. 2 SFB dancers in Wheeldon’s “Within the Golden Hour”
Photo No. 3 Kristin Long and Pascal Molat in Welch’s “Naked”
Photo No. 4 Pauli Magiereck and Rory Hohenstein in Elo’s “Double Evil”