San Francisco Ballet
Program VIII
“Fusion,” “Russian Seasons,” Double Evil”
War Memorial Opera House
San Francisco, CA
April 28, 2009
by Rita Felciano
copyright © Rita Felciano, 2009
Three well-performed works, which attempted to house contradictory elements under one roof, closed this year’s San Francisco Ballet Season. Not surprisingly, these essays in co-habitation yielded different perspectives. The three ballets also made up the most contemporary SFB repertory program in quite some time. Yuri Possokhov’s “Fusion” and Jorma Elo’s “Double Evil” were part of last year’s 75th Anniversary New Works commissions; Alexei Ratmansky choreographed “Russian Seasons” for New York City Ballet’s 2006 Diamond Project. Interestingly, all three choreographers also worked with music drawn from disparate sources.
Possokhov’s “Fusion” looked almost like a new ballet. Last year’s viewing seemed to suggest differences between two groups of dancers: white-skirted vaguely Dervish-like young men in unisons and older more individualized men and women sheathed in richly hued unitards. Clearly this was a ballet about East meets West, experience encounters youth or difference and is rejuvenated by it. While these elements are still in evidence, this year’s performance suggested more interlacing of dissimilarities right from the beginning. So when the second group of men finish the ballet by executing the chest isolations, with which the males in white had started out, those moves didn’t look quite as much a point that had to be hammered in.
One thing is certain; "Fusion" looks better than last year. (A friend suggested one reason: the company performed it so frequently on tour that by now the dancers have made it their own). The two types of music, by the post-modernist with a pop flair Graham Fitkin and by Indian composer with Bollywood connections Rahui Dev Burman (as arranged by Osvaldo Golijov) also sounded less disjointed.
“Fusion” showcased Possokhov’s increasing fluidity in holding extended sequences together. There was an appealingly jazzy ease to this performance in which women soared like rockets, and their jetés cleaved space like arrows. A vibrant sense of aliveness was suggested by the way dancers seamlessly picked up phrases from each other or duets split into leaps for the men and skips for the women. Garen Scribner with Maria Kotchekova and Lorena Feijoo with Hansuke Yamamoto looked particularly good in their partnering.
But the choreographer also unearthed a darker side of community, most prominently in the extended pas de deux for Yuan Yuan Tan. But it started at the ballet's beginning when dancers emerged from the velvety darkness upstage only to be sucked into it again. Possokhov, like few other choreographers, finds depth and complexity in Tan whose gorgeous lines and formidable technique sometimes tend to overshadow her ability to suggest emotional complexity. When the increasingly used Martyn Garside, one of the Dervish figures, held her up by her hands, she dropped like a rock into a grand plié and shot out one of her legs from underneath. As partnered by an almost painfully solicitous Damian Smith, Tan’s performance convinced us of the pain, anguish and sheer frustration in trying to find a way to live. At one moment she could drag herself along the floor, curl into a fetal position and then throw herself through a phalanx of “gate keepers” who promptly spat her back. In the air her unfolding and snapping limbs looked like so many screams. Finally Smith carried her out like a corpse.
Ratmansky’s “Russian Seasons” is a delight. Both evocative of dream states —his dancers sail through the air as if passing constellations—and grounded in hardscrabble reality, the work bows to folk dance traditions. Yet those are so thoroughly absorbed into Ratmansky’s ballet idiom that they serve but as a perfume.
“Russian’s” twelve parts are supposed to portray the life of the Russian peasantry as seen through the seasons and the liturgical calendar of the Russian Orthodox Church. But much of what you learn of the loves and pains of these people is filtered through the lens of a picture book. Ratmansky has said that he wanted the tone to be one of children’s books. That’s exactly what he did, and he did it splendidly.
But, of course, that’s not all of it. From beneath these bobbing, flitting, busybody storybook characters, Ratmansky’ reveals the emotional truths that are buried in myth and folk tales. He gives us the charm of the picturesque in addition to the real ups and downs of life. Juggling or sliding deftly between the two perspectives gives this ballet much of its charm A quartet of arm-swinging big-striding women seem to be both supporting the distraught Sofiane Sylvane but also express their impatience with her almost melodramatic outbursts. When Lorena Feijoo sneaks into the relationship between Sylve and Pierre-François Vilanoba, is she a comical troublemaker or, Iago-like, dripping serious doubts between the two? Maria Kotchekova in her delicious solo of pointe work is both a cute doll and an unbearable showoff. Sometimes Ratmansky gets a little bit carried away with hook-them-in theatrics, and clichés do lurk at the edges, but those moments are few.
The choreographer made excellent use of Leonid Desyatnikov’s wonderfully nuanced score which intersperses instrumental with vocal passages. Beautifully performed by Susana Poretsky, having the lyrics would have been welcome. David Briskin ably conducted. The color-coded costumes—one for each of the six couples—by Galina Solovyeva took some getting used to, but they work.
The return of Jorma Elo’s “Double Evil” made one hope that this was the last time. With excerpts of scores by Philip Glass (Concerto Fantasy for Two Timpanists and Orchestra) and Vladimir Martinov (“Come In”), which seem to have been chosen for their lack of intrinsic merit and incompatibility, the work perhaps was meant as an unpleasant comment on what contemporary choreographers are facing. He or she seems to have two choices. It's tutu-clad pas de deux’s in which the ballerina is primarily turned upside down to reveal the tutu’s stiff underpinnings, and dancers desperately struggle to execute the ballet vocabulary “correctly.” Or choreographers must create even more adrenaline-pumped wysiwyg athletics than can currently be admired on the tube's dance crazes. It’s possible that Elo meant this ballet as a comedy of manners. If so, the humor escaped me. If these either/or choices are the double evil of the title, it’s too bad Elo didn’t see the other works on this program. At least the dancers seemed to have a good time, as did most of the audience.
San Francisco Ballet in Ratmansky's Russian Seasons.
© Erik Tomasson
