“Nutcracker”
San Francisco Ballet
War Memorial House,
San Francisco, CA
December 19, 2009
by Rita Felciano
copyright © Rita Felciano, 2009
No ballet affords the opportunity of multiple viewings the
way “The Nutcracker” does. Every year large companies, as is San Francisco
Ballet, schedule so many performances that it is possible to encounter “new”
casting even from familiar dancers. Half way through SFB’s current three week
run of Helgi Tomasson’s 2004
version, I had never seen Yuri Possokhov’s Drosselmeyer nor Nutnaree
Pipit-Suksun’s Arabian. The really new casting, however, came with a guest
appearance as the Nutcracker Prince by former PNB Principal Casey Herd, who
last year joined the Dutch National Ballet.
At six foot two, a handsome face and dark curls, Casey has an
all-American good look. The first thing he did after Drosselmeyer removed the
Nutcracker mask, was to adjust his locks much the way a gangly teenager might. Somewhat
big boned, he is a technically decent though not a particularly refined dancer.
Partnering in the Grand Pas de Deux’s lifts and dives was secure and
solicitous, and you could see the formidable Sofiane Sylve relax into his
support. He has nice elevation and threw his cabrioles and jete turns off as if
they were a something you did before lunch. A couple of finishes, however,
could have been cleaner. Sylve was as gorgeously restrained and yet fully
engaged as I have yet seen her. Her piques picked like needle pricks; a ruler
had measured her chainés yet throughout her phrasing flowed so musically that
you were convinced that it was she who played the celesta. Curiously, these two
very different dancers seemed to have an easy rapport with each other.
One of the evening’s most pleasant surprises came with former Principal and now Choreographer
in Residence Possokhov’s large scale yet warm Drosselmeyer. The calmness about him portrayed distance as
if he knew what his part here was, and he was glad to play it. The greeting to
the family was generous enough to encompass the last row in the balcony yet his
close attention to the obstreperous Fritz (Roscoe Bernard), who in Tomasson
version wears glasses, was genuinely affectionate. In the interaction with
Clara (a charmingly open Elise Gillum), this Drosselmayer saw her very much as
what she was going to be.
The delightful Pipit-Suksun is petite for Arabian; in the
arms of Brett Bauer and Anthony Spaulding she looked like a doll. But the languor
that flowed through her spine and out through her arms, combined with a slight
smile, told us that she had secrets that she wasn’t about to reveal here.
As memories of Lew Christensen’s beloved “Nutcracker” begin
to fade, Tomasson elegant but cool interpretation, set in a Victorian home at
the time of the 1915 Pan-Pacific worlds’ fair, is beginning to take its place in
my heart though some of it still feels a little chilly, a reminder perhaps that
Victorian homes were notoriously difficult to heat. Michael Yeargan (Scenic
Design) and Martin Pakledinaz (Costume Design) are upper middle class grand:
Grand gowns, grand staircase, grand transformation. This year the charmingly
choreographed children’s dance looked a little rougher than probably intended,
and Quinn Wharton’s King of the Mice just barely made it into his grave.
I am still ambivalent about the Second Act’s spare set which
suggests the inside of the kind of crystal palace or plant observatory that had
become possible with the advent of bent glass. It’s a very empty place that
sometimes just looks too barren. The transparency of James F. Ingalls’s subtly
changing lighting design, however, is magnificent in the way it sets off and
embraces the dancers.
Lorena Feijoo’s Sugar Plum Fairy was kind with just a touch
of motherliness to the way she organized her charges. Tomasson’s choreography
for the various flora and fauna recalled the pastel greetings cards of the time
and served as lovely complement to his other prominent use of a pictorial
representation, photography. At the end of the Dance of the Snowflakes, they
pose for a photo op.
Tomasson’s French variation (Elana Altman, Mariellen Olson,
Jennifer) of tiptoeing (bathing?) beauties doing an approximation of a ribbon
dance still looks bland. That section often does, perhaps it’s in the music.
Matthew Stewart Chinese and James Sofranko Russian (with Diego Cruz and
Benjamin Stewart) were dispatched with both charm and vigor.
As for the two ensemble numbers, here called the Snowflakes
and Waltzing Flowers, they have to yet to erase the memory of Christensen’s
warmer, more expansive version. Waltzing, in particular, looks transparent to
the point of thinness. The floppy petal costumes don’t help. Perhaps they’ll
grow some more by next year.
