"Tears," "From Foreign Lands," "Borderlands"
San Francisco Ballet
Program 2
War Memorial Opera House
San Francisco, CA
March 1, 2014
by Rita Felciano
copyright © 2014 by Rita Felciano
Despite a few hiccups in the last performance of program two, the beautifully balanced triple bill satisfied a hunger for good choreography well performed, challenging the hearts and minds of viewers as well as the dancers. With one world premiere and two reprises from last season's new repertoire, the evening proved to be a most pleasant illustration of how varied contemporary perspectives on this much beloved old art can be.
Caniparoli has said that the music reminded him of water, and the way water connects everything. Starting indeed with water sounds that evolved into slowly shifting but shimmering sonorities on top of which Reich put more dramatic instrumental passages, there was an inevitability to the sound for which water seemed an appropriate description. His choreography sailed on top of this music with individuality and on its own terms, maintaining a constant flow with three duets that made me think of Robbins' "In the Night." "Tears" was beautifully cast and excellently realized.
The way Sandra Woodall dressed the three couples identically -- watery blue for the women and suit jackets, which they eventually took off, and pants for the men -- suggested three stages in a relationship. Lorena Feijoo, still the company's most dramatic dancer, performed at the top of her expressive abilities, giving into weight and throwing herself full force against partner Vitor Luiz, simultaneously escaping and attacking him. Being lifted spreade-eagled, she was all anguish and despair. If there were tears, that's where they came in.
Fair-headed Sasha De Sola and Tiit Helimets, and of similar cool temperament, connected through elaborate lifts and smooth skating moves. Theirs seemed a more egalitarian relationship with De Sola a willing partner to the athleticism of these encounters. Duet work is something that Caniparoli has always been interested and to some extent excelled in. The last couple, a very young, fine-boned Ellen Rose Hummel with Daniel Deivison-Oliveira, could have been the beginning of a relationship, almost a kind of whirlwind romance that presaged the future and left both of them exhilarated but exhausted.
My one reservation concerns the use of the male quartet (Gaetano Amico, Sean Orza, Benjamin Stewart and Myles Thatcher) whose only purpose seemed to provide continuity. Well danced with unisons that broke up into individual expressions -- including a fine solo for Stewart -- and a lot of crawling around, their presence did not make a lot of sense. My theater companion suggested that they were there to give the soloists a break. Maybe, but that's not good enough.
Alexei Ratmansky's "From Foreign Lands" charmed with such solid underpinning while Wayne McGregor's "Borderlands" was a fierce examination of the dancer as human and as machine. Both yielded new insights and concomitant pleasures.
Ratmansky's intricate choreography, to which the dancers responded with ease and alacrity, gave life to Moritz Moszkowski's delightful, folklorically colored salon pieces. The Italian Tarantella and the Spanish bullfight showcased Pascal Molat's ability to infuse intricate footwork with pristine purity -- yet offered to us with such ease. I wish Davit Karapetyan and Gennadi Nedvigin, both them masters of line and containment, could be featured together somewhere in the future. But the heart of this "Lands" beat most strongly in the wistful German variation where all the frolicking slowed down when Sofiane Sylve, calmly, kindly but also a little removed, took the measure of her attentive suitors, Luke Ingham, Myles Thatcher and the handsomely partnering Shane Wuerthner.
The mechanics of "Borderlands" with its super athleticism of stretched out lines, extreme angles and broken connections, took a back seat to the conflicts underneath that incessant drive. The border didn't seem as much in the murky area where Josef Albers colors meet each other then in the tensions of seeing man as both autonomous and as driven. In their light blue, barely-there outfits, the dancers looked like a community in action, but also like pop-up silhouettes against a band of darkness. Tiny Maria Kotchekova looked as if nothing and nobody could stop her; she was mesmerizing. But then there was Sylve quietly looking out into the audience; Molat collapsed on the floor resurrecting himself and Jaime Garcia Castilla challenging his ability to partner like never before. "Borderlands" is a valuable addition to SFB's repertoire.