Robbins Nest
San Francisco Ballet
Jerome Robbins’ Fancy Free, In the Night, West Side Story Suite War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco CA
March 7, 2008
Lorena Feijoo and Damian Smith in Jerome Robbins In The Night. Photo by Erik Tomasson.
No, crowdpleaser was not Jerome Robbins’ middle name. But no American choreographer before or after so effortlessly and tellingly fused the strains of high art and popular entertainment that seem to define our native tradition. The thought intermittently occurred to me Thursday (March 6), as those modern day Capulets and Montagues, the Jets and the Sharks, rumbled, tangled, loved, dreamed and died on the stage of the War Memorial Opera House. The San Francisco Ballet has added handsomely to its impressive collection of Robbins’ dances. The company’s acquisition of West Side Story Suite was a logical step, and the crew made a splendid case for this choreographed précis of the classic, trailblazing 1957 Broadway collaboration with Leonard Bernstein.
This company premiere, complemented by revivals of Fancy Free (1944) and In the Night (1970), adds up to a tribute to the late choreographer on his 90th birthday, a mini-celebration preceding the extensive festivities planned later this spring at New York City Ballet, where Robbins served for so many years as associate artistic director. The SFB trio of dances, which continues through March 20 as Program 4 of the 2008 repertory season, may not tell the whole Robbins story, but what it does tell is eminently revealing.
The choreographer’s passion for illustrating character through gestural detail was there in his very first ballet. The trio of World War II sailors on shore leave in Fancy Free may be the grandparents of those gang denizens in West Side Story, but they share a distinctive patrimony. And it is not far-fetched to find the same parentage in the three contrasting couples who energize the emotional narrative of the Chopin essay, In the Night. "Abstract," was as meaningless for Robbins as it was for his mentor George Balanchine.
West Side Story Suite (staged here by Jean-Pierre Frohlich and Jenifer Ringer) is Robbins’ 1995 rearrangement for NYC Ballet of seven episodes from the show. The choreographer had originally cobbled the piece together in 1989 for the Jerome Robbins’ Broadway revue. A half-century after its creation, the dances still make your hair stand up on end, and, in West Side Story’s current guise, we are spared the project’s most dated aspect, Arthur Laurents’ lachrymose book.
Robbins (and his assistant Peter Gennaro) fuse down and dirty jazz moves with the ballet language in the "Prologue." They import Latin popular modes in the "Dance at the Gym" and "America," while finding a lyrical solution to the concluding, Elysian Fields-like "Somewhere" ballet, a much more satisfying dénouement than the ham-handed dialogue of Laurents’ original. The gang numbers retain their momentum (has any choreographer ever culled so much excitement from three men slinking across the stage in unison?) and for all the naivete and studied informality of the finality, its sincerity is never in doubt. Here, you feel, was the genesis of Robbins’ masterwork, Dances at a Gathering.
For the first time this season, West Side Story Suite has offered the opportunity to the SFB corps to play something other than German peasants and the gang members and their gals seem energized Thursday. The suite doesn’t do everything that the show accomplishes. Maria, the Juliet figure, is a subsidiary character here, although Dores Andre brought charm and modesty to her initial meeting with Tony, the Romeo character, delivered appealingly by Garrett Anderson. Pierre-François Vilanoba invested Bernardo (Tybalt) with brooding intensity; Shannon Roberts was all fire and spice as Anita. Rory Hohenstein’s Riff (Mercutio) had all the moves but seemed theatrically underpowered.
San Francisco Ballet in Jerome Robbins West Side Story Suite. Photo by Erik Tomasson.
SFB and its hired publicity agency have made far too much of the fact that some of these dancers must sing during West Side Story Suite. In truth, the vocalism was always earnest, consistently tentative, small-scaled, not always in tune and miked for dear life. The pleasantly reedy tenor of Matthew Stewart’s "Something’s Coming" was the best of it; but, to be charitable, no one here should consider a career change.
It will probably take a week or so for West Side Story Suite to settle in. One sensed in the corps an aura of caution, a slavish adherence to the beat in the Prologue, a reminder, after all, that these remarkable performers are, after all, ballet dancers, not Broadway gypsies. Still, is there any other choreographer who can so blithely span the two worlds?
Martin West conducted the Bernstein score with more vigor than insinuation. Oliver Smith’s iconic 1957 décor, fire escapes and all, looked evocative in Jennifer Tipton’s lighting scheme.
Thursday evening was notable for another reason. It marked the first appearance this season of principal dancer Lorena Feijoo, who invested the third and most turbulent duet of In the Night with the passionate attack one expects of this fiery artist. She has been missed. In his role debut, partner Damian Smith was, as always, a model of empathy.
The other couples quickly found and sustained the unerring tone of the ballet. Yuan Yuan Tan and Ruben Martin (role debut) brought a courtly aura to the skimming romantic lifts of the first section. Tiit Helimets (who is not flattered by Anthony Dowell’s copper-toned Cossack costumes) ably squired Elana Altman (an impressive role debut) in the folk-inflected middle section, during which an upside down lift comes out of nowhere and yet seems so emotionally right.
In the Night, which is set to four Chopin nocturnes, seems a pendant (an Anhang, as the Germans would have it) to Dances at a Gathering. Perhaps, we should think of Dances as the "prequel" to the later work. Roy Bogas was the commanding pianist Thursday.
SFB’s Fancy Free has settled in since its company debut last season. The familiar cast, especially Pascal Molat’s buoyant gob, now more smoothly integrates steps with characterization. Anderson’s "audition" solo has an appealing awkwardness, while Davit Karapetyan has aced the rumba. The women, Vanessa Zahorian, Erin McNulty and Mariellen Olson, reprised last season’s assignments with distinction.
Although this Robbins tribute is eminently successful, let it be noted that nothing on the program matches the choreographic wonders or depth of feeling of Dances at a Gathering, which artistic director Helgi Tomasson inexplicably shelved after two seasons. I hope we will see the work here again long before the Robbins centennial.
Program 4 of the SFB season will next be performed Saturday at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. For tickets, call (415) 865-2000.
