San Francisco Ballet in Tomasson's On a Theme of Paganini. Photo by Erik Tomasson.
It has always been a mystery to me why more choreographers have not availed themselves of Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. The piece, deemed the composer’s most integrated essay in the piano and orchestra format, possesses virtues that should appeal to dance makers of all stripes. It boasts a clearly defined, rigorous theme and variation structure and kinetic appeal and it revels in the composer’s brooding Slavic romanticism.
The piece has not been entirely ignored, I can recall Frederick Ashton’s Rhapsody, a late career gift to Mikhail Baryshnikov guesting with the Royal Ballet and the Bay Area choreographer Mark Foehringer used this music for a jokey English country house murder mystery, totally ignoring its perfumed lyricism. Now, the San Francisco Ballet’s artistic director Helgi Tomasson has taken his own turn with the score; On a Theme of Paganini is the centerpiece of the company’s fifth subscription program of the season. It opened over the weekend at the War Memorial Opera House.
Tomasson is working here on an expansive scale we haven’t seen from him in a while. This is no chamber essay, the piece calls for five principals, six demi-soloists and a mixed corps of 12. That adds up to 23 bodies. It’s a pleasure to see so many dancers on stage again (Tomasson has limited the number of performers the choreographers of the upcoming New Works Festival can use), and the new ballet seems to capitalize on his principals’ personalities, but, as seen on Sunday afternoon (March 9), On a Theme of Paganini looks like well-bred, respectable house choreography that, despite some inventive moments, fails to attain distinction. Perhaps, those 24 fleeting variations on Paganini’s violin caprice are too episodic, too volatile in tone to be reflected adequately in movement. This music, after all, may constrict as much as it inspires.
In Tomasson’s work, the ballerinas, Maria Kochetkova and Vanessa Zahorian, etch the theme in mirror formation, and Tomasson derives a modicum of tension from the contrast between Zahorian’s brilliant attacks and Kochetkova’s softer, more rubato-laden manner. The florid arms look like a thematic image. A duality emerges: Zahorian is hoisted and manipulated by Joan Boada and Pascal Molat in a bravura trio. Kochetkova meets a gentler fate in the hands of Davit Karapetyan, who lifts her softly, rocks in place, cradles her in his arms and kisses her sweetly during the familiar 18th variation, all the more enjoyable for its air of predictability.
This duality, the sacred and profane, if you will, is a recurring theme in Tomasson’s dances, but he has explored these contrasts more fully in earlier ballets. Instead, the choreography in On a Theme of Paganini goes conventional, just when you want it to be up-front and personal. The corps and demis, first seen in silhouette, leap across the stage and spin in place without ever establishing a relationship with the principals or looking like an organic part of this ballet.
Still, the dancing Sunday was predictably focused and grand, and even, in the Kochetkova-Karapetyan exchange, quietly affecting. Martin Pakledinaz’s costumes, recycled from Tomasson’s 1998 Silver Ladders, served well. Roy Bogas played the Rachmaninov with his customary aplomb. Martin West conducted.
The remainder of the program, which will next be repeated Wednesday at 7:30 p.m., consists of revivals from 2007, and they’re all winners. Dores Andre was the Julie and Boada the Billy Bigelow figure in Christopher Wheeldon’s 2002 Carousel (A Dance), set to Richard Rodgers’ eternally lovable score, and their youthful ardor raised the temperature. No doubt about it: Andre, a corps dancer from Spain is enjoying a banner season.
If Wheeldon traces the eruption of first love so tellingly in Carousel (A Dance), he probes a more complex relationship with sculptural mastery in the pas de deux from the 2005 After the Rain. Arvo Pärt’s austere piano-violin score (rendered by Roy Malan and Michael McGraw) delivers us to a landscape where the unpredictable is commonplace, and, again Sunday, Yuan Yuan Tan and Damian Smith were the magnificent guides to a place where shape-shifting lifts and supports seem infused with an almost moral force. I doubt if we will see anything more jaw-dropping or logical than the final moments of this duet.
Yuan Yuan Tan and Damian Smith in Christopher Wheeldon's After the Rain. Photo by Erik Tomasson.
Sunday’s audience proved wonderfully receptive to the multimedia onslaught of Wayne McGregor’s bracing, provocative Eden/Eden. "Technology is the continuation of evolution," exclaims one of the embedded voices in Steve Reich’s Dolly, which has inspired the British choreographer to deliver a meditation on the ethics of cloning. The piece does chatter on a bit, but McGregor is offering what the French would call "un recherche," as he posits a world predicated on replication. The questions he raises, principally on the whether socialization can ignite a mortal spark in robots, may be too much for any single ballet to encompass.
But, there’s great daring and intelligence to Eden/Eden, a sort of choreographed Blade Runner and the partially new cast made a scorching argument for the piece. Tan and Tiit Helimets have not completely effaced memories of predecessors Muriel Maffre and Gonzalo Garcia, but their dancing and that of their colleagues (who include Katita Waldo, Jaime Garcia Castilla, Anthony Spaulding and the apparently inexhaustible Molat) was never less than sensational in the choreography which owes something, but not everything to William Forsythe. Gary Sheldon conducted the instrumental and vocal ensemble in the Reich.
Eden/Eden will probably disappear from the repertoire after this run, which concludes March 18. See it. There’s no better conversation piece in the SFB repertoire right now.
For San Francisco Ballet tickets, visit www.sfballet.org or call (415) 865-2000.
