San Francisco Ballet in Mark Morris's Joy Ride. Photo by Erik Tomasson.
During the second program of the San Francisco Ballet’s New Works Festival Wednesday evening (April 23) at the War Memorial Opera House, you needed to remind yourself of two things: The dances on show (four in this Program B) are not in competition with each other and we were never promised innovation. We weren’t promised a lot of tutus, either, but we got them, nevertheless. We got Holly Hines's crisp tutus in Stanton Welch's pallid Naked and we got James Searle's bedraggled tutus in James Kudelka’s bizarre The Ruins Proclaim The Building Was Beautiful, a premiere from the noted Canadian choreographer that adds up to 30-plus minutes of gnawing anticipation.
Julia Adam clothed her dancers in Christine Darch's gleaming whites. The costuming award, however, goes to Isaac Mizrahi, whose shiny gold, silver and pewter body tights, with digital LED counters suspended from the neck, devised for Mark Morris's Joyride, may set a fashion trend. All in all, the evening, long but varied, added up to an old friends reunion: these four choreographers have all contributed significantly to SFB's identity over the past two decades and the wealth of approaches to movement here are downright staggering.
Still, I would suggest that the stress inherent in mounting 10 premieres in 48 hours is beginning to show. Even with composer John Adams on hand to conduct his wondrously demanding "Son of Chamber Symphony," Joyride found the eight terrific dancers hovering on the precipice. Morris hasn’t often worked with music with this kind of speed and awesome metrical variety (the co-commissioned piece was premiered Nov. 30 at Stanford by Alarm Will Sound), and he has responded with a kind of visceral energy that finds bodies slicing their way through stage space with an abandon that proves disarming.
The supine dancers at the start are deceptive; the 20 minutes that follow allow little respite. Lifts are treacherous (my admiration for James Sofranko’s hoisting of Elizabeth Miner on the run is total). Episodes of kick boxing leaven the dancing; daring extensions and realignments of stage space prevail. The other performers (Dana Genshaft, Rory Hohenstein, Pascal Molat, Gennadi Nedvigin, fiery Jennifer Stahl, Sarah Van Patten) dazzle us with articulation at high speed.
Morris, however, hasn’t quite captured the vein of sensuous lyricism that runs through the second movement of the Adams score. The not-quite duets, with arms reaching around to envelope partners, seem a temporary solution, and Joyride needs a still point somewhere for contrast. But this is a difficult score for any orchestra to master; Adams, who will also conduct the second performance Saturday at 2 p.m., may yet impose an order that will permit us to see more clearly the structure and design behind the choreography. The Ballet Orchestra was not having a comfortable time Wednesday.
Kudelka’s offering for the New Works Festival is an essay steeped in foreboding. Ten corps women flow from the wings onto the stage, their mussed tutus and hairstyles recalling the transported doxies from Kenneth MacMillan’s Manon. The women, who seem to float and bob in space and weren’t in such hot shape to begin with, are psychologically and physically ravaged by three men (Pierre-François Vilanoba, Aaron Orza, Martyn Garside), all wearing 19th century long coats and grotesquely wigged and made up so that their jaws seem wired shut. They turn their attention to menacing two other women (Elana Altman, Frances Chung). At the end, Vilanoba focuses on Yuan Yuan Tan, garbed in red high heels and contemporary gown to match. He simulates riding in place, another gesture in futility. Rodney Sharman supplied the ingeniously orchestrated César Franck keyboard works, adroitly conducted by David Briskin.
Yuan Yuan Tan and Pierre-François Vilanoba in James Kudelka's The Ruins Proclaim The Building Was Beautiful. Photo by Erik Tomasson.
The Ruins Proclaim The Building Was Beautiful takes its time to wrap the observer in its mantle of terror, and the sense of inertia only contributes to the aura of dread. The men respond to the women’s discomfort by jumping and spinning in place, lifting them like discarded statues. And you emerge with the sensation that everyone, masters and subjects alike, are trapped in the same sexual morass. After one viewing, I will say this: The Ruins is some kind of experience and I wouldn’t want to be Kudelka’s analyst for all the money in the world.
If the evening needed a dollop of charm, it was supplied by Julia Adam, who, in A rose by any other name, gives us a retelling of "The Sleeping Beauty" for a cynical age. There’s no debunking here. The shade of Marius Petipa can rest easy. The choreographer and former company dancer possesses a lovely antic spirit and her dancers locomote through space like robots crossing a wading pool with arms extended and sharp pivots. Adam conflates the Prince and Lilac Fairy (Gennadi Nedvigin), offers ample dancing opportunities to the King and Queen (the divinely cast Tiit Helimets and Lily Rogers) and transforms the fairies into guys, led with appealing swagger by Brett Bauer.
San Francisco Ballet in Julia Adam's A rose by any other name. Photo by Erik Tomasson.
Kristin Long’s cheery Aurora is menaced by Carabosse, the seductive Elizabeth Miner, a dancer who might distract any prince in his quest. The piece is entertaining enough, but it’s hard to discern what Adam has contributed to the legend, beyond a gentle role reassignment. While I’m grateful that she did not deconstruct Tchaikovsky, her choice of music is odd. Bach’s "Goldberg Variations," excerpted and orchestrated, points the way to structural problems that Adam has not begun to confront, let alone solve. If ever a ballet cried out for a commissioned score, A rose by any other name was it.
Speaking of music, Welch’s Naked seems constrained, rather than liberated by the score, Poulenc’s "Concerto in D Minor for Two Pianos" (Roy Bogas, Michael McGraw), a work several years ago deployed by artistic director Helgi Tomasson. The choreographer responds to thematic and harmonic changes with a kind of academic rigor that wants to illustrate the score, rather than fuse with it. So, when the music turns sassy (in the inimitable Poulenc manner), Molat abandons partner Long, breaks in and beguiles us with stunning brisés and his phenomenal elevation. Tan and Ruben Martin were the second set of principals.
More disconcertingly, Welch tosses us allusions on which he never capitalizes. I did not understand the Orpheus and Eurydice motif of the women covering their partnerseyes as they advanced across the stage, and nothing that happened later enlightened me. Naked rarely finds Welch at his most satisfying, but Tom Boyd’s Rothko-like projections were appealing.
For SFB New Works Festival tickets, call (415) 865-2000 or visit www.sfballet.org
