Anthony Spaulding and Yuan Yuan Tan in Yuri Possokhov's Diving Into The Lilacs. Photo by Erik Tomasson.
Three observations are not in dispute during this opening week of the San Francisco Ballet’s 76th repertory season at the War Memorial Opera House. One, an alarming number of the company’s male principals are nowhere in evidence. Those who are out of town, on the injured list or simply not cast in the first two programs include Damian Smith, Tiit Helimets, Gennadi Nedvigin, Jaime Garcia Castilla, Pierre-François Vilanoba and Nicolas Blanc. Two, the company still offers strength in numbers. Three, in Diving Into the Lilacs, choreographer in residence Yuri Possokhov has come up with his most individual, coherent and captivating piece since his first major company commission, Magrittomania, eight years ago.
So, what we saw in the SFB’s opening program Tuesday (Jan. 27) was a company still sustaining the elation of last year’s 75th anniversary, as stellar talents mingle with representatives of a new generation of performers. If the troupe is in the process of recovering from an unprecedented four-city national tour last fall, at least it got the opportunity during that tour to hone the splendid, must-see revival of Balanchine’s The Four Temperaments that concludes this bill.
But Diving Into the Lilacs, for three principal couples and four corps couples, was Tuesday’s newsmaker. The piece allows Possokhov the opportunity to exercise his anarchic wit, which always seems to simmer beneath the surfaces of his dances. And it taps into the former principal’s autobiography, too. A program note suggests the extent to which lilacs for Russians (or in this case, Ukrainians) suggest symbolic seasonal regeneration. In that spirit, Possokhov has chosen a score that has clearly inspired him, Boris Tchaikovsky’s Sinfonietta for String Orchestra. Boris (no relation to Peter I.) was one of Russia’s most prominent second-tier composers of the post-Stalin era. This music is tuneful, expertly written for strings, touched with the essence of pastoral and eminently danceable. Possokhov’s earlier forays into Western classics (Mendelsson’s Italian Symphony and Ravel’s Concerto for Piano Left Hand) have, to these ears, sounded like misjudgments, generating responses in musically literate observers that were inevitably at odds with the choreography.
This new piece, however, seems like a direct pipeline to Possokhov’s melancholy Russian soul. Perhaps the opening movement of four, devolving in front of Benjamin Pierce’s striking floral diorama with the corps stretched out on the stage floor, looks uncomfortably literal, but, then, the choreographer’s antic spirit takes over, and, except for a unison finale, there isn’t a predictable combination in the 25-minute length. Possokhov spices the classical vocabulary with folksy motifs and ordinary walks and seems to have peered into the hearts of his principals, all of whom delivered their assignments with flair (the casting of the three couples remains unchanged throughout this week, something of a miracle).
San Francisco Ballet in Yuri Possokhov's Diving Into The Lilacs. Photo by Erik Tomasson.
Possokhov has refined his eye for striking patterns and sculptural imagery, but, now, it all looks integrated into a more fluid organism. He has not previously used the body in such an idiosyncratic manner. Dancers kneel, stretch and ambulate, hands gesture, arms sweep, yet transitions melt into new incidents and you simply go along for the ride. Maria Kochetkova, fresh from her no-contest triumph on NBC’s Superstars of Dance, tangled with Pascal Molat in a slippery exchange that capitalized on speed, eloquent elbows and shifting balances. Then Anthony Spaulding squires Yuan Yuan Tan in a hilarious pas de deux that finds her first appealing to his back, down which she elegantly slips; he relents and totes this super-elongated performer like a museum attendant hoisting an objet d’art. Possokhov has always been alert to mining the comic potential in Tan’s divinely statuesque proportions, and his work here is irresistibly funny. The flaring temperaments of Lorena Feijoo and Joan Boada meet in a third pas de deux, larded with macho jumps and strides and whimsical bicycling gestures (at one point, she looks like his personal trainer).
I am not sure, after one viewing, that Possokhov has resolved the tensions between corps and soloists, but the fresh, seemingly spontaneous movement scheme of Diving Into the Lilacs represents a new direction for the choreographer. Sandra Woodall contributed color-integrated jerkins and skirt and Martin West conducted the Tchaikovsky alertly.
Alert, also, was the word for the revival of The Four Temperaments, a classic of modern ballet since its 1946 premiere. Balanchine’s representation of the four classical humors that comprise the human personality still seems as fresh as when SFB first danced it in the mid-70s. Again, one marvels at how deftly Balanchine drew his imagery from popular culture, while realigning the dancer’s proportions and embodying the wonders of Paul Hindemith’s commissioned piano and strings score. If you think a particular tableau looks like something else, you’re probably right. This time around, that row of black bathing suited women crouching in unison recalled for me one of those ancient magazine ads for an amusement park.
San Francisco Ballet in Balanchine's The Four Temperaments. Photo by Erik Tomasson.
Casting in the principal assignments was primo. I did think that Molat succumbed to melodrama in the arched back diagonal trajectory of the “Melancholic” variation and that Davit Karapetyan might savor the droopy postures of “Phlegmatic” a bit more. But Ruben Martin and the fierce Sarah Van Pattern captured the spirit of the “Sanguinic” duet; Van Patten, who should try “Choleric” some day, has developed into a really smashing Balanchine interpreter. Sofiane Sylve was the unflinching, authoritative “Choleric” on this occasion. Lily Rogers, Daniel Deivison, Elena Altman, Brett Bauer, Nutnaree Pipit-Suksun and Spaulding were the theme couples. Roy Bogas delivered the piano assignment with his customary insights.
Bogas was also at the keyboard for Beethoven’s C Major Concerto, the musical inspiration for the revival of artistic director Helgi Tomasson’s 2000 Prism. This was a fair revival of this grand-scale abstraction, which might have benefited from a speedier tempo overall, especially in the pit. Martin and Hansuke Yamamoto lifted Kristen Long elegantly in the first movement. But Ivan Popov showed little empathy for Sylve in the central movement. The revival will be remembered for Taras Dimitro’s subscription series debut in the final Rondo (the most accomplished section of the piece). The Cuban dancer’s remarkable elevation, preternatural speed and cottony landings, not to mention a conspicuous absence of self-regard, suggest that he and his audiences have much to look forward to in the next three months.
Dimitro’s pyrotechnics in the Le Corsaire pas de deux at last week’s gala were a tasty preview; if only Vanessa Zahorian’s accomplished ballerina had exhibited some of the requisite competitive spirit. Much of the circusy gala fare looked forlorn, ripped from context. While Katita Waldo (opposite Popov) epitomized angular majesty in a bit from Christopher Wheeldon’s Polyphonia, it just stops dead. It was generous of Tomasson to bring on Myrta and the Wilis for part of the Act 2 Giselle duet, but Popov proved a sloppy partner to Tan’s ethereal heroine. Kochetkova and Boada were inflammatory in a Possokhov duet to fragments of Glazunov’s Raymonda score, but the choreography seemed a collection of intriguing gestural details with no emotional payoff.
Deivison was thrown into Balanchine’s Tarantella opposite the ever-ebullient Frances Chung and doubtless did his best. But a Tarantella that is not danced up to tempo, like this one, is a failed Tarantella. Tina LeBlanc in her final opening gala before retirement lit up Balanchine’s Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux with her classy attack and instinctive musicality, but Isaac Hernandez (deputizing for Blanc), despite his flamboyant performance, has volumes to learn about partnering (who, at 18, knows it all?). If all those men remain on the sick list, he will have the opportunity to learn much this season.
Program One of the San Francisco Ballet season continues in alternating repertory through Feb. 7 at 8 p.m. www.sfballet.org, 415.865.2000.
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