San Francisco Ballet in Wheeldon's Within the Golden Hour. Photo by Erik Tomasson.
Any ballet season that includes George Balanchine’s Stravinsky Violin Concerto is truly blessed. One of the choreographer’s most sweeping and yet most compact essays in the neoclassical language that he made the distinctly American standard for a generation, the work came late to the San Francisco Ballet (1995) and was last danced by the company at its Balanchine Festival in 2004. This wondrous ballet has been away from us much too long. Happily, Stravinsky Violin Concerto opened the all-revival program Friday (April 3) at the War Memorial Opera House and it bestowed a benediction on all that followed for the next two hours. Of course, you must go. The work may not return for another five years, and there’s much more to savor on this bill.
Made for New York City Ballet’s epochal 1972 Stravinsky Festival, Stravinsky Violin Concerto was Balanchine’s second go at the music (the 1941 Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo Balustrade, now lost, was the first) and, by any measurement you care to use, the definitive go. I would like to think that, when it came to preparing the ballet, the choreographer recalled the genesis of the 1931 score. Reluctant to write a concerto for an instrument that he did not play, Stravinsky tested the violinist Samuel Dushkin and asked him if it were possible to play a chord that spanned an interval of an eleventh, drawing it on a napkin in a café. It was; in fact, that chord opens the work, and Dushkin went on to “own” the concerto (formally, in D Major) for many years.
That exploration of technical possibilities in music seems to have carried over to the ballet, in which two duets are framed by ensembles for the four principals and a corps of 16, all in practice clothes. Balanchine’s manner of infusing the classical language with gestures and moves that have no place in the classical vocabulary never seems as witty or concentrated as it does in Stravinsky Violin Concerto. Hips swivel, a man is pulled across the stage by a string of women, as if he were in a chariot out of control. Feet flex, pelvises jut, corps dancers wave at a latecomer as if they were cheerleaders. Everybody lopes or jogs or digs in their heels, when they’re not flying in from the wings. And, in the final movement, the performers fold arms across chests and deliver an approximation of a Slavic dance, rising on demi-pointe as if they were wearing those soft leather Georgian boots.
Everywhere, Balanchine fractures our idea of classical alignment, and everywhere he plumbs Stravinsky’s motor energy with a conciseness he may have elsewhere equaled but never bettered. And how he can surprise us. To the violinist’s initial entry, Balanchine deposits his four corps men and second ballerina on stage immobile, the music almost suffusing their veins. When they take off, the trajectory is always unpredictable. I don’t know a more exuberant moment in Balanchine than that episode in which the corps men in unison traverse a square space with clipped jetés. It goes on for no more than 30 seconds but it leaves traces in the mind.
Yet, the heart of the work lies in those central movements, Aria I and Aria II, master classes in partnering that resonate long after the curtain falls. The first duet proposes a control scenario as the pair’s extended arms suggests a stalemate, an ability to come to grips or even mutual understanding. The man ultimately acquiesces, sinking to the floor. The more emotionally complex second duet exhibits a protectiveness on the man’s part and vulnerability on the woman’s. At the end, he embraces her tenderly but shields her eyes (a gender reversal from Balanchine’s earlier Orpheus). The critic Nancy Goldner has suggested that the male in these duets is a surrogate for the choreographer himself, and, considering his attitude towards women, it is an observation well worth pondering.
Yuan Yuan Tan and Damian Smith of San Francisco Ballet in Balanchine's Stravinsky Violin Concerto. Photo by Erik Erik Tomasson.
I attended both Friday’s and Saturday afternoon’s performances of this Stravinsky Violin Concerto, staged by Bart Cook and Maria Calegari. Their contribution yielded moments of eloquence; this is a difficult ballet for dancers to master. But this revival could be better still (perhaps, by Thursday, when this Program 6 concludes). Most of the corps was probably new to the ballet and they haven’t yet completely assimilated the tension in repose, the suppressed energy that lurks everywhere, and upper bodies, especially among the men, need additional refinement. On Friday, Sofiane Sylve (Aria I) invested her assignment with palpable authority, arching her back in subdued ecstasy, integrating her measured jetés without missing a bit. The duet didn’t attain its full potential; partner Pierre-François Vilanoba seemed to struggle with his balances, especially on his initial entrance. In Aria II, Damian Smith proved a canny partner to Yuan Yuan Tan, whose incendiary extensions, pliant torso and speed of articulation did not disappoint. Tan doesn’t seem as yet to have intuited the tensions bristling under the surface, so those final yielding gestures were underplayed or underprojected.
Saturday afternoon’s performance brought role debuts for Elana Altman and Tiit Helimets as the first couple. He may not have been to the Balanchine manner born, but Helimets’ elegance of phrasing and noble bearing served magisterially on this occasion; this was one of the most satisfying, least self-advertising performances of the season. Altman’s apparent caution gave way to confidence, as she shifted weight with considerable mastery. In Aria II, Ruben Martin was the reliable squire to Katita Waldo, whose airy port de bras and speed in transition remain models for her colleagues. On both occasions, concertmaster Roy Malan found the vivacity and tenderness in the score. David Briskin conducted here, and in the rest of the program.
It was wise of artistic director Helgi Tomasson to juxtapose Stravinsky Violin Concerto with a reprise of Christopher Wheeldon’s ravishing Within the Golden Hour, commissioned for last season’s 75th anniversary New Works Festival. Both ballets make the duet the center of their universes; in the Wheeldon, dancers operate only in twos, or multiples of twos, except in the stunning final tableaux, a labyrinth of linked arms clustered and swaying in a restricted space.
What to these eyes was one of the finest contributions to that New Works Festival has only improved with time and experience. Golden Hour is the most lyrical piece Wheeldon has shown here; the invention rarely flags. Brett Bauer imparted youthful charm to the box step waltz with Waldo. Vilanoba and Sarah Van Patten were the incendiary couple in the oozy, floor-dominated, shamelessly erotic second duet. Joan Boada and Maria Kochetkova informed their gentle, Vivaldi-accompanied pairing with almost scary intimacy. Garen Scribner and Martyn Garside rupture this reverie with a playful, muscular scherzo that suggests an outtake from the Bolshoi’s Spartacus, and their attack Friday couldn’t have been more masterfully judged.
Sarah Van Patten and Pierre-François Vilanoba of San Francisco Ballet in Wheeldon's Within The Golden Hour. Photo by Erik Tomasson.
That said, and despite admirable contributions all around, Golden Hour is not perfect. As it glides through its 36-minute length, you wish it were shortened by one or two episodes, possibly the interlude for four women, which goes nowhere gracefully. One problem for these ears is the music, stringy bits by the contemporary Italian Ezio Bosso, interspersed with that single Andante (again, for strings) by Vivaldi. Functional, rather than inspired, the score has a numbing effect. However, James K. Ingalls’ twilight lighting and Martin Pakledinaz’s coppery and aqua costumes are major contributors to the success of the ballet.
(Note that there’s more Wheeldon on the way soon. It was heartening to learn last week that Morphoses, the choreographer’s own chamber company, will tour to three Northern California cities in January).
There’s certainly nothing numbing about Leonard Bernstein’s imperishable score for the 1957 Broadway musical, West Side Story. But the suite of dances that choreographer Jerome Robbins drew from the musical for presentation at New York City Ballet in 1995 is dating very quickly. It seems years older than it did in 2008 when SFB moved mountains to sell it to the public, and I can’t help wondering if Robbins would have withdrawn it, were he still alive (and with a full West Side Story revival now packing them in on Broadway). One problem is that Robbins extracted the dances from the show and also rearranged them, so that the sequence now ends with the unbearably mawkish “Somewhere” ballet.
Second, I just don’t believe that these nicely scrubbed young men and women are ethnic New York gang members and their molls. Third, these numbers are more potent in context with the show. Fourth, without an extended duet for the Romeo and Juliet-like lovers, Tony and Maria, the sequence lacks an emotional center. Last, the occasional burst of dialogue is wince-making (and not because of the delivery).
Nevertheless, if this material is still meaningful for you, be sure that the company goes at West Side Story Suite with disarming relish. Former SFB principal Rory Hohenstein returned as guest Friday and made a most credible Tony (he also dances Riff in other performances). Damian Smith’s Riff snarled convincingly and sang passably. Martin’s Bernardo brooded charismatically and Shannon Roberts flounced her skirt, shook her wig and belted Anita’s “America” sturdily, without effacing memories of Chita Rivera. James Sofranko and Elizabeth Miner shared a charming moment in the “Somewhere” ballet. Additional vocalism was furnished, principally, by Natasha Leland and SFB corps member Matthew Stewart, who delivered “Something’s Coming” in a sweet, endearing tenor.
Program 6 continues at the War Memorial Opera House through Thursday at 8 p.m. For tickets, www.sfballet.org, 415.865.2000. The company’s revival of Balanchine’s full-evening Jewels opens April 25.
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