San Francisco Ballet in the "Rubies" section of Balanchine’s Jewels. Photo by Erik Tomasson.
There is something to cheer about this week. George Balanchine’s remarkable, full-evening Jewels (1967) is back at the San Francisco Ballet after a six-year hiatus, the third go-round for the company, which brought the complete work into its repertoire rather late, in 2002 (though Rubies, the middle panel of the piece, arrived as long ago as 1987). Miami City Ballet introduced Jewels to the Bay Area a few years earlier. Not long ago, the work was exclusive New York City Ballet fare. Today, if you’re lucky, you can catch it in such far-flung terpsichorean outposts as Seattle and Cincinnati, evidence of the growth in stature of the American ballet movement in the past few decades. The Kirov dances it, too. And the only complete version on DVD (Opus Arte) derives, significantly, from the 2000 production by the Paris Opera Ballet.
Jewels is always a thrill, revealing, as it does, Balanchine the master magician in total possession of his theatrical powers, conjuring historical periods, moods, scenarios and even cultures from bodies moving through space to divinely ordained music. As much as any of the choreographer’s works, it renders academic the distinction (maybe, the abyss) between narrative and plotless dance. I defy anyone confronting these three ballets for the first time not to come away with the emotional satisfaction of witnessing the most searching of story ballets.
We are told that Balanchine was inspired in his creation by a visit to the Van Cleef & Arpels jewelry emporium. And we know that Jewels, despite the choreographer’s denial, is an homage to three traditions of classical dance in which the choreographer worked—the French (Emeralds), American (Rubies) and Russian (Diamonds); in fact, the jazzy, angular style of Rubies was, for all intents and purposes, Balanchine’s own invention. If Jewels is a species of autobiography, it is also a distillation of the choreographer’s art, an object lesson in evoking worlds of sensibility through music and gesture.
The evanescent nostalgia of Emeralds (to bits of Fauré’s incidental music to Shylock and Pelléas et Mélisande) yields to Stravinsky’s Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra in Rubies; thence, to the final four movements of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 3 for Diamonds. Each of the three ballets suffuses its own fragrance through the theater. And the identical movement generates different responses in us, depending on the context. When the men kneel in Emeralds, it seems like an act of yearning for an unrecoverable past; they don’t even notice that the women have vanished. When the men kneel before the “show girl” in Rubies and manipulate her limbs, they succumb to and extend a conventional concept of sexiness, American-style, which declares that “Bigger is better.” And when the prince figure in Diamonds genuflects before his ballerina, he affirms Balanchine’s elevation of woman to the loftiest place in his pantheon.
The dizzying stylistic palette of Jewels challenges any company, especially one that has allowed the work to hibernate for six years. Role debuts dotted the first two SFB weekend performances Saturday (April 25) and Sunday (April 26) at the War Memorial Opera House, where the work continues in alternating repertoire through May 10. Elyse Borne staged it, with coaching from those matchless Jewels exponents of yesteryear, Violette Verdy, Mimi Paul and Suzanne Farrell. Getting the steps down is one thing; distilling the spirit of the work is another. The two virtues did not always come together in one cast.
Yuan Yuan Tan and Damian Smith in Balanchine's Emeralds. Photo by Erik Tomasson.
Saturday’s Emeralds, a success overall, basked in the elusive mystery that makes some of us cherish this work almost irrationally. It didn’t so much sparkle as glow. The piece arrived with a dollop of drama. Because of the illness of dancer Ruben Martin, Seth Orza was fetched from Seattle’s Pacific Northwest Ballet to squire Lorena Feijoo in the first pas de deux. Orza, the brother of the San Francisco Ballet’s Sean Orza and Aaron Orza, looked promising when, two years ago, I saw him at New York City Ballet in Peter Martins’ Romeo and Juliet, and here, he appeared a cavalier in the making. The lifts seemed a bit desperate, but given the fact that Orza had less than a day’s rehearsal with this cast, no harm done. Feijoo found that air of “I’ve got a secret” fantasy in Verdy’s solo with its voluptuous arms cleaving the air. Damian Smith squired Yuan Yuan Tan (role debut) in the “walking duet,” with quiet mastery. Tan’s promenade disclosed worlds of meaning and the calibrated raising of arms and legs made its potent effect. Hansuke Yamamoto partnered Frances Chung and Dana Genshaft in the trio. The ravishing, 10-woman corps seemed more attuned to the matter than in the previous revival. And the final septet, a masterful late addition by Balanchine, found the company at its refined best.
Sunday afternoon, Maria Kochetkova was visibly feeling her way into the Verdy role, underlining the transitions and bringing a touch of unwanted melodrama to the solo. Partner Nicolas Blanc seemed too restrained by the score and rushed through his partnering duties. Chung and Isaac Hernandez made little of the “walking duet.” But Taras Dimitro’s silky attack held the interest in his trio with Dores Andre and Charlene Cohen.
Tina LeBlanc and Pascal Molat in Balanchine's Rubies. Photo by Erik Tomasson.
SFB has always communicated the roguish wit of Rubies with its movement allusions to harness racing, the American jogging mania and Broadway gypsy corps, and the company scored again over the weekend. The Rubies to see was Sunday’s, with Tina LeBlanc taking on one of her final assignments before she retires next month and imparting such verve to the Patricia McBride role that she seemed to inject all her colleagues with comparable exuberance. So sharp is LeBlanc’s musicality that she plays with the phrasing without missing a beat. Watch her stab her pointes in perfect time to the staccato keyboard and be amazed.
LeBlanc’s spirit certainly inflamed Pascal Molat, who found that air of playful competition missing Saturday, when Vanessa Zahorian was his technically sharp but emotionally constrained ballerina. These were Molat’s first performances of the role and they capitalized on his speed in turns and general joie de vivre. Elana Altman offered a beautifully articulated “show girl” on Saturday, but she misses that air of rampant egotism that Sofiane Sylve brandished on Saturday. I recall her air of satisfaction when the four corps boys partner her, rearranging her extremities as if she were an exhumed monument. However, Sylve’s technique is surprisingly spotty; she struggled in her unsupported arabesques.
Vanessa Zahorian and Davit Karapetyan in Balanchine's Diamonds. Photo by Erik Tomasson.
Still, she did bring an air of majesty to Saturday’s Diamonds, in which the reliably empathetic Pierre-François Vilanoba struggled to find an emotional connection with his ballerina. This tribute to the Petipa-Ivanov era abounds in references to Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty, but the moments of vulnerability, like the arm that Odette passes along her face, missed resonance here. On Sunday, Zahorian and Davit Karapetyan left the stage slightly scorched with their impassioned delivery of one of Balanchine’s stranger pas de deux, with its groping promenades and ardent climax. The corps yielded superior results most of the time in their sharp-cut patterns.
Martin West conducted with much empathy, especially the Fauré, where he succumbed to the music’s erotic flow. Pianist Michael McGraw sparkled his way through the Stravinsky; and the Ballet Orchestra’s oboist, Laura Griffiths, merits all praise for her contribution throughout, but most notably in the Diamonds pas de deux.
The production, borrowed from Miami City Ballet, summons no comparable response. Tony Walton’s starry, back lit décor resembles a series of computer screen savers and when the lighting in Diamonds metamorphoses into facsimiles of chandeliers, the effect is hopelessly cheesy. And what, pray tell, is the significance of those dangling Japanese lanterns in Rubies? The lighting everywhere lacked subtlety. I know that the dance world is going through some rough patches these days, but surely a company of SFB’s stature and accomplishment could assemble a decent Jewels production in house. The work deserves nothing less.
SFB’s revival of Jewels continues, in alternating repertoire, at the War Memorial Opera House through May 10. Tickets: 415.865.2000, www.sfballet.org
