San Francisco Ballet in Ratmansky's Russian Seasons. Photo by Erik Tomasson.
A milestone of sorts.
Rarely in this reporter’s experience over more than three decades with the San Francisco Ballet has a work with the invention and unforced charm of Alexei Ratmansky’s Russian Seasons been greeted with the polite or even perfunctory applause that followed the exhilarating company premiere at the War Memorial Opera House Tuesday evening (April 28) during the first night of the final program of the 2009 season. Perhaps, Ratmansky’s 12-part evocation of ancient Russian folk traditions is too alien for our audiences. Perhaps, the quiet finale, in which a young couple prepares for its wedding and possibly seals its fate, is simply too downbeat for the socko wind-up crowd the company is endeavoring to attract these days. Perhaps, Leonid Desyatnikov’s haunting score, with violin and mezzo-soprano soloists dominating, misses the pounding, gut-wrenching sonorities by Philip Glass that accompany Jorma Elo’s aggressive and eminently disposable Double Evil, which ends the program.
Whatever. Russian Seasons, unveiled in 2006 at the New York City Ballet’s Diamond Project is the latest import to make the breadth of SFB’s repertoire under artistic director Helgi Tomasson the envy of the nation. Ratmansky’s SFB 2003 commission, Le Carnaval des Animaux, was a whimsical and sophisticated take on the popular Saint-Saëns score, a calling-card piece with a zany sense of humor. But this latest arrival seems transfused from the choreographer’s Slavic veins. Six couples, in Galina Solovyeva’s bright, color-coded dresses, pill-box hats (fortunately doffed for most of the piece) and tunics, animate themes from the country’s native culture. It’s a quietly captivating panorama of a how a society plays, loves and weeps and there isn’t a dull or unfelt moment throughout its 43 minutes.
Sofiane Sylve in Ratmansky's Russian Seasons. Photo by Erik Tomasson.
As the men gather upstage apart from the women, Ratmansky deftly evokes a functioning, organic community, and if thoughts of Robbins’ Dances at a Gathering or Nijinska’s Les Noces trip through the mind, they may have occurred to Ratmansky, too. Before long, a couple in tangerine (Yuan Yuan Tan, Damian Smith) emerges from this society, but the choreographer keeps everybody busy. Guys link arms, lope and swagger. Women cluster and titter. Knees are slapped, voices are momentarily raised, but an air of quiet melancholy seeps into the jollity. A woman is ostracized by her comrades and rejected by her man. Another weeps over her lost lover and is teased by her companions. A woman flaunts her sensuality. The boys leap out with hormonal enthusiasm. The exits and entrances are constant and dramatic and nothing overstays its welcome. It’s all very soulful and sensuous, too.
Ratmansky, the former artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet, and now artist in residence at American Ballet Theatre, seems to reach back in time, to the pre-Soviet era and his lacing of the ballet language with vernacular motives is fascinating and unpredictable. Flexed feet, linked arms, awesome plies are the building blocks here. But Ratmansky draws, too, on Russian visual art for inspiration. The crossed-arms stances seem inspired by the painted and carved icons that are part of the culture. Episodic it may be, but the effect of Russian Seasons is to sustain a continuum between past and present, yet, thanks to Ratmansky’s sweeping vision, the piece never looks spotty as it sweeps to its pensive finale.
No doubt about it. The SFB premiere, staged by Yan Godovskiy, offered the company an opportunity to shine in a different kind of repertoire. Surely, Tan will find more emotional content in her role as the run proceeds, but this was a lovely role debut. Sofiane Sylve (in red) repeated her assignment in the NYCB premiere and embodied the earthy sensuality of the part, especially in tandem with partner Pierre-François Vilanoba. The other couples were Lorena Feijoo and Davit Karapetyan (green), Vanessa Zahorian and Pascal Molat (blue), the divinely flirtatious Maria Kochetkova and Isaac Hernandez (violet) and Elizabeth Miner and Hansuke Yamamoto (purple). Ratmansky makes it all so fluid and spontaneous that moments like Hernandez’s whizzing, direction-shifting solo seem improvised on the spot. Throughout, Mark Stanley’s lighting is astonishing in its subtlety.
Desyatnikov’s score borrows from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons (thrice) in structure and from Shostakovich in spirit. Its acrid lyricism merits hearing on its own and concertmaster Roy Malan and mezzo-soprano Susana Poretsky (who sang in the NYCB premiere) made one eager to encounter this music again. David Briskin conducted. Two suggestions for SFB: the music sounded much too dim on Tuesday and a dollop of (additional?) amplification might help. Second, when Russian Seasons is revived in 2010 (in a more congenial context), would it be possible to reprint the texts of the five songs in the program or in a separate handout? They do matter.
Sarah Van Patten and Garen Scribner in Elo's Double Evil. Photo by Erik Tomasson.
Framing Russian Seasons with two revivals from the 75th anniversary New Works Festival was, in theory, a good idea. You might ask, as these choreographers do, where is classical dance heading in the 21st century? Elo, apparently, believes we need to deconstruct the ballet vocabulary and mock its sentimentality and its conventions before we rebuild. Thus, Double Evil ranges from sweet, increasingly contorted partnering gambits (to Vladimir Martynov’s score, deployed ironically) to in-your-face combinations that recruit the eight dancers grinding confrontationally, set to Philip Glass’ Concerto Fantasy for Two Timpanists and Orchestra. Elo repeats the process, in case we didn’t get it the first time. It all wears you down, rather than lifting you up, though the four couples went at it Tuesday as if it were holy writ. They included Zahorian, Molat, Vilanoba, Elana Altman, Pauli Magierek, Sarah Van Patten, Daniel Deivison and Garen Scribner.
Yuri Possokhov’s bouncy Fusion, which opens this program, attempts a hybridization of jazz ballet and some species of Sufism, as four men in white (Diego Cruz, Martyn Garside, Benjamin Stewart, Matthew Stewart), gradually interact with four couples in blue and gray. The music includes minimalist effusions by Graham Fitkin and Bollywood-type sonorities by Rahul Dev Burman. It’s all attractive in its slinky way, but the promise of the title never really happens, which may be the idea. Possokhov’s latest, Diving Into the Lilacs, is not as polished a piece, but I find it a much more personal work. That, also, will return next season.
Program 8 of the San Francisco Ballet season continues, in alternating repertoire, through Friday, May 8. Saturday, May 9, at 8 p.m., the company presents a farewell gala for and with principal dancer Tina LeBlanc.
Tickets: 415.865.2000, www.sfballet.org
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