A DAZZLING NEW
WHEELDON BALLET!
Also, the Two Sides of "Company
B"
By Paul Hertelendy
artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music
and dance
Week of Feb. 10-17, 2010
Vol. 12, No. 64
There is a captivating, almost hypnotic flow to the modern ballets of
Christopher Wheeldon, who unveiled his new “Ghosts” at the San
Francisco Ballet
Feb. 9. For the SFB, this hottest of new choreographers lives up to
being a major catch.
There’s an air of mystery around the willowy figures that rise and fall
and bend
deep at the waist, with the women wearing tulle skirts suggesting an
obscure romanticism. They
whirl and turn in circles. But the moves are fresh and contemporary,
with a
dazzling pas de trois of Sofiane Silve interacting closely with, and
being
lifted a thousand ways by, Brett Bauer and Tiit Helimets---one of the
most
original inventions I’ve ever seen on the ballet stage.
Yuan Yuan Tan and Damian Smith
added a pas de deux which was more dutiful than inspired.
Enhancing the environment is a huge, blackened sculpture by Laura
Jellinek
overhead, like an old dredged-up wreck of a plane or ship, moved about
from
time to time, adding to the precariousness of the scene (would it come
tumbling
down??). I trust the health-plan insurance is fully paid up for
all
involved.
The ballet’s name was surprisingly given not by the choreographer but
by the
composer, Kip Winger, who created an effective, unsettling new
26-minute score
for piano and orchestra to back the effort in this most gratifying and
thematic of SFB commissions of recent years.
Pity that Jerome Robbins’ “Opus 19/The Dreamer” stands on the same
program.
It’s too similar, but less arresting. The SFB looked sharp in it as
phalanxes
of dancers made small, spidery moves behind the lead couple, Maria
Kochetkova
and, subbing for an indisposed Taras Domitro, Davit Karapetyan. The
K-&-K
lead couple are given very challenging roles throughout, made even more
difficult by the visual mismatch: He looks a foot taller than she.
But he
stepped in very effectively in a role recalling---in part because of
the
satin-smooth Prokofiev music---some aspects of “Romeo and Juliet.”
Martin West’s orchestra rendered both scores impressively.
On the surface, Paul Taylor’s brilliant exuberance “Company B” (1991)
reads like a
jolly recollection of the bobby-sox era, circa 1940, with pop music,
boogie-woogie, and slow dancing in vogue then. But beneath, it’s a
brilliantly
conceived tragedy, alluding obliquely to the G.I. soldiers going off to
World
War Two, leaving their girlfriends behind, sapping the vitality of the
home
community. Today it’s viewed as an anti-war statement.
The enthusiastic audiences emerge talking about its wild solos that all
but
shake the physique into a million pieces, by Pascal Molat
(“Tico-Tico”), and
Lorene Feijoo (“Rum and Coca-Cola”). But the mood of these
Andrews
Sisters vintage recordings shifts with the sentimental “There Will
Never Be
Another You,” where, after a dance with Katita Waldo, Quinn Wharton
joins the
endless line of men marching off to war in cadence.
Others of note in this varied piece were Elizabeth Miner, Brett Bauer,
Gennadi
Nedvegin and Benjamin Stewart. (Note: casts change
nightly.)
Today the performance is past, but this one continues to resonate every
time I read
the international headlines. It’s t he medium of
the past, commenting
eloquently
on current events.
San Francisco Ballet in Program
2, opening Feb. 9 at the Opera House, S.F. Through Feb. 20. For
info: (415) 865-2000, or go online.
©Paul Hertelendy 2010
#
Paul Hertelendy has been
covering
the dance and modern-music scene in the San Francisco Bay Area with
relish
-- and a certain amount of salsa -- for years.
These critiques appearing weekly (or sometimes semi-weekly, but never
weakly)
will focus on dance and new musical creativity in performance, with
forays
into books (by authors of the region), theater and recordings by local
artists as well.
#
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