NEW DANCES: WIGGLE, TWIDDLE AND FIDDLE
Diversity of movement comes with modern ballet, far more than in classical counterparts. Such was the lesson from the San Francisco Ballet’s most recent program of moderns, invigorating works peppered with world premieres. It featured as choreographers the veteran Helgi Tomasson and two of the hot younger innovators he had snagged, Dwight Rhoden and the Englishman Christopher Wheeldon—-as different as night and day.
Wheeldon stashed all the toe shoes in his jolly-up piece “Finale Finale,” a true joy joy (sic) influenced by modern dance, high-energy movement classes and gymnastics’ floor exercise event. The seven dancers in flats stood up to this stylistic diversity brilliantly; clearly, you no longer get hired if you can only do fetching arabesques and perfect Pas de Six (as was once the case).
The madcap romp had the mismatched seven seven—Wheeldon started all these repeats, not I—sambaing to Darius Milhaud’s catchy score “The Steer on the Roof” (Le boeuf sur le toit) with abandon, sometimes dropping down, sometimes just shrugging shoulders (the first group ballet shrugs this viewer has encountered in 58 years of heavy dance exposures). Without the classical moves, the dancers build on their momentum in exultant fashion, clowning and romping through delights, with as much composure as you can maintain in tight-fit costumes bursting in candy colors and bright barbershop-helix designs, emphasizing male buns.
Rhoden’s large-cast “The Promised Land” too was innovative in its hard-driven frenzy of high energy full of wiggle, twiddle and fiddle, clearly a piece designed to bring in young audience awed by the crunching minimalist music. Its most original touch was having Lucas Erni (spotlighted on April 10), far shorter than his colleagues, dancing one solo after another as if the emperor himself, while all the others fell into pairings. Clearly, all its driven moves were exhausting, with Doren André (the one in the black bare midriff) in focal role. Eric Sung provided a lengthy cello obbligato.
Yes, Rhoden’s work with its blurring gymnastics would draw a new audience. But Wheeldon’s work is the memorable one most likely to be remembered and replayed. Even the dancers appeared to enjoy it.
Helgi Tomasson’s “Prism” (2000) may not be as cutting edge, certainly not with a Beethoven piano concerto as audio (even with the veteran Roy Bogas tapped for the solo). But at this matinee it centered on a newer dancer from China, Wanting Zhao—-a stunning and highly poetic feminine soloist hopefully assured major roles in future seasons already being planned, subsequent to Tomasson’s retirement. Also of note in the fast-flying finale was the virtuoso veteran Hansuke Yamamoto, leaping the way many 20-year-olds wish they could. One of Tomasson’s adroit touches was a trio of men pirouetting in line, but with the middle man turning the opposite way, just the manner in which machinery gears cog (rather than the usual all-matching turns toward the right). Stunning!
Music Director Martin West conducted throughout, in good rapport with both soloists Sung and Bogas.
S.F. BALLET in Program 6, world premieres by Rhoden and Wheeldon, plus Tomasson’s “Prism,” concluding April 15. Opera House, S.F. For info: 865-2000 or go online: www.sfballet.org.
