REMARKABLE CAREER = GREAT BALLET WITCH
A veteran ballet dancer in her late 70s still stealing the show as the malevolent Witch casting spells and curses?
My apologies to the ever-youthful roster of S.F. Ballet performers, but this “La Sylphide” show and its whole bubbling cauldron of vermin belong to Anita Paciotti, hook, line and sinker. I had first encountered her as the sole leading lady of the newborn Oakland Ballet’s precarious venture “Hansel und Gretel” in 1964, 58 years ago—-then playing Gretel rather than the Witch in yet another fairy tale. Talk about versatility!
In the old fairy-tale ballet ”La Sylphide” her form flits here and there around the stage seemingly weightlessly like a cloud of curses, constantly reenergized by the putrid steam from her cauldron a la MacBeth as she dispenses her black magic. Her agility remains amazing with those giant spider-like steps, moving like a silent wind-swept fog, slowing down only to tell a fortune reading palms (foretelling a break-up of the hero James with his fiancée Effy). And the tireless trouper Paciotti repeated the role several times during the week’s run, surely risking lung damage from the cauldron’s boiling noxious fumes night after night.
Character roles like Paciotti’s here are ubiquitous in 19th-century story-telling ballets, putting a premium on subsequently near-forgotten pantomime—the elaborate textbook array of theatrical arm movements telling stories and emotions—indeed, telling almost everything short of concepts like “mother-in-law,” which veteran story-teller George Balanchine once lamented was, alas, beyond the capability of pantomime. Ms. Paciotti’s many roles ranging from queens and party hostesses down to the medieval village witch are, frankly, spell-binding.
In this pseudo-Scottish fairy tale complete with kilts (and presumably clothing worn beneath as well, contrary to Scots’ traditions), James meanwhile is totally carried away by the elusive Sylph that only he can see. The magical nature of this apparition involves sudden appearance and disappearance. Between the Sylph and the Witch, you wonder what on earth James has been smoking on this fateful day.
No matter. Like the dreaded Medea of old, the Witch gives the swain a fatal gift in the form of a long tulle scarf, to be passed along to the Sylph. The Sylph dons it, collapses and dies, leaving the Witch happily cackling in her villainy for all eternity.
No, we haven’t forgotten Sarah Van Patten in the title role, giving the Sylph that uniquely feathery float characteristic of the old Bournonville/Danish mode of early ballet. This early ballet had been a mind-blowing sensation everywhere, as it introduced the first dancers on pointe, via 19th-century dancers like Marie Taglioni and the Danish dance star Lucile Grahn. Back then, only La Sylphide was on pointe, in contrast to this modern production credited to Bournonville, even though even some of the corps de ballet enters, all on pointe.
March 20 Van Patten was complemented by the nimble Gurn of Esteban Hernandez and the Effy of Ellen Rose Hummel, both of them additions to the S.F. Ballet’s front ranks in recent seasons. James was played by the very muscular Ulrik Birkkjaer, himself as Danish as Hamlet, a veteran of the Royal Danish Ballet where the style of Bournonville is still treated royally.
The other work on the double bill was Alexei Ratmansky’s “The Seasons,” to the old Glazunov score. It looked like a fairly traditional ballet of groups and soloists till Ratmansky ultimately brought on the Fauns in wild costumes—-a roguish sextet of coltish men—to disrupt the orderly proceedings, kicking out the circumspect ladies’ corps. Whatever you might call it—a “disruption ballet” perhaps—It brought some fun and chaos to an otherwise orderly large-ensemble piece.
The two conductors, Martin West and Ming Luke, maintained a lively pace with an effective orchestra.
Devotees of the SFB ballerina from Shanghai Yuan Yuan Tan, here in stunning roles since 1995, were disappointed with her relegated to several supporting roles in “The Seasons,” nothing more.
SAN FRANCISCO BALLET’S Program 4, March 15-20: “La Sylphide” and “The Seasons.” Opera House, S.F. For info: (415) 865-2000 or go online: www.sfballet.org.
