Three very modern works on stage. In a nutshell: the eclipse ballet, the smartphone ballet and the mirror ballet.

The latest San Francisco Ballet offerings in Program 5 are indeed very contemporary, but more immersed in high energy than meaning or story-telling. The meaning is concentrated in Christopher Wheeldon’s “Bound to” (2018), a timely social critique of smartphone madness, producing a population so mesmerized today  watching the mighty cell phone that they will jaywalk blithely oblivious of cars, stare at the device and miss friends passing by, and generally encapsulate themselves like new-age hermits downtown, where these insanities reign.

Wheeldon is saying, wake up and smell the roses. With 10 dancers going through the motions and somehow avoiding collisions, the miraculous heroine (Dores André on March 28) breaks the mold  and ultimately establishes warm human contact, melting the hardened hearts.

Along the way there are various couples in rather acrobatic dances—boy-girl, girl-girl, and boy-boy, all possible permutations. Wheeldon’s most eye-catching innovation is having two dancers sit on stage and touch the soles of their feet together, perhaps a Lower-Latitude counterpart to nose-rubbed kissing in the Arctic.

At the midpoint, there’s an arresting solo by the rangy, strapping, fast-thrusting  Angelo Greco, the best such seen here since the retirement of Davit Karapetyan. Followed by Yuan Yuan Tan in a spidery role opposite Carlo di Lanno.

Pity that today we don’t have dancer-actors  like Villella, Baryshnikov, Massine or Nijinsky,  because the Narcissus role in Yuri Possokhov’s world premiere could use precisely such theatrical impact. Possokhov’s mirror ballet “…two united in a single soul…” cries out for a true persona at the center. Joseph Walsh gamely danced the demanding Narcissus part with the agility and endurance of a gymnast while virtually ignoring the giant egg-shaped mirror upstage as well as the rest of the up-and-down scenic design by former SFB dancer Ben Pierce. Somehow the men survived the golden-gilded girlie costumes thrust on them while Sofiane Sylve danced up a storm opposite Luke Ingham.

The star of this flashy crowd-pleasing work, inspired by Ovid, was vocalist and countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen in exquisite renderings of modernized Handel arias in a clarion voice, most notably doing that heart-rending operatic hit “Lascia ch’io pianga.”

All in all the great athleticism and unified movement of the vaunted S.F. Ballet  dominated throughout this “Lyric Voices” program—highly energetic, but aloof, and generally devoid of emotion. Following the same vein was the eclipse ballet by Trey McIntyre, “Your Flesh Shall Be a Great Poem.” Seemingly the impetus here was mid-eclipse revelry, to get out and live it up during the eclipse, starting with the long solo by Benjamin Freemantle, with his handstands and rotating/ gyrating leaps, later
pairing with a portable stool (Conclusion: ballerinas are greatly preferable partners). We also got a pas de deux for two men, recalling the unforgettable pair of John McFall with superstar Mikhail Baryshnikov over 30 years ago.

Given all the electronic music, the pit orchestra had most of the night off.

While well executed, and above-average length (2.5 hours) with pointe shoes on the ladies throughout, this high-energy all-modern program lacked contrast, and that may well account for the smaller-than-usual attendance at the Opera House.

S.F. Ballet’s “Lyric Voices” Program Five, through April 7. Opera House, San Francisco. For info: (415) 865-2000, or go online.

Click to share our review: