San Francisco Ballet: Concordia, Symphony in C, On Common Ground

San Francisco Ballet continued its venerable tradition of commissioning unusual works from young choreographers-before-they-were-stars with the premiere of Matjash Mrozewski’s “Concordia” on Program 7, which opened last week at the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco.

Set in a dark, vast space, “Concordia” gives the impression of a binary-star system, in which the neoclassical -- Kristin Long in Christopher Read’s smoky tutu with a prim collared tunic -- and the contemporary -- Muriel Maffre, in the same outfit, sans tutu skirt-- orbit each other uneasily. Joined by their partners, Gennadi Nedvigin and Pierre-Francois Vilanoba respectively, they etch out vaguely confrontational but largely abstracted encounters in tensile, twisting poses and snaking limbs.

Under the idiosyncratic thrum of Matthew Hindson’s music – an alternately romantic and perplexing score, which seemed to be a far stretch for the San Francisco Ballet’s Orchestra under the baton of Martin West -- a quartet of edgy interlopers--Joanna Mednick, Courtney Wright, Jaime Garcia Castilla and James Sofranko—punctuate the transitions from one couple to the other.

Structurally speaking, Mrozewski’s style is not unlike that of fellow Canadian James Kudelka, with a bit of the punchy speed and flash-forward poses of the works of LaLaLa Human Steps’ Edouard Locke. But while his assemblage of steps shows promise and his groupings and intermeshing of trios and quartets of dancers are interesting, on the whole the piece doesn’t manage to make a memorable impact.

It’s a bit unfair that he comes at the end of a season that’s seen the return of William Forsythe’s “Artifact” and the premiere of Wayne McGregor’s startling “Eden/Eden.” “Concordia” simply doesn’t come across with the conceptual richness, or texture of either McGregor’s or Forsythe’s pieces. Still, as an effort from a young choreographer, it looks like a respectable stepping stone on the way to even bigger ideas.

More revelatory was George Balanchine’s “Symphony in C” – a powerhouse which comes disguised as a pretty ballet with lovely white tutus and glittering tiaras, and was notable on opening night for the number of debuts in its eight principal roles. A work of exquisite beauty, set to the music of the same title by Georges Bizet, “Symphony in C” is a true test of a company’s mettle – from corps de ballet to principal-- since its technical challenges offer no place to hide. Either you can do it with style or you can’t do it at all.

It was a tough night for the corps de ballet, which largely lacked the expansiveness that the Balanchine choreography and Bizet music begs for. In the first two movements particularly, they seemed ragged and sluggish, as if they hoped that at a slower pace no one would notice that feet were not pointing and arabesques were wobbly.

Nevertheless, leading the first movement, the rock-solid Vanessa Zahorian brought a soubrette’s charm to her pas de deux with Gonzalo Garcia, whose announcement that he plans to depart the company at the end of this season has made his every appearance on stage a bittersweet occasion.

In the sublime second movement, Yuan Yuan Tan offered her accustomed regal composure. If there seemed to be a shade of distant coolness between her and partner Tiit Helimets, it was nevertheless a refined and engaging performance.

Not so, for Molly Smolen, who was largely unsuccessful at conveying a very-much-needed graciousness in the notoriously difficult third movement. Smolen has gotten a lot of the hardest technical assignments of the season, perhaps because she gives the impression of solidity, but the swift, allegro footwork of this hair-raising section of the ballet seemed to sneak up and ambush her. To be sure, it’s never easy to have to jump side-by-side with Pascal Molat, who sails easily through two turns in the air in the time of her single turn, and elicits spontaneous gasps and chuckles from the audience. Molat does more than serve up the lofty leaps, though. His knack for phrasing and warmth shows us that dancing is not just steps, any more than an ode is just words on a page.

Also making a strong debut was Sarah van Patten, newly promoted to principal this season. Van Patten, partnered sometimes unsteadily by soloist Hansuke Yamamoto, has discovered an appealing glamour and warmth onstage that gave her steps--even faltering ones –a sparkle as she led the fourth movement.

Looking more energetic was Lar Lubovitch’s “Elemental Brubeck,” an over-long commission to three recordings by Dave Brubeck that was fueled by a jet-propelled Garcia and an easy-going sweet romance between Katita Waldo and Ruben Martin in the duet. It decently filled out Program 7, running in rep with Program 6, which features old favorites such as Julia Adams’ mesmerizing “Night” and Agnes de Mille’s “Rodeo,” in addition to the premiere of Helgi Tomasson’s newest work, “On Common Ground.”

This last, though not one of Tomasson’s best ballets—the choreography for a fearsome quartet of Tina LeBlanc, Lorena Feijoo, Joan Boada and Davit Karapetyan, plus the trio of Elana Altman, Jennifer Stahl and Rory Hohenstein has a feel of spiky, mid-1950’s Balanchine -- nevertheless has a way of sticking in one’s mind days after the performance.

The program notes gave little hint as to Tomasson’s intentions, however the Ned Rorem score against Sandra Woodall’s visuals – blood red streaks projected on the back, and a raft of gigantic gingko leaves floating above –were striking and clearly invited further thought.

A bit of research reveals the odd fact that in post A-bomb Hiroshima, a gingko tree only a few miles from ground zero was the first thing to bloom after the war. This hardy perennial has since become a symbol of hope and renewal – an apt metaphor for our times, and a forward-looking expression for a company that now looks ahead to its 75th anniversary season in the fall.

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San Francisco Ballet: Eden/Eden, Chi-Lin, Spring Rounds, Pacific, The Fifth Season,Carousel, Fancy Free

The landscape is spare, but far from serene in “Eden/Eden,” Wayne McGregor’s ambitious and compelling ballet, which San Francisco Ballet gave its American premiere on Program 4 of their repertory season on Tuesday night. This is risky work for SFB, but ultimately both rewarding and haunting.

Created originally for the Stuttgart Ballet, “Eden/Eden” is ostensibly about cloning, but, never simplistic, it’s also a meditation on the seductive intersection of technology and the human machine.

“The process is as follows,” intones one of the five unseen vocalists in a scientific drone. Over the pulsing Steve Reich score from his opera “Three Tales”—conducted here by Gary Sheldon—their measured monologue sets us initially in the midst of the cloning debate.

Muriel Maffre, in flesh-colored skivvies and skullcap, ascends into a stark spotlight, all androgynous, hairless muscle, while projections assembled by Ravi Deepres unfold like a universe behind her. Maffre has never had a problem with finding the beauty in an ugly line, and in “Eden/Eden” she makes the most of a torqued spine and limbs yanked in every direction. Joined in a weirdly agonistic duet by Gonzalo Garcia, they create a vision of biology gone haywire.

Like Autons, the creepy mannequins of sci-fi’s “Dr. Who,” the dancers seem to multiply, eventually filling the stage with flails, as if the impulses for each movement were directed from the wrong nerve endings. Bathed in Charles Balfour’s sickly green-gray light, the figures in this fearsome gymnasium are nearly impossible to tell apart. And the whole exercise becomes even more disturbing when they shed their skullcaps and don Ursula Bombshell’s tunics to become individuals. There’s a moment of mental resistance--you don’t want to believe that these “Bladerunner” replicants could ever become human.

McGregor--whose metier in his own company, Random Dance, is modern dance-- has his own lexicon of movement that is far from ballet-based, although curiously he utilizes the women’s pointe work effectively, perhaps because his understanding of the technique stems from expediency rather than tradition. Nevertheless, the dancers eat up this style and spit it out like nails, offering performances of surprising depth and aggression. If you find yourself seduced by the physical beauty and apparent perfection of the alien uber-humans before you--including Katita Waldo, Pascal Molat, Rory Hohenstein, Jaime Garcia Castilla, Moises Martin, and notably corps members Dana Genshaft and Hayley Farr-- you might notice that there are no apples on the silvery tree hovering in this Eden. That fruit has been plucked and we’ve all taken a big bite.

Only a few weeks ago, when William Forsythe brought his company to Cal Performances, I wondered idly if San Francisco Ballet would ever perform a piece like his “Three Atmospheric Studies,” a complex, heavily text-based, but thrilling work with almost no traditional ballet steps. We have our answer. SFB Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson has taken an enormous risk in presenting McGregor’s very unpretty, but very absorbing work, and we can only hope that there more of these sort of challenges lie in the future.

In a different vein, two other works premiered on the ballet’s Program 5 on Thursday night—none more anticipated than Christopher Wheeldon’s “Carousel (A Dance),” made originally for New York City Ballet. Set to excerpts from Richard Rodgers’ “Carousel” –the grand “Carousel” waltz and “If I Loved You”—this version offers a sketched, dream ballet of Julie’s ill-fated romance with smooth-talking carny Billy, danced on Thursday by Sarah van Patten and Pierre-François Vilanoba. In a lemon-colored dress with matching ribbon, Van Patten brings a lovely unsuspecting freshness to her role, although Vilanoba is perhaps a little too likeable to convince as her no-account beau.

The main weakness in this “Carousel,” though, is the choreography. Wheeldon jam-packs every count with steps and the result, while impressive, hasn’t quite nailed the feeling of giddy freedom. Many of the lifts in Van Patten and Vilanoba’s duet were lovely, but with all the swooning and the swooping happening early in their waltz, there was very little room for emotional build.

Wheeldon might do well to take a look at Jerome Robbins’ “Fancy Free,” which got more than a little lift from Molat, Anderson and Garcia as a trio of roguish sailors on shore leave. The young Robbins—who reportedly refined and pared back the more cartoonish antics of this larky 1944 vignette—offers more bang for your buck with a twitch of an eyebrow than all the swooning lifts in the world can accomplish. If the dancers (and the orchestra) could have been a little looser and jazzier to match the bounding Leonard Bernstein score, it was nonetheless a delightful excursion that brought an instant smile to the lips from the first burst of energy onstage.

Filling out Program 4 were the Arcadian gambols of Paul Taylor’s “Spring Rounds,” led on Tuesday night by Vanessa Zahorian and Garrett Anderson, and Helgi Tomasson’s “Chi-Lin” with an inscrutable Yuan Yuan Tan in the title role. Program 5 saw the return of Mark Morris’ “Pacific” and Tomasson’s “The Fifth Season,” with the music delivered under the capable baton of Martin West.

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San Francisco Ballet: Firebird, Artifact, The Dance House

Yuri Possokhov surely has a goofy romantic streak in him. In his first commission for San Francisco Ballet as official Choreographer in Residence, Possokhov’s new version of the old Ballet Russes boy-meets-bird classic, “Firebird,” has a sleek contemporary aesthetic, but the moment when it really takes flight is in the sweetly naïve “first love” pas de deux for the Prince and Princess, danced at the premiere on Thursday night by Tiit Helimets and Rachel Viselli.

Possokhov originally created a version of “Firebird” for the Oregon Ballet Theatre in 2004, although the word is that he made substantial changes for this production. Nevertheless, although it had some standout moments—many of which center on a gleeful Pascal Molat, chewing the scenery as the demon Kaschei—this “Firebird” in the end doesn’t quite satisfy.

It’s not for lack of skillful collaborators. Adding the titular Firebird to her list of exotic creature roles, Yuan Yuan Tan gave the impression less of the mercurial critter we’ve come to expect, but a rather grander more haughty bird, and Helimets brings an doodle-headed charm to the not-too-bright-but-very-lucky Prince Ivan, who wins her allegiance and assistance in defeating the demon so he can win his princess.

Costume designs by Sandra Woodall explicitly call up the ballet’s Russian origins, but seem at odds with Yuri Zhukov’s elegant, rather minimalist sets. Taken separately, the pretty Russian dresses and the airy skeletal masses of the décor would stand up well, but seen together, they leave one with the sense of being half-in and half-out of a fairytale. The orchestra, under the baton of Martin West, also sounded unusually sluggish particularly through the dance of the demons and the final apotheosis, perhaps partly accounting for why the finale of the ballet, a scene usually heart-breaking in its gloriousness, appeared a little underwhelming.

Inevitably, however, one can’t help but compare this version with the original “Firebird,” a lavish work created by Michel Fokine in 1910 to a dazzling score by Igor Stravinsky that was seen locally a few years back when the Kirov Ballet brought a reconstruction to Cal Performances. While Possokhov retains most of the original libretto--conceived by Serge Diaghilev out of several Russian folktales-- his choice of the shorter “Firebird Suite,” devised by Stravinsky in 1945 instead of the full 1910 version of the score, has meant that much of the storytelling has been compressed, making for a good ballet, though not a great one.

On Thursday night, the company also returned to the blood red barre of David Bintley’s “The Dance House.” Created for SFB in 1994 in the maelstrom of the AIDS crisis, “The Dance House” had something of a histrionic feel when it debuted, but the years have softened the edges a little and abstracted the ballet into a better, though still programmatic sketch of doomed lives in the microcosm of a ballet classroom. In the central role of the bringer of death, Gonzalo Garcia unleashed a decidedly earthy, oddly sympathetic take on a problematic character created originally by Anthony Randazzo, while Tina LeBlanc and Kristin Long reprised the roles they created in the first and last movements respectively, joined by Viselli who gave a respectable inner quiet to her adagio pas de deux with Helimets.

More eagerly anticipated though, was the return of “Artifact Suite” William Forsythe’s deconstructed ballet which dazzled audiences last season, and which arrived on Program 1 on Tuesday night. With a lead cast as diverse as Muriel Maffre, Pierre-François Vilanoba, Lorena Feijoo, Pascal Molat and Elana Altman, it was clear that Forsythe’s idiosyncratic work is meant to look vastly different on every body. But just as clearly, it’s Maffre who makes the most of this freedom. Surrounded by ranks of corps members signalling enigmatic semaphores behind her, she traces a long arc with her leg that swoops into a teetering dive for maximum effect.

Notable in the masses of humanity that fill the stage was corps member Lily Rogers, whose incised, almost insolent lines brought unexpected clarity to the second movement. Rogers’ debut next week in the role of the Firebird should worth seeing.

A ballet like “Artifact” should always be on the program with a George Balanchine work. On Program 1 it was “Divertimento No. 15,” to the Mozart work of the same name and conducted by George Cleve. Watching the patterned brush of dozens of legs, the push through the hips in a step forward, the wide sweep of an arm, and then seeing it taken to a new extreme by Forsythe was like watching the journey that ballet has taken over the years. Among the five principal women of “Divertimento,” Katita Waldo offered exactly the right delicate pointe placement, turning mere steps into sparkling chains, which is not to detract from Kristin Long, Frances Chung, Vanessa Zahorian and Viselli, who navigated their solos with cheerful aplomb, as did the trio of principal men Gennadi Nedvigin, Jaime Garcia Castilla and Nicolas Blanc.

Also on Program 2 was Helgi Tomasson’s jaunty “Blue Rose,” and rounding out Program 1 was Jacques Garnier’s “Aunis” given a speedy slingshot velocity by Garrett Anderson, James Sofranko, and Rory Hohenstein.

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San Francisco Ballet: 2007 Opening Gala

It’s not often that pieces on a gala program surprise you, but San Francisco Ballet’s Opening Gala at the War Memorial Opera House on Wednesday night went beyond the usual star-studded pieces d’occasion to offer an evening of thoughtful, often provocative dance.

None was more surprising or engrossing than Yuri Possokhov’s “Bitter Tears,” a world premiere unveiled by Muriel Maffre, accompanied by countertenor Mark Crayton singing the famous “Stille Amare” or “Poison Aria” from G.F. Handel's “Tolomeo.” Combining spare modernism with a formality that evoked the court ballets of the 17th and 18th century, this startling work melded theater, opera and dance to explore tantalizing imagery. Even if Possokhov’s intentions were not immediately apparent to anyone unfamiliar with Handel’s tale of betrayal and death in ancient Egypt, the drama playing out onstage was nonetheless compelling. From her stately entrance, clad in a pale flesh colored leotard and a flame gold skirt, to her shedding of the skirt to reveal a diaphanous tutu frame, to her final throes in beautifully ugly sharpened angles, Maffre embodied the wisping vapor of poison itself twining around Crayton as he described his slow descent into death. This was not your usual gala fare.

As devotees of the company know, Maffre has announced her retirement from the company at the end of this season, though clearly she is still at the height of her artistic powers. Maffre has never seemed to worry much about going out on a limb in any performance, as if somehow she respects her audience enough to know they’ll appreciate the challenge of even the most esoteric interpretations, and the audience responds in equal measure.

An enigmatic air also surrounded Yuan Yuan Tan and Damian Smith, who floated through dreamy, peripatetic acrobatics in a duet from Christopher Wheeldon’s “After the Rain,” set to the music of Arvo Part. No less impressive, if more violent in its undertones was the Armenian-born Davit Karapetyan’s “Last Breath,” an impressively caustic solo to music from the film “Matrix Revolutions.”

The program also included several revivals of works from the 1970s-- among the most successful, Jacques Garnier’s 1979 ballet “Aunis,” which kicked off the entire program. Aunis is the old name for the area of France on the Atlantic coast around La Rochelle, and appropriately enough it was up to the trio of Frenchmen -- Nicolas Blanc, Pierre-François Vilanoba and Pascal Molat – to put their own stamp on the winged contractions and flights across the stage to Maurice Pacher’s arrangements of folktunes on accordion.

Tina LeBlanc and Gennadi Nedvigin gave their own wholly convincing spin to Gerald Arpino’s “L’Air d’Esprit,” a Romantic-tinged tribute to the great ballerina Olga Spessivtseva set to the music of the “Giselle” composer Adolph Adam. Nedvigin was more than suitably airy, but it was bravura precision and speed from LeBlanc – who surely has the fastest feet in the West -- that dazzled with its unexpected edginess.

In a different vein, San Francisco Ballet’s newest principal Molly Smolen offered a solo, “Five Brahms Waltzes in the Manner of Isadora Duncan,” accompanied on the piano by Roy Bogas. Smolen was coached in the role by Lynn Seymour -- for whom Sir Frederick Ashton originally created the piece in 1975 -- and she evinces something of Seymour’s wildness as she throws herself almost instinctively into the pure sensation and feeling of the arches and twining arms. If the deceptively simple-looking “Five Dances” seems a touch dated, it is nevertheless a credit to Smolen’s expressive powers that she kept it interesting to the end.

In a more classical vein, Lorena Feijoo and Tiit Helimets worked hard to infuse the duet from the second act of “Giselle” with a Romantic glow. Vanessa Zahorian gave her Aurora a bit of American attack in the grand pas de deux from “The Sleeping Beauty,” which SFB will perform in its entirety later in the season. Partnered by Gonzalo Garcia, who whipped through his solos with panache, Zahorian looks like the details of the role are still in development, even as the dancing hits a solid note technically.

Nutnaree Pipit-Suksun and Vilanoba unfurled a quiet air of composure and the intensity from the inside out to Helgi Tomasson’s contemplative “7 for Eight,” while Kristin Long and Joan Boada put the champagne fizz into Tomasson’s “Soirees Musicales,” a frothy display of virtuoso sauciness to the music of Benjamin Britten.

The evening, under the baton of Martin West, ended with the buoyant finale from George Balanchine’s “Symphony in C,” led by a sunny Frances Chung and Garrett Anderson.

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SFB: Giddy spinning at the Nutcracker

San Francisco Ballet
“Nutcracker”
War Memorial Opera House

There was giddy spinning going on outside of the War Memorial Opera House on Thursday night, even before a single dancer had stepped onto the stage for San Francisco Ballet’s holiday treat, Helgi Tomasson’s “Nutcracker.”

Little ones in elegant dresses and suits enacted their own sort of party scene as they clutched the teddy bears that ushers handed out at the door and practically vibrated with excitement in the lobby, which was decked out in silver and green for the holidays.

Inside, as the overture got underway, under the sprightly baton of Martin West, the kids kept up a low buzz of impatience, which settled in as the curtain went up on Michael Yeargan’s elegant San Francisco-inspired Victorian sets and Martin Pakledinaz’s frothy costumes.

Tomasson’s lovely “Nutcracker” – the fifth version San Francisco Ballet has staged since they started the Christmastime tradition back in 1944 – eschews the heavy psychological tack of some modern versions, although it is not just the simple bon-bon of most traditional “Nutcrackers” either. Tomasson’s young Clara is very much a “‘tween” -- not quite ready to give up her dolls, but old enough to be dancing formal dances with the adults, and her dreams emphasize the fantastical elements of childhood along with the wonder of growing up.

Hannah Foster made a charming Clara -- scrappy in the battle scene and visibly entranced when swept up in the arms of her transformed Nutcracker, Tiit Helimets. A natural prince, Helimets’ refined classicism made for a patrician, though somewhat bemused demeanor and his eerily soundless landings from prodigious jumps were impressive. As the King and Queen of the Snow, though, it was Joan Boada and Kristin Long who fully captured the exhilaration of the gorgeous Tchaikovsky music, filling out the shimmering snow flurries with eddying turns, punctuated by elegant poses that reached to the end of their fingertips.

If there was a lackluster moment in the ballet, it came only at the end with Yuan Yuan Tan as the transformed and newly tutu-ed Clara. Tan is a hugely talented dancer, but her lackadaisical attack and eccentric musicality on this occasion betrayed a peculiar lack of effort only thinly disguised by those hyper-mobile arabesques. Her uneven performance stood in contrast to that of Vanessa Zahorian, whose onstage glow warmed the stage as she led the bouquet of waltzing flowers with fast light turns as the Sugar Plum Fairy.

Happily, the rest of the company looked as if they relished the fun of bringing an old standard to vibrant life. If these dancers have done a hundred “Nutcrackers,” you’d never know it from gusto with which they attacked their roles. From the fuzzy-legged Kirill Zaretsky as the Mouse King, to the zesty Spanish spiced up by Rory Hohenstein, Hansuke Yamamoto, Jaime Garcia Castilla, Dores Andre and Frances Chung, to the Arabian with Nutnaree Pipit-Suksun tastefully twining around the brawny duo of Moises Martin and Brett Bauer -- everyone onstage tackled each of their characters with enthusiasm.

Brooke Moore, Mariellen Olson and Jennifer Stahl handled the candy-striped, be-ribboned French variation with decided aplomb, while Pascal Molat made it look as though the stage wasn’t large enough to contain his outsize leaps in the Chinese divertissement. As always, the rousing Russian trepak -- choreographed by Anatole Vilzak and danced with bouncing, bounding humor by James Sofranko, Garrett Anderson and new company member Benjamin Stewart -- brought a delighted roar from a crowd thoroughly enchanted.

This review originally appeared in the Contra Costa Times.

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San Francisco Ballet: 2006 Gala and Swan Lake

San Francisco Ballet
War Memorial Opera House, Van Ness Avenue at Grove, San Francisco
through February 4

San Francisco Ballet Opening Gala: Wednesday January 25, 2006

A light drizzle didn’t at all dim the spirits of the happy souls promenading in all their finery at San Francisco Ballet’s Opening Gala last Wednesday night at the War Memorial Opera House. Indeed, the mood in the lobby was still so giddy at ten minutes after eight that most of the audience members were barely close to their seats when the lights went down.

That’s business as usual for the annual ballet gala, but the program Helgi Tomasson cooked up for the opening of the company’s 73rd season offered more than the usual finger-food. This year’s selection ventured from the classical to the contemporary in what could have been a statement on the range and diversity requisite for a 21st century ballet company.

There’s a reason why San Francisco Ballet, recently named company of the year by Dance Europe Magazine, not only remains in the top tier of classically-based companies in the world, but also has run in the black financially for fourteen years. How many troupes can field twenty nine dancers in an evening that calls for the exacting classicism of “Paquita,” the asperity of William Forsythe, the Romantic softness of “Chopiniana” and everything in between?

It was the dynamic trio of Katita Waldo, Kristin Long and Vanessa Zahorian who opened the program with a deliciously breezy rendering of Forsythe’s “The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude,” partnered with agile precision by Nicolas Blanc and Pierre-François Vilanoba.

Muriel Maffre and Damian Smith, dancing a pas de deux from Yuri Possokhov’s “Reflections” offered a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside a modernist enigma. In one long seamless moment that left behind a sense of longing and loss, Maffre and Smith managed to conjure far more of a Romantic essence than did Claire Pascal and Ruben Martin, whose duet from “Chopiniana” – also known as “Les Sylphides”—was curiously lacking in Romantic style.

In the “Black Swan” Pas de Deux, Lorena Feijoo ably demonstrated how to give an account of a character within the first minute of an entrance. The evil glint in her eye was perhaps a trifle dismissive of partner Davit Karapetyan -- the Armenian-born principal who joined the company this season from the Zurich Ballet -- but her caprices could not cloud the high spirits which emerged in his spectacular jumps.

Among the many other standouts of the evening were Pascal Molat, making a sharply specific and percolating debut in Hans van Manen’s “Solo,” Nutnaree Pipit-Suksun, who produced gasp-worthy articulation partnered by new principal Tiit Helimets in David Bintley’s “The Dance House,” and a brightly magnetic Gonzalo Garcia in fire engine red for Lar Lubovitch’s “Elemental Brubeck.”

SFB's: Swan Lake
San Francisco Ballet’s spring season got off to thoroughly satisfying start with Gonzalo Garcia making an impressive debut opposite Tina LeBlanc in Helgi Tomasson’s “Swan Lake,” which opened on Saturday night at the War Memorial Opera House.

Tomasson’s “Swan Lake” – first produced some 18 years ago -- is among the more succinct versions of the sprawling classic though in essence, it is unchanged from the famous version choreographed by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov. His is also a visually pretty production.

Although the original story is set in Germany, the inspiration for the scenery and costumes, designed by Jens-Jacob Worsaae, is the floral French Rococo landscapes made famous by 18th century painter Jean-Honore Fragonard. Conceptually this doesn’t interfere with the basic story – boy meets swan, boy falls in love with swan, boy betrays swan, boy and swan plunge to their deaths -- although the court scenes in the first and third act can look a little overly fussy, which is in contrast with the streamlined dancing onstage.

Among the chief pleasures of the evening, though, was seeing Garcia tackle the sometimes problematic role of Siegfried. From the start, Garcia has always had the tools -- easy multiple turns, a lofty jump and an exuberant love of being on stage. But as he moves through the classical canon, he constantly adds nuance to his dancing, and never more satisfyingly so than in his Siegfried, where every movement becomes a part and parcel to his expressiveness. A double assemblé turn – tossed off with disarming ease – is no longer just a tricky step, but seems to echo the turmoil in a troubled prince’s thoughts. He acknowledges relationships with the other dancers onstage as he passes them during his variations, and in his partnering work, he is more sensitive to how his line not only complements, but completes his partner’s, and often adjusts accordingly.

In the dual role of Odette and Odile, LeBlanc displayed her customary security and the swift dagger-like pointe work which speaks volumes about her strength. Even so, though, she imbued her White Swan with a forlorn desperation, shaping the character in a simple arabesque that sank down to earth with both a melancholy plushness and a keenly accurate instinct for the music. When Garcia enfolded her in his arms, the small nuzzle into his neck could have melted an ice block.

By contrast her Black Swan had the feeling of a caricature of Odette rather than a shadowy alter ego, and in this, LeBlanc’s technical accomplishments seemed a hindrance that made her Odile a distant figure. So solidly invulnerable was her performance that the sparks never really flew between her and Garcia the way they did in the second act.

A casual observer might assume that LeBlanc -- who joined the company in 1992 and has done this role many times – was cast secondarily in the role of mentor to Garcia, who is a younger principal. It may well be the case, but to say that is to deny Garcia full credit for the intelligence with which he approaches every role. In fact it looks more like this pairing works --as it did so well in “Giselle” last season -- because there is a meeting of two astute minds. LeBlanc and Garcia have peppered their interpretation with details -- the way she barely touches his shoulder before falling into his arms, a quick understated glance under the arm – so that it looks like a partnership, rather than just two dancers moving in close proximity. Even if certain aspects didn’t work completely, their performance as a whole had coherence.

If the devil is in the details for the Swan Queen and her Siegfried, it is doubly true for the corps de ballet. This flock of sixteen swans, augmented by eight soloists, boasts fine dancers, but sadly, small things – heads tilted at different angles, arms raised to varying levels – betrayed a lack of attention to what is, to many people, a key part of the appeal of the lakeside scene. Some of the more meaningful aspects of the corps’ steps have been forgotten or distilled away. Gone, for instance, is the lovely twining motion of the arms that used to signify swans preening. The dancers now do a simplified classroom-style arm movement that conveys little of the supernatural quality of their swan-maiden duality.

The owlish Damian Smith made the most of his predatory, scenery-chewing role as the evil von Rothbart and the pas de trois in the first act got a lift from the girlish and light Vanessa Zahorian, who danced opposite a nervous looking but very pretty Rachel Viselli. Sergio Torrado, whose bravado is impressive but whose technique has just enough sloppiness to mar the effects, partnered them both. Possibly the two dancers having the most fun at the ball in the third act, however, were Elizabeth Miner and Pascal Molat, who danced a fast and furious Neapolitan.

Newly appointed music director Martin West wrung every bit of drama from the Tchaikovsky score, particularly in the ebb and flow of the second act. His leadership is a welcome relief, and if the orchestra seemed to flag at the end of the ballet, still they sound livelier than ever under his baton.

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