An edited version of this appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle.
(photo: Erik Tomasson)
Whenever a favorite dancer gives a retirement gala there’s a bittersweet mood in the audience and Saturday night was no exception as San Francisco Ballet bid farewell to Tina LeBlanc, who retired from the stage after dancing ten years with the Joffrey Ballet and 17 years as a principal with SFB.
Never a diva, but always a star, LeBlanc is the quintessential American ballerina--a dancer of can-do amiability with brains, pragmatism and a remarkably unpretentious freshness onstage and off. Even the ticket stubs for the gala occasion on Saturday night at the War Memorial Opera House said simply and without formality, “Tina’s Farewell.”
“You know, it’s funny, it actually feels like a family gathering,” remarked Rory Hohenstein, a former soloist with SFB who has guested with the company for the last few programs of their 2009 season. “But I saw dress rehearsal and already we were getting a little…” he wiped at his eyes.
Bill Repp, the doorman who enthusiastically greets patrons at the Grove Street entrance to the War Memorial Opera House—commiserated for a moment, “I’ve seen of course lots of dancers retire through the years, but this, this is one of the hardest,” he said shaking his head, “Tina is such a lady. She just commands so much respect from everyone.”
Devotees waiting for the doors to open so they could stake a spot in standing room reflected on LeBlanc’s qualities.
“When she first came to San Francisco Ballet, I had the impression she was a very technical dancer,” recalls Paul Dana, “But she proved to be so much deeper of a dancer than that.”
“I’ve seen many Auroras, and she was the first one since Margot Fonteyn to make me cry,” adds Tab Buckner. “Every gesture, the way she captured the mood of the music, in everything she did there was such logic in the way it unfolded. She is unique.”
Asked which of the many partnerships of Tina’s stands out in their memories, the crowd returns an unhesitating chorus. “Gonzalo!”
LeBlanc’s tremendous generosity onstage has never warmed a partnership so well as the one she shared with former SFB principal Gonzalo Garcia, who returned as a guest artist from New York City Ballet to present her in Balanchine’s “Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux” with just the kind of tenderness, nobility and abandon that she inspired in him in so many roles. Long-beloved as he rose through the ranks, Garcia’s partnership with LeBlanc was one of the magical events at San Francisco Ballet and from the roar that went up from the audience at their first steps onto the stage, clearly no one at the Opera House had forgotten.
Garcia’s beats were as lofty as we remembered--his exuberance still thrilling, but when LeBlanc looked at him meltingly, he turned his eyes to the audience for an instant as if to say, “Am I lucky or what?”
His gallantry was the perfect frame for LeBlanc, who even in this last performance took risks, playfully pushing the musicians and conductor Martin West with her crystalline phrasing, nailing a series of turns with a flourish and sailing—even floating—into Garcia’s arms in the coda.
Interspersed throughout the evening were video clips from LeBlanc’s long career, mixed in with tributes from her colleagues. Predictably much of the video, assembled by Austin Forbord, featured her astonishingly brilliant technical moments, breathtaking turns and virtuoso pointe work. But while most interviewees are inclined to mention her technique first, they almost always end by talking about how moving and engaging her dancing became, and there was no better place to see that sensitive and intelligent artistry than in Lar Lubovitch’s “My Funny Valentine,” which she performed on Saturday with Griff Braun, of Lubovitch’s company.
During intermission, LeBlanc’s early ballet teacher, Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet’s Marcia Dale Weary, recalled her young student. “She was so sweet, but so focused-- I knew right from the start that she would be a ballerina,” remembered Weary, “She still looks like the same little girl to me,” she added wistfully.
LeBlanc has always been best at playing real women, not airy-fairy types. While other dancers can look like unfamiliar, otherworldly creatures when you see them off stage, LeBlanc is always strikingly real—the same person you see onstage is the person you meet offstage. Even in dreamy roles like the Adagio from Helgi Tomasson’s 1995 “Sonata,” which LeBlanc danced with Ruben Martin in the second half of the program to the accompaniment of David Kadarauch on cello and Nataly’a Feygina on piano, she manages to compress a womanly earthiness into the expressiveness of an arching back or extended limbs.
“As a tall partner, I thought there would never be a possibility for me to work with this woman who made everything look easy,” said former SFB principal Benjamin Pierce, whose duet with LeBlanc in 2000 in Julia Adam’s “Night” remains etched in the memories of those who saw it. “I admired Tina so much but she was like a forbidden fruit, so ‘Night’ was like a gift. She had a reverence for the duality of two people working together and of her place in a big, beautiful company.”
Often hailed as the company’s premier technician, and admired by colleagues and audiences alike for her sunny vivacity, LeBlanc’s very presence in a ballet could immediately ground an entire cast. For her finale, LeBlanc shifted to Balanchine classicism with the pas de deux and polonaise from “Theme and Variations.” Partnered attentively by Davit Karapetyan, LeBlanc navigated the hair-raising choreography with extraordinary nerve and grace.
No matter whom the partner, when LeBlanc looks at him, there is a particular tilt of his head as he looks back at her and the warmth of her smile as she balanced steadily on one stretched pointe seemed to inspire Karapetyan, who walked around her gazing admiringly.
At the curtain call, as tears streamed down LeBlanc’s face, Helgi Tomasson led a parade of dancers--including Nicolas Blanc, Pascal Molat, Gennadi Nedvigin, fellow ballet moms Katita Waldo and Kristin Long, Joan Boada on crutches and LeBlanc’s former partners David Palmer and Parrish Maynard—who paid one more tribute to her. Garcia fell, only part-comically, to both knees before her, but perhaps no men affected her more than her two young sons Marinko and Sasha, whose pride in their mom’s evening was clear.
At the end, LeBlanc took one last bow, mouthing to the audience, “I’ll miss you” as the curtain fell.
Labels: ballet, reviews, San_Francisco_Ballet, SFChronicle
