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| New Works Festival
SF BALLET 2008 75TH ANNIVERSARY Program A |
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| CriticalDance NWF-A |
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| The logistics for the festival have been complex. He requested that the choreographers stay away from piano and chamber accompaniments, �so that we can show off our wonderful orchestra.� There were a few ground rules: no pas de deux, running times between 15 and 30 minutes, and casts that ranged between 7 and 16 dancers. / Dance Magazine - April 2008 |
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| Fusion, SFB choreographer in residence Yuri Possokhov treads a path similar to the one he pursued in Sagalobeli...Here, the choreographer melds whirling Dervishes with standard ballet moves. ..At the beginning, four corps men, dressed in traditional white headgear, skirts and pants sit on the floor. Four couples in blue (they include Smith, Castilla, Boada, Gennadi Nedvigin, Lorena Feijoo, Kristin Long, Yuan Yuan Tan and Vanessa Zahorian) interject in a flurry of extended limbs and dramatic pointe work. Within the Golden Hour, an exquisitely deft abstraction for three principal couples and a mixed, eight member corps...Wheeldon makes news here by lavishing his considerable powers of invention on a standard format, skewed in an unpredictable manner. Framed by a series of rising and descending mottled bars, garbed in Martin Pakledinaz�s glittering costumes...you go to the three interspersed duets featuring six of SFB�s most striking principals. Katita Waldo and Damian Smith�s encounter abounds in slippery backs and evolves into a heart-stopping waltz, taken up by the corps. In some ways, the pairing of Sarah Van Patten and Pierre-Fran�ois Vilanoba suggests an homage to Balanchine�s Agon in its floor-oriented gambits, but the ardent physicality is Wheeldon�s own touch. The Balanchine of "Diamonds" is suggested in the pas de deux for Maria Kochetkova and Joan Boada which proceeds in a diagonal trajectory, as he approaches her on a series of bended knees in a literal courtship ritual...Noted and appreciated was a flighty mirror-unison duo for Rory Hohenstein and Jaime Garcia Castilla. What perhaps appeals most about Within the Golden Hour is a sensation of spontaneity. Paul Taylor was understandably cheered to the rafters when the great modernist materialized on stage after the unveiling of his Changes..Here, Taylor evokes the world of 1960s rock and roll through recordings of six songs by the Mamas and the Papas and Lennon-McCartney. But..What never comes across is the scent of the revolution that the choreographer cites in his superscription. Still, one episode, an almost literal setting of John Phillips� "Dancing Bear" (with Benjamin Stewart in Dr. Dentons and Aaron Orza as the ursine mentor), is charming and quirky beyond words. Patrick Corbin set Changes on 11 members of the SFB corps, and they seemed to relish their assignments in material which may have seemed as ancient to them as the gavotte. Courtney Elizabeth flailed amusingly in �California Earthquake,� while Pauli Magierek, of whom we will see much in the coming days, led "I Call Your Name" with verve. Nevertheless, it will be interesting to see what Taylor�s own company makes of Changes, when it incorporates the work into its repertory later this season./ VOD Review |
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| "Fusion" was the improbable triumph of the evening...A quartet of dervishes in flowing white, juxtaposed with four couples in sleek pantsuits .. Those dervishes keep intermingling with the contemporarily clothed dancers like spirits or angels. The heart of the piece is a pas de deux for Yuan Yuan Tan and Damian Smith, the four dervishes standing as a wall that she runs through, then over, then rolls beneath before her increasingly clinging coupling. Were those dervishes her block to transcendence, or her gate to it, or both? When the pantsuit-dressed men take on the dervishes' kneeling chest pumps by ballet's end, have they found a piece of nirvana on earth? The metaphorical possibilities were rich.
Wheeldon's "Within the Golden Hour," Sarah Van Patten and Pierre-Fran�ois Vilanoba have a lovely pas de deux to strings that imitate bagpipes; Maria Kochetkova performs her specialty, folding up tiny inside Joan Boada's arms; Katita Waldo and Smith share a waltz in which the playfulness is largely superimposed upon the soundtrack. Santo Loquasto's crazy costuming amped up Taylor's "Changes," slinky Anthony Spaulding doing the pony like some latter-day hippie in bell-bottoms, Pauli Magierek and Alexandra Meyer-Lorey down in psychedelic dresses. It was refreshing to see these 11 dancers going for broke to "California Dreaming" in front of James F. Ingalls' rock-concert lighting. But unlike another Taylor dance to popular songs from a bygone wartime, "Company B," little pathos emerged beneath the fun. Hints came with Courtney Elizabeth punching out her comrades to "California Earthquake," glimmers of a deeper cultural grief in her strung-out stumblings. I suspect that Taylor conceived the emotional core of the work to be Aaron Orza and Benjamin Stewart's tender duet to "Dancing Bear," but the song isn't sufficiently well known for the lyrics to resonate. Others may argue whether the deceptively ragged vocabulary squanders the company's classical training, whether the package is more than nostalgia. One thing not debatable is the heroism and fineness of the dancers in every premiere. Spikily energetic Elizabeth was a hippie goddess, while Lorena Feijoo and Kristin Long delivered clarity and strength in "Fusion," surrounded by gorgeously fluid men. It was hard not to be distracted by Clara Blanco and Lily Rogers' sensual musicality in "Within the Golden Hour," and by Jaime Garcia Castilla in every step he took. / YKW Review |