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| CHOREOGRAPHER / TITLE |
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| New Works Festival
SF BALLET 2008 75TH ANNIVERSARY Program B |
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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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| Welch�s Naked seems constrained, rather than liberated by the score, Poulenc�s "Concerto in D Minor for Two Pianos" (Roy Bogas, Michael McGraw), a work several years ago deployed by artistic director Helgi Tomasson. The choreographer responds to thematic and harmonic changes with a kind of academic rigor that wants to illustrate the score, rather than fuse with it. So, when the music turns sassy (in the inimitable Poulenc manner), Molat abandons partner Long, breaks in and beguiles us with stunning bris�s and his phenomenal elevation. Tan and Ruben Martin were the second set of principals.
A rose by any other name, gives us a retelling of "The Sleeping Beauty" for a cynical age. ..The choreographer and former company dancer possesses a lovely antic spirit and her dancers locomote through space like robots crossing a wading pool with arms extended and sharp pivots. Adam conflates the Prince and Lilac Fairy (Gennadi Nedvigin), offers ample dancing opportunities to the King and Queen (the divinely cast Tiit Helimets and Lily Rogers) and transforms the fairies into guys, led with appealing swagger by Brett Bauer...Kristin Long�s cheery Aurora is menaced by Carabosse, the seductive Elizabeth Miner, a dancer who might distract any prince in his quest. The piece is entertaining enough, but it�s hard to discern what Adam has contributed to the legend, beyond a gentle role reassignment. The Ruins Proclaim The Building Was Beautiful takes its time to wrap the observer in its mantle of terror, and the sense of inertia only contributes to the aura of dread. The men respond to the women�s discomfort by jumping and spinning in place, lifting them like discarded statues. And you emerge with the sensation that everyone, masters and subjects alike, are trapped in the same sexual morass. After one viewing, I will say this: The Ruins is some kind of experience and I wouldn�t want to be Kudelka�s analyst for all the money in the world. Even with composer John Adams on hand to conduct his wondrously demanding "Son of Chamber Symphony," Joyride found the eight terrific dancers hovering on the precipice...The supine dancers at the start are deceptive; the 20 minutes that follow allow little respite. Lifts are treacherous (my admiration for James Sofranko�s hoisting of Elizabeth Miner on the run is total). Episodes of kick boxing leaven the dancing; daring extensions and realignments of stage space prevail. The other performers (Dana Genshaft, Rory Hohenstein, Pascal Molat, Gennadi Nedvigin, fiery Jennifer Stahl, Sarah Van Patten) dazzle us with articulation at high speed./ VOD Review |
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| Welch's "Naked" pushed at ballet's boundaries in a different way, 19th century poses (like "Paquita"-style arms) yielding to 21st century twists in the same way that the clean classicism of Francis Poulenc's Concerto in D Minor for Two Pianos is constantly warped by early 20th century avant-gardism. Kristin Long and Pascal Molat were the spitfires; Yuan Yuan Tan threaded through in a ballerina-in-a-jewelry-box role. It was good to see Frances Chung, usually such a cannon shot, used in the dissonant slow sections alongside Brett Bauer. "Naked's" pleasures were academic - the ballet doesn't seem to be about anything more than the steps themselves - but those pleasures were many.
Perhaps no choreographic voice is as original - as outright weird - as Julia Adam's, you're reminded by the stilted, puppetlike movement in "A Rose by Any Other Name." But in tethering "The Sleeping Beauty" to Bach's "Goldberg Variations," Adam binds her coolly distant formality to a coolly distant score - and the result feels like a long exercise in style. There are in-jokes for those who know Petipa's "Sleeping Beauty," especially in the male fairies, but the humor is glacial. Still, I'm glad there's a place for a vision as strange as Adam's in the ballet world, and in this festival. How you feel about James Kudelka's "The Ruins Proclaim the Building Was Beautiful" may depend on your capacity for existential malaise, but there's no discounting the conceptual boldness. With its commissioned score by John Adams, "Joyride" was the PR coup of the Ballet's 75th anniversary season, and Wednesday, with Adams himself conducting, it lived up to the buzz...I felt Morris pushing from within ballet's language and conventions. Elizabeth Miner has a solo of fouette turns that seems to spin right out of everything she's done up to that moment; Rory Hohenstein blasts through a variation of spectacularly ticktocking legs...But the drama of "Joyride" is its slower middle movement. Here, Morris has his couples (led by Sarah Van Patten and Gennadi Nedvigin) dance their pas de deux both facing front, side by side, the man standing slightly behind, the woman quite steady on her own, thank-you-very-much./ YKW Review |