San Francisco Ballet, War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco, CA
Program 1: Sea Pictures, Black Cake, Prism
Jan 30, Feb 9, 2001

The start of the season was heavily anticipated for most of the dancers I knew. All of us felt a little starved of good dancing, despite the surfeit of Nutcrackers this year. So I must confess that I found the first program for San Francisco Ballet this year to be a bit tame. The acquisition of the Hans van Manen piece notwithstanding, It was clear that this year would be not about the works, but about the dancers.

Sea Pictures, which seemed romantic and lush last year, seems a little obvious on a second viewing. I find myself often wishing for the sweep of the Edward Elgar music to be reflected in the choreography. Tina LeBlanc is, as always, so technically secure and yet so passionate, that she makes a otherwise somewhat banal piece look much more interesting. The lifts and partnering are intricate and difficult in this piece, but the dancers executed them well, though not as cleanly as last year, and with a bit of a forced look to them. Vanessa Zahorian (with Pierre-François Vilanoba) was appealing, but ultimately not as touching as Julie Diana.

Black Cake was the piece I really came to see both nights and it didn't disappoint. Van Manen's sense of humor was evident from the start in the careful direction of the dancers. American ballet companies, it seems, rarely get to perform works of this kind of delicious theatricality, works which rely as much on the sensibilities of the dancers as they do on the choreography. Still, it was soundly constructed, to music of Igor Stravinsky, Jules Massenet, Pietro Mascagni, Leos Jan‡cek, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, and very carefully rehearsed. On both nights, I saw the sharp-witted Julia Adam, whose focus and use of her back set her apart immediately. The cleverness of her duet with Yuri Possokhov ably offsets the quirky sensuality of the preceding pas de deux, which on the second performance was given much more life by Lorena Feijoo and Guennadi Nedviguine. Whether she's doing La Bayadére or Black Cake, Lorena manages to invest her dancing with a sensuality that is quite appealing. Occasionally, there is an expression on her face that seems not to match the piece she's doing, but this is a minor complaint against a dancer who is one of the strongest at SFB.

The second performance also gave us a chance to see Lucia Lacarra perform the third duet with Stephen Legate. Every time I see her it seems like it's an event. Mainly, though, itÕs an opportunity to see the Limbs at work. In terms of expressiveness, she certainly has a fair amount of appeal, but it's the articulation and extension of those legs and arms that make her fascinating to watch. I also realized that whenever I see a piece that she's in, it seems like the choreographer has seized the opportunity to show off her flexible extensions àla seconde and her développés. But now, the same choreography looked entirely different on Tiekka Schofield in the first performance. Schofield's extensions are by no means shabby, but Lacarra pushes them just to the point of inhuman flexibility. When it becomes the Lucia Show though, it turns into a distraction from the dance itself. In a similar way, Sylvie Guillem's high à la secondes used to distract one from the classicism of the White Swan pas de deux, as if suddenly it wasn't about a swan, it was about showing off the legs.

Prism was, as most of Helgi TomassonÕs pieces are, the one to round out the program. Observing the piece, which was choreographed for New York City Ballet and is set to the gorgeous music of Beethoven, I couldn't help but play a little game as I watched. Who had Mr. Tomasson had in mind when choreographing this section? A parade of Balanchine ballerinas went through my head. Was this one meant to be Pat McBride? This section would have looked good on Tanaquil LeClerc, but that's an older generation. Perhaps Suzanne Farrell. Or Merrill Ashley. It helped distract from the series of technically difficult, yet uninspiring steps which he had given the dancers to do.

The second movement was performed by Lucia Lacarra on the first night. It looked tailor-made for her with développés àla seconde sprinkled liberally throughout, but see paragraph above. Her partner, Cyril Pierre, seemed so incidental to the pas de deux that I felt sorry for him. Always in the darkness, behind her glowing, spot-lit legs, he was just a shadowy presence who did a few jeté entrelacés and then rushed to help support her pirouettes. Likewise the corps was only a faint hint in the background, hardly noticeable in the darkness, which seemed to be a shameful waste of talent. By contrast, Yuan Yuan Tan deigned at least to share the spotlight with Pierre François Vilanoba on the second night. She is a beautiful legato dancer as well, but less distracting in her flexibility, and this role suited her well in its abstraction

The final movement, as led by Gonzalo Garcia, seemed to finish out the Balanchine formula correctly. Garcia is wildly appealing, perhaps because of his youth, but also because of his obvious zest for dancing. It brought an immediacy and a pathos to his Prodigal Son last year, and invested this thankless role in the third movement of Prism with its only real moment of pizzazz. I would say that one hopes he will be promoted to Principal Dancer soon, but the road to a season is littered with the bodies of dancers promoted and then exploited at too young an age. I wouldn't wish that on him. Still, he is dancing better and better and one might add, more securely than some other principals.

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This review initially appeared on Voiceofdance.com, March 21, 2001.

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