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San Francisco BalletFebruary 2000 by Renee Renouf |
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Gala Performance has its roots in England on the eve of World War II. Restaged by James Jordan of State Ballet of Missouri, now renamed Kansas City Ballet, the work is durably funny, if it suffers some because it is played broadly and obviously. I was sitting in front of two critics, Martha Ullman West from Portland and George Jackson of Washington, D.C., both of whom were familiar with Tudor’s staging and the casting of early Ballet Theater - Nora Kaye, Nana Gollner, Janet Reed, Alicia Alonso, Muriel Bentley - all graced the work. Nora Kaye as the Russian Ballerina; Nana Gollner as the Italian Ballerina; Janet Reed as the French one. The Italian one needs to be statuesque; the Russian dark and medium in height and emotional; the French small, quick and capable of conveying frivolity and the supreme coquette. The Italian cavalier needs to have his moments of a dog who ‘done wrong’ and walk like the tail between the legs and the French cavalier ebullient, puzzled and befuddled, but otherwise smiling and full of ballon. San Francisco Ballet can supply all these components and then some. But instead of a butter spreader there is a tendency to use a full-fledged spatula to spread on the effects. Two visiting critics, George Jackson and Martha Ullman West, have memories of that first cast, I only the memory of the work itself and the early American exponents in other ballets. But there is a lot which is right, and part of it is supplied by the period itself and the postures which Tudor devised for the corps in the opening. Wheater as the Ballet Master is so deliciously distraught, you can sense the nostrils flared as a means of controlling a nascent fit; his dabs with the handkerchief are just quite precious and arch. 'Trippingly on the tongue' is a vocal equivalent. One longs to see something created to Noel Coward music in which his snooty, crisp disdain could be adequately showcased. Muriel Maffre had quite the right touch. Her eyes are slightly veiled and she lets the inflection of her movements and the pauses tell the story. She is very much the ballerina comme il faut, rendered absurd by the plumes which bob and almost tockle her cavalier’s nose when she does her supported turns. Her bows are screams of decorum; the costume helps too, for the skirt bobs with every sedate step. It seems apparent that Maffre knows how to maneuver the sum of all these errant parts. One of the best, fleeting moments comes when the Russian ballerina, intent on corralling seventh-eighths of the bouquets, grudgingly thrusts a smidgen of a bouquet in the Italian ballerina’s direction. Maffre grasps it firmly and presses it to her bosom, a vintage postcard of swooning narcissism and imperious acceptance. While she was overly broad at moments, Lorena Feijoo did a smashing job as The Russian Ballerina. Technically secure to the point where she could exaggerate turns and make them swoopy, she had this bug-eyed gaze when accomplishing precarious turns. But even more, I got the impression that she must have seen a parade of Russian ballerinas when she was studying in Cuba. Watching them, she had the elements of her characterization inbuilt in her experience. Kristin Long was an energetic, determined French soubrette, a bit veering toward the pugilistic side, and I felt she might throw some epithets with as much ease in grand jetes batu. When Tina LeBlanc danced it on Thursday evening she provided more edge, like glass chimes fluttering in the wind, but one sensed she was fully capable of taking one of those itsy-bitty glass chimes, crushing it under her pointe shoes and wagging the jagged edge at her opponent. There was quite an even match with Joanna Berman when they collided over the attention of the conductor and bouquets. Joanna Berman inaugurated the role at San Francisco Ballet and she brings a Garbo-like neck thrust and gaze to the audience. Ninotchka, here we come! The many off-center pirouettes are very secure, done at an incredible angle. She pushes the glamour envelope just so much. Feijoo in contrast provides this astonished slightly pop-eyed gaze; both individual, both very effective. Alice LuAnn Lewitzke and Stephen Legate gave a broader stroke to the Italians, particularly Legate, who provided more character to the role of the Italian cavalier, the head tossed in gallant, alert manner, the swoopy gesture when the hand is extended - even if it’s the wrong one. Lewitzke’s size and demeanor evoked the memory of Svetlana Beriosova. Lewitzke has a lyric quality. It is nice to see her and Ikolo Griffin, also in the corps, enjoy lead roles. Unfortunately, I did not have a chance to assess Griffin as the French cavalier. The small parts, Dresser and Conductor provided a sense of Degas back stage, and the opening passage is perhaps the happiest part of the entire performance. The nerves, the hierarchy, the bowing, scraping, the intrigues, the warm-up, the last minute check on ensemble Tudor has etched with enormous skill, like a Rowlandson pen and ink. If the main body of the work has become flawed by over-emphasis, the choreographer was not present to temper the display or interfere with the interpreter’s emotions.
The Dance House enjoyed two first rate casts and performances; the second cast jelled the ballet for me, to my surprise. This is David Bintley’s treatise on Death, dedicated to the memory of his friend Nick, quite the subject to we living in the AIDS capital of the world. The first and subsequent victim is, of course, a woman. I think Bintley has a ways to go to surpass the reputation of Andree Howard’s Death and the Maiden or my memory of Balanchine’s La Valse with Tanaquil Le Clerq and Agnes de Mille’s A Bridgroom Called Death for the Joffrey Ballet. He nonetheless made a statement with distinctly classical choreography. Aside from a wonderful backdrop by Robert Heindel, there is the visual handicap to overcome, the red stripe on the lead dancer and the ensemble from neck to crotch. Heindel’s backdrop and costume designs are difficult to reconcile as coming from the same artist; the former is evocative, the latter crudely 'in your face', not in harmony while using a ballet costume outline: body tunic with tarlatan or netting. Yuri Possokhov and Tina LeBlanc provided a lyric emphasis to the macabre nature of the first movement, particularly Possokhov, who can contract and release in a manner to which even Martha Graham would accord approval. For a sunny, sensitive artist Possokhov has an enviable talent to convey rapists, the sinister and the wicked. Possokhov’s line also provided a clear exposition of the more startling as well as beautiful Bintley devices. It is ultimately the Bintley choreographic skill which conveys the sense of the work, once the eye is able to overlook the glaring costume problems - the red with baby blue, then a more muted black and café latte hue and finally stripes and café au lait on Vanessa Zahorian and Gonzalo Garcia who danced both evenings seen. When Peter Brandenhoff and Kristin Long took the initial roles November 9, the work crystallized for me. Both Long and Brandenhoff give the work more dramatic edge, both slightly heavier in physique, a lyricism muted to an emphasis on the Breughel-like sinister nature of the tousled hair,whitened face with scruffy red and blue costume for the Death figure. Possokhov and Brandenhoff both conveyed the sinister, watchful, menacing nature of their character Brandenhoff gave it his all; the prolonged ‘bravos’ which greeted him at the curtain fall elicited from him a visible sigh of satisfaction. If thsi performance alone is indicative, it shouldn’t be long before he regains the soloist position he never accepted for a year with Hamburg Ballet. In the second movement the February 3 program featured Joanna Berman and Stephen Legate; February 9 their roles were taken by Julia Adams and Pierre-Francois Vilanoba. The key quality of the exponents of the first movement were again echoed by the emphasis in both couples. The Berman/ Legate partnership held warm emotional accents in the musical phrasing. There is an ease, a sharing in their partnering satisfying to observe. Adams/Vilanoba were no less effective, if their emphasis seemed more sculpted in space, more abstracted in feeling. Adams as a rising choreographer manages to set her work in space, in relationship to the entire conceptual span of a ballet, not her dancing alone. A conceptual more than an interpretive talent, she is constantly growing. Vilanoba reminds one, implicitly, that ballet vocabulary was crystallized at the French court. He is unforced about it, but it definitely is there, and one quickly learns whatever Vilanoba attempts will be comme il faut! Vanessa Zahorian and Gonzalo Garcia were leads in the third movement both nights. Physically nicely matched, Zahorian shines a bit more when partnered by Gennadi Nedviguine. I never saw Garcia in Prodigal Son, but this Prix de Lausanne winner is quick, nervous, and intelligent, while Zahorian is precise, porcelain like, fleet and very musical. It would be great to see them in a Massine demi-charactere ballet.
Taiko is both a complicated and an obvious work. Its first season it was redeemed for me by Muriel Maffre’s figure as Belief. Among other things, she is the only dancer in the company who executes the sliding neck movement properly. A half hour or so with a Bharata Natyam exponent could teach the dancers the rudiments of the technique. Once learned it would help multiply convey the Pacific Rim Fusion this work so clearly addresses. (If you can say that a ballet addresses anything!) Traditionally it is said a Japanese village extends as far as the sound of their drum - the taiko - can be heard. With an ethos or explanation like that, such a work as Stanton Welch has attempted is going ‘to push the envelope’ of classical format, doing it with sound. The sound may be different from what William Forsythe uses, but the expansion via aural material is similar. I will say categorically that Taiko’s sounds are infinitely more human and socially based than the technologically-produced accompaniment to a work, however brilliant, like In the middle, somewhat elevated. Muriel Maffre is one of the singularly rare artists who can execute both with equal aplomb and conviction. Taiko has several insistent sounds - first, the rhythms and rolls of various sized drums; second the high wispy nature of the bamboo flute, which I think is horizontal; third, brass bells which jingle like the sound equivalent of people hopping all over the place. The tones are quite Japanese - communal in quality.
With the exception of Belief, the costumes are diaphanous black jackets and trousers which get shed to reveal white body tights traced with Maori-like curvy linear marks with a large human eye at the solar plexis. Chidosie Nzerem starts off the ballet with his incredibly strong presence aquiver, head to foot, with the insistent rhythms, making the statement of energy and surging activity in all directions which characterizes the ballet. What’s done is not all that complicated; the counter rhythms are in the body instead of groups as Balanchine employed in Symphony in 3 Movements. The social origin and the connotations of the body counter-rhythms slowly dawn on you that make the difference. The dancers, now dancing the ballet for a second season, find it pretty well set in their muscle memory. This ease made itself apparent. In the February 9 performance, Taiko became a work about surface layers, like the costumes, which gradually are shed to join the insistent, pervasive calm of Belief. From the Australian aborigine to the Japanese villager and the mountain kami, the Western edge of the Pacific Rim culturally has a belief system which Stanton Welch is drawing from. The work may have flaws; but in this performance coherence and juxtaposition between present and the underlying collective core shone through. Welch is reaching for something important; may he continue. Go Pacific Rim!
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