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These three principal San Francisco Ballet dancers have remarkably divergent voices. Their choreographic visions provided the audience with an exciting program in modern ballet, one of the best modern ballet evenings I have seen since early exposure to the dramatic pieces of Ballet Theater in the early 50's. It was on a par with the best of the Joffrey programs when the Joffrey Ballet danced at the Opera House in late spring or early summer. Incidentally, Gerald Arpino was present at the programs opening, and was enthused at what he saw. I left the performance both viewings with that rare sense of gratification for an evening well spent.

If I did not state it previously regarding Program A, I want to mention now that Helgi Tomasson set the limits on the choreography as not being dances created for the choreographer to appear in. I believe there also was a time frame of twenty to thirty minutes. He specifically mentioned to Julia Adams that she needed to try partnering.

Opus 50
Music: Pytor Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Choreographer: Christopher Stowell
Costumes: Mark Zappone
Lighting: Lisa J. Pinkham

Night
Music: Matthew Pierce
Choreographer: Julia Adam
Costumes: Benjamin Pierce
Lighting: Lisa J. Pinkham
Tina Le Blanc; Benjamin Pierce; Peter Brandenhoff; Damian Smith; Catherine Baker; Julie Diana; Leslie Young

Magrittomania
Music: Ludwig van Beethoven and Yuri Krasavin
Choreography: Yuri Possokhov
Costumes: Thyra Hartshorn
Lighting: Kevin Connaughton
Roman Rykine; Yuan Yuan Tan; Joan Boada; Stephen Legate; Guennadi Nedviguine

Christopher Stowells Opus 50 refers to the title of the music he used of Tchaikovsky. It is melodic, elegiac, formal and stormy and to expound the range he paired Joanna Berman with Damian Smith with some excellent secondary leads, two of the best being Gonzalo Garcia, a former Prix de Lausanne winner, and Ikolo Griffin.

In Mark Zappone Stowell found a designer who knew how to achieve considerable elegance with a minimum of effect. Surely an exaggerated color and a double breasted waist length tunic can evoke the romantic and gallant for the male and a diagonal strip of satin of similar hue across the torso gives a romantic tutu the visual fragrance of an era of manners and desperate emotion within a formal situation. With a few chairs and a riser, plus emergence from a shadowy lighting, the viewer is prepared for something futile within the conventions of the ancien regime. I wish Palmers designer had been so kind to the male dancers.

To fill his phrases, Stowell employed formalized gestures, palms raised with deliberation to the collar bones, almost as a means of saying, Here I am, displaying the proper manners, in this polite situation, time and place. But the gesture is accomplished with classic carriage, and nothing follows to provide us with an emotional content or clue to the gestures meaning. The device fills the phrase, the ballet technique is performed impeccably by the entire ensemble, but the gestural device remains the device. It is separated from the drama and the stormy passion and incompleteness of the leading couple. It takes us nowhere in the schema of the situation.

Julia Adams had a singular advantage in Night. She was concerned with dream life, and in selecting this subject, she tapped into the collective unconscious in a singular manner. Along with repetitive gestures and music, her theme enabled the audience to identify with the various irrational, obsessive elements going on inside an individual human skull. Semi-human figures are encountered, the veiled trio of women cavort and wiggle in different guises, fates of existence who look decorous but swivel their hips around in distinctly unarchetypal demi-goddess fashion. A covey of male figures provide the woman, brilliantly danced by Tina Le Blanc, with everything from back supports to endless, ceaseless mountains and cliffs to climb. By the end, Le Blancs exhaustive night life has everyone ready to stand up and shake themselves to get rid of the tension. Instead they cheered and yes, the two times I saw the program, Night enjoyed a standing ovation, not the least of it sheer relief that, Thank God, thats not my particular dream pattern!.

Yuri Possokhovs Magrittomania seemed to me the most finished and cohesive of the six works presented. With Wheeldons Sea Pictures, it presented a coherent, plausible melding of emotion and classical vocabulary, so that the dancers look beautiful and interesting at the same time. With all the contortions and distensions in contemporary life, I find the combination quite appealing, and Possokhov has always danced with a high degree of expressiveness in his torso.

Ive been told that Possokhov had been exposed to Gitis Institute in Moscow. From my small exposure, the training comprises exercises in creating movements in the style of and a thorough knowledge of Western musical form. It showed.

The opening scrim saw Magrittes man in black, a European counterpart of the grey flannel clad in New York, dripping from the proscenium to the floor like a steady shower of blackened rain. Later balloons, a female image upside down, a lengthy vista to a vanishing point and the roof tops of a nameless European city contrasted with the movement before it. Using Roman Rykine as his protagonist, Possokhov provided him with a dazzling array of phrases to the surging line of Beethoven scores, the overall pattern one of interweaving circles and diagonals with steps of elevation to indicate a search of some sort high, low, plus round and round.

The corps came out in suits, women included, will balloons, rather quickly popped. Their jackets off, the womens lavender dresses, which moved enticingly at the ankles, were accented by large white balls at the breasts. Oh, those thoughts of the burst bubbles of life.

A trio of men, Joan Boada, Stephen Legate and Guennadi Nedviguine, danced handsomely, and joined Rykine to lift him aloft.

Then Yuan Yuan Tan, dazzling in her full length, covered up red gown, arrives on the scene, and her face is masked in gauze to match Rykine, who sits upstage left awaiting the encounter with Tan and its unknown dimensions not unlike a drone about to be activated by the workers. A pas de deux ensues which takes full advantage of Tans elongated and clear line. She manages to unmask him and departs triumphant.

All the while Beethoven is thundering away, punctuated by quirky accents of the commonplace and the derisive cleverly inserted by Yuri Krasavin.

The corps is provided with the lateral stage movements both when they arrive and in the final moments, and also some strong diagonals. Then they all seem to execute a circular sweep, the men with their black coats flying in jetes resembling a flight of ravens, birds both scavengers and messengers of Apollo.

Yuan Yuan Tan emerges and walks slowly down stage bearing an enormous balloon. With her large eyes luminous and face an enigmatic mask, she moves with dignity and deliberation. At stage center front she pauses and the balloon bursts. Instant black out.

While Night received a standing ovation both nights I saw Program B, Magrittomania reception was equally warm, but restrained and limited to prolonged applause and a salvo or two of bravos.

Many years ago, San Francisco Ballet provided a summer series where the dancers and a few invited guests mounted works in an old upstairs pair of studies on 18th Avenue, one studio comprising the stage, the second studio the audience on risers. When the company moved to Franklin Street, the practice was discontinued and within two years artistic direction was assumed by Helgi Tomasson. He did not choose to continue the practice and those dancers who wanted to try out their choreographic ability worked mostly elsewhere, except when the dancers were invited to stage works on the students.

This invitation by Tomasson to try their hand on the Opera House stage with the full facilities of the company, orchestra and production budget was not only a risk, but an extremely generous opportunity. Tomassons taking the chance was handsomely rewarded and he needs to be thanked.