© Erik Tomasson and SFB SFB 'Apollo' reviews SFB 'Rodeo' reviews 'Spring Rounds' reviews 'Magrittomania' reviews Waldo in reviews Helimets in reviews recent SFB reviews more Renee Renouf reviews Discuss this review (Open for at least 6 months)

In Spring Rounds, a delicious little ballet, one needs to be grateful that Tomasson asked Paul Taylor to create it for the company; I hope it’s the first of several. Taylor’s ability to stage polite, but exuberant behavior is a rare, beautiful gift, evoking civilized training so often absent in current grunge attitudes and attire.

Katita Waldo, partnered by Garrett Anderson, confirmed a hunch she was chosen because of her emotional acuity, Kristin Long for her physical resemblance and movement dynamics of the dancer who molded the role for Paul Taylor. Waldo’s connecting gaze is matched by elegant port de bras and little phrasing touches emphasizing choreography plus her innate talent. The second cast of supporting male dancers seemed particularly strong and felicitous: Jaime Garcia Castilla; Daniel Deivison; Jonathan Mangosing; Joseph Phillips; Anthony Spaulding; Quinn Wharton.

Although I missed Tiits Helimet’s local premiere as Apollo, I did manage to see him at the Saturday February 18 matinee with Muriel Maffre, Peter Brandenhoff, Moises Martin and Gonzalo Garcia in Magrittomania, and felt he and his companions made the work cohere in a special way. We are lucky he joined us by the Bay. It was a European performance; Helimets, as a northerner, conveys the grey-skied city scape of those cities and the vaulting distance of their skies naturally. Joining the bowler-hatted trio he and Brandenhoff faced off as kinsmen when Brandenhoff was not dancing alone with an indelible wide-eyed questioning look. Brandenhoff invariably creates an individual character to his assignments, a source of relish. Garcia’s bowler hat came down over his ears like one of the Marx brothers, a totally raffish persona he rarely has the opportunity to project. To less degree this also applied to Martin, so one saw the Baltic meets the Pyrenees with Muriel Maffre, grande dame from La Seine. In Maffre and Helimets’ veiled pas de deux, Kurt Jooss’ sharp social commentary echoed through the encounter. Taking their brief curtain calls, their natural smiling acknowledgment crossed the footlights clearly.
 

While Pauli Magierek reprised the Rancher’s Daughter in Rodeo, Kristin Long assumed the Cowgirl’s role, Damian Smith the Head Wrangler, Matthew Stewart as the Champion Roper. Stewart’s rendition of the man who gets the girl was a debonair cowhand who gauges the situation just right, his tap dance equally pitched. The ego of Smith’s Wrangler is not so massive as Legate’s, but his chemistry with the Rancher’s Daughter was definite. With technique to spare. Long's interpretation started somewhere outside the cambium layer. The Cowgirl's dilemma doesn’t come naturally to her.

Program II, February 19

Before the February 19 program Cecilia Beam interviewed Pascal Molat as part of the company’s continuing adult outreach. In the usual questions regarding training, Molat informed the audience that in his Paris Opera auditions a dozen young men remained out of 300 and then after three months the winnowing brought the number to eight. At graduation Molat was side lined for a year with a stress fracture of the knee. He recuperated sufficiently to earn a gold medal at a Montpelier Competition and from there he joined the Ballet Wollonie. Full of praise for San Francisco Ballet, he cited the variety of the repertoire as one of its signal virtues.

What I found of particular interest was Molat's recitation of the dance schooling the Paris Opera School gives its students. The training not only embraced the classical curriculum but also Graham technique, dance history, French folkloric dance and anatomy, “So when we hurt, we know exactly where it is and what’s wrong.” Such a recitation clearly indicates background and the placement of the dancer in history, a preparation not too evident in many American dancers.

The subsequent matinee brought Pierre-Francois Vilanoba’s thought processes to Balanchine’s Apollo with a simple grandness and a touch of majesty, supported by Muses Yuan Yuan Tan, Katita Waldo as Polyhemnia and Lorena Feijoo as Calliope. Sitting in the Dress Circle and relying on binoculars, Vilanoba’s development of Apollo still glowed. Waldo’s variation was delivered with crisp accuracy, the forerunner of witty women like Clare Boothe Luce and Dorothy Parker. Feijoo’s Calliope was the personification. of eloquence, epic in emotion if not poetry. Hers is a freer placement of port de bras, almost a throw away as if its technical demands were too little to interest her. Tan and Vilanoba seemed to share an exchange.

Blue Rose featured Kristin Long and Joan Boada in the LeBlanc/Molat roles; Claire Pascal and Ruben Martin stepping into the Feijoo/Vilanoba assignment while Vanessa Zahorian and Nicholas Blanc reprised their own. Long/Boada danced their roles more as dances than as romantic expositions; it is unusual to see Long render her assignments as other than the gifted, technically assured ballerina she is. The same seemed true for Boada’s take on his solo. Pascal and Martin danced several degrees cooler than Feijoo/Vilanoba, though theirs was a clear emotional take. The Ruben/Blanc Brothers’ variation retained the feeling.

Wheeldon’s Quartenary had two new casts: for Spring, Kristin Long; Jaime Garcia Castilla; Elizabeth Miner; Hansuke Yamamoto, with Sarah Van Patten and Ruben Martin in Autumn. Little can be added from the first sighting save to state competent dancing and the still remarkable pas de deux from Muriel Maffre and Yuri Possokhov with all its extraordinary demands of flexibility and strength. Van Patten and Martin gave strong physical emphasis in the Autumn section and the Spring quartet seemed well matched. Every choreographer is entitled to follow his vision, but I do question Wheeldon’s use of such disparate choices in his music, which probably reveals my lack of sophistication.