© Erik Tomasson, SFB SFB 'Divertimento No. 15' reviews 'Divertimento No. 15' reviews SFB 'Within the Golden Hour' reviews SFB 'Fusion' reviews recent SFB reviews more Eric Taub reviews Discuss this review (Open for at least 6 months)

I haven't said much so far about SFB's orchestra, which propelled the dancers with great verve under the quick batons of David Briskin and Martin West, with West's conducting of the eponymous Mozart being particularly crisp, and at tempi rapid as the current fashion at City Ballet. The SFB dancers responded beautifully, with a happy, bright precision that looked particularly fine in City Center's cozier setting (although the ballet was premiered here in 1956, for many decades it's been seen mostly in the grander, more distant New York State Theater). As City Ballet's old-timers have frequently observed, at City Center Balanchine's ballets had a charming modesty of scale and intimacy (which, of course, was utterly ruined by the move to the State Theater). Indeed, this Divertimento's timbre was warm, inclusive and intimate; it glowed rather than dazzled.

Up close, the corps almost overwhelmed with friendliness. Here in the big, bad city I'm always a bit mistrustful of the Regional Ballet Smile. Do real people ever beam and grin so? Not on Columbus Avenue! But even viewed with this New Yorker's cynical eyes, the San Franciscan's speed, precision and unity justified their determinedly happy demeanor. I did notice the San Francisco women's tightly held arms, especially in the corps, and wouldn't have minded some of the less formal, airy freedom of in port de bras that Balanchine admired so. Sadly, I couldn't see a really nicely arched foot among the women, not even the leads.

The ballerinas were Katita Waldo, Sarah van Patten, Nutnaree Pipit-Suksun, Elana Altman and Kristin Long. After they'd introduced themselves in opening movement, Davit Karapetyan, Mateo Klemmayer and Hansuke Yamomoto sauted in together, with poise, elegant line and long, tapered legs punctuated with with deeply arched, almost prehensile feet which put the ladies' to shame. As the sidemen for the Theme which precedes Balanchine's and Mozart's six variations, Klemmayer was secure, clean and a bit bland, while Yamamoto's perfectly shaded port de bras was as much a delight as his near-perfect jumps and attitudes.

I've long been a fan of that striking redhead, Katita Waldo, but in the first, "happy hands" solo she was, sadly, stiff and sketchy. I enjoyed the strong, expansive second and fourth solos (by Van Patten and Altman), with Pipit-Suksun floating through the third with the luxuriant, aqueous arms and carriage I've come to expect from her. I would've enjoyed better Kristin Long's brio and rapidity in the sixth variation's bravura allegro had she had more turnout and more-flexible feet. Karapetyan began the Fifth Variation with a generous sweep of his arm in his first diagonal of sauté arabesques, with a grand legato riding above his allegro leaps. City Ballet's current men would be hard-pressed to match his casual perfection.

Throughout the women's intricate solos, with their with their enchainments like strings of Baroque pearls, each woman addressed the audience with an appealing, open carriage and inviting smile. Their presentation grew stronger in the Andante's parade of beatific duets. Such graciousness was well-suited for City Center's close stage, where each dancer seemed well able to make eye contact with almost every audience member. They invited us to share, in some small part, their bliss. No wonder many City Ballet veterans still mourn for that company's days in this theater. City Ballet's ballerinas tend to be more pleasantly affectless with their upper bodies, focussing instead on limning the spatial progression of Balanchine's shapes. SFB's dancing impetus comes from the extroverted presentation of their faces, shoulders and arms; the focus of City Ballet's dancers emanates from their legs, feet and pelvises, with their upper bodies more-or-less along for the ride. The SFB women were more-traditional ballerinas than Balanchine's tiaraed muses, but the leads were never less than authoritative: grand in the Andante, fleet-footed in the allegro finale.

In its strengths and weaknesses, Within the Golden Hour could well be a Generic Christopher Wheeldon Ballet. Set to bits of music by Ezio Bosso and Vivaldi, all sounding like Steve Reigh outtakes, Within has some interesting bits punctuating vast tracts of same-old. The ballet begins with two men, Brett Bauer and Mateo Klemmayer I think, who face the audience, slide down into big sideways splits, then slowly lean their torsos forward until they're fully prostrated before us, planting their faces into the stage.

In the ensemble sections, it's familiar Wheeldon. He seems to belive that if a duet looks good on one couple, it must look better on two. How often have we seen two couples downstage doing the same steps to the same beat, and another pair of couples upstage working through a different duet, also simultaneously? For Wheeldon, once so fluent in use of ensembles, bits like these in Golden seem a step, if not backwards, then sideways. Likewise, his signature, incessant floor work seems less a healthy expansion of ballet's vocabulary, than an incongruent affectation. On the other hand, his duets for the three lead couples, Lily Rogers and Brett Bauer, Dana Genshaft and Mateo Klemmayer, and Tina LeBlanc and Joan Boada must have engaged more of his attention, especially a waltz for a not-quite-touching couple (I think Genshaft and Bauer). As Wheeldon's works tend to look better on subsequent viewings, I wish I could withhold judgment on Within the Golden Hour; right now, the best I can say is that it's painless.

I wish I could say as much for Yuri Possokhov's Fusion, which, in a perverse way, perfectly complemented Divertimento No. 15. Just as Divert is a near-dialectic synthesis of music and dance, so it is with Fusion, and Possokhov's choreography and Graham Fitkin's and Rahul Dev Berman's score. Individually, they stink, and together they stink even more.

Depicting a "fusion" of old Near Eastern and modern ballet dance styles, Fusion aspires to pedantry, but, like Daedalus, fails spectacularly. Possokhov tosses together dancers in vaguely old-school near-Eastern garb with others in vaguely modern attire. The dancers toil and sweat mightily, especially the beautiful Maria Kochetkova, but the tedium of Possokhov's aerobics-class compositions and the score's mind-numbing, repetitive burbles toil harder. They say there's an angel above every blade of grass exhorting it to grow; who knew that they do it with double tours? Fusion's grinding humorless assault left me longing for the unenlightened Orientalism and shameless kitsch of Scheherezade.