SAN FRANCISCO BALLET.

SAN FRANCISCO BALLET CITY CENTER OCTOBER 20-25, 1998

In its latest incarnation, or at least the incarnation it chose to reveal in New York City, San Francisco Ballet is a company without a past. This is curious, given that it's the oldest ballet company in the United States, with a highly regarded school. Yet with the exception of Agon, first danced by the company in 1976, and a couple of minor works by artistic director Helgi Tomasson, the repertory SFB brought to New York City was all acquired in the last two years. The roster is full of newcomers as well; indeed, just under half the company's sixteen principals have arrived since 1994, either from second-string foreign companies or the lower echelons of American Ballet Theatre. In its yearning for world-class status SFB has elected to buy talent elsewhere rather than develop it from within. The result is a product styled by and for the international marketplace, a company that mirrors San Francisco at its ever-so-slightly-provincial best.

Of the works new to the Big Apple, the most interesting by far was William Forsythe's The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude, choreographed for his own company, Frankfurt Ballet, in 1996. With music by Franz Schubert (the allegro vivace from the Symphony No. 9 in C Major) and marvelous lime-green pancake-style tutus by Stephen Galloway that recall Oskar Schlemmer's costumes for The Triadic Ballet, the piece is speedy, witty, and gay. Tina LeBlanc sailed through the choreography with the crisp, clear footwork of an old-style Balanchine ballerina, unrushed and radiant. As her partner, Parrish Maynard was precise, elegant, and knowing, a cavalier masquerading as an athlete from Les Biches.

Although SFB is the senior member of the Balanchine "family," neither speed nor attack is among its trademarks. Often the dancers lag behind the music, emphasizing the pose at the end of a phrase rather than the continuum of movement within it. The result is decorative rather than dynamic, classicism leached of contrast, nuance, and freedom. This explains the curious blandness of SFB's Agon; only Christopher Stowell had the jazziness that makes the choreography of this 1957 ballet "swing."

Perhaps it's all those reruns of I Love Lucy that make Agon or The Cage, choreographed by Jerome Robbins in 1951 but only recently added to the SFB repertory, so difficult for dancers of today to "get." In this postfeminist era, how many of us encounter the naked face of misogyny or the brute violence of the unrepressed? I have always thought of The Cage as projecting the underside of the fifties, the dark, neurotic world that television sitcoms like Lucy ignored. Unfortunately, there is little hint of this in the SFB production. Lucia Lacarra plays the Novice like a French gamine, all spidery arms and kooky humor, curious, innocent, funny. As an interpretation it held together; it just didn't seem to go with the rest of the ballet.

Tomasson has been choreographing for some twenty years now. His work is amiable but undistinguished, a showcase for the company's dancers and the stylish accoutrements he has made part of its identity. Silver Ladders, which premiered last spring, has a flashy set by Martin Pakledinaz, a score by Joan Tower that quotes liberally from The Rite of Spring, much stamping, circling, a climactic copulation---and a program note explaining that "an important ritual is being played out." The work is a showcase for his current muses--Yuan Yuan Tan, who trained in Shanghai and Stuttgart, and Lacarra, a graduate of Spain's Ballet Victor Ullate and Roland Petit's Ballet National de Marseille. Both are ballerinas in the Sylvie Guillem mold, with ultra-high extensions and long, rubbery limbs, although Lacarra has the face of a goddess and the luminous presence of a star.

With the exception of Flemming Flindt's rarely seen The Lesson, brilliantly performed by Yuri Possokhov, LeBlanc, and Anita Paciotti, the remaining works held little interest. In fact, Christopher Bruce's Sergeant Early's Dream, with its frumpy costumes and Irish theme, seemed an odd choice for a company that prides itself on being modern. As for Etudes, surely the company could have found a better vehicle to display its classical strengths than this tired and very old-fashioned warhorse.