San Francisco Ballet.

War Memorial Opera House

San Francisco, California 

January 29-May 11, 2003

With 2004 promising two new full-length productions and substantial tributes to George Balanchine and Frederick Ashton, San Francisco Ballet made it easy on itself this year. Revivals, some of them overexposed and others deserving of obscurity, competed for attention with world and company premieres. To satisfy the ever-ravenous appetite for at least one evening-length narrative, Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson and principal dancer Yuri Possokhov teamed for a hectic, charmless Don Quixote, staged in a borrowed production design (Jens-Jacob Worsaae's from the Royal Danish Ballet) with minimal eye appeal. It was, however, appealing enough to generate a run on the box office and the addition of an extra performance.

But this season of austerity (Tomasson's eighteenth at the helm) yielded unexpected pleasures right from January's opening night gala, when Tomasson showcased his hoard of new male talent with Concerto Grosso, a quintet to fast-slow-fast baroque scores that introduced the sensational Pascal Molat and the lyrical Jaime Garcia Castilla. The piece came as a surprise and looked like it was tailored for these men in about ninety minutes; Tomasson's dance-making on impulse has always seemed among his most irresistible.

This was also a year in which a generational shift seemed too striking to overlook. A rising cadre of dancers found itself in the spotlight more often than in previous seasons, and other performers, some of them veterans, finally established their own fiefdoms. Kristin Long transcended any hint of the soubrette in the opening night revival of Tomasson's Chaconne for Piano and Two Dancers and rode a crest of popularity with an exuberant Kitri in Don Quixote and the McBride role in George Balanchine's "Rubies," where articulation was welded to brio. Julie Diana and Damian Smith tasted of divinity in the "walking" pas de deux of "Emeralds."

Then, the Basilio of the superb Cuban-born demi-caractere Joan Boada, recovered from lingering injuries, dazzled in the opening night Don Quixote, opposite compatriot Lorena Feijoo's tough-cookie Kitri--not a partnership bathed in empathy, but a liaison calculated to ignite fireworks. They went off for a good two and a half hours, his placement and speed matched by her elevation and ferocity. It was almost enough to make one overlook a choreographic collaboration in which dramatically unmotivated ensembles seemed to erupt every time six corps dancers gathered on stage. The set pieces (Kitri's flying entrance, the wedding pas de deux) survived, but the Spanish dances tasted as authentic as frozen tapas.

Natalia Makarova's well-traveled staging of Paquita, which was unveiled on tour, offered thirty minutes of classy Russian bravura, though one might question the order of the variations in the former Kirov assoluta's scheme. Here, the pedigreed Vadim Solomakha squired the charismatic Yuan Yuan Tan, whose supernal extension, exotic line, and aristocratic demeanor (which excludes mugging for the groundlings) contributed the requisite authority. The women's corps missed the last degree of finesse.

At the end of the season, the newchoreographers program delivered a galumphing hit in Alexei Ratmansky's Carnaval des Animaux. THIS BURLESQUE BALLET "TO SAINT-SAENS'S SCORE FOR "TWO PIANOS AND ORCHESTRA REVELED IN SANDRA WOODALL'S BRILLIANTLY IMAGINATIVE COSTUMES AND AN ANTHOLOGY OF RIB-TICKLING VIGNETTES--MURIEL MAFFRE'S BEDRAGGLED FOKINE SWAN, PIERRE-FRANCOIS VILANOBA'S HIRSUTE LION, ,AND FEIJOO'S DITZY, PIGTAILED BALLERINA CAVORTING TO AN OFFENBACH PARODY. Stanton Welch's Tu Tu mined Ravel's G Major Piano Concerto for its insouciance (captured by Long and the priceless young Gonzalo Garcia in the first movement) and its wistful romanticism (exemplified by Maffre's floating solo into darkness in the adagio). Holly Hynes's stiff tutus and halters for the women and bathing suits for the men added up to an act of sabotage. Former principal dancer Julia Adam raised hopes with imaginal disc, a twelve-dancer romp to a neo-baroque score by the congenial Matthew Pierce; Adam's reputation for quirky, if not subversive, movement survived in her Irish dance steps for the men and conga line for the women. Veteran Leslie Young and new soloist Ruben Martin met in one of the choreographer's more enigmatic duets. A good time was had by some.