Last night I returned to the War Memorial Opera House for Program 2 in the 2022 season of the San Francisco Ballet (SFB). Given that this is the 37th and final season of Helgi Tomasson as Artistic Director and Principal Choreographer, I had to say that I was far more satisfied with his “Caprice,” which opened the program, than I had been a week ago with “Trio.” He made a bold move in setting this ballet to Camille Saint-Saëns’ Opus 55 (second) symphony in A minor with the Poco adagio movement from the Opus 78 (third) symphony in C minor inserted between the Scherzo and Prestissimo movement that conclude Opus 55. (Opus 78 is best known as the “Organ” symphony and is probably the only Saint-Saëns symphony familiar to most listeners. Whoever re-instrumented that movement to compensate for the absence of an organ deserves credit for a job well done, credit that was sorely lacking in the program book.)
One of the combinations of dancers performing “Caprice” before Alexander V. Nichols’ minimal scenic design (photograph by Erik Tomasson, courtesy of SFB)
Performing against a minimal scenic design by Alexander V. Nichols, consisting of straight lines of light that unobtrusively shifted orientation from one movement to the next, Tomasson’s choreography was consistently faithful to the flow of Saint-Saëns’ symphonic movements. He gave the impression of systematically exploring how his dancers could engage with each other in different combinations. However, when set against Saint-Saëns’ technique for introducing and elaborating his thematic material, there was nothing “mechanical” about those explorations. One could simply sit back and enjoy an eloquent flow of rhetorical explorations of different combinations of classical steps. This is the Tomasson ballet I definitely want to remember.
Sadly, I can not say the same about the rest of the program. The second offering was Jerome Robbins’ “In the Night,” who subtitle ought to be “Chopin I Forgot to Include in Dances at a Gathering." The good news is that “In the Night” is far shorter than Robbins’ early venture into solo piano music by Frédéric Chopin. True to the title of the ballet, all of the selections are nocturnes. Robbins prepared duo choreography for Opus 27, Number 1, in C sharp minor, Opus 55, Number 1, in F minor, and Opus 55, Number 2, in E-flat major. The ballet then brings these three couples together in a setting of Opus 9, Number 2 in E-flat major. The music itself was performed by pianist Mungunchimeg Buriad (whose name was sadly overlooked in the program book).
Each couple reflects a unique personality type, but those personalities tend to be muted. As a result, when all the dancers gather together for the final nocturne, the choreography never allows for much other than their occupying the same space. I have seen this ballet performed by some of the brightest stars in both New York City Ballet and the Royal Ballet; but, in spite of all that talent, every performance I attended left me feeling cold. Seeing the nocturnes interpreted by a new set of dancers raised my hopes but never really achieved satisfaction.
On the other hand I have to confess that I found the SFB premiere of William Forsythe’s “Blake Works I” little more than mind-numbing. All the music was taken from tracks on James Blake’s album The Colour in Anything. Blake is one of those singers that prefers affectation to diction, and I found that listening to a string of his songs in an uninterrupted sequence quickly became annoying. There is an impressive amount of diversity in the dances that Forsythe has created; but, at least as a “first contact” experience, the choreography of “Blake Works I” did little to attract my attention and the music did everything to disengage it.
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