Possokhov’s “…two united in a single soul…” in rehearsal (photograph by Erik Tomasson, from the Web page of program notes for this ballet on the San Francisco Ballet blog site)
Last night in the War Memorial Opera House, the San Francisco Ballet presented the world premiere of the latest creation by choreographer Yuri Possokhov, “…two united in a single soul….” The ballet was an interpretation of the Narcissus myth, taking its title from a phrase in Ovid’s account of that myth in his Metamorphoses (as translated into English by Brookes More). Music was composed by the young Russian composer Daria Novo on a commission by SF Ballet. Her score, in turn, involved a transmogrification of the music of George Frideric Handel including vocal selections originally written for castrati. This music is now sung by countertenors; and last night’s performance included countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, performing on stage alongside the SF Ballet dancers.
Handel’s music enjoyed a moderate amount of popularity in the dance world during the twentieth century. His music was choreographed by both George Balanchine and Ninette de Valois (as well as modern dancer Paul Taylor). This was a time when the very idea of a “historically-informed” performance (HIP) of such music was almost entirely unknown; and audiences tended to get rich orchestral interpretations prepared by Thomas Beecham and others sailing under his flag. Novo rejected both the Beecham and HIP “flags” in favorite of mashing up (she called it “integrated”) Handel sources through electronic treatment.
This entailed some awkward consequences. The musicians in the orchestra pit, led by Martin West, could not balance Novo’s electronic effects without having their instrumental sounds mixed and then fed to the loudspeakers on either side of the stage. Unfortunately, Cohen faced the same problem and had to sing into a headset with a wireless microphone. This meant that just about every aspect of the dazzling account of Handel that he had presented at the American Bach Soloists’ New Year’s Eve concert this past December was painfully distorted through the mixing process.
Since this was an evening of ballet, one can assume that most of the audience was there to look, rather than listen. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the choreographic interpretation involved costuming that made almost all of the dancers on stage look identical. This was not so much Narcissus gazing at his image in a pond as it was a carnival fun house with so many mirrors as to give the impression that everyone was Narcissus. This was definitely an imaginative take on the myth; but, once Possokhov made that point, it seemed as if he had little else to say and even less sense of how to incorporate Cohen’s physical presence into his choreography. As a result the dancing in “…two united in a single soul…” was as much a muddle of Ovid as Novo’s score was a muddle of Handel.
Nevertheless, over the course of the entire evening, there was more substance to what Possokhov did than could be found in the two preceding ballets on the program, both of which were given their respective world premieres by SF Ballet about a year ago. These pieces were “Your Flesh Shall Be a Great Poem,” choreographed by Trey McIntyre and set to recordings of Chris Garneau singing his own music, and “Bound To,” choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon with songs by Keaton Henson, some of which were orchestrated by Matthew Naughtin. The best that can be said of either of these offerings is that the participating dancers brought an impressively solid command of technique to their performances.
The sad part was how little substance they were given with which to display their talents. There was a mind-numbing sameness in the musical offerings from both Garneau and Henson; and it was more than a little depressing that neither McIntyre nor Wheeldon provided the dancers with enough diversity and energy to rise above that sameness. Indeed, McIntyre was so locked into that routine music-does-this-so-dancers-to-that formula that his choreography sank into the music, rather than rising above it. Everything was decidedly not “beautiful at the ballet” last night.
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