Last night San Francisco Ballet began its run of the fifth program in its 2021 Digital Season. This was the third and last of its “mixed repertory” offerings. The overall structure consisted of a highly intense narrative in the middle of three selections, framed on either side by abstract interpretations of music by Johann Sebastian Bach (at the beginning of the program) and Ezio Bosso (at the conclusion). The “Bach ballet” was Helgi Tomasson’s “7 for Eight,” seven selections of movements from the keyboard concertos executed by different combinations of eight dancers and featuring Mungunchimneg Buriad on piano and harpsichord. The performance was captured on January 30, 2016. The final offering was David Dawson’s “Anima Animus,” set to Bosso’s “Esoconcerto,” a high-energy concerto for piano and strings, captured on video on April 25, 2018.
Like many of my generation, my first exposure to choreographing Bach’s music was George Balanchine’s “Concerto Barocco,” which remains one of my favorite Balanchine creations. This was very much a study in the overall architecture of a three-movement concerto for two violins and strings, suggesting that Balanchine was as attentive to the structures on the score pages as he was of the structures he was realizing with his dancers. “7 for Eight,” on the other hand, is more of a pastiche, picking and choosing individual movements from three of Bach’s solo keyboard concertos (BWV 1052 in D minor, BWV 1055 in A major, and BWV 1056 in F minor) with a “keystone” in the form of the second movement of the BWV 1065 concerto for four harpsichords in A minor. Ironically, that “keystone” is actually a transcription of the tenth concerto in Antonio Vivaldi’s Opus 3 L’estro armonico, scored for four violins, cello, and ensemble in B minor.
The four male dancers in the final movement of “7 for Eight” (photograph by Erik Tomasson, © Erik Tomasson, courtesy of San Francisco Ballet)
Three of Tomasson’s movements are duets, two of them (the first and sixth) danced by Yuan Yuan Tan and Tiit Helimets. Through these movements Tomasson explores different approaches to reflecting the solo-ensemble relationship in the concerto movements. There are also movements for three dancers (two female and one male) and the interplay of a two females and two males in different combination. Only one of the movements is a solo (taken by Taras Domitro, the one male in the three-dancer movement). The concluding movement is then an “all-hands” finale.
The four-harpsichord concerto selection was arranged for single harpsichord, and all the other solo selections were played by Buriad on piano. For the most part, this “mixed selection” did not grate on my preference for hearing Bach concertos in their usual three-movement structures. Only the harpsichord selection was disturbing, since the second movement of the Bach-Vivaldi synthesis concludes with a cadence clearly meant to introduce the final movement. That cadence is never fulfilled, since Tomasson shifts back to the solo keyboard repertoire; and that was the one moment that irritated my musical sensibilities.
Dawson’s approach to Bosso’s concerto, on the other hand, was a straightforward one. Bosso was apparently relatively eclectic as a composer; but “Esoconcerto” seems to have been his nod to the repetitive structures one finds in the music of Philip Glass. This provided Dawson with just the right background of a driving pulse against which he could explore the dynamic interplay among six women and four men. While the background material described the dance as revealing “the rich contrasts between male and female psyches,” I found I could settle into Dawson’s abstractions without worrying too much about signification.
On the other hand, signification was unavoidable in Cathy Marston’s “Snowblind.” This choreographic interpretation of Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome was also captured on April 25, 2018, and that recording was discussed on this site at the beginning of this past June. At that time I had just become aware of Marston through “The Cellist,” which I had previously seen streamed by The Royal Ballet. Both of these ballets were rich in narrative content, “The Cellist” having been a reflection on the tragic life of cellist Jacqueline de Pré.
For both of these ballets, “first contact” primarily involved teasing out the narrative foundation and then considering how the choreographer would provide an interpretative perspective. On this second encounter with “Snowblind,” I began to wonder whether Marston had any perspective at all. Indeed, I could not decide whether she had read Wharton’s book and chose to express her reactions through choreography or she had just skimmed the CliffsNotes version and then began to conceive a danced version. Back in June I mustered all of the patience I could to document my impressions. However, on this “return visit,” I found the entire experience muddled in its approach to narrative and tedious in its efforts to find an effective choreographic interpretation.
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