Friday, May 7, 2021

SFB’s Take on the “star-cross’d lovers”

Yesterday evening San Francisco Ballet (SFB) launched the penultimate stream of its 2021 Digital Season. The program consisted of a full-length performance of Romeo & Juliet choreographed by Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson and first performed at the War Memorial Opera House on March 8, 1994. The video was a film production that inaugurated Lincoln Center at the Movies: Great American Dance in 2015. As a result, this offer differs from the other Digital Season videos by presenting “intermission features” that included a “making of” segment and a profile of the SFB School. More critically, I came away with the impression that the production teams for the previous SFB videos had a much better understanding of how to “capture” ballet than the Lincoln Center crew did.

The first encounter of Romeo (Davit Karapetyan) with Juliet (Maria Kochetkova) at the Capulet ball (photograph by Erik Tomasson, © Erik Tomasson, courtesy of San Francisco Ballet)

That said, there was much to admire, beginning with Maria Kochetkova’s interpretation of Juliet, which managed to nail the full diversity of dispositions that this character experiences over the course of the entire narrative. Davit Karapetyan’s Romeo captured every annoying detail of his obsession with Rosaline (WanTing Zhao), which turns on a dime into a focus on Juliet, whom he first sees when he has crashed the Capulet ball. Indeed, that ball scene provides more insight into the nature of Paris (Myles Thatcher) than one usually encounters; and one has to wonder if an allegiance with the Capulets is more important to him than whether or not he marries Juliet. Indeed, Luke Ingham’s portrayal of Tybalt came so close to excess that one almost wants to warn Paris to quit while he is ahead (and, as we know from the final act, still alive).

What I found the most unique of Tomasson’s approaches to the scenario was his treatment of the Prince of Verona (Martino Pistone). The music that Serge Prokofiev provided for his first appearance, breaking up the street fight between the Capulets and the Montagues, practically seethes with authority. Pistone (under Tomasson’s direction?) never captured the intensity of that authority, reducing the Prince to an annoyed suburban parent scolding his unruly children.

Nevertheless, I subsequently toyed with the idea that Tomasson may have intended a subtext. It is clear from the ball scene that the Capulets are an opulently wealthy family with no qualms about conspicuous consumption. We do not see very much of Lord Montague, but I found it worth speculating that the rivalry between the two houses may have been rooted in fiercely competitive merchant businesses. (In that context Lord Capulet may have chosen Paris as better suited to take over the “family business” than hot-headed Tybalt would ever be.) As a result, the prosperity of Verona itself probably owed much to the finances of the houses of Capulet and Montague. In that context, the Prince might chide the two Lords; but he has no real clout to enforce his ban on street fighting. As Karl Marx might have put it, “civic authority” has to take a back seat to “capitalist authority!”

The more familiar the story, the more conducive it is to being viewed through a variety of lenses. Tomasson selected several imaginative lenses through which to view Shakespeare’s tragic tale of a “pair of star-cross’d lovers.” Some of those lenses were more focused than others; but, as a whole, the SFB approach to the play’s narrative triggers some imaginative thoughts to go along with its rich choreographic resources.

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