Last night in the War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco Ballet (SFB) presented the first performance of the second of the three programs in its festival of new works celebrating its 90th anniversary and entitled next@90. Nine choreographers have contributed to this festival with three represented on each program. The opening selection, “Emergence,” was created by the most familiar of those choreographers, Val Caniparoli, who is celebrating his 50th anniversary with SFB. His contribution, entitled “Emergence,” was followed by “The Queen’s Daughter,” an unconventional take on the Salome narrative created by Bridget Breiner, Artistic Director and Principal Choreographer of the Staatsballett Karlsruhe. The program then concluded with “BOLERO,” choreographed by Yuka Oishi, making her debut in the United States.
Reading the material in the program book, one probably would have expected an evening of imaginative creativity involving both a relatively familiar narrative and two approaches to abstraction. Sadly, all three instances of choreography emerged as a rather tiresome slog, resulting in an overall feeling that there was more action in the orchestra pit than was taking place on stage. This was true even of “BOLERO,” which might have been taken to be the most familiar and hackneyed offering.
Instead, Ravel’s music was given a markedly nonstandard treatment. Indeed, due to additional music composed by Shinya Kiyokawa, one had to wait about a quarter of an hour before Ravel took over the spotlight. By that time the viewer might have been forgiven for feeling fatigue at what Kiyokawa himself calls “sound design” and the fear that the choreographer could not get her head around what she had created. When Ravel finally took the spotlight, the choreography seemed to have more to do with large numbers of dancers doing not very much, while conductor Martin West led his orchestra with a sensitivity to the rich palette of contrasting sonorities that made Ravel’s music anything but dull.
Sasha De Sola rehearsing the role of Salome for her performance of “The Queen’s Daughter” (photography by Chris Hardy, courtesy of SFB)
Music also soared above choreographic muddle in “The Queen’s Daughter.” In this case the score was Benjamin Britten’s Opus 15 violin concerto, conducted again by West with Concertmaster Cordula Merks serving as concerto soloist. Ironically, the concerto was conceived as a reflection on the Spanish Civil War, a far cry from the discontents of the Herod family. Those familiar with that latter narrative had no trouble following its episodes in Breiner’s choreography, but every one of those episodes outstayed its welcome. As a result, Britten’s meticulously crafted concerto provided anyone willing to listen with a rescue from a narrative account that tended to do little more than go around in circles.
This was also the case where “Emergence” was concerned. This was also set to a concerto, but the music could not have been more different. The composer was Dobrinka Tabakova, who had created a concerto for cello and string ensemble. Eric Sung was the concerto soloist, and the conductor was Matthew Rowe. Sadly, the choreography again emerged as too much of the same thing going on for too long. The good news was that there was no end of imaginative thinking in Tabakova’s concerto, which emerged as anything but “too much of the same thing.”
If there are prospects for new approaches to ballet choreography, they were disappointingly absent from the second of the three next@90 programs.
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