COMPACT 'BEATLES' STIRRED AT SMUIN BALLET
                        Passage of Time Mollifies Staunch Opposition 
<>                                              By Paul Hertelendy 
        artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music and dance 
                                                                 Weeks starting May 13, 2011
                                                                  Vol. 13, No. 97
        The Smuin Ballet courageously brought back a version of Michael Smuin’s “To the Beatles” (1985), the work that got him fired as the San Francisco Ballet’s artistic director. 
            It’s hard to believe that this light-hearted entertainment was the main impetus driving out Smuin after a highly stimulating decade of creativity at the SFB helm. This is a jolly diversion recalling the hippie era and the Haight-Ashbury culture, along with break-dancing and glints of John Travolta-like cavortings  in “Saturday Night Fever.” But the “Beatles” work was savaged when it went on tour in Southern California. And the SFB board let its President Richard LeBlond know that this was not the image of San Francisco they wanted to see propagated all around the country. So Smuin, who had lifted the troupe up from near-collapse when he came in, was sent packing, and the Smuin Ballet, which he then founded in 1994, was the result, carrying on these days at the Yerba Buena Novellus Theatre, well after the veteran choreographer’s death. 
            Today, it’s hard to see why all the fuss, at least in the chamber-ballet adaptation on view at Smuin Ballet. But perhaps that’s because “Beatles” now reflects colorful S.F. history rather than contemporary culture---viewed as closer to Isadora, Luisa, Twain, Cain, London and Bierce than anything around today.
            “To the Beatles” is now hugely popular, if the show of May 11 cheered by a near-sellout crowd was any gauge. It leads off with an extravagant Shannon Hurlburt solo, doing everything including a moon walk and break dancing, thereby enkindling the crowd. Further along, the troupe’s other traffic-stopper, Erin Yarborough-Stewart (currently redheaded, no longer blonde), paired with John Speed Orr for the most limber acrobatics and upside-down poses that had to be seen to be believed.
            Smuin’s works often border on the commercial and Broadway side. The hot Latino number of a passionate couple (Jean Michelle Sayeg, Ryan Camou) could have come straight from an Argentinian night club. And the sensual solo of the sinuous Jonathan Mangosing, cartwheels and all, transcended genres, enhanced by the mottled lighting by Slocum and Oesch.  
            Choo-San Goh (1948-87) was an important New York choreographer until struck down by the AIDS epidemic. His “Momentum” for five couples, with a Prokofiev piano concerto as accompaniment, was a welcome if brief addition. It’s a streamlined work in white tights, moving briskly along, until a tender, touching moment where a woman lays her head on the hand of her partner. And suddenly time stands still with supreme eloquence in that moment of repose.
            Amy Seiwart, one of the area’s leading creative artists, misfired in “Requiem”---not with her dances, but rather with her choice of music. The brawny, bare-chested men and the women in strapless outfits are stunning and sexy; the curly-headed Travis Walker doing a demanding solo looks like  budding star. But in that racy environment, with women spreading their legs toward the audience, why select one of the most sacred of scores, the dying Mozart’s hallowed “Requiem?” The two elements are in total conflict; the music and its sung texts for the Mass of the Dead calls for decorum, sacred dance, perhaps reverence too, and all that flesh be damned.
            Tilt!
            SMUINOTES---All the music was prerecorded…The 1985 brouhaha over “To the Beatles” could have been predicted, if any one had a good enough memory: Exactly 15 years earlier, Carlos Carvajal’s hippie-flavored “Genesis 70” to minimalist music of Terry Riley had caused a similar stir at the S.F. Ballet, with very similar critiques delivered to the choreographer, as Carvajal ruefully recalls today. Are we reliving the anti-modern revulsion over  “The Rite of Spring” in Paris over and over again? Each of these choreographers stood to be praised and vilified, all in the same paragraph, simultaneously.  But no, never to be forgotten!
            Smuin Ballet, a 17-member company. Yerba Buena Novellus Theatre, San Francisco, through May 15. For info: (415) 978-2787, or go online.

        ©Paul Hertelendy 2011
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           Paul Hertelendy has been covering the dance and modern-music scene in the San Francisco Bay Area with relish -- and a certain amount of salsa -- for years.
    These critiques appearing weekly (or sometimes semi-weekly, but never weakly) will focus on dance and new musical creativity in performance, with forays into books (by authors of the region), theater and recordings by local artists as well.
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