JULIET: DON'T BREAK A LEG, PLEASE!
By D. Rane Danubian
artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music
and dance
Week of May 10-17, 2010
Vol. 12, No. 98
When the
going gets tough, the tough get going.
Bad enough
that the heroine loses both her lover and her
life in the ballet “Romeo and Juliet.” But in the San Francisco
Ballet’s season
finale at the May 9 matinee, Juliet had one worse: a head injury in her
opening
bedroom scene requiring an unscheduled exit and curtain, and an
extended delay
of performance.
Maria
Kochetkova, the Muscovite ballerina who had also danced the
opening night, sustained the injury which a terse Opera House
announcement
identified as a “small cut.” When the delay stretched to 25 minutes
however,
with the audience kept in semi-darkness, it was clear that more was
involved.
Company staff
later explained it as a hit on the head
requiring no stitches. Much to Kochetkova’s credit, she returned to
action and
danced up to her usual elevated level through the drama stretched out
to close
to three and a half hours. Consequently, despite the adversity the SFB
completed its 77th season on an upbeat note with extra plaudits for
Juliet, while
ballet is now put back into mothballs until the fall season.
But with a difference:
Now the old ballet term to ward off
all jinxes before the curtain, "Break a leg!" may need
replacement with less dramatic terminology.
Helgi Tomasson’s “Romeo and
Juliet,” San Francisco Ballet,
music of Prokofiev, with orchestra, through May 9 at the Opera House,
S.F. For
info: (415) 865-2000, or go online.
©D. Rane Danubian 2010
#
D. Rane Danubian 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.
#
Return to main menu