'LITTLE MERMAID:' STUNNING, EVENING-LENGTH, MULTI-DIMENSIONAL 
                                              By Paul Hertelendy 
        artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music and dance 
                                                                 Week of March 25-April 1, 2010
                                                                  Vol. 12, No. 82
            An amazing unprecedented fantasy has overwhelmed the stage with John Neumeier’s “The Little Mermaid” at the S.F. Ballet, ruling and roiling the waters through March 28 in its North American premiere.
            Fueled by the unique artistry of Yuan Yuan Tan in the title role, the ambitious evening-length piece blends many disparate elements from  both modern and traditional ballet, Balinese  gamelan dances, Japanese Noh and Bunraku theater, and some martial arts too. It is a very rich, very complex work of a dream world and of a surreal slice of reality, hard to assimilate fully once, and thus well worth seeing again in subsequent seasons if the straining SFB budget is up to it.           
            It’s drawn from the classic 1837 fairy-tale tragedy by Hans Christian Andersen. With the help of a witch, the mermaid abandons her happy life in the sea to get a human body and soul, at a high price, along with the love of a prince she saved from drowning. Instead, totally unaware of her role,  he marries a very terrestrial beauty. The perverse witch had given the metamorphosed mermaid  great dancing ability, but at the cost of loss of her beautiful voice (overlooked in the ballet) and of very painful feet.
            The ballet retains most of the essential plot and adds the role of Poet, who has gay leanings revealed in an irrelevant prologue.
            Like the best of the more modern evening-length ballets, this one focuses on the interplay of protagonists, with far less attention to corps de ballet and divertissements. It’s about the interaction of the Mermaid with the Prince as well as the malevolent (macho-male) witch, mixed with her stunning solos, and spiced with the character part of the wandering Poet (an ETA Hoffmann-like role, here depicting Andersen himself).
            But it is the fantasy and enchantment that makes this heroine quite different from Giselle, La Sylphide, the Swan Queen, and other 19th-century ballerinas. Underwater, the finned mermaid undulates her arms magically, in the Balinese manner, as if devoid of bones or joints, while other figures sway with the suggestions of swell. Indeed her role is mostly arms---When “swimming,” she is picked up (by “invisible” Japanese-style porters in black).
            Without question this was the greatest and most versatile role for Tan since she became an SFB principal 13 years ago. In addition to getting the dual-contrast roles that ballerinas dream about, she also had serious acting to do in the second half. She makes  her bargain with the witch and battles for the attentions of the Prince, who shows much greater interest in playing golf (!), even on shipboard, than in her. And Tan’s extreme pliability and hairpin back-bends make the underwater sequences extraordinary.
            Lest you think the Prince’s above-water scenes are real, they come off surreal, whether by choreographer Neumeier, or by set designer Neumeier, or by costume and lights designer Neumeier. Neumeier does it very skillfully, zeroing in on his thematic essence. In the end, the whole ballet takes place in---the Poet’s inner mind.
            In fact Neumeier did it all short of the music, an original, unsettling score from Lera Auerbach, which is the way Sergei Prokofiev might be writing were he alive today---marginally unstable much of the way, pictorial, sometimes downright eerie, seasoned with sounds like saxophone and electronic theremin (played by guest artist/virtuoso Carolina Eyck), the latter signaling the despair of the Mermaid.
            Yes, there are weak spots, particularly the final act dragging out the anguish of the betrayed Mermaid to interminable length, making her look eventually like a simpering pouter. The model-sized 1930s ocean liner looking like a rich-boy’s toy from FAO Schwartz. And the unsympathetic view of a nuns’ parochial school, is as crude as anything I ever saw from the Soviet Union.
            But Neumeier is an American, directing the Hamburg Ballet, where this updated version debuted in 2007. To play the Poet, he brought one of his animated dancer-actors from Hamburg, Lloyd Riggins.
            The rest seen March 23 came from the SFB: The Prince, the statuesque Tiit Helmets; the Witch, the fast-flying, combative Davit Karapetyan, and the Prince’s lady, the demure Sarah van Patten. Casts rotate, with van Patten doing several Mermaids, and Pascal Molat appearing as the Poet after March 23.
            John Neumeier’s “The Little Mermaid” at the S.F. Ballet, after H.C. Andersen’s 1837 tale; US premiere, through March 28. Runs 2:20, with one intermission. Opera House, S.F. For info: (415) 865-2000, or go online. 

        ©Paul Hertelendy 2010
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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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