MARK MORRIS, THE MASTER OF BALLET VERSATILITY
As Smiles
Light Up in San Francisco
By Paul Hertelendy
artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music
and dance
Week of March 15-22, 2009
Vol. 11, No. 76
Governments may be going broke, account-holders are
uneasy,
debts are excessive, jobs are iffy, and dividends are being zapped.
But there’s a
silver lining in all this---SMILES. More
smiles than ever, in fact. Against a big recession, it may be the first
defense for
the rank-and-file world, especially so for the nervous performing-arts
world.
You go to the San Francisco Ballet
these days, and suddenly every one smiles at you---the box-office folk,
the
ticket-takers, the ushers, the bartenders, even dancers. Funny how a
recession
can suddenly turn you into a welcome arrival, like a long-lost patron
and
donor. Will it catch on to all the rival groups? We will see…
The smiles
illuminated a couple of engrossing SFB programs that
opened March 12-13. There was no
Friday-the-13th jinx here, not with Mark Morris’ “Joyride,”
a
futuristic ballet arguably anticipating the 22nd century,
perfectly
suited for the Bay region which had spawned Silicon
Valley.
It was the most interesting of six ballets, hands down. “Hands down”
was one of
many unorthodox positions Morris dreamt up for his wanna-be
startrekkers, along
with supine repose with leg pointed arrow-like at the ceiling. A lot of
rectilinear movement
suggested distant roots in Nijinsky’s “The Afternoon of a Faun.”
The skin-tight
gold-lamé costumes showed off the musculature
extravagantly while Pascal Molat, Morris’ favorite soloist here, did
his
feathery leaps and landings suggesting total weightlessness.
For the
benefit of techies, there were LED numbers on a tiny
screen on each dancer’s navel, all changing randomly. My favorite
dancer by far
was No. 7, who became 5, then 2, 9, and 0….Surely you remember!
Morris bit off
a very difficult score---John Adams’ “Son of
Chamber Orchestra”---which is much more effective for dance than as a
concert
piece. It is jazzy and rhythmic, but the meter shifts faster than you
blink.
Somehow Conductor Martin West kept it all together, though the
orchestra
sounded tentative.
The
combination of two of today’s top creative artists, Morris-Adams
as choreographer and composer, was irresistible. This could become not
only one
of the SFB’s enduring hits, but also a touchstone for other companies
proving
their mettle in modern ballet.
The meticulous
rehearsal of on-stage ensembles paid off in
this all-Morris evening. There was a light-hearted diversion with
comedy in “Sandpaper
Ballet,” piecing together an array of short selections composed by that
pops-concert
favorite, Leroy Anderson, who would have been 100 years old now. Here
the women
wear ponytails, suggesting some collegiate rhythm section, in large
group
dances whose costumes have a droll green-frog look. And Morris will
often hide
Molat in the back row, then have him emerge out of nowhere and light up
the house.
“A Garden” is
much less effective, with numerous
incompatibilities. Composer Richard Strauss forced his heavy romantic
cape onto
the nimble baroque dance pieces of Couperin, while the Morris dancers
were doing yet
another take on modern ballet, with shoulder shrugs, head-in-hands
poses, and
other unorthodoxies. It didn’t remotely work, and yet it showed Morris
as one
of today’s most versatile choreographers, stylistically so different
that you’d
swear on this one night you were watching three different
choreographers at work.
The March 12
concert, which the SFB calls Program Four, was a
hot-and-cold affair, following the same format a hohum curtain raiser,
a thought-provoking
serious piece, and finally a comedy. The serious piece was one of the
great romantic
dance-theater conceptions of the 20th century, Antony
Tudor’s “Jardin
aux Lilacs” (Lilac Garden, 1936). The blending of the romantic theme
with a
more modern array of movements was never conceived better. Lorene
Feijoo
performed the anguished woman at her engagement party, tormented as
much by
seeing her fiancée (Ruben Martin) as her true beloved now off
limits (Pierre-François
Vilanoba). The fiancée in turn is still in the sights of his
voluptuous
girlfriend (the stunning tall newcomer Sofiane Sylve), who you already
suspect
will become the mistress. It’s set in 19th-century England,
where
all the men wear white gloves, and where the heroine dies a thousand
deaths in
a hundred random, bewildered steps.
That program
closed with a side-splitting Jerome Robbins comedy, “The
Concert.” The diversion of distracting concert-goers was powered a bit
too
soberly by Danielle Santos in Sarah-Palin glasses, trying gamely to
emulate comedienne Joanna Berman of years past, and the high-flying,
cigar-chomping concert-hater (Molat, again!). I think if Molat ever
took a
night off, the whole SFB would have to shut down….
Nonetheless, this
is no one-star troupe by any means. But the SFB does have a rich
pipeline to sources in both France and Cuba, providing an on-going
influx of excellent talent and personalities.
The
return of Helgi Tomasson’s “On a Theme of Paganini” (2000)
was gratuitous, offering tidy classical ballet steps throughout. It
could have
been created 75 years ago (though since then, corps de ballet have
become a lot
more athletic). Vanessa Zahorian and the petite Maria Kochetkova were
spotlighted before the ensemble. The most memorable performance? The
wondrous
septagenarian Berkeley
pianist Roy Bogas, who can make Rachmaninoff resonate with the
dexterity of
yore.
San Francisco Ballet,
with orchestra, in programs Four and
Five at the Opera House, S.F., through March 25. For info: go online.
©Paul Hertelendy 2009
#
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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