S.F. BALLET STRUGGLES WITH THE MODERNS 
                                              By Paul Hertelendy 
        artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music and dance 
                                                                 Week of Feb. 25-March 4, 2011
                                                                  Vol. 13, No.  70
        When  Helgi Tomasson’s ballet company goes all modern, it’s navigating through a mine field that have some of the patrons jumping ship in mid-passage.
            The San Francisco Ballet’s reprise with one of Tomasson’s most audacious creations, “Nanna’s Lied” lacked the intense shock value of its 1993 premiere season in the Feb. 24 opening program. And it was followed by William Forsythe’s born-to-shock postmodernism “Artifact Suite,” which sent many understandably streaming to the exits long before its interminable conclusion three-quarters of an hour after the start.
            At least there was excellent dancing, given Yuan Yuan Tan and Lorena Feijoo and partners in the latter. And earlier on, Vanessa Zahorian and Gennadi Nedvegin headed a  superb ensemble simulating the great Soviet ballet troupes in Possokhov’s tutu ballet “Classical Symphony,” after Prokofiev. 
            Where to start with “Artifact Suite?” A black curtain comes banging down loudly while the 30 or so dancers rearrange their formations (Was it a staging malfunction? No---it happened six times!). Then glaring  bright lights on stage are directed into the patrons’ eyes. And hey, I just happened to leave my RayBans at home. A badly recorded sound system plays back grating Bach at al, and a pianist who didn’t need to be amplified was, to excess. 
            And through it all, the phalanxes of dancers in tights made semaphoric gestures in displays of arms and arms. 
            Any patrons wanting their money back were out of luck, as by then, the box office had closed.
            So the night’s highlight was Yuri Possokhov’s attractive 2010 retrospective, a male-dominated showpiece, full of high-gliding jetees, but not without blemishes: Some men handling their ladies like potato sacks, and then dragging them around the floor like carcasses.
            "Nanna's Lied" is a tragedy, perhaps set in the  Berlin of the 1920s when this music from Weill's "Three-Penny Opera" was popular. Nanna (Sarah van Patten) is an innocent wandering into a house of floosies and debauchery, taking up with a tough young man (Anthony Spaulding), then being victimized by an older rapist (Val Caniparoli). The honkytonk music from the pit sounded authentic, but clearly the S.F. Ballet had difficulty to find just the right raspy German vocie to emulate those old Lotte Lenya renditions.
             The conductor for the evening  was the consistently effective guest Emil deCou, who after leaving the SFB became the conductor of the Pacific Northest Ballet.
              Program Three of the S.F. Ballet, through March 9 at the Opera House, S.F.,reviewed Feb. 24. Casts rotate. For info: (415)  865-2000, 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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