ArtsSF

A rousing celebration of Hispanic culture came off with the S.F. Ballet’s “Dos mujeres” program, continuing offstage well into the night before the large and wildly enthusiastic crowd. The entire Opera House was decorated high and low with multi-color South-of-the-Border images, including the oversize flowers enhancing the box seats. The new Artistic Director Tamara Rojo hit the nail on the cabeza with her unique pairing, one celebrating the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo in the US-premiere gala spectacle “Broken Wings,” the…

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BERKELEY, CA—-“Anna Karenina” may stem from 19th-century literature, but she is very much a woman of our era, led by her heart, for which she is condemned by a starchy old-line society. Her tale has been taken up by many ballet choreographers since the middle of the past century, none of them more brilliant than Yuri Possokhov, whose mellifluous flow of major-production dancers in his five-year-old “Anna” more than compensates for his insatiable thirst for scenelets—13 of them in all,…

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A wondrous night unfolded at the Opera House as the S.F. Ballet’s swans floated in gracefully and flew off to the cheers of a sold-out house. For many, “Swan Lake” is the pinnacle of all ballet love-drama fantasies, a fairy tale that grips the heart with great endearment. This time led by a very promising ballerina out of Sweden, Nikisha Fogo. The fairy-tale plot: innocent maidens are scooped up by the evil winged sorcerer Von Rothbart, transformed magically into swans,…

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Without question, the S.F. Ballet is flying high with the love duo Valentine, “Marguerite and Armand.” It was flying into the troposphere Saturday when danced by SFB superstar Yuan Yuan Tan in a farewell performance. The Opera House was sold out wall-to-wall for the Feb. 10 show, vibrant with repeated bows for the ovations at the final curtain. How apt for the Opera House, where many patrons recognize right away the synopsis of Verdi’s opera “La Traviata,” both drawn from…

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I went for the ballet. Instead came a brief but intense light show of swirling dots, somewhere between microscopic cell colonies and the birth of planets in the cosmos, all operating on speed. The new Tamara Rojo era of the S.F. Ballet was kicked off with Aszure Barton’s splashy “Mere Mortals,” a 70-minute avant-garde socio-political critique with massive cast masquerading as an evening-length ballet. An incredible lithe, pliable dancer (Jennifer Stahl on Jan.27) does showstopping solos and pairings on stage,…

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We tumble and we fumble, and then we meet the compact Smuin Ballet which has emerged from the pandemic seemingly unscathed. Its newest Bay Area run showed off 17 beautifully coordinated and trained dancers in pieces new and old, bursting with precision and energy. Purists may carp about the troupe’s leanings toward the commercial, but this group under Celia Fushille offers both sides, serving up contemporary with a capital C, abetted by the new associate director and adroit choreographer Amy…

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Oversize Renaissance palaces, over some dozen danced scenes, played out on dual tiers. An oversize pit orchestra for the eloquent Prokofieff music, the most majestic ballet score of the 20th century, stamping this as the preeminent evening-length achievement of the post-Tchaikovsky era. And a massive cast set opulently in Shakespeare’s Verona. Can anything top this ballet for sheer performance power resonating with romanticism? And the feel of a lavish city state of half a millennium ago, with enough period costumes…

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Even in an evening of routine modern-ballet repertory works from recent seasons, you’re thunderstruck at the incredible proficiency of the S.F. Ballet dancers. In a piece like “Blake Works,” I found myself thoroughly irritated, mostly by the pop music lacking beats or focus. And yet the 20 or so dancers were so skilled and well-rehearsed, you thought they’d gone through training of a West Point drill team on the parade ground, then sped it up by four (an experience back…

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There’s hope for us all when a lead dancer here moves on to choreography and finds his inspiration with 13thcentury Persian poets. The Frenchman Nicolas Blanc, a principal here shortly after the Millennium, turned to the poet Rumi in creating his new “Gateway to the Sun” for the San Francisco Ballet. The main character is the lonely, reflective Poet, presumably Rumi himself, separate but connected with the community around him. Max Cauthorn played that lead barefoot in a breakthrough dancing…

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Just when you thought they’d gone out of vogue—swans, mouse-kings, sylphs and all, with pantomime—story ballets are back this month, accounting for half of the six new works to date at the S.F. Ballet. Only now, it’s without all those kookie oldie characters. It’s not the kiddies’ tales of old any more. Sorry, no gnomes, just tomes of modern-ballet story-telling. And now, it’s not enough to dance; the cast must also act. The latest one—–No. five of the rare cornucopia…

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