ArtsSF

The most arresting moment in the Smuin Ballet’s spring program came in the pas de deux of “Oasis,” choreographed by Helen Pickett, until recently head of the Atlanta Ballet. Here the couple (Erica Felsch and Robert Kretz) played out a dream-fantasy, almost as if swaying underwater, vicariously inviting us all  to put ourselves in that ethereal spotlight to the restless mystery music of Jeff Beal, adroit in its tasteful percussion. Pickett gives us fleeting figures flitting by in the dark, and…

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Horror stories are rare in ballet, and “Frankenstein” (2016)  is one of the effective ones, in the vein of the old revenge plays ending with homicides and corpses all over the stage. I counted six who die by the final curtain, but I may have missed one or two. The work links posh gentility with lurid assaults. Thank London’s Royal Ballet for launching this work, adapted from Mary Shelley’s trail-blazing novel of two centuries ago—-very appropriate for marking, if not exactly…

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Every time that “Ibsen’s House” is brought out at the ballet, which is not nearly often enough, it’s a stunner of a modern dance drama. Created a decade ago by Val Caniparoli, it features five couples playing out the tensions in a male-dominated society when the wife too yearns for a role, for latitude, even for freedom. It’s a social revolution that leaves you riveted with its electricity, even if you’re unfamiliar with Henrik Ibsen’s century-old plays like “Ghosts,” “A…

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The modern-day move away from the great tradition of story ballets continues. In the S,F, Ballet program (No. 2) that opened Feb. 13, the inviting options to go the story route, even in an American classic, were crushed in favor of modern-day abstractions. Abstract ballets are indeed appealing—but do they embody the only story worth telling in ballets created today? “The Chairman Dances—Quartet for Two,” based on John Adams music actually written for an opera, veered off into another direction,…

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The high-flying, versatile Smuin Ballet has put together a rousing evening to elevate the spirits. Somewhere on high, founder Michael Smuin must be smiling. The dancers run the stylistic gamut from modern ballet to Broadway show dance, as adept at one as the other. Credit Artistic Director Celia Fushille, herself a former dancer under Smuin, for shaping a prime ensemble, then assembling a program resplendent  in prime-color contrasts. The most daring piece is Annabelle L.  Ochoa’s mystical “Requiem for a…

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Carvajal’s Tapping New Social Culture was Anathema With the 50th Anniversary of the highly innovative and uninhibited “Summer of Love” in San Francisco, we recall the trail-blazing ballet “Genesis ‘70” that resulted not long after. The furor that the here-and-now work produced had been compared to the 1913 Paris premiere of “The Rite of Spring,” which had aroused the biggest riot in ballet history. Recalling the era is the creator of “Genesis ’70,” Carlos Carvajal, a local choreographer still going…

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OAKLAND, CA—-Graham Lustig can pull rabbits out of the hat, or make silk purses from a pig’s ear, or merely make vibrant ballet evenings out of nearly nothing. Just call him somewhere between hyper-wizard and miracle worker. The case in point is his economically trimmed version of “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” mounted for the plucky, long-struggling Oakland Ballet performing in a spartan community-college theater before an audience of about 100. If that. Despite the troupe’s very limited resources and just 19…

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The season finale for the local ballet troupe now called simply SMUIN is a knock-out show, featuring imaginative choreography from both East and West. Our hippie era was exuberantly revived in Trey McIntyre’s elaborately staged large-budget world premiere, “Be Here Now,” marking the 50th anniversary of the Bay Area’s Summer of Love, that one-time exuberance of beads-pot-fringes nirvana. The viable companion piece is Amy Seiwert’s “Broken Open”—-a local choreography competing distinctively on a national level. The stellar New Yorker McIntyre…

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The story of Cinderella is so well known and so imprinted with pop culture inflections that finding an audience for any retelling of it in any medium requires a good deal of imagination and perhaps even daring. It is a matter of surpassing rather than affirming previous understanding of the story. Ballet is no exception. The Cinderella story was a ballet first in 1813 (Vienna), then in 1822 (London), again in 1893 (St. Petersburg), and then again in 1906 (London)….

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