MORE DRILL TEAMS THAN MAGIC FIRE
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, the sole remaining hope of humanity, in front of a strutting, stamping corps of 40 plus, all in black tights or coats. Add to it blinding strobe lights and an amplified, deafening electronic score, and you have the perfect shock treatment for us plebian onlookers.
Choreographer Barton conveyed part of her perils-of-artificial-intelligence message with the lockstep marching brigade of automatons in complex maneuvers threatening to stamp out all us humans, more like West Point drill teams than ballet troupes.
In any event, the heroes of this flash-in-the-pan world premiere were the designers of visuals, Pablo Barquín and Anna Diaz, making a million lively-lovely dots move about on screens in sync with the music.
But wait, there’s more. After it’s over, every night there’s a “spontaneous” dance party in the lobby for all comers, led by close to 10 real dancers bearing bright hand-held lights. All are doing their own thing to inspire revelers and, very entertainingly, delay departures to the serious freeways. And who am I to deny that the all-comers dance party seemed a lot more fun than “Mere Mortals?”
Supposedly, “Mere Mortals” is a work about ancient Greek deity—Pandora and Prometheus for starters—though there is neither box for curious Pandora nor fire for Prometheus. If Prometheus forgot to lug his fire to San Francisco, at least the Opera House compensated symbolically with lurid red lights inside and out throughout. If we still felt ignorant, understandable: fire was seen by Greeks as bringing knowledge and progress to humanity.
Beyond the sparkling ballerina, there’s a lithe male soloist (Wei Wong) playing the role of Hope. Other figures emerge and recede from the mass like tide cycles sped up to furious speed.
However unfathomable, the work won cheers and standing ovations from the full house, which was much younger than your routine ballet crowd. And though you may compare the pop and sizzle-fizzle to a Shakespeare play title—-“Much Ado about Nothing,” perhaps?—–the bizarre night was redeemed by the ticket-buyers’ exuberant entry into the all-comers lobby dance afterward.
It’s a happening to attend and talk about, once only, and not take too seriously. The SFB can delight in ensuing box-office receipts. But going back to pre-A.I. Shakespeare, “What fools these mortals be.”
SAN FRANCISCO BALLET in Aszure Barton’s 70-minute world premiere “Mere Mortals,” Jan. 26-Feb. 1, with nightly public dancing in the lobbies. Music and sound score by Sam Shepherd. Opera House, S.F. For info, (415) 861-6000 or go online www.sfballet.org.
