‘Sleeping Beauty’ to kick off eye-opening season
Those rumors of ballet’s imminent demise? San Francisco Ballet will put them to rest with a 2018 season ranging from the opulent tradition of “The Sleeping Beauty” to a forward-looking choreography festival, and hallmarked by both breadth and depth.
The War Memorial Opera House season opens with the annual gala on Jan. 18, then segues into Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson’s “Beauty,” a bewigged and bewitching three-act fairy tale — and balletic tour de force — not seen here since 2007.
On the other end of ballet’s spectrum is the already announced season-closing “Unbound: A Festival of New Works.” The three-week event brings leading dance makers to the Opera House: David Dawson, Alonzo King, Edwaard Liang, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, Cathy Marston, Trey McIntyre, Justin Peck, Arthur Pita, Dwight Rhoden, Stanton Welch, Miles Thatcher and Christopher Wheeldon will create world premieres, to be presented in four programs and 17 performances. Live streams, dance films, symposia and pop-up events round out the festival.
Tomasson’s personal imprint is felt throughout the season in his “On a Theme of Paganini” (sharing a bill with Val Caniparoli’s dance-drama “Ibsen’s House”). In a later program celebrating Jerome Robbins, one of Tomasson’s mentors at New York City Ballet, four works set to Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Chopin and Bernstein will showcase Robbins’ inventiveness as well as the superb musicality of the San Francisco dancers.
Benjamin Millepied’s “The Chairman Dances,” a hit at the 2017 gala, returns in expanded form alongside Peck’s “Rodeo: Four Dance Episodes” and Balanchine’s “Serenade,” illustrating how a new generation of post-City Ballet artists is expanding on the master’s ideas.
On its first visit since 2008, the National Ballet of Canada performs “Nijinsky,” created by Tomasson’s longtime friend John Neumeier (performed here in 2013 by Neumeier’s Hamburg Ballet), in April. Liam Scarlett’s “Frankenstein” also comes back to life for six performances.
World Ballet Day returns in early October, and this year’s “Nutcracker” runs Dec. 13-30.