A thrilling, expansive Robbins retrospective
In dance, as in the other arts, there is a point where high culture meets pop entertainment, and occasionally the two merge. It is a rare occurrence and sheer magic when it happens. Jerome Robbins conjured that bedazzlement in his dances many times in his career, and the San Francisco Ballet is reveling in that spirit in its final conventional subscription program of this season, which opened Tuesday, March 20, at the War Memorial Opera House.
We know that the choreographer who devised the bentknee routines for the corps in “Opus 19/The Dreamer” (which opens the program) also made the dances for “West Side Story.” The San Francisco Ballet’s survey strives to celebrate Robbins’ centenary by exposing his stylistic and emotional range, and it succeeds handsomely.
This is an exploratory undertaking for another reason. With the exception of Sarah Van Patten, everyone Tuesday was making a role debut. Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson reached deep into the ranks for his casting. The thrill of discovering a role for the first time before routine sets in can positively affect dancers as well as audiences.
You could see it in the revival of Robbins’ first ballet, “Fancy Free” (1944), which, in the staging of JeanPierre Frohlich, emerged an utter triumph Tuesday. Drawn from the corps and soloist ranks, the three leads (Benjamin Freemantle, Esteban Hernandez, Lonnie Weeks) brilliantly delivered the contrasting characterizations of these sailors out for a good time in a bar in World War II Manhattan before they sail away to their destinies.
No problem with technique. Freemantle’s duet with Sasha De Sola ached with the tenderness of impermanence. Hernandez embraced his terrific verticality. Weeks dispatched his rumba with panache. Dores André was the other woman. Martin West conducted the Leonard Bernstein score with great enthusiasm. “Fancy Free” may be a period piece, but what a period.
“The Cage” (1951) is not of our time either, and some observers today may swallow hard to enjoy this man-devouring tribe of female insects. Yet there’s no denying Robbins’ sheer theatricality and his astute use of Stravinsky’s Concerto in D to accompany a dystopian fantasy. The women in frizzy wigs clump around, commanded by a frizzier queen (Sofiane Sylve), while a novice (Maria Kochetkova) mates with and massacres her prey. In a feat of unorthodox casting, Kochetkova deployed her girlish demeanor to chilling ends, as Weeks and Steven Morse succumbed to her mock innocence.
“Other Dances” was a Robbins pièce d’occasion for Mikhail Baryshnikov and Natalia Makarova and the choreographer’s final Chopin piano ballet. It abounds in footflexing folk references and ends with a breathtaking lift that seems like an Olympic trial for two great exiled dancers. Angelo Greco (incandescent) and Frances Chung (lyrical) brought their own personalities to it. The pianist was Natal’ya Feygina.
Cordula Merks was soloist in the Prokofiev Violin Concerto No. 1 for “Opus 19,” in which the soulful Carlo Di Lanno was the questing protagonist and Van Patten his elusive foil. Not top-drawer Robbins, but extremely palatable in this casting.