A look at S.F. Ballet’s Unbound: A Festival of New Works. Pictured: Choreographer Cathy Marston.
2-week festival of dance premieres 3 years in the making
Dance history will be made in San Francisco this month. So far, it’s a matter of statistics. The three-year preparation period is the longest ever for a San Francisco Ballet project. The 12 choreographers (and assistants) who will participate comprise the largest creative complement the company has ever fielded. It’s impressive. But whether Unbound: A Festival of New Works will answer Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson’s question — where is ballet headed in our time? — is something we won’t know until it all ends May 6.
No denying that the planning for Unbound, a sequel to a similar, smaller festival 10 years ago, has been almost military in its rigor. As company General Manager Debra Bernard explains, the 12 dance makers each visited for threeweek periods in relays last summer. Meanwhile, Tomasson had divided his 78 dancers into three mini-companies (each comprising its allotment of principals, soloists and corps) and assigned each team to four of the 12 choreographers, spreading the distribution through the summer.
So, for the most part, each dancer, depending on the choreographer’s plan, might have learned as many as four ballets for the festival. During their three weeks on site last summer, the dance makers also were expected to deliver their musical, scenic and costume requirements to the company. Costumes and decor were constructed all over the globe. All of the dozen artists will be here for most of this month. “It’s a real jigsaw puzzle,” said artistic administrator Abby Masters.
There have been a few awkward moments along the way. The music in one case presented a problem. Arthur Pita wanted to borrow scores by Björk for his ballet, but the Icelandic composer and pop diva was not easily persuaded. Credit another Icelander named Tomasson and a flurry of letters and phone calls in Icelandic for securing permission to use Björk’s music.
Tomasson started the creative process three years ago, when he sought out the busy choreographers who he felt were indispensable to Unbound; Christopher Wheeldon is the only returnee from 2008. Tomasson also sought diversity in movement styles and artists’ backgrounds. Five of the 12 choreographers will be making their San Francisco Ballet debuts: Alonzo King (his own local Lines Ballet is currently celebrating its 35th anniversary), David Dawson, Dwight Rhoden, Cathy Mar-
ston and Annabelle Lopez Ochoa.
Marston’s dances are almost completely unknown in this country; Ochoa’s dances have been performed locally by Smuin Ballet, the defunct Ballet Silicon Valley and the touring Joffrey Ballet and Scottish Ballet. Both women have, in the past, confronted gender issues. And, in the past, San Francisco Ballet, like other major American companies, has not engaged an abundance of women to create dances.
Both choreographers stand out for another reason. They believe in the power of narrative ballet, which is still not completely accepted in the post-Balanchine era. Story is essential to British-born Marston. Back home, she has choreographed such literary classics as “Jane Eyre,” “Wuthering Heights” and “Lolita.”
When I visited her rehearsal last summer, she was preparing “Snowblind,” an adaptation of Edith Wharton’s bleak novel “Ethan Frome.” In this trio, the protagonists — Ethan, Mattie and Zeena — are locked in a heroic psychological struggle, with every movement looking weighty and monumental. Marston quietly observed her dancers, Ulrik Birkkjaer, Sarah Van Patten and Mathilde Froustey, arranging an arm here, a leg there, with the concentration of a master sculptor.
“Yes, I love storytelling and working with characters through dance,” said Marston in a post-rehearsal chat in a Ballet office. “I am not against abstraction and I like to play with how far you can abstract a narrative and still tell a story. I try to avoid props and ballet mime wherever possible. I go to abstraction and come back to storytelling.
“I started here with a plan and no movement,” she continued. “At this point, I’m tightening it up to fit it all into a half hour. Everything works. I am relieved.”
Mention difficulties encountered by female choreographers and Marston shoots back, “How much time do you have?” Getting serious, she says, “The treatment of women is a big problem in the U.K., too, less so in Europe. Last year, Crystal Pite made a piece for the Royal Ballet and it broke an 18-year record of men only. There are so many contributing factors; there are only a few top women in the field. You have to dig to find the less-than-top figures in the hope that they will, through sufficient exposure, rise to the top.
“It’s interesting that the attitude towards me changed after I directed the Bern (Switzerland) Ballet. Companies are asking for narrative, and I do it. The more work you do, the more work you get.”
That statement applies to Ochoa, who said in a conversation that she has eight commissions in the hopper. For San Francisco, she has staged the quasi-abstract “Guernica,” inspired by Pablo Picasso’s career and the masterpiece he painted in 1937 in response to the destruction of a village during the Spanish Civil War.
“What I like about this artist is that he used his art to make heartrending, poetic images about a senseless act of violence that should not be forgotten,” says Ochoa. “My piece was inspired by a TV report of the gassing of a Syrian town, and I felt helpless, unable to watch the whole thing.”
Ochoa is also fascinated by Picasso’s evolving style. “He would change it every time he took a new mistress,” said Ochoa. “He also always painted himself as the minotaur. But my greatest challenge was learning how to translate the Cubist style into movement. I hope to confuse viewers, so they won’t know if it’s an arm or a leg they are looking at.” Projections and costumes will leave little doubt about the source of the choreographer’s inspiration.
Ochoa did not come from the ballet world, but from the contemporary and jazz dance spheres, which favor collaboration between dancer and choreographer. She made her first professional dance 17 years ago at 27. “My career bloomed at a slow rate. I never found my gender too much of a problem,” says Ochoa. “I’ve always had lots of work.”
Yet Ochoa is conscious of the gender problem in this country, and she is sympathetic. “Times are changing. It is essential that the young generation have role models,” she says. “If I can be a model for these 18- and 19-year-old girls who aspire to be choreographers, maybe, in the future, there will be more.”
Allan Ulrich is The San Francisco Chronicle’s dance correspondent.