Lovable ‘Études’ tops Valentine’s program
Modern ballets by Tomasson and Marston fill out diverse triple bill
War Memorial Opera House was full of love on Valentine’s Day, the opening night for San Francisco Ballet’s Program 3, “In Space & Time.” A 70-year gap separated the pieces on the triple bill, a May-December juxtaposition that highlighted ballet’s ever-evolving range.
The program opened with Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson’s 2006 “The Fifth Season,” a suite of vignettes that channel the motifs in Karl Jenkins’ score through the organic musicality of the dancers — limber Yuan Yuan Tan wrapped around Tiit Helimets; Vitor Luiz and Dores André in lyrical embraces; and Sofiane Sylve leading Helimets, Luiz and Luke Ingham in a fourperson tango. Sandra Woodall’s ombré unitards, touched with sparkle, create a soft, painterly effect.
Edith Wharton’s 1911 novella “Ethan Frome” inspired “Snowblind,” choreographer Cathy Marston’s contribution to last season’s Unbound: A Festival of New Works. Ulrik Birkkjaer was all anguish as Ethan, a broken small-town man who is unhappily married to the sickly and sour Zeena, played by a seething Jennifer Stahl. Ethan finds doomed passion with Mathilde Froustey’s free-spirited Mattie, his wife’s cousin.
The British Marston pared the plot down to a postmodern dance-drama that teases a rich narrative from spare sets, simple costumes and expressionistic contemporary choreography. Zeena’s herky-jerky tempos and hard angles are a dramatic counterpoint to Ethan and Mattie’s lyrical lifts and embraces, while a gossamer corps of men and women waft in and out of their taut scenes, representing driving snow and foreshadowing the lovers’ ice-cold fate. For the score, Philip Feeney arranged music written in Wharton’s time by Amy Beach and Arthur Foote, and seamlessly mixed in Arvo Pärt.
If ballet has an 11 o’clock number, it’s “Études.” Choreographed in 1948 by Harald Lander for the Royal Danish Ballet, this extravaganza for 40 dancers builds from balletclass exercises to nonstop virtuosity and Busby Berkeleyesque fanfare. “Études” opens academically: standing at studio barres, trios of dancers set a percussive rhythm of pliés, kicks and turns.
The steps grow more complicated and layered in time with the music (Knudåge Riisager’s arrangement of Carl Czerny’s zippy études), and over the next 45 minutes the timpanist gets as much of a workout as the dancers. The barres disappear, the stage brightens, and floodgates open. Phalanxes of dancers enter from the wings, one after the other, and crisscross the stage in parades of leaps and turns. Over here gentlemen are jumping, over there ladies are leaping. Perfect timing is essential, and the company looked tight (a huge improvement over the under-rehearsed excerpt performed at this year’s Gala).
Then principal dancers join the party, and Tomasson called in the A-team on opening night: Angelo Greco in relentless turn combinations — including fouettés done in spoton timing with a bevy of women pirouetting around him — Joseph Walsh demonstrating buoyant footwork, Carlo Di Lanno partnering Sasha De Sola in a dreamy Romantic-era pas de deux. De Sola hit her stride after changing into a classical pancake tutu for the crescendo, a showcase for her trademark turns, bang-on arabesque balances and precise hops on pointe.
The audience roared — Valentine’s Day or not, you can’t help but fall in love with “Études.”