Beauty trumps pain of life’s final exit
In one of several ingenious set changes that punctuate Trey McIntyre’s “The Big Hunger,” a wall that had seemed immovable flies to the rafters, magenta light flares like the embers of hell, and a drawing of a giant stick man running for the exit assaults the eyes.
When this set change happened the evening of Thursday, Feb. 13, as San Francisco Ballet danced the work’s world premiere at the War Memorial Opera House, two viewers behind me laughed sharply, the tone of their caws more nervous than delighted. It was fitting tribute to what McIntyre has accomplished: a ballet disquietingly merging the horrific and the cartoonish.
A prolific and nationally wellestablished maker of, often, popinflected and unpretentious ballets, McIntyre has here turned from his usual vernacular soundtracks to a very different realm: Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2. This is the score that Prokofiev completed in 1913 and dedicated to a friend who had committed suicide — only to see the score destroyed by fire during the Russian Revolution.
When Prokofiev rewrote it in 1923, he created one of the most formidable works of the piano repertoire, with a scherzo that demands 10 notes per second for a treacherous 2½ minutes. To meet this gantlet, the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra tapped Van Cliburn gold medalist Yekwon Sunwoo, whose deft performance, conducted by Martin West, provided drama aplenty.
Still, I suspect audience members who walked out discussing “The Big Hunger” spilled onto Grove Street more atwitter about the visual design.
McIntyre has said that the idea to use the international “exit sign man” in “The Big Hunger” struck one night when he and scenic designer Thomas Mika were out having a beer. And indeed at first “The Big Hunger” looks as if it could be taking place in an industrialchic bar, with perpendicular beams that seem to jut toward the audience, and a door marked “Exit” behind. (Effective lighting by Jim French.) I won’t give away the most inventive surprises, but suffice to say that what you thought was the only exit keeps changing, confronting the dancers with one hard truth: For each of us, there is no escaping the final exit.
Into this horror chamber scamper a squad of wigbedecked goons, who reminded me very much of the goons in George Balanchine’s “The Prodigal Son” (another ballet with a Prokofiev score). Those androgynous, everyperson goons are the most haunting presence in a ballet that insists there is no merely “regarding the pain of others” — sooner or later, the pain will be yours.
As a ballet, “The Big Hunger” is conceptually sound and theatrically brilliant — but choreographically, I can’t help feeling it is underrealized.
The opening duet between a distractedly despondent Dores André and an increasingly thrashing Benjamin Freemantle could have used more gesturally defined progression from wariness to despair.
Jennifer Stahl and Luke Ingham have a far more interesting duet to the Intermezzo, she confident and nearly vulgar, he trying to perform for her approval, and both were superb.
In the finale, Esteban Hernandez and Wei Wang have the cleverest costumes (also by Mika) — long gray garments that suggest military coat, priest’s robe and woman’s dress all in one. But their general acrobatic energy reads as a broad stroke on McIntyre’s part rather than as deeply musically attuned responsiveness.
The goon squad of “Big Hunger” could also use a few more performances to tighten its ensemble work.
But there was no such need for improvement during an exquisite performance of Edwaard Liang’s “The Infinite Ocean,” which the Ballet premiered during its 2018 Unbound Festival and has also since taken on tour, making this a finely honed showcase for 12 dancers’ lyricism.
Sofiane Sylve elicited awed gasps in her backbending partnering with Tiit Helimets, but there were shining moments too for playful Julia Rowe, doleful Jahna Frantziskonis and quicksilver Max Cauthorn and Myles Thatcher.
The night was capped by Harald Lander’s “Etudes,” a surprise revival hit from 1948, which begins with corps dancers at the barre going through their classroom paces and ramps up to a fouette turn fantasia in which Angelo Greco reigned supreme.
You know you’re in for a caper from the prelude, flurries of flute notes (themes of Carl Czerny as adrenalized by Knudåge Riisager), and yet somehow Sasha De Sola brought deep pathos to her technical perfection, seeming to have an enraptured conversation with the music even when repeating a little stir of the leg — rond de jambe en l’air, if you want to get technical — first low, then waistheight, then forehead high. Every phrase was a drama unto itself.
De Sola is so much warmer in her rapport with the audience than Suzanne Farrell, and yet there is something Farrellesque about her in the way we seem to watch, almost voyeuristically, as her fully entranced imagination toys with each step before our eyes. It was audiencepleasing beauty to make you forget the hard truth of McIntyre’s vision — and it worked, for now.