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The Opening Gala Gala by Ann Murphy Every year, like some kind of distillation device, the well-heeled San Francisco Ballet gala reveals something essential about the state of the country, the city, and the ballet itself, all in only a few hours. Five years ago, the SF gala was a sedate, beautifully mournful affair. That January, a hall of black gowns tasteful enough for an aristocratic funeral reflected how frightened the country was but how prepared, too, for introspection. Then, within a year or two, as national fear was replaced by national swagger, exaggerated 18th century hoops, yards of tuille, and a fairy tale approach to grandeur took the place of careful black. Such fashion exaggerations were gone this year. In fact, the 2006 gala seemed like a foreshadowing of the increasingly lavish but conservative display of Oscars night. The orchestra section was awash in beautiful glimmering gold, white, pink and tawny sheaths (most with plunging-necklines filled to overflowing). Bodies of every age were toned and tucked. Seventy-year-olds in skin-revealing dresses bared remarkably buff arms and backs. Even the men this year all seemed trim and tidy. The ballet itself cast off a similarly beautiful, carefully well-heeled appearance. What saved the night from complete tedium was how the dancers continue to exert strong idiosyncratic zest even when their performances are tame, as too many of them were Wednesday. No one more blatantly embodies the idiosyncratic than the Mannerist Cuban ballerina, Lorena Fejoo. Feijoo performed Odille, the evil Black Swan of "Swan Lake" (in the "Black Swan Pas de Deux") with technically elegant Davit Karapetyan as Siegfried. Feijoo cut a fascinating, if disturbing, figure. Her own technical peculiarities, from her pulled-in chin (which flattens her neck) and her bent arms to her posed fingers, gave her Odille a witchy glamour, part El Greco and part 19th century melodrama. In an age of warmed-over minimalism and an American inclination toward appealing but shallow surfaces, a performer like Feijoo reminds us that the "temper" in temperament has exotic, even erotic, appeal. But Feijoo’s interpretation of Odille was really just another surface interpretation, this one ornate and self-absorbed as opposed to smooth and companionable. One of the sad results was that Feijoo reduced Karapetyan to décor, making a duet into a solo and arrogating to herself the right to be the diva engaged in a dance of seduction with the audience. Thirty-one fouttees be damned. True seduction, as some of her more artistically evolved colleagues know, is deepest and most mysterious when it is indirect. The night opened with William Forsythe’s "The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude" (to the Allegro vivace of Schubert’s Symphony No. 9 in C major), and the traditional, the Pas de Trois from "Paquita." Kristin Long, Katita Waldo and Vanessa Zahorian brought easy sass to the brutal deconstructions of the already deconstructed Balanchine neoclassicism that "Vertiginous" is built upon. Nicolas Blanc bit into his steps hard, while Pierre-Francois Villabnoba was almost master of his. But Forsythe’s pyrotechnics have gotten tedious. Lacking Balachine’s grace-laden view of the universe, the dance has no philosophical legs, despite its dazzle and brains. Ten years out, "Vertiginous" is starting to look self-important and about as daring as a Prada gown at the Oscars. "Paquita," danced by the insouciant Frances Chung, willowy Rachel Viselli and buoyant Jaime Garcia Castilla demands technical aplomb, which all three showed in abundance. But the spirited showmanship, the bravura and cheeky joy the trio needed to make the excerpt more than a classroom display was woefully missing. Limpid Claire Pascal and Ruben Martin’s rendering of Chopiniana’s "Pas de Deux" was technically superb but suffered from the same emotional anemia. Even Tina LeBlanc and Joan Boada had difficulty finding the right note in the devilish "Harlequinade Pas de Deux" by Balanchine. Although they were technically precise and gave the parts plenty of energy, the dancers chose to dance it as a pure sugar. Harlequin and Columbine only make sense when they embody love that is comic and enticing and also implicitly tragic. In the end, the daring moments came out of performances, not dances. Muriel Maffre and Damian Smith invested Yuri Possokhov’s "Pas de Deux" from his ballet "Reflections" with such anguished sensuality that they made the difficulty of the steps seem ineluctable rather than contrived. The three men in the ironically named and wonderfully witty "Solo" by Hans van Manen danced like the theater was on fire, especially the impeccably daft Pascal Molat. Nutnaree Pipit-Suksun will help give new meaning to legs, thanks to her endless, exquisitely articulate limbs, which veritably sing as they fan out from a back a supple as bamboo. And Gonzalo Garcia, giving us the one glimpse of something new thanks to his solo "Elemental Brubeck" by Lar Lubavitch (its U.S. premiere is later this year), danced with a maturity that fuses his former boyish dash with deeper understanding of his energy, his line and his rapport with the audience. The choreography was a clunker, but the dancing was divine. The night finished with the 3rd Movement and Finale of Tomasson’s own "Prism" (2000), an excerpt that offered a monumental close to the night’s monumentally postmodern opening. Finally, the dancers got to cut loose, and they danced with joy that had an edge honed by inspiration as well as by the knowledge that dance is fleeting. The smooth homogeneity of the crowd no longer seemed to mirror the ballet, and I finally felt San Francisco Ballet’s deeper promise.
Volume 4, No. 4
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