A Trio to Treasure--For Different Reasons
"Symphony #9," "Wooden Dimes," "Swimmer"
San Francisco Ballet
Streaming
March 10, 2021
For anybody with doubts about Ballet being a contemporary art form, this was the show to see. Alexander Ratmansky’s “Symphony #9” and Yuri Possokhov’s “Swimmer” bracketed Danielle Rowe’s world premiere of “Wooden Dimes.” They made for an intelligent satisfying evening of 21st century dance. There was barely a false note among them.
Co-commissioned by American Ballet Theatre, “Symphony #9” was seen in a taped 2019 SFB version; it showcased the company in enviable shape. Even streamed Ramansky’s take on the Shostakovich (conducted by Martin West) looked superb. Quickly shifting groups of multiples billowed and contracted with quasi militaristic discipline. The ominous undertones of uncertainty and fear – first signaled in the score –often contradicted the sense of surface “community.” Again and againd discordant harmonies in the brasses or woodwinds called up choreography that was as crystalline as it was mercurial.
Jennifer Stahl and Aron Robinson, echoed by the many fluid two-by-twos, called attention to the bravery it takes to survive in hostile environments. So much of the choreography is playful and yet, not as emotionally buoyant as it looks. Is the person in the center of a wild circle dance being honored or imprisoned? What do we see in a long string of swinging hand-holds? A line dance or a chain gang?
Way Wong is the outsider among these fragile survivors. Maybe his bounding leaps, whipping turns and a face full of shine are promises of a new world. The symphony, after all, was commissioned to celebrate the end of WWII.
Rowe’s ‘Wooden Dimes” starred a beautiful Sarah Van Patten as Betty Fine, an ambitious show dancer with an ordinary name. She loses the love of her life Rober Fine (Luke Ingham) to the glamour of stardom. It’s about as sentimental a tale as you would ever want, but Rowe squeezed something of a plausible story from the cliché. She does it with wit, a touch of irony and a dollop of sweetness. Shaping it as a film, may have offered her a Busby Berkeley fan dance and some odd visual perspectives, but it also kept the work oddly chopped. Having the poor slob of a lose out to his buddies and a wooden table (á la William Forsythe) also made for some awkward moments.
The work is set to a commissioned score by James M. Stephens, with a modicum of jazz flurries and, unless I am mistaken, a bit of the “Dies Irae” leading up to the end. Rowe’s story escapes a maudlin libretto with two lengthy pas de deux for Patton and Ingham. In the first they tenderly share spacious encounters with Patton sailing up and over her solicitous partner. The second effectively builds on the first with the increasing realization that Robert wants out.
Tiit Helimets got the best close-up when, in the seduction scene, his applauding hands turn into grabbing paws. It was a LOL moment. However, Dores André and Max Cauthorn as the “Dark Angels” looked better in the short excerpt in the Gala. “Dimes” opens and closes with Van Patten walking toward the stage’s ghost light. Of course.
Possokhov’s “Swimmer” is a great show. Based on a short story by John Cheever, the chronicler of suburban white middle class America, it features, among others, ten principal dancers, just about half of the rest of the company, and a dozen or more students from the SFB School. This is a big endeavor by the former Bolshoi dancer and now SFB Choreographer in Residence Possokhov. Alexander V. Nichols’s scenic and Kate Duhamel video design, plus stunning costumes by Mark Zappone are scene stealers. But to even get a taste of “Swimmer’’’s textural richness, it needs to return to the stage.
What Possokhov might have considered Americana included: a swimming pool in everyone’s home, “Lolita”, Hopper’s “Nighthawks”, “Catcher in the Rye” and, the odd piece out, ‘Final Swim' from Jack London’s “Martin Eden.” These are odd choices but the choreographer, apparently, had reached back to the images of the United States he encountered while growing up in Russia.
The crowded pastel-colored Hollywood pool party, including two strutting divas, is pure comedy; and to see Lauren Strongin’s girly Lolita with Tiit Helimets as a slimy seducer – twice in one evening – is a treat in itself. The Hopper painting received two additional characters with Sylviane Sylve and Luke Ingham in a duet of cartwheeling lifts during which they barely looked at each other. For “Catcher in the Rye” our traveling non-hero Joseph Walsh meets his business shirt clad fellow students who slowly but surely fade away, leaving Walsh disconsolate at the edge of the stage.
For all its spectacular and entertaining theatricality, “Swimmer” ultimately takes a dark view of who we are. Most encouraging about the work is Possokhov’s ongoing quest to find new expressive forms for telling stories with ballet.
copyright © Rita Felciano 2021
