All’s Well That Ends Well

“Midsummer Night’s Dream”
San Francisco Ballet
January 28, 2021
Streamed

If you have to watch streamed full-length ballets, you probably could do not much better than San Francisco’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream” (available until February 10). This jewel received a single on-stage performance last April, the night before the SF Opera House closed. With a different cast, recorded last summer, it will have to do until sometime after the Company returns live. Yet Frank Zamacona’s superb direction for the screen lets the camera be our eyes without distracting editing. The only note of sadness – besides those inevitable in the medium – is the second act where all, of a sudden, the dancers look so shrunken.

It’s difficult to think that in creating his first full-length ballet, Balanchine didn’t remember his childhood dancing with the Mariinsky. There can’t a more charming ballet opening than those tiny elves skipping around and going down for a nap --starting us on the Dream. Their tinkling music is just another of Balanchine’s extraordinary skills patching together this marvelous score – I  even liked the Wedding March – that, maybe even Mendellsohn would have approved.

Tomasson’s second casting was first rate, illustrating the depth of quality of what is still his company. Sasha de Sola’s Tatiana was self-assured, regal when defying Oberon (Esteban Hernandez), queenly to her attendants yet “lovingly” relaxed into the cambré in Bottom’s arms (a touchingly befuddled Lucas Erni). De Sola is often a cool yet superb performer; she did not disappoint. In the  Pas de Deux, Vladimir Kozlov partnered her generously and with grace. Hernandez’ fiendish solo with its length, speed, turns and beats is reputed to be a male bravura solo. Now we know why.

The mix up among the lovers was, of course, resolved. They were Sarah Van Patten’s fragile Helena and Elizabeth Powell’s a little more worldly Hermia. Even though we smile at these lovers, some of the Balanchine-Mendellsohn supports genuine heartache. He gave the dual between chest-pounding Lysander (Myles Thatcher) and the kick-prone Demetrius (Luke Ingham) powerful music, suggesting, even though we know better, real danger. Cavan Conley’s Puck ‘s was everything I wanted him to be.

This performance offered one newcomer  to me. Sasha Mukhamedov is a soloist who joined the company in 2019. To my recollection I have never seen her perform. She is a dancer of extraordinary power. With a fierce glance toward us, Hippolyta’s jetés flew like the arrows that she didn’t deploy. One after another imprinted itself into space.

The second act divertissement just looked too crowded; it needs the breathing space that the Opera House allows. The Pas de Deux for Frances Chung and Ulrik Birkkjaer, however, shone with her shaping and pacing the lines – floating, flying, yielding and giving in. Brikkjaer knew just what to do.

copyright 2021 © by Rita Felciano