One Year Gone, Another on the Horizon
"School Demonstration", "Rendezvous," "Blue Rose," Effervescence" "Stars and Stripes"
San Francisco Ballet School
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
San Francisco, CA
May 24, 2018
To young performers recitals are the equivalent of graduation: you finish one set of skills and, hopefully, are allowed to the next level. Every ballet school has them, and teachers work long hours to show off students at their best. Mainly, they are an opportunity for family and friends to enjoy a particular student performing for an audience. San Francisco Ballet School’s yearly Showcase fulfills all of those ingredients. Those of us without youngsters to admire get an opportunity to step back from the grandeur of the Opera House and remember what it takes to finally get there.
While I miss earlier years, in which the youngest dancers stole your heart with their earnest attempts at tendus and port de bras, seeing large groups of level two, three and four filling the stage with a sense of what they were striving for more than made up for it. These young performers must be willing to forego at least some of the social media’s fast food diet in order to achieve something difficult but beautiful.
Choreographed by former Ballet Silicon Valley long-time Principal and now SFBS faculty member Karen Gabay, probably close to 200 children and young adults moved musically (to Gounod) with precision, a sense of ensemble and the airiest of port de bras. The performance moved briskly but never hurriedly as the choreography grew more complex, with one-on-one partnering, the boys showing entrechats and tours en l’air, the girls' point work and nicely timed pirouettes.
The second half of the program started with “Rendezvous", a world premiere by soloist/choreographer James Sofranko, who is now the new Artistic Director of the Grand Rapids Ballet in Michigan. Set on two couples, SFB Trainees Emerson Dayton/Tommaso Beneventi and Leili Rackow/Esteban Cuadrado, to piano and violin (Daniel Sullivan/Ani Bukuijan) by Enzo Piano, this lovely, excellently varied work, no doubt will serve Sofranko well in his new responsibilities.
As the couples meet, you notice a common reserve in the way they approach each other. But differences emerge quickly. Lyricism and drama exist side by side. Dayton and her partner’s flowing lines of soft lifts and swings had an easy grace while Rackow’s relationship was edgier, more abrupt, expressed more athletically. The women’s gowns – one white, one speckled dark -- supported these complementary dances.
Helgi Tomasson reprised his 2006 “Blue Rose,” to a series of short piano/violin pieces by Elena Kats-Cherin. Set on three couples, used in solos, duets, small ensembles and a finale octet, “Blue” is a light hearted charmer with ballroom-and folk elements woven into each other. I saw a waltz, a tango, rags, and, I am pretty sure, a jig. It’s the kind of piece that Tomasson does well: finely detailed ballet steps, spiced with borrowed ones from other practices. As danced by six trainees: Jasmine Jimison, Rackow, Maya Wheeler, Cuadrado, Joshua Jack Price and Jacob Seltzer, "Blue Rose" showed no signs of wilting.
The spacious and lighthearted “Effervescence” is corps member Blake Johnston’s second ballet for the SFB’s showcase. Much helped by Holly Hynes’ stylish pastel costumes, the piece showed a promising sense of the challenge of choreographing on ten dancers. Johnston made excellent use of stage space, giving the work a vernal sense of breath. In a pre-performance interview, she explained that she wanted the ballet “to be bubbly, youthful, and enthusiastic. I wanted to create something the students could feel free dancing, while still challenging their technique.” Well said.
This evening by young and very young dancers closed with a quite good performance of the entire “Stars and Stripes.” It’s the ballet in which Balanchine pulled all the stops of perhaps the country’s greatest band composer, John Philip Sousa. The music is infectious, the dancing lickety-split and Balanchine’s use of classical and Broadway dance astounding. The patriotic over the top imagery is hard to take, but it might not have been so in 1958. Coached by Elyse Borne, SFB students stepped up to the challenge.
The women’s group formations were splendidly clear, and if some of the unisons didn’t quite start the way they were supposed to, everyone finished on the same beat. The dozen men in the third campaign shone in “male” dancing: splits in the air, turns à la seconde, and perfectly coordinated double turns.
Jimison's Liberty Bell had spunk and charm, in addition to elevation, speed and precision; while Australian native Price’s El Capitan had all the elements that you look for in the packed full bravura variations. He strutted and smiled and carried Jimison aloft with a grin that never left his face.
copyright © 2018 by Rita Felciano
