★★★★✰ San Francisco Ballet has elected to bring a recently filmed version of the ballet to its audiences as the first program of 2021. And what a lovely way to kick off the digital season!
Tag - Esteban Hernandez
★★★★✰ 'Spellbound' delivered in every regard – opulent grandeur, terrific people watching and above all, marvelous dance.
★★★✰✰ Liam Scarlett has great taste in dancers. For the 29 March world premiere of Die Toteninsel, his fourth commission for San Francisco Ballet, the British choreographer chose the lyrical and athletic principal Joseph Walsh and soloist Lauren Strongin...
★★★✰✰ The performance was thrilling ...because it marked the Aurora debut of soloist Wona Park, whose Kitri debut in the season-opening Don Quixote got loads of buzz. At just 19, she dances with an ease beyond her years...
★★★★✰ There’s nothing like watching a woman crush a man’s neck with her thighs to make you go hmm, maybe that whole #MeToo thing has legs.
★★✰✰✰ The efforts of San Francisco Ballet’s artists are sadly misplaced in this largely joyless and wholly unsatisfying rendition of The Sleeping Beauty.
San Francisco exists in its own world, out here on the distant West Coast. The San Francisco Ballet, though, just became more global than ever, with new 2017-18 members joining from around the world. The company school, which presented its annual Student Showcase 31 May through 2 June at YBCA Theater, draws international students as well...
★★★★★ Pita’s Salome is pure postmodern dance-theater, and a five-star surprise on the Opera House stage.
★★★★✰ "....that is what is marvelous about Forsythe's Pas/Parts. Would that more choreographers would offer that kind of brisk and bracing slap in the face."
★★★✰✰ By way of a défilé, the evening opened with the “Waltz of the Hours” from Balanchine and Danilova’s Coppélia ...Soloist Jennifer Stahl led two dozen girls from the SFB School, adorable in cotton-candy tutus.
The SF Ballet premiere of choreographer-in-residence Yuri Possokhov's pas de deux from Bells is my all-round favorite of the evening. Sublime dancing from Maria Kochetkova and Davit Karapetyan...
The best all-round piece of the evening is Hans van Manen’s Variations for Two Couples, from the exquisitely concise choreography by this still-relevant master...
If the choreography was a mixed bag there was a clear flip side, or rather two. This year's standard, particularly on the boys' side, gave cause for celebration at the strength on show...