San Francisco Ballet – Shostakovich Trilogy – San Francisco
★★★✰✰ The choreography in Shostakovich Trilogy, which was co-commissioned by SFB and ABT and premiered in 2014, is as frustratingly capricious as the music.
San Francisco Ballet – The Sleeping Beauty – San Francisco
★★★✰✰ 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…
San Francisco Ballet – The Fifth Season, Snowblind, Etudes – San Francisco
★★★✰✰ I was thrilled to see Snowblind returning. It was by far my favorite offering of last year’s Unbound Festival because it captivates on every level: potent storytelling, emotive choreography, fitting design tropes and deep character development.
San Francisco Ballet – Divertimento No. 15, Appassionata, Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming – San Francisco
★★★★✰ A triple bill joining George Balanchine’s Divertimento No. 15, the San Francisco Ballet premiere of Benjamin Millepied’s Appassionata and Justin Peck’s Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming.
San Francisco Ballet – Unbound Festival Program B: works by Myles Thatcher, Cathy Marston, David Dawson – San Francisco
★★★✰✰ Snowblind is a great narrative ballet – the source material is striking and Marston’s interpretation of it, equally so.
San Francisco Ballet – Serenade, The Chairman Dances, Rodeo – San Francisco
★★★✰✰ Not all, but many pas de deuxs have a romantic subtext, whether intentional or not. But in Rodeo Peck has crafted a pas de deux celebrating introductions and the process of getting to know another person.
San Francisco Ballet – 7 for Eight, Magrittomania, Pas/Parts – San Francisco
★★★★✰ “….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.”
San Francisco Ballet – Opening Night Gala – San Francisco
★★★✰✰ 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.
San Francisco Ballet – Romeo & Juliet – San Francisco
Choreographed by artistic director Helgi Tomasson in 1994, the ballet is popular with audiences here and makes a satisfying coda to his thirtieth-anniversary season…
San Francisco Ballet – Program 6: Shostakovich Trilogy – San Francisco
It’s a disconcerting feeling when you don’t respond to a piece that nearly everyone else agrees is revelatory. That’s the situation I find myself in with Alexei Ratmansky’s Shostakovich Trilogy.
San Francisco Ballet – Don Quixote – San Francisco
Principal dancers Mathilde Froustey and Carlos Quenedit were exactly what the audience wanted on opening night.
San Francisco Ballet – Dances at a Gathering, Hummingbird – San Francisco
San Francisco Ballet’s Program 4 is a double bill coupling a welcome return of Robbins’ Dances at a Gathering with a Liam Scarlett’s Hummingbird.
San Francisco Ballet – Program 3 including Myles Thatcher premiere – San Francisco
Program 3 features Hans van Manen’s Variations for Two Couples, William Forsythe’s The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude, Manifesto by Myles Thatcher and “The Kingdom of the Shades” from La Bayadère.
San Francisco Ballet – Prog 1: Serenade, RAkU, Lambarena – San Francisco
America’s oldest ballet company, San Francisco Ballet, opened its eighty-second season with a triple bill that encapsulates the uniquely varied repertory developed by artistic director Helgi Tomasson…
San Francisco Ballet – Infinite Romance: 2015 Season Opening Night Gala – San Francisco
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…
San Francisco Ballet – Caprice, Hummingbird, Symphonic Dances – Paris
Audience applause during the evening recognised that Scarlett’s Hummingbird was the starry centrepiece of the three Paris premieres.
San Francisco Ballet – 2014 Opening Night Gala – San Francisco
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…
Paris Opera Ballet – William Forsythe / Trisha Brown bill, Don Quixote – Paris
The middle piece, O Zlozony/O Compsite, is a beautiful work by Trisha Brown, made for the company in 2004. Bizarely it always reminds me of Ashton’s Monotones…
Paris Opera Ballet – Serenade, The Prodigal Son, Agon – Paris
The company danced Serenade well but the very simplicity in its choreography, created as it was initially for students, ironically makes it hard to produce a perfect performance…
Paris Opera Ballet – La Bayadère – Paris
At the end the curtain came up once again, and Brigitte Lefèvre (artistic director of the ballet) and Nicolas Joel (director of the opera as a whole) emerged to announce the promotion of the evening’s Solor, Josua Hoffalt, to the ultimate rank: étoile. There were buckets of tears, from Hoffalt, Gilbert, and Dupont. In fact, it was the high point of the evening. An uncontrolled release of emotion, at last.
