2016 at Stern Grove: San Francisco Ballet

When you park off Wawona for a Sunday Stern Grove matinee, the path to the
meadow-auditorium as remodeled by the late Lawrence Halprin does three or four turns on its sloping route to the wonderful meadow given to San Francisco by Mrs. Sigmund Stern honoring her husband. You come out near the clubhouse which some decades earlier was a roadhouse and now houses a series of both gender toilets adjoining the original building. A few feet downward and there are a slew of short-order vendors and the Stern Grove Association booths for information and assistance.

As VIP’s [read press affiliates] it was still necessary to trek across the meadow, brimming with multi-cultural humanity, to the VIP tent to get badges and green wrist bands enabling our party of five to imbibe beer and wine as well as claim our share of Table 35, next to the bona fide press table. This year the press has been moved to the lower of three tiers of tables, if off side, so that our view of San Francisco Ballet was decidedly at an angle. It also enabled us to observe Frances Chung stretch her legs and bend her back prior to entering as Odette in Swan Lake, her debut in the role. She doubtless will appear in the ballet during the 2017 spring season at the Opera House.

In addition to Tiit Helimets as Siegfried and Alexander Renoff-Olson as Von Rothpart, the program included Helgi Tomasson’s Fifth Season, music by Welsh composer Karl Jenkins and two pieces appearing semi-regularly on SFB’s programs: Christopher Wheeldon’s After the Rain pas de deux to Estonian composer Arvo Part, finishing with George Balanchine’s Rubies with Vanessa Zahorian, Joseph Walsh and Jennifer Stahl.

Before further comment, our party of five included Carlos and Carolyn Carvajal, who have graced performances and mounted works locally both in the earlier San Francisco Ballet days, with Carlos’ Dance Spectrum and Carolyn’s witty performances with Dance Through Time and in the ballet parts of San Francisco Opera seasons. Carlos’ tenure with San Francisco Ballet goes back to Willam Christensen’s years, and two subsequent stints under Lew Christensen with Le Grand Ballet de Marquis de Cuevas, Breman and Bordeaux Opera Ballets in between.

Dennis Nahat and John Gebertz made numbers three and four, both having assignments with Akyumen Technologies since Nahat’s abrupt termination at Ballet San Jose, bringing two Chinese productions to De Anza Auditorium in Cupertino and Southern California, and participating in the affairs of Donald McKayle at U.C. Irvine. Dennis regaled us with stories of ABT’s Swan Lake in the rain at New York’s Delacorte Theater and the ingenuity of Lucia Chase.

Swan Lake brought swoons of admiration from Carolyn Carvajal for the dancing of the corps de ballet, remarking on the correctness of the staging as she remembered it with Merriem Lanova’s Ballet Celeste. Dennis observed how crisp the angles in the line of foot and leg in Odette’s solo because of short tutus, unlike the knee-length costumes so remarked upon in Ratmansky’s production of Sleeping Beauty. We had to assume Tiit’s interpretation because his back was to us ninety per cent of the time, but Chung’s expression provided the clue of Odette’s concern and wavering. For the first time I could feel a thought process from the progression of Odette’s choreography, as well as the touching moment when she ventures under Siegfried’s arm in the pas de deux, a creature moment for certain.

Wan Ting Zhao and Jennifer Stahl provided the leaping choreography and Isabella DeVivo, Jahna Frantziskonis, Noriko Matsuyama and Emma Rubinowitz, precise, multi-cultural little cygnets, hopping in sync for all their worth.

Tomasson’s Fifth Season was garbed in Sandra Woodall’s sleek tight and top fashion de rigeur with choreographic abstraction, divided into sections titled Waltz, Romance, Tango, Largo and Bits, eight corps in the ensemble with principals Mathilde Froustey, Yuan Yuan Tan, Doris Andre , the men Carlos Quenedit, Tiit Helimets, Aaron Robison in his local San Francisco Ballet debut.

Yuan Yuan Tan seemed to have cornered the feminine role in After The Rain
pas de deux, her sinuous,willowy length adapting to Luke Ingham, a second
Australian to partner her in Christopher Wheeldon’s protracted study of langeur
and emotional connection, minimally costumed in flesh tones by Holly Hynes. Ingham made an effective foil to Tan, clearly an excellent partner.

Rubies is, to me, a very urban ballet, brash, out there with a neat dash of Broadway. Jennifer Stahl danced the figure manipulated by the four corps men Max Cauthorn , Blake Kessler, Francisco Mungamba and John-Paul Simoens. From a distance it seemed effective, given location reservations and the vivid memory of Muriel Maffre in that role. Vanessa Zahorian and Joseph Walsh danced the leads with aplomb and good humor.

San Francisco Ballet annually draws some of Stern Grove Festival’s biggest audiences. Halprin’s design gives the public an amazing series of alcoves where they can stash their bodies and their lunches. Halprin’s vision reinforced that fact Stern Grove Festival, at the threshold of celebrating its 80th annual summer, continues to be one of the crown jewels of San Francisco’s cultural and recreation diversions.

S.F. Ballet At Stern Grove’s 75th Season, July 29

The Sunday that San Francisco Ballet dances at Stern Grove is nearly always a “fingers’ crossed” affair, thanks to summer fog making the temperature a dicey consideration.  Below 68 degrees Union stipulations prevent the dancers performing; there have been summers when the audience saw one or two numbers before Helgi Tomasson arrived at the mike to announce the temperature-driven shutdown.

While grey was the overcast tone, the temperature cooperated and Lawrence Halprin’s handsome redesigned meadow and hillside was packed with an estimated 10K of dance and picnic lovers. With a stage now worth performing on, the company was dancing for its 68 th time since 1943.  No, my math is correct – there has been at least one year in my attendance memory that touring conflicted with the annual appearance.

Our party of six, two arriving later, showed up with food and ancillary equipment filling a grocery cart and two TJ bags to find five of the eight seat table spots taken, three by a mother and daughter and a middle aged viewer on seats nearest the stage; none of the portable green fences are installed on the stage side of the tables. The remaining two were completing a lunch of  grilled shrimp, fennel salad, vin rose and a pound-type cake with rose geranium bought at The Ferry Market.  Ultimately, six of us distributed ourselves on the benches and started in on 40 clove chicken, steamed green beans, Greek Houmani cheese with Pain Pascal, papaya and grapes. Brooke Byrne’s contribution of lavash with eggplant humus and tofu was rapidly demolished, ditto the raisin filled loaf Dan Henry bought on 24th Street.

In addition to my friend and neighbor Remy Munar, we counted three dance teachers, Jonathan Barnett, Brooke Byrne and Corinne Nagata, plus Dan Henry, former Ice Capades partner now Pilates instructor at the Buchanan Street Y.

Barnett, Royal Ballet-trained, formerly with the Irish National Ballet,  comes each summer to the Sonoma Ballet Conservatory to teach, but spends most of the year in Edinburgh where he teaches and has started Edinburgh Ballet Circle, a performance group for professionally-minded adults. Brooke Byrne with Sonoo Petty started Geary Dance Center, next door to the House of Bagels, the fall of 2011.  Corinne Nagata, after several years of affiliation with Jacques d’Amboise’s American Dance Institute, now is affiliated with Lines Ballet’s Dominican University Program and several San Francisco private and charter schools.  Following his years with the Ice Capades when Dorothy Hamill was the principal attraction, Dan Henry managed Charles Schulz’ Ice Rink in Santa Rosa.  After starting the Pilates program at the Presidio’s YMCA, Dan built up the Buchanan Y program with his passion for the system, mechanical abilities with equipment , knowledge of cross training benefits and a capacity for wit which keeps any sessions from being  just routine.

The peroxided head of the woman at the bench nearer the stage obscured most of Balanchine’s Scotch Symphony.  She was having a great time, head moving,  torso undulating slightly over Mendelssohn passages she particularly liked. My one hissed comment asking her to keep her head in one place elicited a momentary “I’m sorry,”  but habit was strong.  I did manage to see Yuan Yuan Tan flit behind the bamboo tubs serving as screens, but it took Davit Karapetyan’s jetes and the male ensemble lifting her to see glimpses of Tan’s performance.  Nicole Ciapponi’s first movement solo allowed enough lateral coverage of the stage for me to register the crispness of  her brises.  She shares something of the solidity characterizing Patricia Wilde’s performance, creator of  the role. The Karapetyan role was first danced by Andre Eglevsky whose elegant legato failed to rescue a rather dumb nod to Bournonville and the Scots connection.  Tan’s rendition was more wispy and fluid than Maria Tallchief  as the original Sylph.  Despite the dash of the kilts, it just isn’t one of Balanchine’s best.

Following intermission, Corinne heroically traded seats with me and I was able to see the stage and stage right entrances without obstruction. Spinae, by corps dancer Myles Thatcher, his second for company trainees and apprentices, demonstrated  considerable skill in emphasizing  dancers’ spines.  Commencing with the tights-only  men circling the stage in pique arabesques to an insistent score by Phil Kline and Mary Ellen Childs, it was clear Thatcher possesses  individual vision. The whippet-slim silhouette of the ten dancers was noteworthy along with entrance and exit style and a lying prone on the floor appropriate for a ‘Thirties film musical.

Hans Van Manen’s Solo to J.S. Bach’s solo violin sneaks virtuoso upon the viewer; it has been revived periodically since its 1999 company debut.  Starting with Hansuke Yamamoto  with his springy little jete arabesques, it progressed to James Sofranko and on to Gennadi Nedvigin with slight butch arm gestures; after the trio was introduced successively, pirouettes and turns increased with the tempo, each dancing madly before exiting;  they completed the marathon as an ensemble; it’s breathtaking each time.

Christopher Wheeldon’s work Number Nine which completed the program was danced to a score that I consider martial in a  British style, declarative, unflagging – not much in the manner of nuance, but admirable in its steady progression.  The women in the corps sported handsome short yellow tunics, but the men had to labor in elongated shorts with contrasting trim which cut the line of the thigh, making them look chunky with the sole exception of Vito Mazzeo whose length of leg can defy almost anything.  Four couples danced handsomely; Frances Chung/Daniel Deivison; Vanessa Zahorian/Gennadi Nedvigin [amazing considering his workout in Solo]; Sarah Van Patten/Carlos Quenedt; Sasha de Sola/Vito Mazzeo. The ending with the women clasped in their partners arms in attitude en avant is one of Wheeldon’s unexpected reads of the classical vocabulary.