by Leigh Witchel
The drama9 program of San Francisco Ballet’s next@90 contained a trio of ballets in very different genres, none of them music visualization.
Val Caniparoli was a late substitution to the festival lineup, pinch-hitting for Benjamin Millepied. Millepied had even selected the cast Caniparoli inherited. But Caniparoli, who has known the company for years, was able to quickly create “Emergence,” and did it topically.
The sound design by Ben Juodvalkis opened with static, which became a barely audible heartbeat. Four couples, each in simple outfits by Susan Roemer – pants, skirts, shorts – wrestled one at a time, while a voice-over cataloged the neurotic fears of the pandemic: “Will we be able to go outside? Should I continue? Should I continue dancing?” The nervous thoughts were more compelling than the wrestling and racing around, especially the most topical: “Way too much Zoom!”
The sound design moved into a rich string score by Dobrinka Tabakova played live, and onstage, one man doing turning attitude jumps. Befitting the topic, the cast was often alone; Ellen Rose Hummel did a solo of curling arms and slow turning balances. Misa Kuranaga did a chain of turns over and again, and more port de bras. Nikisha Fogo, in pants, did chaînés and piqués. Even with different dancers, it had the effect of one long solo.
Everyone returned one by one to the plangent music, racing back, then coming forward but winding up in a line, staring at the audience, an idea best left to Anna Sokolow. From there, Caniparoli set a series of duos that grew in density, but stuck with two, perhaps three people onstage. The action never stopped, and there was a lot of sturm und drang in the motion and running. The first of the couples briefly went into unison with the last, then the cast ran to a clump, then came forward in a triangle to us.
Caniparoli was working under extenuating circumstances, but you could still sense the rushed construction. Most of the choreography was predictable and followed a path of least resistance. The movement was swirly-whooshy contemporary that likely felt more interesting than it looked. Caniparoli had the cast come forward in a line to stare at us not once, but twice. Everything went down easily and predictably. We needed to be surprised.
More duets happened as the music churned, and the cast came forward, arms linked, to reach away and struggle, another functional but predictable moment. The dancers clumped together again to look up as the music went into its final chord.
There was little in “Emergence” that didn’t feel as if we had seen it somewhere else, until two men ended a section with a short tender dance. It felt jarring because they had all been paired off with women. That’s not verboten, but it is a partner switch – did it mean something or nothing? The two men pulled against and supported one another, but then suddenly covered each other’s mouths. That was unexpected as ballet yet made perfect sense in the context of a dance about the pandemic. It was the first moment “Emergence” went from competent and reliable to interesting.
Bridget Breiner, an American who had a long career in Germany, now running the Badische Staatsballett Karlsruhe, chose to journey a less-traveled path: the one-act narrative ballet.
To Benjamin Britten’s violin concerto, Breiner told the story of Salome through the prism of her relationship with her mother. It’s a familiar myth but not one immediately to hand. Breiner’s frequent collaborator, Jürgen Franz Kirner, provided a huge gilded ring at first suspended above the stage, then lowered to the floor as the performing space. Breiner asked for simplicity, and Kirner gave her that in the costumes, but Salome is a story that could use a bodice or two (as well as some veils).
The action began with Sasha De Sola on the ground, asleep, in what seemed like a cell. In a quick dumb-show we saw the daughter and “the prophet” as children, then the queen usurping her husband’s crown and giving it to her lover. The little girl watched, and then was swapped out for De Sola.
As John the Baptist, Wei Wang entered almost unnoticed at the side, but then did an adage that showed off his extreme line. He and De Sola met tentatively, then danced. He pressed her overhead before leaving.
De Sola ran off, leaving Jennifer Stahl and Tiit Helimets as the queen and her new husband staring suspiciously at Wang, who pointed at both in accusation. Wang did another adagio with impressive promenades into turns. Neither the queen nor her consort could look at the prophet, but she pointed at him constantly with her arm or leg, as if they were weapons with him in her site. On the queen’s direction her lover imprisoned the prophet.
If you know the story, you know things only get worse. The queen and her lover argued, and everyone seemed to be having a breakdown. Her husband had designs on her daughter, which, even for the queen’s strained relationship with her child, was several bridges too far, and she protected Salome.
The morality was twisted (well, it IS Salome . . .) but De Sola sunk her teeth into a twisted role. Initially wearing a pale blue wrap dress, she pulled it off to reveal a little fire-red dress underneath. She set about seducing Helimets, both from rebellion and claiming her own dangerous sexuality.
Things got even more screwed up as she took revenge on her mother, seducing Helimets while staring the whole time at Stahl. The little red dress came off in breakaway bits to show a gold leotard. That double reveal should have at least her earned her a runway win in “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” Condragulations, Sasha, you’ve won this week’s challenge!
Not willing to be intimidated, the queen stared her daughter down. Girl Fight Tonight! Her husband took the remains of Salome’s red dress and picked them up as if to sniff. It was all on the edge of TMI.
After having a crise, Stahl decided to direct her daughter’s sexual aggression in a way that benefited herself. She told her to seduce the prophet, with the inevitable pas de deux and the inevitable result; three men symbolically beheaded him.
The younger versions of Salome and John returned to play and run off as De Sola wept by his body, then howled.
The tone of the ballet was overwrought, but somehow “The Queen’s Daughter” felt as if it either went too far dramatically, or not far enough. Even so, it provided juicy roles – a tour de force for De Sola and a big part for Stahl, one of the festival’s other MVPs. It’s a solid work, but probably more memorable as a vehicle for dance actors than on its own.
Yuka Oishi’s “BOLERO” went into completely different territory – at first. But then it retreated.
Oishi is a Japanese dancer who had a long career in Hamburg. German influences are likely familiar to her, and at first, “BOLERO” seemed very Pina Bausch, down to the suits.
It used a great video projection backdrop designed by Jun Nishida and Hiroki Inokuchi, starting with TV static as we returned after intermission. Each cast member came onstage in a different way, went to the back to stare (glued to the idiot box as my Mom would have groused?) and walked into a line, vibrating as the next person came in.
Everyone posed: one person smiled, another made a peace sign. When the orchestra came in, it wasn’t with Ravel’s score, but additional music by Shinya Kiyokawa that sounded as if the musicians were endlessly tuning up. The static slowly melted down but if Oishi’s initial concept was tanztheater, it was dime store: Once the line was made, the dancers did nothing with it – they just scattered, and then the default of bargain counter Bausch, they stared at us.
The music moved into a variation based on the “Boléro” beat scored for drums and woodwind, and Oishi reached for a startling image that seemed to borrow not from Bausch, but Butoh: Everyone fell down and a woman in a catsuit designed by Emma Kingsbury (including a hood fully covering her head) came onstage. The music switched to piano chords and strings, a man came out to do an adagio with her. When the last man was left in a suit, he took off his jacket to show that he had the dappled brown unitard underneath as well.
But when the actual score began, Oishi restarted with a big adagio for the full cast. The dancers walked onstage slowly at the back, while people in front did tendu exercises and plastique from “Afternoon of a Faun.” No face masks, no suits, just folks in unitards either walking or partnering. It was as if she either gave up after the first part, or made the second part first and they told her it had to be longer.
When the line got big enough, the folks in the back hooked around as if it were “La Bayadère.” But instead of working with that, Oishi broke the line apart and went on to duets, and this became a standard ballet to “Boléro.” A couple entered on the stage’s diagonal, then four couples, and like almost any other version, Oishi followed the slow build of the Ravel. By the finale it was just a big pas de deux done by many couples in unison.
Ideas came and went fitfully: a “Faun” walk, the women locking arms, the men doing an adagio that literally looked as if it were lifted from the first center combination in class that day. “Boléro” is a brief score, but Oishi had run out of ideas.
She moved towards a predictable big finish, with the cast swiveling and jumping in front of the fabulous, spacey projections of what looked like the Crab Nebula with planets and meteors heading into it. There was a central couple, and the cast lifted a woman and she fell as the nebula burst apart.
If Oishi could have turned “BOLERO” into the apocalypse we saw projected, Ravel would have approved. Instead, the whole work suffered from a lack of nerve and tenacity. It didn’t earn being titled in all caps. Sure, “Boléro” is both overfamiliar, repetitious and too short, but make it unbearable and interesting before you settle for long enough and mediocre.
copyright © 2023 by Leigh Witchel
“Emergence,” “The Queen’s Daughter,” “BOLERO” – San Francisco Ballet
War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco, CA
February 8, 2023
Cover: San Francisco Ballet in “BOLERO.” Photo © Lindsay Thomas.
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