A famous New York dance critic, who shall remain nameless, said to me once while we were discussing some awful New York City Ballet recordings: "Most people natter on about 'musicality,' which they wouldn't recognize if it bit them on the ass!" I think of him every time I write about music at the San Francisco Ballet and someone goes: "Whaaat? Why do you care about that?"
I do care, and they should, too, because music is the foundation of classical dance. New choreographers naturally like new music, but they should respect it as much as they would a score by Mozart or Schubert. Examples of what makes me crazy about living choreographers misusing or disrespecting music filled the last two San Francisco Ballet subscription programs. After Program 6, which opened last week on Thursday night, I'd had enough. I was already thinking ahead to Mark Morris' divine Sylvia, in which an almost forgotten 19th-century score is rescued, reinvented and made to sound more fabulous than one could ever have expected. That's, of course, why Morris is considered "musical."
Program 6 ended with Artifact Suite by William Forsythe, late of Frankfurt Ballet, the choreographer whose New Sleep (1987) put the stamp on the new SFB regime of Helgi Tomasson. I still quiver when thinking about that premiere, with its electronic Tom Willems score. Forsythe made two more pieces for SF, both popular, but neither having the dangerous erotic gravitas of New Sleep. Forsythe's Artifact Suite (this was the US premiere) is not an entirely new piece but a remaking of Artifact (1984), a full-evening work (hence the diminutive "suite"). All I can say is that the 45 minutes were so grueling, I can't imagine what sitting through a whole evening would be like.
First and foremost is the music — Forsythe's choreography "is what it is" (to quote current sports figures). The "Chaconne" from Bach's Partita no. 2 for solo violin pours from the loudspeakers like that classical music designed to keep away predatory teens at the mall. No information, including the player or whether the violin was amplified, was volunteered, but after a series of events truncated by the repeated, noisy crashing of the fire curtain, the curtain stayed down, and we got to listen to the violin in the dark. Some people left, and the rest chatted. Remember Mr. Balanchine's comment about listening to the music if you don't like the dance? He would not have been amused at this spectacle. Forsythe also shined two bright lights in the audience's eyes. What is this —1969?
The second part of Artifact Suite was danced to minimalist piano music by American composer Eva Crossman-Hecht. (I don't like to presume, but I wonder if pianist Michael McGraw has a Motrin budget?) The other problem for me was the lighting, by the choreographer himself. Lights in the wings illuminated (if that's the word) only parts of the soloists' bodies. I had a difficult time separating Muriel Maffre, tall, skinny and sporting a gamine haircut, from her partner Pierre-Francois Vilanoba. And what is the point of casting sparkplugs like Lorena Feijoo and Pascal Molat if you are going to obliterate their personalities in Stygian gloom?
By now you gather that I did not enjoy much about Artifact Suite, but I was apparently alone, for the youngish crowd erupted in cheers. They were surely impressed by the dedicated, selfless dancing, full tilt with those wonderful Forsythe arms that make dancers look as if they are about to take off into full flight. Yeah, but was the damage to the eardrums worth it?
Peace work
Another work that had musical questions was on Program 5, Tomasson's world premiere The Fifth Season. He discovered Karl Jenkins, a Welsh composer whose L'Homme Arme: An Oratorio for Peace was my favorite recorded choral work of 2005.
Tomasson employed Jenkins' five-movement Second String Quartet — but orchestrated, with no credit given. I presumed the composer was responsible; if so, surely the fourth movement, "Tango," is meant as a joke? Having Sarah Van Patten dragged around and mauled by three men made it look like a decorous version of Smuin Sleaze. There are complicated duets in Fifth Season, but the best is set to music from Jenkins' "Palladio" as a duet for Yuan Yuan Tan and Damian Smith. Adult, tender and beautifully danced, it was easily the high point of the ballet.
The rest of that evening was given to a slow-speed version of Balanchine's Allegro Brillante; Tomasson's academically charming Chaconne for Piano and Two Dancers, starring a cool Kristin Long and the new Dark Knight, Davit Karapetyan, whose muscles have muscles of their own; and Morris' Sandpaper Ballet. The other pieces on Program 6 include Stanton Welch's ho-hum Mozart ballet Falling, and Mr. B's homage to Times Square strip joints, the excruciatingly arch and tacky Rubies, with Stravinsky's "Capriccio" sounding like bad Gershwin. And there we are, back to music again.