Saturday matinees are, generally speaking, the up-and-coming dancers' chance to shine. You might think it's second-rate — these are not the big stars, and besides, this is the old ladies' show, right? But guess what? a) These young dancers are hungry for their chances. They can't wait to get out there, so the energy is outrageous, and b) Dancers put out for old ladies. The audience is loyal, generous, and demonstrative. I can't remember the last time I heard so many outbursts of applause during the dancing: it was like at a jazz concert, every soloist gets his appreciative response. It's like a conversation back and forth between the dancers and the audience, and the dancers come alive for it.
Such was the case for San Francisco Ballet's Program 7, a strong mixed bill with some of the best choreography and best dancing of the season so far. Actually, some of the biggest stars were on hand for "Symphony in C," and delivered some of their best dancing ever. The program followed a formula seen already, three pieces in different styles: something based on popular dancing, something "contemporary" (angular, edgy, with a "problem" in it), and something classical.
First up was jazz, a revival of "Elemental Brubeck" which Lar Lubovitch made for SFB last year. It is probably the best new dance in a popular idiom since Paul Taylor's "Company B," and the dancing made you hear the music and want to applaud the artists. Lubovitch was a go-go dancer at one point in his career, and he knows how much fun jazz dancing can be. He gets it that there's something necessarily repetitive about it — you've got to find the groove and get in it, and grind a little. It's no fun having to quit early before you've really got your knees warmed up, your hips working, and your shoulders loose and ready to shimmy.
From the look of it Saturday afternoon, the kids who dance it best are probably the second cast. Everybody gets it, the idiom is theirs, and they were out there tearing it up. Rory Hohenstein (the Boy in Red, who dashes in and sets the tone for each section with dazzling virtuoso material) has totally got the boogie in his butt; watching the rhythms go snaking up and down his spine and out his arms was fantastically satisfying. He can do the big ballet tricks and make them musical, hold the finish of a pirouette, stay up until it seems a miracle, then bite it off right when the saxophone does. Unlike Gonzalo Garcia, on whom the piece was made, who obviously digs doing all these interesting moves but seems never to have seen or heard of them before, Hohenstein looks like he's talking his mother tongue. Everybody shone. Elizabeth Miner was gorgeous in the slow movement, Alexandra Meyer-Lorey was perfect in the quicker stuff. All the boys were great: Martyn Garside, Garen Scribner, Jonathan Mangosing, and especially James Sofranko, whom I'd like to see get a chance to dance the Boy in Red. He's got the look, the swing in the hips and the juice in the shoulders; he's got the musicality, the timing, and the technique to deliver the tricks.
The new ballet, "Concordia" by Matjash Mrozewski, came in the middle. It may have secrets I did not penetrate. It contrasts modern and classical styles, but was most interesting just to see how vividly the corps dancers Joanna Mednick and Courtney Wright commanded the attention when their moments came.
In Balanchine's "Symphony in C," perhaps the greatest ballet choreographed in the 20th century, the applause from the audience started the moment the curtain went up, before anybody made a move or a sound. Yuan Yuan Tan gave the most musical performance I've seen from her in a long time in the great slow movement, though her concentration broke when the audience applauded a feat of flexibility — the vertical splits, no less, with her nose to her knee — and it took a while for her to re-enter the mood. They did it because she asked for it, which was a mistake on her part, for it does not suit Bizet's heart-breaking music. That image is, of course, absolutely amazing, but it is not a trick. Understandable mistake, of course, but small-town. The whole company danced brilliantly.