The first few innings of San Francisco Ballet's immensely enjoyable free concert at Stern Grove last Sunday were kinda rained out. Things picked up after "Prism," which was alas plagued with mists, drizzle, and light rain throughout the performance. Periodically the dancers were pulled off the stage and someone with a mop came on to swab down the wet floor, while the cheerful announcer asked for our patience til it became safe for the show to go on.
"Prism" is pure dance, set to an early Beethoven piano concerto, with many quick changes of direction; it flashes with many quick re-facetings of the dancers' bodies. So it is fun for us but tricky for them to dance under the best conditions. With uncertain traction, even these fleet and generous dancers had to move rather carefully. Though the allegro still had many playful moments, and the adagio was very grand, it was really the orchestra (especially the marvelous pianist Roy Bogas) who were able to hold the phrasing together and make it a pleasure.
Vanessa Zahorian, Jaime Garcia Castilla, and Isaac Hernandez danced the opening allegro, Yuan-Yuan Tan and Tiit Hellimets the adagio, and Hansuke Yamamoto was the mercurial star of the finale, who seemed airborne and gave no sign of encountering any difficulties.
Stern Grove is a stern test of a dancer's heart �" after all, this concert takes place outdoors, and there's always something: a bee flies in the face, someone chokes on a chicken bone and the medics come through. Then there's the constant fluctuations in the weather, people donning and doffing jackets and hats, so you can only see the stage some of the time. Half the audience is sitting on tree roots. The park has some of the sublimity of Yosemite Valley; it's a deep, romantic chasm, lined with eucalyptus and carpeted in deep green ferns, with golden nasturtiums spangling the backdrop. That's part of the charm, and the concert is free. The dancing is gravy. And what wonderful dancing. Once it became safe, the afternoon was glorious.
Yuan Yuan Tan performed the casually intimate duet "After the Rain" (Christopher Wheeldon) with SFB's finest partner-dancer, Damien Smith. This was balanced against the Soviet-classic showpiece "Don Quixote," performed with warmth and aplomb by our Cuban star Lorena Feijoo and her Brazilian cavalier Vitor Luis, who has the power of turning a bravura step into a gesture, translating an attention-grabbing trick into a gesture of homage to his ballerina. Bravo!
But the real fun of the day came from Mark Morris, who made "The Sandpaper Ballet" for this company a decade ago, and gave SFB a sure-fire finale. The piece uses all their technique, but only as a basis for dancing in a playful American way that uses the resources of vaudeville, Broadway, and 50 years of American swing-time shagging to give to large-scale stage action the rhythm and flair of the dancing that talented kids like to do.
Morris set his ballet to the popular music of Leroy Anderson �" "Sleighbells Ringing" and "Syncopated Clock" are the tunes you probably know by name. Sound effects include sleigh bells, typewriters, whistles, and a gadget that goes "whee." The ballet is arranged as a suite of 8 songs, set for 25 performers; the program lists them only as Ensemble, and everybody gets a chance to star (Danielle Santos, Jeremy Rucker, Ruben Martin Cintas, and Courtney Elizabeth, the company's most versatile dancer, who was a joy).
Kids love it because the logic is often that of a children's game. Each dance, for example, starts out with all 25 arranged as if they're on a checkerboard, and the first dance moves them around the stage so that at the end of every zingy phrase, someone jumps at the last possible second into the empty space. Sometimes, with artful craft, Morris empties the stage so only one boy is kicking around, or a couple are hanging around being very casual. Morris is uncannily able to suggest scenarios without being literal, and the dancers have the gift of letting you feel their humanity in these situations without nagging you to notice how cute they are. It just makes you love them, and grateful to him.
It's particularly sweet to see the bedroom dance done by Kristin Long, who's noticeably pregnant and looking very happy.