It is difficult to work up any enthusiasm for describing San Francisco Ballet's Swan Lake that opened last Friday night for a two-week run at the Opera House, alternating with a mixed bill that opens tonight. Maria Kochetkova and Joseph Walsh danced the doomed lovers in a performance where the steps were done accurately and with finesse, but the characters and their feelings were just barely sketched in. I felt like I'd had the story explained to me.
It is to be hoped that other casts will do better. I'd bet on Sophiane Sylve and Carlo di Lanno, who have chemistry, understand the style, and can project poetic dimensions of heart and soul; also the partnership Yuan Yuan Tan/Tiit Helimets �" they have achieved sublime performances in the past that redeemed all the follies of the costumes and scenery. May they do so again in the course of this run.
Because of Tchaikovsky's music, which is noble, sincere, and emotionally overwhelming, Swan Lake is the greatest ballet in the world in everyone's mind and heart �" though there is hardly a great production of it to be seen anywhere except London. Since the music is so strong, every conceivable liberty has been taken with posterizing it, and the music and the dancers can save it. But there is not a first-rate tragic Swan Lake to be seen in America. Helgi Tomasson's, though it's sentimental, is certainly less perverse than ABT's and less dislocated than Peter Martins' for New York City Ballet. The Russian versions still have happy endings forced on them by the Soviet political bosses. The truest versions to Tchaikovsky's overwhelmingly tragic music are Frederick Ashton's for the Royal Ballet (which plays it straight) and the all-male version by Matthew Bourne, which is sincere, beautiful and overwhelmingly cataclysmic in its finale.
San Francisco Ballet established themselves as an international company back in 1988 with Helgi Tomasson's first production, which, though it had some problems, was superlatively danceable and glowing. They toured it to the world to acclaim.
But his second production, designed by Jonathan Fensom, who has awesome credentials in the legitimate theater, does not "push the boundaries" as he had hoped, but rather compounds the problems of the first. Now it's like a box that the dancers have to dance their way out of if they're going to save it.
Fensom gets the first thing wrong: he puts the men in black boots against a black floor, so their feet in effect disappear, which makes it hard to see the dance. In the second act, the lake is represented by a gigantic block of charcoal under a full moon that glows so bright the swans are painfully glary to look at, and their reflections in the obsidian-shiny floor make their lines go blurry. Meanwhile the hero's black boots make his feet disappear (the black floor again). In the first act, the royal mansion's grillwork, the backdrop for most of the dancing, competes with the movement like snow on a TV screen, while the ladies' jackets bunch up around their shoulders and shorten their necks.
The third act has some fine character dancing: Jennifer Stahl scored brightly in the Spanish divertissement, Rebecca Rhodes as a Hungarian dancer, and Jahna Frantziskonis as the Neapolitan Princess. Best of all were the Russian couples, danced by Sasha de Sola and Dores Andre with Hansuke Yamamoto and the splendid James Sofranko. It's a fine piece of choreography, as fine a piece as Ashton's celebrated pas de quatre, and captures the air of doomed brilliance that all the incidental dances in Swan Lake ought to have.
The corps de ballet danced well. The four little swans were extremely well-rehearsed and brought off their percussive dance to great eclat: they were Isabella De Vivo, Jahna Frantziskonis, Julia Rowe, and Natasha Sheehan. Daniel Deivison-Oliveira as the evil sorcerer brought great panache to his role.
Cordula Merks and Eric Sung played the featured violin/cello roles in the second act, and principal oboist Laura Griffiths was glorious in the melody to the prelude of that act. There's no doubt that the performances will improve as the run continues. Meanwhile, Myles Thatcher's world premiere on Program 7 is eagerly awaited.