San Francisco Ballet, Program 6 -- Performance Review

San Francisco Ballet, Program 6

March 31, 2012

The San Francisco Ballet is a world class organization and they proved it again last night with their performance of Program 6, which consists of three separate ballets of about one-half hour each, with two intermissions.  The first is Act III of Raymonda, which is part of a three act ballet originally composed in 1898 in Russia.  The music was composed by Alexander Glazunov and the original choreographer was Marius Petipa.  Rudolph Nureyev brought it to the West in the 1960s and the San Francisco Ballet has been performing Nureyev's adaptation of Act III since 2000.  It is a very conservative ballet: very traditional, and very Russian.  It is not rich in emotional content or narrative line. Costuming, sets, lights and, of course, the dancing are superbly executed, but it was not to my taste.  Visually it is very impressive;  it is a spectacle of dancing technique and a celebration of the human body and its movements.

The third ballet is a new work by composed for the San Francisco Ballet by Scottish Ballet Director Ashley Page entitled Guide to Strange Places.  This is its World Premier.  I couldn't figure out what the title had to do with the ballet.  There is nothing that suggests strangeness and the staging is spare, yielding no sense of place.  This is a casual, lively, energetic ballet set against the music of John Adams, which is well suited to the choreography.  Interaction between the dancers is limited.  It is not an emotive ballet except for this pervasive vivaciousness and upbeat energy that is very winning.  Lights, costumes, and staging are simple but striking.  It ends enigmatically and somewhat abruptly, but overall a pleasing display. 

The highlight of the evening was the middle performance, Raku.  This is a beautifully done, powerfully emotional, imaginatively staged, narrative ballet.  It was created by San Francisco Ballet's Choreographer in Residence, Yuri Possokhov, and set to music composed by the San Francisco Opera and Ballet Orchestra's bassist, Shinji Eshima.  In my eyes, the music makes this ballet.  The music is imaginative and interesting and sets the emotional tone as much as the lighting and the staging, which is also done with excellent taste and great imagination.  The choreography is perfectly suited to the musical background.  It is a loosely told narrative of a monk who suffers an unrequited love for a princess and ends up burning Kyoto's Golden Pavilion to the ground.  But it is not a literal depiction of this series of events.  It is a metaphor that extends beyond the particulars of this story reaching across time and circumstance to emotional and psychological truths not bound to particular events.  The theme of burning reflects a general understanding of the ways in which humans burn with desire, passion, drive and destructive energy throughout life.  It is a profound and ambitious artistic objective and it is resoundingly successful.  This is a dance performance that works in every way that one could hope for.  I would say it is one of the best dance performances I have seen for its beauty, its imaginative staging, the seamless integration of music and dance, its physical execution, and its psychological depth.