Founded in 1933, San Francisco Ballet is America's first professional classical company, and over the decades it has danced its way to major international recognition.
Its mixed bill at the Orange County Performing Arts Center on Wednesday (the opening of an engagement that switches tonight to a full-evening "Othello") proved that the company can look authoritative in 19th century showpieces, home-grown dance dramas and acquisitions from the world of modern dance.
But this evening of local premieres had nothing genuinely new to offer, no vision of ballet as anything other than expensive, conservative entertainment. You could marvel at all the honed proficiency on view, but after that, nothing.
Indeed, the evening proved most memorable for rehabilitating the reputation of Mark Morris at a time when his choreography for his own modern dance ensemble has become progressively hollow and formula-ridden.
Choreographed for the San Franciscans three years ago, Morris' plotless "Sandpaper Ballet" created a sense of spontaneous, childlike buoyancy through the charming white-and-green play clothes designed by Isaac Mizrahi, the zesty orchestral bagatelles composed by Leroy Anderson and the choreography for a 25-member super-corps.
There were typical Morris structural ploys (lines forming and re-forming), but, for once, they never became predictable. There were typical Morris jokes (people "accidentally" out of line), but, for once, they never looked forced. So when the music repeated itself but the dancing didn't, or a slew of guys suddenly tried to partner the hyper-glamorous Muriel Maffre, Morris took you by surprise.
Although James Sofranko and Nicole Starbuck danced a sweet early duet, the ballet increasingly focused on Yuri Possokhov, a distinguished classical cavalier and dancing actor here enjoying such anti-classical challenges as a gymnastic floor tussle with Julie Diana.Possokhov also choreographed the serious ballet that always comes in the middle of this kind of mixed bill: "Damned," based on the Greek tragedy "Medea" and set to two pieces by Ravel, including the highly challenging Concerto in D major for the left hand.
Unfortunately, the narrative portions of the work weren't merely bad, they were corrupt--throwing nonstop showpiece steps and lifts at a classic of world drama as if that somehow made the storytelling clear or powerful.
