When asked about his plans for San Francisco Ballet, Helgi Tomasson initially sounds like someone recovering from giving an enormous party. "Will there be changes down the road?" he says. "You never know, but I haven't had a chance this year to sit back and take a look."
Indeed, the 66-year-old artistic director of the country's oldest ballet company has been busy with a whirlwind of festivities this year, essentially serving as host of an ambitious, multi-pronged 75th anniversary celebration. The events have included a three-day New Works Festival in the spring that featured 10 world premieres by 10 prominent choreographers, an ongoing four-city U.S. tour, an alumni weekend, several exhibits and a glitzy gala, featuring a formal dinner for 1,375 at San Francisco's City Hall.
The company certainly has much to celebrate, having been transformed into one of the world's best by Tomasson, who became its artistic director in 1985. With 73 dancers and a current operating budget of $47 million, it has an international reputation for exquisitely trained dancers and a repertoire devoted equally to preserving the classics and commissioning new works that often stretch the boundaries of the ballet vocabulary. It has reaped the benefits of popular appeal, critical acclaim and sincere admiration from eminent dance makers such as New York choreographer Mark Morris, who observes that "when you're the only ballet in town, you could become parochial or complacent, but that's not the case with this company."
A milestone is reached and they keep on going
Returning to Southern California for the first time in five years, San Francisco Ballet will appear this week at the Orange County Performing Arts Center and present two programs that juxtapose some of the New Works choreography with the 1946 George Balanchine classic "The Four Temperaments" and Tomasson's 2006 ballet "The Fifth Season." Now on the third leg of its tour, the company received mixed reviews in Chicago and New York, with various critics concluding that some of the participating choreographers from the New Works Festival, who included Morris, Paul Taylor, Christopher Wheeldon and Jorma Elo, could have done better. Most, however, took care to praise the versatility and clarity of the dancing.
