DOS MUJERES Double Bill Comes to San Francisco Ballet Next Month

San Francisco Ballet has announced casting and creative details for Dos Mujeres, the company’s first-ever double bill of works by Latina choreographers. Programmed by Artistic Director Tamara Rojo in her inaugural season with the company, Dos Mujeres includes the world premiere of Arielle Smith’s Carmen, a commission from the Olivier Award-winning choreographer in her North American debut, set in modern-day Cuba with a jazz-influenced score by Grammy winner Arturo O’Farrill and costumes by luxury designer Gabriela Hearst. Carmen is paired with the North American premiere of Broken Wings, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s vibrant and colorful exploration of Frida Kahlo’s life. Together, the program takes on the stories of two powerful, mythic women, an exploration of Latina womanhood that marks not only the company’s first double bill of female choreographers, but its first program dedicated specifically to Latiné stories—keeping with the theme of “firsts” in Tamara Rojo’s inaugural season with the company and her vision for the organization at large.

“We are thrilled to introduce Broken Wings and a brand-new Carmen—our second world-premiere commission of the season—to audiences in San Francisco, two ballets that are brilliantly envisioned by remarkable choreographers showcasing the breadth of Latina womanhood and expanding the stories we tell onstage,” said Tamara Rojo. “With exceptional creative elements across disciplines, from incredible costume design to original scores infused with Mexican and Cuban influences, as well as delightfully unexpected casting that challenges gender expectations, our hope with Dos Mujeres is to celebrate the diverse community in San Francisco and uplift the voices of female choreographers as they interpret some of our most complex heroines.”

Principal dancers will include Jasmine Jimison, Sasha de Sola, Jennifer Stahl, Esteban Hernández, Joseph Walsh, and Wei Wang; casting details for each evening will be released in the weeks prior to opening.

PROGRAM INFORMATION

Dos Mujeres will begin with the world premiere of a newly reimagined Carmen by Arielle Smith, a Havana-born, London-based choreographer who was recently awarded an Olivier for Outstanding Achievement in Dance for Jolly Folly with English National Ballet and named “One to Watch” by The Guardian in 2022. Inspired by her Cuban heritage, Smith sought to break away from traditional portrayals of Carmen and the familiar context of the Bizet opera, centering the story on the independent woman at its heart and restoring agency to the iconic heroine, while infusing the work with the rhythms and sounds of Cuba.

Smith’s boundary-pushing, cinematic approach to choreography will be complemented by a newly commissioned score by Grammy Award-winning jazz composer and pianist Arturo O’Farrill, an artist with a lifelong dedication to Afro-Latin music and a proud cultural ambassador of Cuba. O’Farrill has written three ballet scores for Ballet Hispánico in New York as well as Cuba’s Malpaso Dance Company; his compositions have been featured in the repertoire of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater as well. Carmen marks his first commission for SF Ballet.

Carmen is also a first for sustainable luxury fashion designer Gabriela Hearst, who will be making her stage design debut having recently served as Creative Director of Chloé, becoming the first female Latin American designer to helm a Paris fashion house, and earning honors including being named one of Financial Times’ “25 Most Influential Women of the Year” in 2021 and designing First Lady Jill Biden’s 2021 inauguration ensemble. Hearst specializes in sustainable materials and practices in luxury fashion—influenced by her upbringing on her family’s ranch in Uruguay—which she has infused into the costume design for Carmen, as the costumes will be crafted from merino wool.

Carmen will be complemented by the North American premiere of Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s Broken Wings, a vibrant, colorful exploration of the life and surrealist art of Frida Kahlo, who lived in San Francisco in the early period of her career. Featuring an original score by Peter Salem interwoven with mariachi and Mexican folk music, Broken Wings’ inventive choreography and fantastical costuming inspired by Kahlo’s art—including a chorus of skeletons, birds, flowers, and more—allows audiences to enter the realms of Kahlo’s paintings through the lens of her wildly creative spirit. Lopez Ochoa returns to SF Ballet following her first commission for the company, Guernica, a work inspired by Picasso that premiered in 2018 as part of the Unbound Festival alongside an accompanying short film.

ADDITIONAL ACTIVATIONS

In another first for the company, SF Ballet has commissioned Oakland-based visual artist Maria A. Guzmán Capron to create a textile piece inspired by Carmen and Broken Wingsthat will be translated as a large-scale mural on the production scrim, which audiences at each Dos Mujeres performance will be able to experience. Joining together an extensive palette of vibrant and often playfully patterned fabrics to construct bodily forms, Capron’s artistic practice explores cultural hybridity, a non-binary sense of self, and the competing desires to assimilate and be seen. Her work for Dos Mujeres will capture the multiplicity of identities as two become one, inspired by a moment in Carmen. Capron’s work is in the collection of the de Young Museum in San Francisco and the Jorge M. Pérez Art Museum in Miami, Florida. As a 2022 recipient of SFMOMA’s SECA Award, her exhibition Respira Hondo was presented at SFMOMA from December 2022 through May 2023. Images of this new work and its translation to the stage in the War Memorial Opera House are forthcoming.

Latin American guitar duo Los Macorinos and vocalist Geo Meneses will return to SF Ballet to perform “La Llorona,” the popular Mexican folk song, during each performance of Lopez-Ochoa’s Broken Wings, following their appearance at the 2024 Opening Night Gala. Additionally, following each Dos Mujeres program, Mariachi Bonitas, the all-female mariachi group known for their vibrant and engaging performances, will perform in the lobby areas of the Opera House.

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