Review: PROGRAM 6 at San Francisco Ballet Shows Off the Range of This Remarkable Company

San Francisco Ballet's Program 6 of mixed repertoire is one wild ride of a show. Every time the curtain rises on its three ballets, we're in such a completely different world that it's almost hard to believe we're watching the same company. The one through line is the spectacular dancing. In fact, I would venture to say the company has never been dancing better than it is right now.

First up is Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson's Prism from 2000. It was made on New York City Ballet where he danced before coming to SFB, and is very much in the mode of a neoclassical ballet by his mentor there, the legendary George Balanchine. The movement is in service of the music, Beethoven's sublime Piano Concerto No. 1. (One wonders if Tomasson is actually trying to one-up Balanchine, who famously pronounced Beethoven's music "undanceable.") We get three varied movements of unadorned classical ballet unencumbered by even the hint of a narrative. The choreography is so in tune with the music that the dancers appear almost to skim and float above its surface. It's a magician's trick really, as they make the hardest of moves appear effortless and in the moment.

Prism is not only one of Tomasson's very best pieces, but also one of the most Tomassonian (if that's a word). The emphasis is on clean lines, crystalline technique and genteel stage deportment. At first glance, it can seem pleasant enough if a little underwhelming, but closer attention reveals all manner of underlying structures and nifty ornamentation that ride perfectly on the music. By the time the music gets bigger and more robust in the final movement, the choreography literally leaps off the stage as the pyrotechnics come fast and furious. Ending in a whirl of 29 luminous dancers forming a jubilant kaleidoscope, it's the kind of ballet that elicits tears of joy.

The opening night cast was so terrific from top to bottom that it feels almost churlish to single out only a few. But attention must be paid to the opening trio of Max Cauthorn, Sasha DeSola and Lonnie Weeks. The two men match each other perfectly while each retains his own distinctive line, with Cauthorn's vertical air positions and Weeks' astounding extension. DeSola is having a breakout season, and this is another role where she plays with tempos and spins for days before stopping, seemingly forever, in an unsupported balance on one toe. Joshua Jack Price is astonishingly good in a repeated motif where a trio of men in peel-off formation do a sort of hopscotch move before launching into a double pirouette. Price stands out in the way he makes the sequence at once muscular and refined. In the second movement, Tiit Helimets and YuanYuan Tan dance a lengthy adagio that unusually for Tomasson is devoid of pathos or angst, and still manage to make it consistently compelling. Julian McKay, as the sort of cherry on top of the sundae, veritably bursts onto the stage. The extreme speed of his spins, the altitude of his leaps and mid-air, 180-degree scissoring of his legs unambiguously deliver the pyrotechnics for anyone who may have found the first two movements a tad too laidback.

Next up is Finale Finale, a world premiere by the very much in-demand Christopher Wheeldon, continuing his long and fruitful association with SFB. One of the hallmarks of Tomasson's leadership has been his ability to attract to top choreographers to make new work on the company, and one of the hallmarks of Wheeldon's ballets is his restless imagination. With any new Wheeldon piece, you never know what you're in for. In this case, we get a Katzenjammer Kids cartoon-a-rama, as if said Kids were hopped up on a few too many Flintstones vitamins. Set to Darius Milhaud's jazzy potpourri Le Boeuf sur le Toit from 1920, it's fun, it's playful, it's bratty, sometimes sexy and completely unpredictable. Talk about your Looney Toons. The overall conception of the piece feels like Paul Taylor in an antic mood and the rambunctious movement is all over the map. Wait - Did Benjamin Freemantle just do a rhumba-ish hip swivel while blithely holding Isabella Devivo astride his outstretched arms? Did Joseph Walsh really just do a quick homage to Charlie Chaplin twirling his cane? Yes, indeed, all that and more.

Is it a great ballet? Probably not, but it works well here as a sort of sherbet course to cleanse the palate between the more substantial ballets on the program. Costume designers Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung's brightly colored unitards are zingy fun, until they start getting a little overly fussy by adding on swim caps and various flouncy accessories midway through the ballet. Alexander V. Nichols lighting is superb throughout, as he keeps things bright and frothy while also consistently quirky and interesting, and that's a tall order. The cast of seven tear through the piece as though they're having the time of their lives. For the record, on opening night they were Dores André, Cavan Conley, Isabella Devivo, Benjamin Freemantle, Esteban Hernandez, Elizabeth Powell and Joseph Walsh - terrific, all.

The final ballet is The Promised Land, another world premiere by another ace choreographer, Dwight Rhoden. He has much more serious things on his mind, namely all the crap we've been through between COVID, the ongoing fight for racial justice and the January 6th insurrection. Lest the title and subject matter sound like a sanctimonious slog, I can assure you the ballet is not. Rhoden isn't interested in dragging us through the muck all over again or providing pat, feel-good sentiment. Instead, he wants to capture this specific time we're living in by reflecting the audience back to itself as a community of dancers facing tough challenges and constant unknowns and surviving the whole thing together. The ballet has a lot of darkness to it, but it is never dreary.

The music is a contemporary classical mashup of Phillip Glass, Hans Zimmer and several other composers, played by an amplified orchestra that includes electronic instruments we don't often hear at the ballet. This gives the work a drive and sense of energy that propels the indefatigable cast through the challenges Rhoden presents them. And what challenges they are, as he again and again pushes them to their limits in ways that suggest he is more interested is exploring their struggle than he is in eliciting perfectly polished performances. As much as the dancers tore through the preceding Wheeldon, they seem even more engaged here, constantly pushing themselves. There's a lot to take in here, too much in fact to absorb in a single viewing. This ballet feels so "ripped from the headlines" that it will likely take some time and distance to fully appreciate it.

The dancers bring such fierceness to every moment and dance with such stage-filling amplitude that it's surprising to discover at curtain call there are only 17 of them. Once again, there are too many superlative performances to call each one out, but I have to mention WanTing Zhao who dances with a gorgeously feral quality far removed from the pristine classicism she normally offers. Whirling dervish Esteban Hernandez provides the centrifugal force that holds the ballet together. Wei Wang partners Sasha DeSola beautifully and nails every last quirky twist and turn of the choreography, proving once again that he is SFB's utility player. Wang never calls undue attention to himself and always nails the style of whatever ballet he's in, making the choreography look its best.

I left the Opera House with an overriding feeling of gratitude, as though we'd all just taken part in a communal act of art courtesy of SFB. By simultaneously honoring the classical roots of their artform and striving to push its boundaries to make it newly relevant, they revive our spirits and make us feel alive again. Program 6 runs in rotation with a very different, yet equally wonderful Program 5 through mid-April only. So go already!

[All photos by Erik Tomasson]

Live performances of San Francisco Ballet's Program 6 continue through Friday, April 15th at the War Memorial Opera House, 301 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco, CA. Running time is approximately 2:25, including two intermissions. Proof of full COVID vaccination and the wearing of masks while in the building are required. For tickets and additional information, visit www.sfballet.org or call (415) 865-2000, M-F 10am-4pm.

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