PROGRAMME I

Fanfare
The San Francisco Ballet's short London season got off to a very bad start with a heavy-handed and dull-witted production of Jerome Robbins's Fanfare, which sets Britten's Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra to dance. An irritating and obtrusive "major domo" superfluously explains which musical instruments are in question during each part of the performance, despite the fact that the company are dressed in equally obtrusive costumes displaying those very instruments. It is not flattering to the audience, who might be expected to know a bit more than nothing, to have a coxcomb in a funny costume talking in a loud voice all through, and it put everyone in the theatre into a bad mood, which did not aid appreciation of what followed.

A Garden
Mark Morrison is a talented choreographer who in this pageant pays his respects to the traditions of courtly dance, making good and sometimes excellent use of the music. The result is pleasing rather than thrilling, serving as an undemanding showcase for the dancers, who – especially the men – were made to seem as if over-schooled in technique, moving from pavane to carillon to gavotte in unvaryingly fulsome and formulaic style, which looked at times like ice-skating rather than dance. Little individuality was displayed in the performances, and scarcely any syncopation, subtlety or nuance. The dancers were not helped by the Royal Ballet Sinfonia, which sounded a trifle weary. At one moment things came fully to life, when Joanna Berman and Damian Smith danced the Menuett together; here Morris's choreography is inspired.

Magittomania
But things changed into a wholly different gear with the phenomenal choreographic debut of Yuri Possokhov. His Magrittomania is a clever, original and beautifully worked conception which suddenly transformed the San Francisco Ballet into a troupe of wonderful dancers, and gave the exquisite Yuan Yuan Tan an opportunity to show what she is made of – which seems to be some sort of stellar liquid, weighing ounces to everyone else's pounds. Possokhov's ingenuity and lively sense of the absurd result in a delightful and witty meditation on the paintings of Rene Magritte, elements of which figure as the dance's setting. The intelligence and high artistry of the concept suggests that Possokhov has a brilliant future as a choreographer.

Symphony in Three Movements
There was something lacking in the pace of this piece. A tired-sounding Royal Ballet Sinfonia gave the dancers insufficient energy, and in consequence this famous ballet moved blandly along, giving some of Balanchine's connections a faintly clichéd air, and summoning too little from the dancers. But the audience, still under the spell of Magrittomania, seemed not to mind.

PROGRAMME II

Quartette
Helgi Tomasson's Quartette is a delightful showpiece for four ballerinas, each of whom has a lengthy solo. It is a good way to start an evening of ballet. Kristin Long was especially striking in the third variation, evincing the qualities one most wishes to see in a dancer: instinct and expressiveness. The Dvorak piano pieces which accompany the dance can serve it well if well played, because Tomasson has found much in them which longs to be interpreted in movement; and in this rendition the dancers found an able supporter in pianist Michael McGraw.

Sea Pictures
Some might find the story told by Sea Pictures sentimental; most, more justly, would find it moving. It is a love story, in which men are in love with the sea and women are in love with the men who love the sea. Because the sea is a jealous mistress she keeps one of the men after a storm, leaving his sorrowing girl to answer the summons of his drowned ghost by flinging herself into the waves. Wheeldon tells this simple but infinitely touching tale with great narrative skill. Because of the directness of emotion and the uncluttered, imaginative classicism of the choreography, the dancing was expressive and true. Julie Diana as the bereaved girl was especially effective, and Elgar's songs – beautifully sung by Diana Moore – became powerful in this marriage with Wheeldon's design. Bugaku Music Toshiro Mayuzumi Choreography George Balanchine Principle roles: Cyril Pierre, Yuan Yuan Tan This famous ballet shocked with its explicit eroticism when first performed in 1963. Its Japanese inspiration allowed Balanchine to combine the floral delicacy of oriental gesture with the angular symmetries of oriental machismo. It is a ballet ideally suited to the genius of Yuan Yuan Tan, who is so mesmerically wondrous a dancer that the rest of the stage almost vanishes when she is on it. She magnetises attention, all the more so because in addition to being a dancer of exquisite instincts she is a first-rate actress, and fills the astonishing fluidity and nuance of her movements with richly communicated personality.

Glass Pieces
A big sweeping first section for complete corps de ballet opens this brilliant dance, full of driving rhythems and pulsing movement, carefully arranged so that the crossing and interweaving lines of dancers glide faultlessly by one another and through one another. As Robbins himself acknowledges, the inspiration for the dance is the city – powerful and flowing, but with people keeping their own space and intentions as they obligatorily mingle in the crowds pouring along the grid of streets.
    A romantic second part follows; an intimate duet, perhaps portraying two lost people who find each other and are therefore cease to be lost, their encounter taking place in an anonymous, automatic realm where the blindly moving background lines of dancers never interact with them – once again, as if the stage were the city, and the joining of two lives happens among millions of other human events indifferent to it.

Yuan Yuan Tan
One of the unforgettable features of San Francisco Ballet's 2001 visit to London was the dancing of Yuan Yuan Tan. She is a ballerina of exceptional gifts: fluid and light, expressive and instinctively beautiful in every movement, she is also a natural actress, and her perception of the roles she plays flows through her dancing, illuminating and enlivening every gesture. When she is on stage all other dancers seem to fade into dimness by comparison. Because she is just now coming into the peak of her dancing life – she is in her mid-twenties – audiences are on the brink of seeing the flowering of one of the very greatest ballet careers of this generation.
    For so outstanding a dancer. Yuan Yuan Tan is a wonderfully modest and collected young woman. Conversation with her reveals why; it is that she has what is needed in addition to rare natural talent to make a truly great dancer: intelligence and dedication. It is said that overnight success takes about ten years to accomplish. But in the case of a dancer, it takes longer, and the work is unremitting; and Yuan Yuan Tan had to have more than most.
    Yuan Yuan Tan's mother might have been a dancer. She was chosen for the Shanghai Dance School, but her father refused to let her attend. She transferred her ambition to her daughter instead – although history nearly repeated itself, for Yuan Yuan Tan's father was as reluctant as his father-in-law had been to countenance a career in dance. Yuan Yuan Tan's mother kept trying to persuade him, and so too did one of the teachers at the Shanghai Dance School, who had chosen Yuan Yuan Tan from the gruelling auditions to which she was invited after being spotted performing folk dances at the Shanghai Children's Palace. Eventually Yuan Yuan Tan's father, goaded by their efforts, tossed a coin to see whether he should agree; and the coin came down in Yuan Yuan Tan's favour.
    But perhaps Yuan Yuan Tan's father did her an unknowingly good turn. His opposition kept her from the Shanghai Dance School so long that when she finally enrolled she was a year behind her contemporaries, and was given special tuition to catch up. The result was that she surpassed them all. In December 1992, aged 15, she won a silver medal at a dance competition in Finland. The following year she won a gold medal in Japan, and the Nijinsky Award from the Polish Government, a prize usually given to young male dancers. Receiving the award meant giving a gala performance in Poland, and the gold medal likewise prompted a return invitation to Japan – and both in turn meant international exposure, which resulted in her being given a scholarship to the Stuttgart Ballet School. While there she was seen by Helgi Tomasson of the San Francisco Ballet, who invited her to participate in a gala. Stuttgart Ballet had already offered her a place; but when the prescient Tomasson offered her a soloist's contract at San Francisco, she took it.
    Unsurprisingly, Yuan Yuan Tan's favourite role is Giselle. It is obvious from the style and quality of her dance that she can and will make all the great classical roles her own. But the adventurous and innovative dancing of the San Francisco Ballet – even though many of its dances are choreographed for the stronger and more technique-bound Americans who form the bulk of the company – offer her an opportunity to show that her skills are as various as they are great. Wherever the San Francisco Ballet goes, Yuan Yuan Tan therefore has to be one of the major reasons to see them.
AC Grayling