Programme 3
Allegro Brilliante
Choreographed by
George Balanchine
Music by
Piotr Illyich Tschaikovsky
Staged by
Sandra Jennings
Pas de Trois
from Paquita
Choreographed by Natalia Makarova
after Marius Petipa
7 for Eight
Choreography by
Helgi Tomasson
Music by
Johann
Sebastian Bach
Rush
Choreography by
Christopher
Wheeldon
Music by
Bohuslav
Martinu
Costume design by
Jon Morrell
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The San Fransisco Ballet
Programme 3
Sadler's Wells
20 - 25 September 2004
In this the third of San Francisco Ballet's three programmes for its Sadler's Wells visit, the quality of dance remains excellent, the range impressive, and the pleasure quotient sky high. Helgi Tomasson has put this company into the first rank among world class companies, and clearly enjoys the chance to display its abilities in work that spans the field, from the formalism of Balanchine to exciting new work such as his own '7 for Eight', premiered in San Francisco earlier this year. This is a beautiful piece which among other things reinforces the impression any balletomane must have: that Yuan Yuan Tan, who takes the lead in two of the piece's 'movements', is a dancer of exquisite talent ? the embodiment of physical fluency and eloquence, expressive, passionate and instinct with grace. The sheer beauty of her comportment, which has that fractional syncopation that seems to anticipate even as it interprets the pattern of the dance, is a very rare quality even in the best dancers: indeed there is only one other in living memory with quite that unearthly fluent beauty of expression, and that is Margot Fonteyn.
And to pick out just one dancer for praise from among such a good company says a great deal.
Tomasson's '7 for Eight' was the best thing in a very good evening of ballet. Balanchine's 'Allegro Brilliante' was characteristic, with its military evolutions of shapes - diagonal lines into squares and back - and its neat restraint. The costumes in the Pas de Trois from 'Paquita' and Christopher Wheeldon's 'Rush' (in this latter looking enjoyably like the uniforms in early Star Trek episodes, but in striking colours) added to the pleasure of both pieces, which were impeccably performed. 'Rush' is a dance for a large ensemble, admirably handled by Wheeldon's sense of spatial logistics, and rendered the more powerful by the Martinu score it is danced to. But of the two Wheeldon pieces on show this week, 'Continuum' in the first programme is the more satisfying.
Since that goes for the Balanchine comparison - given that his 'Square Dance' in programme 1 is Balanchine at his very best because most lyrical? programme 1 would almost have an edge, were it not for Tomasson's outstanding '7 for Eight' and Yuan Yuan Tan's performance in it. But it is not for that alone that the evening was - as all evenings with the San Francisco Ballet are - wonderfully enjoyable.
AC Grayling
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