The mysteries of ballet

Made a last minute decision yesterday to go to the ballet. It's the 75th anniversary of the San Francisco Ballet, and as part of that, they have three guest companies performing in tribute to the SF ballet this week: the National Ballet of Canada, the New York City Ballet, and Les Ballet de Monte-Carlo. One of my friends had told me about this weeks ago but then we both forgot until I read a review in the paper about it. I have to confess that the main reason I was interested was that Sonia Rodriguez, wife of my favorite skater Kurt Browning, is a principal dancer with the National Ballet of Canada and was one of the dancers in town for this performance. We went last night because it was the only night my friend could make it. Yay for living in the city and being able to stop by the box office on my way home to buy the tickets directly (and thus getting better seats than we found online - row U on the island in the left center orchestra section, which is the first row of the "cheap" orchestra seats - $55 instead of the $95 the people in front of us paid).

When I watch ballet, this is generally me - "I have no idea what's going on. Wow, that's neat. It's amazing what these dancers can do! Hehe that's funny looking. OK I still have no clue what's happening. Wow."

Each of the three ballet companies performed a different 30-minute or so ballet (I didn't time them so I'm not sure if that's accurate, but there were 2 intermissions and the whole thing was about 2 hours long..), and it was a study in contrasting styles, kind of neat for a ballet newbie like myself.

The National Ballet of Canada went first with "A Delicate Battle." I've read the description in the program and I still don't entirely understand what was supposed to be happening ... then again, the choreographer himself says he wasn't going for a particular meaning so maybe that's the source of my confusion. There was something about the "battle" or conflict/tension between the 3 men and 3 women at the centerpiece. There was something going on with the fact that one woman remained fully dressed in her 19th-century style dress, one woman stripped the outer garment to dance in a gauzy skirt, and one stripped all that down to just the nude-colored leotard, but while I would have expected the disrobing to symbolize/accompany a corresponding loosening/freedom in the dancing but it didn't seem to. The woman in the dress was definitely the most tight, most rejecting of the man dancing with her, the one who tried to corral the others and "watch over" the dancers in the beginning, but then the woman in the floaty skirt (which was very pretty) seemed the most loose, most passionate, most embracing of the man. Sonia, who was the woman most fully stripped down, seemed some sort of amalgamation of the others, repeating their motions but with more desperation, passion, frenzy, rapidity... she seemed the most trapped, fighting between embracing the man and struggling against him. When he lifted her, her body language was the most tight, legs pressed together, arms tense... so I don't understand why the most stripped down one was the most conflicted. I don't understand the juxtaposition with the early dancers - the program said something about the women being the protectors, but while the men were, as my friend said, kind of abusive towards the 3 women, they seemed to mostly ignore the other dancers, so I didn't see the threat. I didn't get the overall progression at all, I guess. But the dancing and the staging was beautiful - simple stage with white confetti representing snow fluttering down all through (which was pretty but occasionally amusing when some big clump would suddenly come barreling down towards the stage). It's incredible what these dancers can do - the flexibility, strength, precision, balance (even though sometimes some ballet moves are really silly looking). The crowd gave these performers, IMO, rather tepid applause - polite and appreciative but not particularly enthusiastic, which made the really lengthy bows kind of weird to me. It's like they had planned for greater applause and didn't adjust for a more cool reception so they just went on bowing and bowing in different combinations long after the applause would warrant. Ah well.

After an intermission, the second ballet was from the New York City Ballet - "Duo Concertant" - which was relatively very simple and austere. A pianist, a violinist, a male dancer, and a female dancer...that's it. It opened with the violinist and pianist dueting while the dancers simply watched them for quite some time. This ballet had moments that I really enjoyed - some very pretty and stunning dancing from the dancers, things that made me marvel once again at ballet dancers' perfect balance and precision of movement (though also some inadvertently amusing moments when their shoes squeaked overmuch on the floor, kind of ruining the smooth effortless grace). But it also had long moments of dullness - it's not that interesting to watch dancers watching a pair of instrumentalists whose music is a bit muted from back in row U. The music was not my favorite and a little too quiet. I think if this segment had been shorter, I would have enjoyed it more because the dancing was great, when there was dancing.

One more intermission to clear things between groups and then the curtain went up on a pair of dancers with a candle in between them. Throughout this whole dance by Les Ballet de Monte Carlo, the flame and candles were a recurring motif, both in decoration and in the dancers' movements, with waving arms and flickering fingers evoking the flame. This dance was in my opinion the most interesting - very different, very innovative, very evocative. It had a huge cast of people, in contrast to the other two groups, and they did some interesting things with gender roles. It opened with pairs of women dancing together, where one woman was in a tutu-style skirt while the other was in pants, partnering each other in fluid and interesting movements. It then went to pairs/groups of men dancing together, again where some were costumed in pants and others in a skirt. There was an extended section of dance with a push/pull/control/play type of dynamic between a man in a skirt and a woman in pants. The last segment had all the men and women on stage together, sometimes with the women partnered, sometimes with the men, with half of them (the half where the men were in skirts and the women in pants) reaching towards the other half (the traditionally dressed bunch) who were dancing together, etc. It wasn't even the gender play that was the interesting part here, though. As I said to my friend, I didn't really know what that ballet was about either, but I didn't care because I was just captivated. The movement they achieved, the style, the music, the look..it was all entirely different and really interesting. The SF Chronicle reviewer seemed to find this ballet very pretentious, and stereotypically so. I may just not watch enough ballet to know what's stereotypical but to me, it was fresh and interesting. And the audience seemed to agree - they were on their feet (though not terribly quickly) for this one, while the applause for the previous two groups was mostly moderate. I definitely liked this dance the best of the three.

Overall it was an interesting night - something different than what I usually do, and interesting to see the contrasting styles and variety there is in the ballet.