San Francisco Ballet falls down
San Francisco Ballet (SFB) has mis-stepped and fallen down. Instead of honoring the legacy of Helgi Tomasson, who guided SFB for 37 years and made it one of the world’s leading ballet companies, the Ballet Board made the decision to distance itself from all that Helgi had accomplished.
To repeat what I said earlier, in “San Francisco Ballet takes a wrong turn”:
The San Francisco Ballet Board of Trustees Search Committee co-chairs Sunnie Evers and Fran Streets had an agenda: find a woman, preferably a woman of color, to be artistic director of the San Francisco Ballet. Tamara Rojo fit the bill perfectly. A Latina, a renowned principal dancer and, most recently, Artistic Director of the English National Ballet (ENB). They also wanted to be “with it” and look to the future, the bright new world of diversity and a new, post-white-male ethos.
They were going to be thoroughly modern. “Tamara is the dynamic leader who will change and expand upon how patrons of dance will be able to see and engage with it. She is the voice of the future, and we are delighted she will be here at SF Ballet,” said Sunnie Evers and Fran Street. Out with the old, in with the new. Polemics, not art, was their aesthetic. They can’t stop congratulating themselves over how clever and politically correct they are. They didn’t care about what might actually benefit the SFB, the dancers, the staff, and the culture of our company.
Helgi Tomasson spent 37 years building SFB from a second tier regional company into an international powerhouse of ballet known the world over for sponsoring new works, for its diverse and adventurous programming, and for attracting the interest of the world’s best dancers. His choreography and his partnership with our resident choreographer, Yuri Possokhov, have given us memorable ballets. The Romeo and Juliet that’s currently in the SFB repertoire was choreographed by Tomasson. Apparently, this legacy and proud history counted for little with our search committee; Tomasson was not even part of the decision-making process. He is a white male, after all, and older, so what would he know about the future of ballet?
A look at some of the material SFB has put out in advance of the 2024–2025 season is revealing. Rojo is bringing back the same mixture of English National Ballet standards and contemporary Euro-trash that she had for her first full season. The dances of Kenneth MacMillan and Frederic Ashton are dated and mannered; they are from the 1950’s and 60’s and it shows. They have not stood the test of time, unlike Balanchine and Robbins. They are the heritage of the Royal Ballet and ENB and now we have them grafted on to SFB. There should be works by Helgi Tomasson and our resident choreographer, Yuri Possokhov, and the other choreographers who have written on the company. The creative legacy of SFB is being ignored in favor of the traditional repertoire of ENB and the Royal Ballet.
So the “voice of the future” is mostly the recycled ballets of the ENB and Royal Ballet. Rojo, it seems, doesn’t have much imagination and sticks to what she knows. Her mandate is to get new audiences for SFB, but unless there’s some hidden hankering after the foppish and not very interesting ballets of MacMillan and Ashton, I don’t see how that’s going to work. Are there going to be cocktails and dancing after the performances? With Mere Mortals, the SFB made the revolutionary discovery that if you have cocktails and dancing you can entice young people to come. I might point out that you don’t need to have a party after Swan Lake to get an audience.
To quote again from my earlier article:
Rojo brings what she knows from the ENB and the Royal Ballet. Ballet companies where she was a star. The Dos Mujeres program includes Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s Broken Wings, a ballet that “explores the life and art of Frieda Kahlo.” The ballet premiered in April 2016, danced by the ENB with Tamara Rojo as Kahlo. An accompanying photo shows Rojo dancing the role. … (Aside from the cult of Rojo)… do we really need the mid-20th century repertory of the Royal Ballet and the ENB here? Do we want a European sensibility at SFB? Or a monument to Tamara Rojo? Is this the way forward for the San Francisco Ballet?
I have seen Broken Wings now and it has little to offer in the way of dancing. There are elaborate sets, costumes and lighting, and the theater is decorated with Mexican motifs, but there is not a lot of dancing. Are male dancers dressed as Frida Kahlo sashaying across the stage considered ballet? The stage itself is cluttered with props and furniture and our heroine is confined to a small space, a box on the stage reminiscent of the box the Little Mermaid was stuck in. I understand this staging is meant to represent the restrictions imposed upon Kahlo, but confining her movements also restricts her dancing. The device of pulling yards and yards of red cloth from her vagina was just grotesque. This is not a ballet I would care to see again.
And Rojo is bringing back Ashton’s Marguerite and Armand, another ballet from the Royal Ballet, and one that she danced. The legend of Tamara Rojo will never die! This ballet is a bit of melodramatic fluff with costume changes every 5 minutes and was designed to be a star vehicle for Nureyev and Fonteyn.
Also featured in the mostly gloomy upcoming season is Raymonda, “Set against the backdrop of the 19th-century Crimean War, Rojo expertly draws on the figure of Florence Nightingale to create a Raymonda who redefines the role of women in wartime and society,” and “Akram Khan’s Dust, a one-act exploration of the human experience amidst the haunting backdrop of the aftermath of World War I.” (quotes are from the online Program notes.) A ray of light in the gloom is Christopher Wheeldon’s Within the Golden Hour; a ballet that was written on the SFB. What can I say about Frankenstein? It is a gothic horror story, dark and violent. Not to give it away, everyone dies.
We wouldn’t have the dances of Balanchine and Robbins if not for the dedication of New York City Ballet in maintaining and performing their work. All the ballet artists who danced under the direction of Balanchine and Robbins are able to stage their work and keep it in the repertoire. Helgi was one of them and he is a direct link to those seminal choreographers. Where are the wonderful, creative works by Helgi Tomasson? We have the current dancers, and former dancers who now run their own ballet companies, to keep Helgi’s work alive and that’s what SFB should be doing; not reviving the legacy of Ashton and MacMillan.
From Helgi, we have brilliant dances such as The Fifth Season, Concerto Grosso, 7 for Eight, Caprice, Trio and, in collaboration with Yuri Possokhov, the staging of Don Quixote. Yuri has many exciting works of his own, Firebird, Violin Concerto, Diving into the Lilacs and Fusion are just some. Helgi and Yuri’s best work should be performed, not disregarded. It is truly a shame that the legacy of SFB is not more important to the Artistic Director and the Ballet Board.