A Rousing Evening at the San Francisco Ballet

The San Francisco Ballet's Program 6, a mixed bill of three short works, opened on Wednesday and plays through next Tuesday. If you have the time and the money, check it out because the program is thoroughly entertaining. The opener was Prism, choreographed in 2000 by departing Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson to Beethoven's Piano Concerto #1. The highlight for me was the lovely orchestral performance by the Ballet Orchestra under conductor Martin West and especially the sensitive piano playing by long-time SF Ballet piano soloist Roy Bogas, who is retiring from the company after these performances.

The neo-Balanchine ballet's other highlight was the partnering of longtime principal dancers Yuan Yuan Tan, who premiered the role in San Francisco over 20 years ago, and Tiit Helmets. (All production photos are by Erik Tomasson.)

The second work was Finale Finale, a world premiere ballet by my favorite current choreographer Christopher Wheeldon, who has been nurtured by Tomasson with commissions in San Francisco for the last two decades. It is a gorgeously loose, complex, and funny piece set to Darius Milhaud's 1920 Le Boeuf sur le toit (literally The Ox on the Roof) which started out as a score for a Chaplin silent short and ended up as a ballet with a scenario by Cocteau. Milhaud had just spent two years working as a diplomatic secretary in Brazil, and the music is filled with danceable Latin tunes that dissolve into astringent fogs before bouncing back again. The orchestra gave a wonderful performance and the choreography was delightfully ambiguous, sometimes in lockstep with the music and other times doing its own thing altogether.

The ballet was created for seven dancers, including Dores Andre and Joseph Walsh (above), Isabella Devivo and Benjamin Freemantle, and the amusing trio of Elizabeth Powell, Cavan Conley, and Esteban Hernandez. They were all superb and seemed to be enjoying themselves immensely. The ballet is an instant classic.

The third work for a huge company contingent was The Promised Land, another world premiere by choreographer Dwight Rhoden set to a potpourri of short minimalist pieces by Philip Glass, Luke Howard, Kirrill Richter, Hans Zimmer, and Peter Gregson.

Esteban Hernandez, wearing a sparkly gold shirt, felt like the master of ceremonies for the seven-movement work, leaping and moving frantically throughout even when the music was a mournful solo cello piece.

The abstract scenario had something to do with the pandemic and its isolation, but there was a heap of sexiness too, provided by Angelo Greco among others.

On its own terms, the piece is a major success. Congratulations to choreographer Dwight Roden (and his assistant Clifford Williams, top left in the gold suit), dancers Benjamin Freemantle and WanTing Zhao (above center), and cello soloist Eric Sung who were all superb.