Mere Mortals at the SF Ballet

The San Francisco Ballet began its 2024 season with a bang on Friday night, presenting Mere Mortals, a 75-minute world premiere. There are three more performances this week, Tuesday through Thursday, and you might want to catch one.

The new Artistic Director Tamara Rojo put together a young, international group of collaborators to create a riff on the Pandora myth and Artificial Intelligence. The choreographer Aszure Barton is Canadian-American, the composer Floating Points (aka Sam Shepherd) is British, the AI visual designers Pablo Barquin and Anna Diaz (Hamill Industries) are Spanish, and costume designer Michelle Jank is Australian.

Not only was the auditorium specially lit for the occasion, but so was the lobby where entering crowds would stop and stare at a special effects spectacle...

...that looked like mist or smoke and progressed through an animated loop that eventually spelled out MERE MORTALS.

The crowd was lively, and I believe that is choreographer Aszure Barton looking straight into the camera with a "Who are you?" look.

The typical warnings about loud noise and strobe lights were to be taken seriously for once.

The score by Floating Points, who was playing a Buchla synthesizer along with the full orchestra, was reminiscent of Mason Bates' Electronic Dance Music meets traditional orchestra, and much of it was hard-driving percussive beats for the huge ensemble. The choreography mostly consisted of solos for Wei Wang as Hope, Isaac Hernandez as Prometheus, Jennifer Stahl as Pandora, and Parker Garrison as Epimetheus. The 38-member ensemble were given long stretches of synchronized motoric movement that were thrilling. The ballet also featured a long pas de deux between Pandora and Epimetheus that had the duo stretching their bodies in and out of each other in seemingly impossible ways. (Pictured above is Jennifer Stahl as Pandora arising out of the ensemble, photo by Lindsey Rallo.)

The AI-added background projections were fun, but feel like they are going to soon look dated, rather like how computer screen savers from the 1980s and 1990s now harken back to a specific moment in time. The black on black costumes for most of the ballet brought back memories of Pamela Rosenberg's tenure at the San Francisco Opera where every other production seemed to have somebody striding across the stage in a black trenchcoat. But the ballet as a whole was a brave, interesting success, and if you want to read a serious rave, click here for Rachel Howard at the SF Chronicle.

The audience gave it a rapturous reception.

Wei Wang was great, as usual, playing the symbolic character of Hope, who bookends the beginning and end of the ballet.

Jennifer Stahl was also characteristically brilliant and so was Parker Garrison as Prometheus's brother, Epimetheus.

After the performance, the company hosted a dance party in the lobby.

It looked like fun.