Everything was beautiful at the SF Ballet last Friday.
There were
bon vivants sipping champagne on the outdoor balcony on the mezzanine level...
...along with couples of all sizes, shapes...
...and gender identities.
The San Francisco Ballet continued its season last Friday with
The Blake Works, an evening-length set of ballets by the 76-year-old choreographer William Forsythe set to music by the 37-year-old English pop singer James Blake.
My favorite section was the 20-minute
Prologue, where a Blake song was deconstructed into halting musical snippets sandwiched between silence, with principal dancers moving frenetically across the minimalist stage, led by the incomparable Joseph Walsh.
(All production photos are by Chris Hardy.)
The second section,
The Barre Project, was created during the COVID pandemic, and featured one great dancer after another, like Cavan Conley above, attached to the barre and eventually freeing themselves to encompass the whole stage.
After intermission, there was a reprise of
Blake Works I, seen here in 2022, which Forsythe set for individuals such as the enthralling Nikisha Fogo along with complex dances for the entire ensemble.
The ballet was set to seven songs by Blake, whose recorded music eventually became irritatingly boring to me over the course of a whole evening.
In her rave review of Blake Works in the SF Chronicle, Rachel Howard maintains: "I’d argue that whether you like the music itself is immaterial. To witness the depth with which Forsythe listens is the point." Half of the joy of going to the SF Ballet for me is hearing their excellent orchestra performing live music rather than prerecorded tracks, so I am not convinced, but as a showcase for exciting dancers, the evening does its job.
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