San Francisco Ballet. - Center for the Arts at Yerba Buena Gardens, San Francisco, California; Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco, California; Zellerbach Hall, Berkeley, California - dance reviews

Dance Magazine, Sept, 1996 by Janice Berman

FEBRUARY 5-JUNE 2, 1996 REVIEWED BY JANICE BERMAN

Quite visibly, this was one of the least comfortable seasons ever to descend upon San Francisco Ballet. Forced to roam the Bay Area until the war Memorial Opera House near the Civic Center has been seismically upgraded, the troupe left home without its bigger ballets (with the exception of Swan Lake, given a nothing-but-dutiful outing at Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall).

Instead, some of the company's Balanchine stalwarts (Stravinsky Violin Concerto, Concerto Barocco, Ballo della Regina); a program of three premieres (by artistic director Helgi Tomasson, Christopher d'Amboise, and Stanton Welch); tangy recent hits including David Bintley's The Dance House and Val Caniparoli's Lambarena; and company premieres of Mark Morris's Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes, Flemming Flindt's The Lesson, and Peter Martins's The Waltz Project kept the fans coming.

They followed the feet to the UC-Berkeley campus, to the reduced seating afforded by San Francisco's Center for the Arts at Yerba Buena Gardens, and to the city's similarly smallish Palace of Fine Arts. And even though this tour was like a series of shotgun weddings of troupe to venue, a honeymoon spirit prevailed. In the Opera House or in temporary exile, Tomasson's troupe on home ground is like the 49ers at Candlestick Park: No matter how the wind blows, the team can do no wrong.

That faith is well founded and reconfirmed every time Evelyn Cisneros or Anthony Pandazzo or Elizabeth Loscavio or Katita Waldo or David Palmer, to name but a few of the company's leading lights, steps onstage. As in New York City last year, the company's strength, experience, and artistry makes every performance worth watching, and closely. Tomasson has also chosen some superb soloist and corps dancers. Soloist Yuan Yuan Tan is an extraordinarily delicate, improbably strong presence in everything she does; Sherri LeBlanc (yes, Tina's sister) is buoyant and unstoppable, and Eric Hoisington, Alex Ketley, and Yolonda Jordan are standouts in a sizable crowd of talent. Still, that doesn't avoid occasional mishaps like the moment akin to a train wreck during the men's dance in James Kudelka's Terra Firma or the dogged metricality that infected Barocco.

The repertory is diverse, and some of the new additions are very winning. Dietmar Seyffert's Back Home, a premiere with Joanna Berman and David Palmer in the leading roles, stands as an effective antiwar piece, particularly as assisted by the music of Mahler. D'Amboise's Fly By Night, by contrast, did not live up to the novelty promised by its set, an array of colorful venetian blinds. Too many undeveloped bright ideas got caught in the slats. Welch's Maninyas, a fluid and compelling blend of human and animal magnetism, drew fine performances from a cast that included Berman, Anthony Pandazzo, Elizabeth Loscavio, Christopher Stowell, Julia Adam, and Yuri Possokhov.

Flindt's The Lesson, a ballet about ballet that makes the film The Red Shoes feel like a walk in the park, included the season's most intense performances from Possokhov as the mad pedagogue, Elizabeth Loscavio as his student/love-hate object and Anita Paciotti as the dominatrix/pianist.

Merrill Ashley's visit from New York City Ballet to guest in Ballo, on the final program of the season, was nicely timed. Although she doesn't, can't, dance the way she did when Balanchine choreographed the ballet on her in 1978, she still exudes a spirit of adventure. That's something the San Francisco Ballet would do well to emulate. If the company has any shortcoming, it is the impression that it is almost too well-tended; that the performances, while very good, are safely calibrated so as not to make the heart race overmuch.

For other reasons, my heart stood absolutely still during the long-awaited company premiere of Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes on the final program. Half of Virgil Thomson's notes got lost in the cracks of the onstage grand piano, spoiling one of Morris's most brilliant works. It was a disappointing conclusion to a season that showed not only grace under pressure, but admirable range.