Eds note: If you have absolutely no interest in any of the following...
(a) dancing
(b) ballet, specifically
(c) major U.S. ballet companies, even more specifically
(d) my opinion on any of the above
... then you'd be better off not reading the following post. If you are interested, though, then good for you! And please read on...
Since I arrived in New York earlier this year, I've made a point of seeing as many American Ballet Theatre performances as possible. ABT is one of the top three companies in the country (along with San Francisco Ballet and New York City Ballet), but that's not why I spent good money to see six performances in nine months. I bought those tickets because ABT is the company I dreamed of joining back in the 1980's, when I was a wee ballet dancer stepping onto my first real stage in my first "Nutcracker" role.
San Francisco Ballet was closer to home, but back then, Helgi Tomasson, the artistic director, had not yet transformed the company into the powerhouse it is today. So the first companies I saw perform at the War Memorial Opera House, the ones that created the most buzz in my far-northern suburb of San Francisco, were not the local ones, but rather those that had traveled thousands of miles: the Kirov being one, ABT being another.
In those days, the great Mikhail Baryshnikov was at ABT's helm. The Baryshnikov who I watched in television specials like "Baryshnikov: Live at Wolf Trap" and "Baryshnikov Dances Balanchine." The Baryshnikov who inspired me to zip through the kitchen in wool socks when I was 8 years old, to demonstrate for my grandmother the amazing leap I'd seen him perform on TV the night before. The Baryshnikov who emboldened me to defy my mother's warning that day in the kitchen, and to jump anyway, after which I landed on my face and bruised my gums and knocked my two little buckteeth out of whack (resulting in my first round of braces). The Baryshnikov whose dancing was so beautiful it made me cry as I sat on the couch sick one evening, hurting on the inside because I was too ill to get up and dance around the living room, mimicking him.
What I knew about Baryshnikov then, aside from the fact that he was the Most Amazing Dancer Ever, was that I would have given anything to be one of the young dancers he had plucked from the corps de ballet and made into a star. I knew from my teachers that he had a knack for doing that -- Cheryl Yeager and Amanda McKerrow had just been promoted to principal dancer after only three or four years in the company when ABT came to town -- and somehow I got it in my head that if I wasn't good enough to be made a principal dancer by Mikhail Baryshnikov by age, oh, 21, then I wasn't good enough to be in ballet at all. (Not the healthiest view, perhaps, but what can I say -- I was obsessive.)
At the time, I also idolized another dancer, Cynthia Harvey, who performed with Baryshnikov in the televised version of "Don Quixote," and who, as it happened, also trained at my school, the Marin Ballet. Cynthia Harvey had dark brown hair, like me. She had a long oval face, like me. She danced Kitri in "Don" with sexy pizzazz, the way I dreamed of doing, with those amazing grande jetes and Plisetskaya-style leaps. I loved her so much that the first time I entered the Marin Music Chest competition (for musicians and dancers), I danced her Act II dream-sequence solo from "Don Quixote," learned straight from videotape (I used to push the glass coffee table out of the way in the living room to practice in front of the TV). And when one of my teachers with connections got a pass to observe company class when ABT was in San Francisco, she took me along, just so I could meet Cynthia Harvey in person. (I remember being shocked to discover that even though she looked so tall and long on that video with Baryshnikov, in person, she was not much taller than I was at 13.)
So in case you hadn't noticed, ABT and I have something of a history. I hadn't seen the company live since that time in the 80's, so when I got to New York, I knew that buying tickets was one of the first things I would do.
In the spring, I saw four performances of old classics: three full-lengths and one mixed-rep program, including Amanda McKerrow's final performance before her retirement, in "Giselle." That was a momentous evening to be at the ballet, fraught with emotion, although I couldn't help thinking as McKerrow took her final bows that the performance I had seen Joanna Berman dance with San Francisco Ballet upon her retirement, also in "Giselle," a few years ago, was a more solid, confident, joyous effort. (Of course, I'll admit to a bias there, since Joanna had become something of a friend and mentor when I was a teenage dancer.)
In all, the ABT spring season was lovely, and brought back some fond memories, but it wasn't astounding. One of the dancers I saw a lot of was Michele Wiles, a new ABT principal. Technically, she's great. But if we cared only about technique, then a whole company of dancers could be promoted -- and no one would go to see them. Wiles was a woefully human- rather than bird-like Odette/Odile in "Swan Lake," and even in Twyla Tharp's kinetic "In the Upper Room" this past Thursday night, she looked more awkward than cool in her 80's jumpsuit and big white sneakers. (It says a lot that Sarah Lane, a tiny little fireball of a dancer in the corps de ballet, lit up the stage more as an artist in the spring and fall seasons than Wiles did.) Wiles has abundant energy, but lacks the flair and natural charisma, the "sparkle" that so many ballet watchers cherish, and that so many other ABT women -- Diana Vishneva (a guest in the spring), Paloma Herrera, Alessandra Ferri, Xiomara Reyes -- possess. To watch her dance is to witness the calculation; the movement does not yet spring organically from within, with grace and abandon. Maybe that will change with maturity, but after all the hype over this young dancer's swift rise through the ranks, I was expecting more.
The principal men, on the other hand, more than live up to their rock-star billing. Without a doubt, the Baryshnikov tradition lives on in Angel Corella, Jose Manuel Carreno and Herman Cornejo. And that is the one exception to the following statement:
Twenty years later, San Francisco Ballet, as a company, is better than ABT. (Save for ABT's almost criminal abundance of amazing men.)
It feels odd to be saying that now, considering that as a young dancer, I had my sights set on one company only, and it was not SFB. When I was 14 or 15 and trying to decide where to go from Marin, I remember Joanna Berman taking me aside and saying, "You know, you really ought to consider San Francisco. The company has come a long way in the past few years." And I thought at the time, "Thanks for the advice, but I'll stick to my plan." I only had eyes for ABT. (Note to young dancers: This was not necessarily the best thing. Never, ever throw all your eggs into one basket.)
Now, it's not that ABT has gone downhill, because it hasn't. It is still a master of the classics, and as long as it can keep presenting dancers like Alessandra Ferri and Julio Bocca in those classics -- who with their "Onegin" pas de deux gave one of the most passionate and combustible performances of the spring season -- the allure of its all-star wattage will not fade. (Of all the performances attended by my young ballet-going companion this year -- someone who knows absolutely nothing about ballet, or any other kind of dancing -- the Ferri-Bocca achievement was the only one that elicited a "Wow, now that was cool.")
However, as a vital, relevant, contemporary company, San Francisco Ballet simply has more going on. Way more. Beyond employing some of the best dancers in the world -- Tina LeBlanc, Muriel Maffre, Yuan Yuan Tan, Lorena Feijoo -- it also manages to feed the muse of today's most dynamic choreographers. Why? The company is more versatile, more pliable, more ready to adapt and take risks with new works than American Ballet Theatre seems to be. In the 2006 season, SFB is adding eight new works, the majority of them world premieres, to a repertoire already studded with recent premieres. And not surprisingly, you can see the difference in a season of ballets that premiered in 2001, 2003, 2005, as opposed to a collection of ballets from 1932, 1937, 1942, 1986, as ABT had on its fall ticket at City Center.
Yes, San Francisco Ballet also mixes in the classics -- it's performing "Apollo," "Rodeo" and "Afternoon of a Faun" in 2006, just as ABT did this fall -- but those are more than balanced out by the company's wealth of new works. And if companies want to keep packing people in, and getting new generations of ballet watchers excited about dance, that is exactly the kind of season they need to present. To keep up, institutions like ABT are going to have to do a better job of seeking out new, young choreographers and commissioning new works to run alongside the beloved full-lengths, and start committing some of those dusty old ballets to history, where they belong.
Otherwise, we get a performance like the one this past Thursday, when ABT presented "Dark Elegies," and even I had to admit to my seatmate: that was one of the most boring dances I've ever seen.
If I, lifelong devotee of ABT and of good classical ballet in general, can't be turned on by a 1930's Tudor work, does ABT really think it's going to attract the Internet generation? I think not.
