S.F.'s Laid-Back Balanchine Is Pretty as a Picture

This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on October 14, 2008.

Tina LeBlanc takes part in the San Francisco Ballet's production of George Balanchine's "Divertimento No. 15" at New York City Center in New York on Oct. 10, 2008. Performances by the San Francisco Ballet will continue in New York through Oct. 18. Photographer: Erik Tomasson/San Francisco Ballet via Bloomberg News

Oct. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Five different couples, one giving way seamlessly to the next, share a sublime Mozart adagio and the effect is lovely -- but bland. San Francisco Ballet opened its nine-day engagement at New York City Center Friday evening with Balanchine's ``Divertimento No. 15,'' yet it wasn't quite the same dance the choreographer created in 1956 for his New York City Ballet. Like California's lifestyle compared to New York's, SFB's manner of moving is graciously relaxed and luxuriant rather than thrillingly razor-edged in its lines and avid in its attack.

In ``Divertimento No. 15,'' the Californian dancers aim to please, and please they do. Yet despite their commendable classical form, they ignore an essential hallmark of Balanchine, the shifts in timing and emphasis among steps and phrases. The atmosphere onstage remained that of a lawn party on a mild spring afternoon, the well-mannered figures in the landscape dutifully behaving as they had been taught.

Two dancers proved to be more animated. Gennadi Nedvigin, who combines modern-dance texture with a natural fluidity, and the seasoned ballerina Tina LeBlanc, who grew more and more intuitive in her musicality and ecstatic in her manner as the ballet unfolded.

Another Balanchine classic, ``The Four Temperaments,'' was also danced too gently and smoothly, though it fared better, the choreography being so pared down and radical. The high point of its performance was the crystalline dancing of Sarah Van Patten in the Sanguinic section.

No Clone

Ironically, when Helgi Tomasson, one of Balanchine's fleetest male dancers, became artistic director of San Francisco Ballet in 1985, dance watchers feared he would turn the company into a Balanchine clone. Instead, he set America's oldest professional classical troupe firmly on the path to national and world recognition with a wide-ranging repertory that includes 19th- and 20th-century greats and big names of the present day (from Twyla Tharp and Mark Morris to Christopher Wheeldon and Jorma Elo), along with several, including himself, drawn from the company.

Apart from the Balanchine, the current three-program, 10- ballet engagement emphasizes the very new. Wheeldon's ``Within the Golden Hour'' came off well. Its 14 dancers, delectably costumed by Martin Pakledinaz, might be a tribe of regal hunters out of a child's mythology book. The choreography is attractive, organized with Wheeldon's familiar astuteness, and beautifully performed.

Wheeldon

Wheeldon's habits, such as having classical dancers (wed to verticality) often work on the floor, look natural here rather than cleverly arbitrary. He also blends in his compulsive borrowings from other dance makers more seamlessly -- here, primarily Paul Taylor in his faux-primitif mode. While Wheeldon's 2001 ``Polyphonia'' made me admire him, this is the first ballet of his that made me like him.

``Golden Hour' is limited by being entirely a peaceable kingdom, as is obvious in all three whatever-you-say-dear male- female duets, but each is wonderfully constructed, and Van Patten, ineffably delicate in the middle duo, might well be the successor to Wendy Whelan as Wheeldon's muse.

In ``Joyride,'' Morris was hardly having his finest hour, though imagination and craftsmanship reveal themselves even in a superb artist's most indifferent work. This piece, for dancers provocatively sheathed in metallic second-skin outfits by Isaac Mizrahi, is an exercise in perpetual motion. It's fascinating as such but doesn't leave you much to go home with.

Two ballets by Tomasson, ``The Fifth Season'' and ``Concerto Grosso,'' were both competent and decorous, but SFB, for all its real virtues, will have to abandon its attachment to the merely lovely, the merely tasteful before it ranks as a world-class company.

Through Saturday at 131 W. 55th St. Information: +1-212-581- 1212; http://www.sfballet.org.

© 2008 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.