dance

San Francisco Ballet Presents Balanchine’s ‘Jewels’

Glitter

In its second-to-last program of the 2009 season, San Francisco Ballet presented George Balanchine’s three-part Jewels. It’s impossible not to see the selection as an homage to Balanchine’s influence on American dance as well as a restatement of SF Ballet’s deep connection to the choreographer and his New York City company.

The three mini-ballets—“Emeralds,” “Rubies” and “Diamonds”—that form the piece were ostensibly inspired by Balanchine’s introduction to the celebrated jeweler Claude Arpels. But, while the ballets reflect those colors in their costuming and sets, their connection to precious stones is abstract and distant, as, in fact, is the choreography itself, which makes no connection to story. It has often been explained that the three ballets, each set to a different composer’s music and each choreographed in a different style of ballet, reflect an approach to the various nationally based dance styles that occupied significant parts of Balanchine’s choreographic career.

“Emeralds” inhabits the world of French romanticism; “Rubies” zips across the stage with American jazziness and athleticism; “Diamonds” revolves with deliberation of step and technique in the Russian tradition of late-19th-century ballet.

These traditions were the jewels in Balanchine’s crown—his art. There is a considered quality to the choreography of the three ballets, a lack of freedom, if you will, that is not as apparent in many of his other works. While it is true that playfulness and a kind of self-conscious irony appear now and then, for the most part the choreography continues as a careful reforming of dance styles. Balanchine handles the steps and the dancers cautiously, preciously. As do the dancers of the SF Ballet.

In “Diamonds” the tiny lights that sparkle in the black background of the stage throughout the performance—in “Emeralds” they are green, in “Rubies” red—are white and clustered in formations resembling chandeliers. The corps is exquisite in white tutus and white elbow-length gloves. The polonaise is right out of the third act of Sleeping Beauty, as is the whole sense of aristocracy gone sparkling and mythic. Into this refined angelic hierarchy, step the princess and her courtier, danced on Tuesday night by Vanessa Zahorian and Davit Karapetyan.

Zahorian is a lovely dancer, with a slow lyricism and an intentional placement that grab the viewer’s attention and wonder. It’s a style perfectly suited to the Petipa-like grandeur of “Diamonds.” But throughout her solos and the grand pas de deux, I kept thinking of Suzanne Farrell, for whom Balanchine choreographed the part. Farrell had that same focused quality, but underneath it was an intensity that set her dancing ablaze and ignited the heart of the watcher. The comparison is unfair, I know, but it haunted me in the piece, and in some ways I think it was a key to my reaction to the performance as a whole.

Balanchine choreographed these solos for the ballerinas who were a part of his company. Those dancers were also his jewels—his emeralds, rubies and diamonds. And through them, the dance steps were made living and brilliant. Part of that brilliance was in their connection to the choreographer; without them to invest the steps with the animated memory of the dancers’ and choreographer’s mutual respect and love, something is lost, slips ever so slightly into the academic. To replace them may be to expect the impossible.

In the atmospheric “Emeralds,” Yuan Yuan Tan performed a charming solo to the ballerina’s ethereal arms, and Rachel Viselli danced with deep grace; they were ably partnered by Damian Smith and Ivan Popov and supported by the light and luscious patterns and poses assumed by the corps. Tina LeBlanc, Pascal Molat and Sofiane Sylve and the corps shot through the sassy “Rubies”— jumping rope, flexing feet, comic and brazen, in what was surely the choreography best set for individual interpretation and freedom.

—Jaime Robles

Originally published in the Piedmont Post