Ballet San Jose in "Don Quixote"

Staged by Wes Chapman

George Daugherty, Music Director and Conductor

February 15-17, 2013

Act I - The Village Courtyard
José Manuel Carreño as Basilio and Junna Ige as Kitri  Nutnaree Pipit-Suksun as Mercedes
Damir Emric as Don Quixote and Ramon Moreno  Sancho blows his horn.
Act II. Scene 1 - Gypsy Camp and the Windmill
Junna Ige	Nutnaree Pipit-Suksun as Queen of the Dryads
Act II. Scene 2 - Don Quixote's Enchanted Dream
Junna Ige and Maykel Solas as Basilio	Basilio's "death" scene
Act III. Scene 2 - The Wedding
Ramon Moreno as Sancho Panza and Damir Emric as Don Quixote. Photo by Chris Hardy.
	The Saturday Educational Matinee was attended by over 400 children and their families. Kids got free ballet workbooks, free dance lessons, storytime with a student from the ballet school, and the chance to decorate fans to take home with them.  Photos by Lee Kopp
	"The family matinee attended by dozens and dozens of children gives me hope that there will be a future audience for ballet. Possibly Don Quixote is an even better introduction to ballet than Nutcracker, as I am impressed also by their rapt attention and generally good behavior throughout the performance." Aimee Tsao Dance Tabs
Watching the performance, I could almost feel the warm Spanish sun emanating from the inviting haciendas on stage as Spanish ladies and gents, Gypsies, toreadors, Dryads and assorted townspeople danced with multi-colored whirling skirts and capes. Lynne Jones The Stunning Post	"[Junna Ige] is a refined yet strong technician who sails through the air like a feather and knocks out sequential pirouettes and staccato steps as if carving them into space. Fearless in her attacks and yet soft and yielding into back bend, Ige brought all of these qualities to an adorable Kitri. The handsome Carreño impressed with his assurance. Rock solid in the one-handed lifts, he turns beautifully and partnered Ige securely. To see him drop her from an overhead lift into a fish dive was breathtaking." San Jose Mercury News, Rita Felciano "An indirect import from ABT was guest artist José Manuel Carreño, who danced the role of the disarming yet impecunious barber Basilio. His was a star performance filled with charm. This is a cavalier who can easily toss off five immaculate pirouettes and still be there in time to catch his partner." "As the crisp, elegant street dancer Mercedes, Nutnaree Pipit-Suksun almost bourréed away with every scene she appeared in, flashing coquettish glances at matador Rudy Candia." "…an effervescent evening." Mary Ellen Hunt San Francisco Chronicle "Rudy Candia is a stellar Espada. His tempi throughout are strong and inspired and capture the simmer beneath the surface that is essential in Spanish character dance." "Alexandra Meijer takes to her coquettish role [Kitri] with great sparkle and enthusiasm." Toba Singer, Dance Tabs "[Junna] Ige reflected the character's intention, personality and joie de vivre…she was embodying Kitri. Maykel Solas, as Basilio, had some brilliant moments including his Act I pirouette series—anyone who can manage four/five rotations to the left, while slowing down to hold the final pirouette position on demi-point deserves some extra praise." Heather Desaulniers Ballet-Dance Magazine

 

Ballet San Jose Bows to Modern Masters

Carla Escoda

Former dancer, research scientist & investment banker turned ballet teacher and arts blogger

posted 4/23/13

 

Rudy Candia and Beth Ann Namey in Merce Cunningham's Duets. (Photo: Robert Shomler)

Ballet San Jose closed out its season this weekend with a powerful reminder of the influence of Merce Cunningham on today's choreographers. Not a hint of narrative on display in Program 3, just a series of fascinating comments on what dance is and why it moves us.

Cunningham's playful, mysterious Duets from 1980 eschews nearly all bravura elements of ballet. Instead it deconstructs and levels the male-female partnering relationship, examining what we really need from each other in order to maintain our balance. In this series of six strikingly different vignettes, he tells us "this is what ballet is made of" and at the same time "this is the future of ballet." Ballet San Jose's future appears to be bright indeed, as the corps and apprentice dancers who made up the greater part of Saturday's matinee cast stepped up to the Cunningham challenge with authority -- particularly the vivacious final couple, Mariya Oishi and Alex Kramer.

Cunningham restricts much of the partnering support to light momentary touches, gentle pushes and hand-holding, which requires far more strength and agility in partnering than the traditional hands-around-the-waist or hands-under-the-armpits. In one delightful moment, a woman balances on one leg while her partner graciously offers his outstretched arm. Rather than grasping it, she merely tap-tap-taps it with alternating hands. This woman doesn't need the man's support, but she is touched by his chivalry and lets him know -- in a type of Morse code, because dancers are nonverbal -- that, Yes, she is free for dinner next Friday.

Alex Kramer and Sarah Stein in Merce Cunningham's Duets.(Photo: Robert Shomler)

John Cage's score, the kind of noise that would normally send us in frantic search of a plumber or auto mechanic, is somehow transformed into a piece of sacred music by the dancers' brilliant sense of rhythm and timing. A feat made even more amazing by the fact that this piece is traditionally rehearsed without music, to counts or to a stopwatch. (Watch this fascinating video of former Cunningham dancer Patricia Lent as she explains the unique challenges of rehearsing for Duets.)

Jorma Elo's Glow-Stop. (Left to right) Joshua Seibel, Akira Takahashi, Amy Marie Briones, and Alexsandra Meijer. (Photo: Robert Shomler)

At first glance, Jorma Elo's strenuous, hyperkinetic Glow-Stop would appear to be a rejection of all things Merce, with its lush score -- a marriage of Mozart and Philip Glass, the latter at his most romantic -- and accumulation of tics and gestures on top of classical ballet steps executed at a pace that makes the speediest Balanchine work look like a leisurely stroll. Originally created for American Ballet Theatre in 2006, this piece appears tailor-made for Ballet San Jose: you could not ask for a sharper, more electrifying performance.

Jeremy Kovitch and Alexsandra Meijer in Jorma Elo's Glow-Stop. (Photo: Robert Shomler)

The most interesting elements of Glow-Stop may be the rapid-fire deployment of the arms and the emphatic use of the hands and fingers. The dancers touch various body parts in rapid succession, in a semaphore that reminds us that ballet is very much an OCD art form. By exaggerating the use of the arms and hands, by cramming more steps, more changes in body facing and other stylistic elements into a musical phrase, Elo emphasizes the rules-based nature of ballet and, as Cunningham does in Duets, asks how far we can push the rules without breaking them. Unlike his contemporaries, William Forsythe and Wayne McGregor, Elo appears to have more reverence for classical shapes, for dancers' bodies as human bodies; he's not trying to shock us by distorting the body or creating images of pain and isolation. The exceptional lighting design by Brad Fields and the vibrant, deep red velvet costumes lend a warm glow to the dancers' skin, of a piece with the exhilaration in their faces.

Jessica Lang's world premiere of Eighty One with composer Jakub Ciupiński playing the commissioned score live on stage (far right) on double theremins. (Photo: Robert Shomler)

Jessica Lang, on the other hand, uses lighting to create a more stark and ominous landscape. In a bow to Cunningham, Lang set her new world premiere for Ballet San Jose, Eighty One, in silence. Composer-musician Jakub Ciupiński, positioned on a platform above the dancers, with his double theremins and computer, recreates the score from scratch for each performance as he watches the dancers. The electronic theremins sense the position of the player's hands so that no contact is needed to generate sound; foot switches are used to change instrumental sounds, and samples can be looped and overlaid to create a variety of effects. The movement of Ciupiński's hands and feet as he invents the music and the natural swaying of his body make him look as if he is "conducting" the dancers; his movements are among the most compelling onstage.

Jeremy Kovitch and Alexsandra Meijer in Jessica Lang's Eighty One. (Photo: Robert Shomler)

The piece opens with thin, sculptural shafts of light beaming straight down from the rafters, the female dancers in shadow except for legs and arms which they periodically extend into the light. The sensational lighting design is by Jim French. The columns widen into cones and we gradually see more of the dancers' bodies as they step into the harsh white light, later to be joined by their partners. Nutnaree Pipit-Suksun is initially the only dancer who is bathed in a warmer light, and while all the dancers possess strong technique, she stands out for the exceptional lyrical quality of her movement. The opening and the close of the piece were particularly riveting, while the middle section felt rather conventional and less inspired, many of the movements resembling body conditioning exercises, which failed to evoke the kind of emotion that flooded out from Duets and Glow-Stop.

Kendall Teague and Annali Rose in Jessica Lang's Eighty One. (Photo: Robert Shomler)

Sandwiched between Duets and Glow-Stop was a tribute to retiring principal ballerina Karen Gabay, a gypsy pas de deux set to Ravel's fiendish "Tzigane." Danced by Gabay and the flamboyant, dashing Maykel Solas, Amour Gitan is light on choreographic invention but showcases Gabay's dramatic temperament, Solas' wicked turning jumps and the virtuosity of violinist Lev Polyakin and pianist Kaisuke Nakagoshi.Ballet To The People was disturbed, however, by the image of Solas grabbing Gabay by the hair and shoving her around, while she acted like she was enjoying it -- an unwelcome throwback to a less enlightened era and a jarring contrast to the world of egalitarian partnering opened up by the pioneering Merce Cunningham.

 

San Francisco Chronicle

'R/Evolutionary' review: unique in a way

Allan Ulrich

Published 3:54 pm, Sunday, April 21, 2013

• 
  Jeremy Kovitch and Alexsandra Meijer perform in Jessica Lang's "Eighty One" for Ballet San Jose. Photo: Robert Shomler, San Jose Ballet

0
inShare

Comments (0)

Larger | Smaller

Printable Version

Email This
Font

Ballet San Jose did itself no favors by affixing the dumb title "R/Evolutionary" to its final program of the 2012-13 season at the Center for the Performing Arts over the weekend.

True, one featured choreographer, Merce Cunningham, did effect a revolution in 20th century dance. Also true that this company seems to be developing in an intriguing way that one might call organic, weeding away what was most provincial about the organization. But this 35-member company should not need gimmicks to lure local patrons. South Bay people should pay attention to what's going on here.

Saturday's matinee seemed unique in a way. Of how many regional American ballet companies can it be said that the entire repertoire was created within many of the dancers' lifetimes? Just two of the pieces, which included a world premiere and two company premieres, even derived from the past century. The dancing from new and familiar faces alike has taken on a more stretched look, though they couldn't all keep up with Jorma Elo's choreography, and they still missed a bit of confidence in elucidating the vocabulary in Cunningham's "Duets."

We must thank Ballet San Jose and artistic adviser Wes Chapman for bringing the ballets of Jessica Lang to town. Her new abstraction, "Eighty One," is first a dazzling theatrical spectacle. Jim French's arresting illumination includes myriad spots and other stage lighting plots. It's smoky and mysterious, and high on a platform looms composer Jakub Ciupinski, creating an electronic score, which he calls "gesture control music," altering meters, harmonies and dynamics as the ballet proceeds. Yes, it does feel like a trendy dance club, but the steps belie the surroundings.

Lang, who debuted in San Jose with "Splendid Isolation III" last season, fashioned her new work in silence, but you'd never know it. The choreography for 11 dancers abounds in unisons, frozen tableaux (upturned palms) sweeping bourrees and transitory relationships in which limbs are stretched and backs bear the weight of partners. The patterning opts for fluidity over profundity. It is not Lang's fault that her "Eighty One" follows Elo's "Glow-Stop," which stresses similar gender interactions, but not so ably.

The Finnish choreographer made his work for American Ballet Theater, but I wish this was one piece Chapman declined to import. Elo's dances too often opt for the clever and the formulaic, (remember "Double Evil" at the San Francisco Ballet?) and seem to make a point about old and new again and again. Here he uses the presto movement from Mozart's Symphony No. 28 (valiantly conducted by George Daugherty) juxtaposed with a movement from a Philip Glass piano concerto.

Elo gets propulsion but no elegance from Mozart; the Glass seems more suited to his limited musicality. The 12 dancers, clad in various degrees of burgundy, seem to enjoy these confrontations, which focus on body parts most choreographers skip. He deconstructs the classical language, like those endlessly fluttering fingers. Elo's day with American companies seems to have come and gone, fortunately.

Happily, Cunningham and his aesthetic will always be with us. "Duets," which ABT performed in 1980, shows us six couples in color-coded outfits entering and passing through while John Cage's percussive score alerts and annoys. As the dancers in this staging by Patricia Lent swing arms and swoon into arabesque, one sees a remarkable artist blessedly at work; and one also senses narratives taking shape in the imagination. Kathryn Meeusen and Maximo Califano brought a noticeably aggressive attack to their encounter.

One dance on the program looked back - to Karen Gabay's 33 years dancing with the company. She retired last weekend, and her parting gift, "Amour gitan," a duet she devised in 1998 to Ravel's "Tzigane," allowed her and Maykel Solas to cavort like gypsies under the spell of Eros. They raised the temperature in the hall a few degrees.

Allan Ulrich is The San Francisco Chronicle's dance correspondent. E-mail datebookletters@sfchronicle.com

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/performance/article/R-Evolutionary-review-unique-in-a-way-4451727.php#ixzz2REgcrxIi

San Jose Mercury News San  Review: Ballet San Jose's season closer By Rita Felciano Correspondent Posted:   04/20/2013 02:05:47 PM PDT Updated:   04/20/2013 07:06:29 PM PDT So, for one last time, Karen Gabay joined her colleagues at a Ballet San Jose season closer. The program will be at the San Jose Center for the Performing Arts through Sunday afternoon with a special 7 p.m. tribute to Gabay on Sunday night. In an evening that was largely contemporary ballet at its edgiest, Gabay's "Amour Gitan" became a lovely interlude of romance a la gypsy. In 1998, she had choreographed it to Ravel's bravura showpiece "Tzigane" for herself and now Ballet Master Raymond Rodriguez. A splendid Maykel Solas partners her in these final performances. "Amour" vividly highlights Gabay's expressive range. She still turns respectable pirouettes but she truly came alive as a lover who was teasing and flirtatious one moment and temperamental and sexually demanding the next. At the end, she generously shared a bouquet of red roses with Maykel and the fine musicians, pianist Keisuke Nakagoshi and violinist Lev Polyakin. Jessica Lang's world premiere "Eighty One" proved to be the evening's other highlight. Lang had introduced herself last year with a visually fetching "Splendid Isolation III." The Ballet San Jose commission, strongly performed by an 11-dancer ensemble, is a much more intriguing work. It's a happy tailor-made acquisition for a company that seems to be finding its way toward a new identity. "Eighty One" is a fast-moving, constantly changing ensemble piece in which small groups -- a trio for men here, a quick diagonal for women there -- emerge but never interfere with a communal thrust. Jeremy Kovitch may lift Alexsandra Meijer overhead into an upside down split but she snaps her legs closed, and the two disappear in the group. Francisco Preciado and Maria Jacobs-Yu end up on the floor like some multi-limbed creature, but then he just walks away. Lang's piece works as if an intricately designed machine whose interlocking Dancers Damir Eric and Shannon Bynum rehearse at Ballet San Jose. ( Quinn B Wharton ) parts keep the place humming yet with few of the anti-humanist implications that such an endeavor might suggest. Jim French's design of banks and beams of high intensity lights evoked a self-contained universe. But Lang's most brilliant decision was working with composer Jakub Ciupinski. He created a score of electronics and live theremins -- an early 20th century instrument that appears to pull sound out of thin air. Placing Ciupinsky on a podium upstage left, he looked like the wizard who kept this world in his hands. Jorma Elo's 2006 "Glow-Stop", in a production borrowed from ABT, was created to odd musical bedfellows, the 4th movement of Mozart's Symphony No. 28 and the 2nd movement from Tirol Concerto for Piano and Orchestra by Philip Glass. Yet the combination worked -- perhaps because Elo had yanked the selections out of their context. With an almost identical cast to the one in "Eighty One", this was not the company's most imaginative programming or, at least, casting choice. However, it did challenge the dancers toward a kind of excellence that they seem to thrive on. Amy Marie Briones, Cindy Huang, Akira Takahashi, James Kopecky and, above all, Kovitch left particularly strong impressions. Despite its less than convincing performance, Merce Cunningham's "Duets" was a gift. So full of inventive and witty touches, a glorious spatial design and John Cage's gurgling score, this essay on duet dancing is easy on the eye. It was set primarily on corps members, perhaps to make them shine individually. However, except for soloists Beth Ann Namey and Rudy Candia, these young dancers did not have the maturity to step outside their ballet training. BALLET SAN JOSE

Ballet San Jose's

"Neoclassical Masters"

March 24, 2013

youdancefunny.wordpress.com

Greetings from sunny California!

I thought my last few days in Seattle were crazy, but my travels in California have been insane so far! To recap with some highlights, I spent almost a week in the San Francisco bay area, taking classes but staying in San Jose with my gracious host and frienderina, Jen. She recommended Lee Wei Chao’s class at Alonzo King Lines Ballet, a notion seconded by others in the dance community so I took his class twice (Lines has a nifty deal where your second class is half off, the good ole foot-in-the-door sales pitch), and I also took class at local studios in San Jose (including Marny Trounson, a former soloist with the Royal Ballet, who danced for Ashton! Danced for Ashton I say!!!). Last Thursday began my gauntlet of performances, kicking off with San Francisco Ballet’s opening performance of John Cranko’s Onegin (uh, DRAMA!), on Friday I went to see Ballet San Jose’s ‘Neoclassical Masters’, which consisted of Les Rendezvous and Méditation from Thaïs by Sir Frederick Ashton, Stanton Welch’s Clear, and concluded with Clark Tippet’s Bruch Violin Concerto. After a six hour drive to Los Angeles the next day, I found myself on UCLA campus, watching Los Angeles Ballet perform ‘Balanchine Gold’, an all Balanchine program with La Sonnambula, Concerto Barocco, Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux, and The Four Temperaments. Did you get all that? Because I’m not even sure I did!

I’m still processing much of this, and much of the material is going into the book, but I would like to take a moment to write a bit about Ballet San Jose’s ‘Neoclassical Masters’. I was fascinated by the idea that a good size company like BSJ (who also enjoys the luxury of a live orchestra!) was so close to San Francisco and its home company, because I imagined there might be some competition for dancers and audiences alike. I wondered how proximity affected programming as well, and clearly, the fact that BSJ did two Ashton ballets meant the two companies do have some different interests in mind. However, A common thread was that both companies make wonderful efforts to provide extra educational opportunities to inform the audience about the works they’re seeing—SFB had a discussion with Jane Bourne, a choreologist who stages Onegin and other Cranko ballets, while BSJ brought in Hilary Cartwright to talk about staging Les Rendezvous for the company. Cartwright had some wonderful anecdotes and insights into Ashton’s work, how he trained in the Cecchetti method, his famous demand of his dancers to “bend” (which wasn’t simply a bending of the torso, but required bending of the torso with a spiral or a twist), and that Lucia Chase, the co-founder of American Ballet Theatre even asked him once to be resident choreographer for ABT.

Les Rendezvous is a ballet that is not performed often even in the UK so it’s a real treat to have seen it on BSJ. Charming, airy, romantic, it’s simply a meeting between various couples and four little girls, set in a nineteenth century Parisian park. Few ballets could be so utterly delightful as Les Rendezvous—we’re talking white lace, pink ribbons, and sweet kisses on the cheek. Still, some of the choreography is devastatingly wicked, with plenty of Ashton’s trademark speedy and intricate footwork and a never-ending cascade of the little steps that look simple but aren’t. Soloist Amy Marie Briones in particular handled the choreography with ease, and it has to be said that she is a ferocious fireball of a dancer. She is so technically strong that she’s the kind of dancer you can watch and never wonder if she’s going to do complete the steps because she’s always in control of what she’s doing. One part of the solo requires a fast double pirouette to land in plié, then whip around while arching the back, which is heinously difficult and she did it—several times. With bright eyes and exuberance, Briones was an absolute joy to watch.

Ballet San Jose in Sir Frederick Ashton’s ‘Les Rendezvous’ (Photo ©Robert Shomler)

It seemed many of BSJ’s ballerinas would shine in Ashton, as soloist Nutnaree Pipit Suksun, danced Méditation from Thaïs with a rare and extraordinary beauty. She is one of those dancers that has it all—the lines, the feet, the artistry, and in a spiritual role like Thaïs, with its certain exotic aroma, Pipit Suksun is a stunning goddess. Even the costume seemed to glue itself to her, glowing like an amber firefly as she floated across the stage in ethereal fashion. Beyond her lyricism, Pipit Suksun has a generous warmth to her dancing that invites the audience into the piece, and the image of her in it is permanently emblazoned into my fondest memories. Curiously, I didn’t know that she is one of few Thai ballerinas, and the only one to be currently employed in the US, and it really pointed to the diverse makeup of BSJ as a whole—not just in ethnicity, but also noticeably in physiques. There are curvier dancers, shorter dancers, and not everyone is a beanpole with high arches. The multi-faceted diversity BSJ makes its flavor unique, and I think sends an important message to audiences that ballet is possible for more people than we think, and that artistry and quality of character in dancing is defined by many things.

Ballet San Jose dancers Nutnaree Pipit-Suksun and Jeremy Kovitch in in Sir Frederick Ashton’s ‘Méditation from Thaïs’ (Photo ©Robert Shomler)

Still, it’s not bad to have it all—as long as a dancer knows how to use it, and corps dancer Joshua Seibel really stood out to me in Clear. Sure, he has that blonde prince, Greek marble statue, beautiful lines stuff going for him, but it was really his expressivity in Clear that was so beautiful to watch. There was intensity and focus, on top of incredible control, and I can only imagine what else he could bring to more featured roles. Sometimes I’ve seen dancers who are giving everything they have into a performance but for whatever reason I could still see a little reservation—maybe he or she doesn’t like the music or the choreography is somewhat uncomfortable, but watching Seibel in Clear was an exercise in conviction and commitment to a performance, which is exceptionally hard to do because one doesn’t simply attack the choreography of Clear—a dance for seven men and one woman, Clear is the kind of work that has to unfold from origami to a clean sheet of paper or dissipate like clouds to reveal a sunny day. The subtleties and mastery of ballet technique have to increase as the performance goes on, with purity as the final destination.

Ballet San Jose dancers Zhang Jing and Akira Takahashi in Stanton Welch’s ‘Clear’ (Photo ©Robert Shomler)

Concluding the program was Clark Tippet’s effervescent Bruch Violin Concerto No.1, a showy piece I described as a “bouquet of mountain wildflowers” when I saw it for the first time (Corella Ballet, circa May, 2011). Bruch is typical of a classic symphonic ballet, choreography to music with tights and tutus, and showed off BSJ’s strengths incredibly well. Divalicious Briones sizzled in the red tutu, but the company also boasts two sprites in Junna Ige and Mirai Noda, who fluttered through their roles with smiles and joy. Akira Takahashi provided dazzling virtuosity, his allegro work precise and flighty (as it also was in Clear) as he sailed through numerous jumps and turns with ease. With technique and aplomb, Bruch was the perfect piece to end a marvelous evening of dance with, and I think represents a lot of what the company is all about—diversity, technique, and truly thrilling performance qualities. As the company works through some transitions in changes of leadership, there is real potential to take the Ballet San Jose to establish itself upon the next tier, as a company with more regular performances and a repertory that attracts more dancers. Though there are difficulties to be expected in doing so, with funding being the ever-pressing concern, there is real potential and that is one hell of an exciting prospect.

Ballet San Jose in Clark Tippet’s ‘Bruch Violin Concerto No.1′ (Photo ©Robert Shomler)

SF Chronicle, March 25th 2013

Ballet San Jose review: Signs of growth

Robert Shomler, San Jose Ballet

Ballet San Jose is aiming - and reaching - higher under new artistic director Wes Chapman.

Allan Ulrich

March 25, 2013

If Saturday's matinee at the Center for the Performing Arts is any indication, something significant may be happening at Ballet San Jose. Less than two years under new direction, the company looks ready to take chances.

It went for a big one in the first mixed bill of the new year, one that will be marked by live musical accompaniment at every program. But it was a smashing repertory addition that made the afternoon so rewarding. Whoever suspected that we might be seeing Frederick Ashton's charming "Les Rendezvous" in the Bay Area again? Ashton is the artist many of us place second only to George Balanchine as greatest dance neo-classicist ever, and this 1933 confection had a brief run at the Mikhail Baryshnikov American Ballet Theater, where Wes Chapman - Ballet San Jose's current artistic adviser - danced in the piece with distinction.

I cannot recall any earlier San Jose performances of Ashton's dances, much to the community's loss. But "Les Rendezvous" (set to a recycled composition by Daniel Auber and staged here by Hilary Cartwright) is a fine way to begin a relationship. This is nothing more than a series of amorous comings and goings in a gated park (William Chappell's original set is reproduced) for 15 dancers, and it overflows with youthful invention. But cuteness yields to complex technical feats that need to be dispatched with casual mastery, from courtships on bended knee to combinations that include buoyant entrechats to descents into fifth position.

Up to the challenge

Ballet San Jose made an impressive first go at the piece, the corps relishing Ashton's flying entries. Saturday's principal male Alex Kramer doesn't look like he's old enough to vote, but he possesses a natural elegance and a speed that carried him through brilliantly; the partnering remains a bit shaky. His lady, Mirai Noda, fluttered effortlessly in strings of bourrees.

The other Ashton premiere, the "Méditation from Thaïs" (set by the San Francisco Ballet's Bruce Sansom), did not work its familiar magic. This erotic dream of a piece needs considerably more sensuality and poise than Jing Zhang and Rudy Candia brought to it Saturday. George Daugherty expertly conducted members of Symphony Silicon Valley in Jules Massenet's swooning music.

Also in the pit for this piece and all but "Les Rendezvous," acclaimed violinist Rachel Lee performed the important solos. I applaud the company for hiring her, but the amplification was simply horrid.

Lasting romance

Lee did the honors in the Bruch Violin Concerto No. 1, accompanying the eponymous 1987 Clark Tippett ballet that Chapman brought from ABT. An unambiguously romantic work, it deploys eight corps couples and four principal duos in contrasting colored costumes. In this committed performance, the blue couple of Alexsandra Meijer (wonderful torso and articulation) and Jeremy Kovitch (careful partnering) and the pink pairing of veteran Karen Gabay (much of the old spirit) and Akira Takahasi left the lasting impression.

On a lesser level, the revival of Stanton Welch's energetic but tiresome 2001 "Clear" left a hole in the middle of the program. The male corps probably enjoys all those unisons and canons, set to Bach concerto movements, but this one should have receded into history long ago. The single brief duet uniting Kovitch with Nutnaree Pipit-Suksun, formerly of the San Francisco Ballet, afforded a few moments of pleasure.

Allan Ulrich is The San Francisco Chronicle's dance correspondent.

March 22, 2013

Keep Calm and Dance On

BALLET SAN JOSE

BY JANICE BERMAN

Neoclassical masters, the inspiration for Ballet San Jose’s performances this weekend at the Center for the Performing Arts, cover a lot of ground. So did this show, and generally speaking, the artists rose brightly to the challenge. Of the four works on the bill, two were by Sir Frederick Ashton, providing a wonderful glimpse of someone we don’t see in these parts all that often.

Les Rendezvous, which opened the evening, exemplifies Ashton Style: the demanding pointe work, lovely carriage of the arms, speed, energy, and precision, all delivered with charm and understatement. The meme borrowed from the British wartime slogan, Keep Calm and Carry On, is totally applicable here. Set to music by Daniel Francis Auber, orchestrated and arranged by Constant (the program calls him Constance) Lambert, for years a major force in the Royal Ballet, it embodies a sense of play.

At the gate of a garden, as six well-behaved ladies in white, with hats and gloves, greet each other in grand jetes, arabesques, and of course air kisses, shoulders passing close. The gents (their six partners) also execute grand jetes, albeit not quite as grandly. There are still dancers who don’t point their feet. Technique and the necessary elements of speed and timing remain problematic for some of the dancers in neoclassical pieces such as this one. But everyone’s enthusiasm, as well as a palpable sense of knowing how to take the stage, feels new and invigorating. Certainly Ballet San Jose has moved forward since the great upheaval and change in command that led to it becoming something of an ABT offshoot. The work has visibly paid off.

Jing Zhang and Akira Takahashi in Clear

Amy Marie Briones and Maykel Solas, the principal couple, delighted together and separately. His split leaps were exceptionally high and clean, and her series of spins impeccable. The artful and artless pas de trois of Junna Ige and her partners Alex Kramer and Francisco Preciado were textbook Ashton, in the best way. No strain, just brilliant speed and timing, not to mention sunshine.

A guest artist, the young virtuoso violinist Rachel Lee, played for three of the four pieces (all but Les Rendezvous). She accompanied the Ballet San Jose Orchestra conducted by George Daugherty. They sounded marvelous throughout the show.

Ashton’s Meditation from Thais, a brief pas de deux set to music by Jules Massenet, beautifully displayed the plastique, power, and composure of Nutnaree Pipit-Suksun, in the arms of Jeremy Kovitch, who partnered her well. It’s poetic, tranquil, and tricky at the same time; he is required, at various seconds, to lift her straight up off a seated position on the floor; drape her around his neck, and lift her overhead so she can, extremely calmly (after all, this is Ashton), strike a still, meditative pose. They looked like they belonged together, in shades of muted yet festive gold and bronze, and Kovitch never let us see him sweat.

Stanton Welch’s Clear, to various excerpts from Johann Sebastian Bach, is the Australian’s Paul Taylor piece, without feeling in the least derivative. With open chests and expansive leaps, it surges powerfully onward in ensembles and solos, taking the breath away. That it doesn’t do the same to the dancers speaks volumes about how far the company has come. This really felt like a breakthrough number.

The men of Clear

For male and female principal dancer (Akira Takahashi, a marvelous technician, and the graceful Jing Zhang respectively) and six more men, Clear is a festival of mutability at top speed, where giant leaps are dotted with lovely little moves — a rond de jambe en l’air here, agargouillade there, or manly slaps on the bare tummy (pants by Michael Kors, abs by BSJ). One man even does an amazing series of perfect fouette pirouettes. The partnered interludes cool things down a bit, and the conclusion is so quiet, ending on an upbeat, that it’s easy to think the whole ballet was a dream. In a way, it was. Standout performances from all, but special huzzahs are owed to Francisco Preciado, Kendall Teague and James Kopecky for their pas de trois.

Clark Tippett’s Bruch Violin Concerto No. 1 could have been a train wreck and it still would have been terrific to hear Lee and her fiddle, but of course it wasn’t. The whole company shone with precision and musicality, looking proud to be there, as well they might. They conveyed a sense of tremendous unity in ensemble work, and the principal couples displayed warmth and brio.

Of the principals, Mirai Noda and Akira Takahashi, the couple in pink were particularly ebullient, with charming allusions to Spanish stylings, and Alexsandra Meijer, buoyantly partnered by Jeremy Kovitch, looked fresh and easy as the couple in blue.

Janice Berman was an editor and senior writer at New York Newsday. She is a former editor in chief ofDance Magazine.