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San Francisco Ballet's Invitation
February 2, 1999

by Rita Felciano

Why is it that sometimes a program which looks so good on paper leaves you with a stale taste in your mouth? San Francisco Ballet's season's opener looked like such a winner. A harmless, though undistinguished work by one of the current generation of British choreographers, Christopher Bruce's Sergeant Early's Dream, to start, and then two San Francisco premieres, Kenneth MacMillan's The Invitation and Antony Tudor's Gala Performance. Both MacMillan and Tudor are major twentieth century British choreographers, neither of whom is commonly performed by SFB.

So what went wrong? The major disappointment was the almost an-hour long MacMillan. The piece is so wildly uneven that when it finally picked up about half-way through, I had pretty much given up on what remained to this heavy-handed clonker. Positively drooping with symbolism--draping and undraping of the most awful nude statuary you ever want to see, a divertissment of a cock fight mirroring the randiness of British Upper class society and a sadistic governess frustrating her young charges to a life of furtive sexual pleasures--its narrative about seduction, hypocrisy and violence in an English country house dragged on way beyond its narrative thrust..

Still, The Invitation, also created some strong, plausible characters which saved the work from catastrophe. Primary among them was the older, unhappily married couple (Sabina Allemann and Yuri Possokhov) whose arrival at the party signals the onset of the tragedy. The wall of ice and barely submerged hatred between them made you appreciate divorce. Allemann was powerful, stretching out and longing for another life, and yet for ever corseted by convention.

And you cannot fault MacMillan for not stretching the possibilities of partnering. The highlight of The Invitation are two highly expressionistic and contrasting duets of sexual initiation; one resigned and accepting, the other brutal almost beyond bearing. Alleman's, with the young boy (Vadim Solomakha) explodes with sensual longing, intense womanly passion and also tenderness. Its counterpart, which ultimately ends with the rape of the young girl (Lucia Lacarra), is the one between her and the stony Possokhov whose sinewy leg work entraps the unsuspecting teenager. Lacarra played the role too much like a teen bopper on the make, but when she walked towards the audience, a fatally wounded animal, I must admit, she got to me.

Tudor's Gala Performance is not only a hilarious send-off on self-infatuated stars but also a sly dig at the idiosyncracies of Russian, Italian and French style dancing. Today when ballet has become an international language, these differences are somewhat arcane but up to a point,the comedy still works. Joanna Berman as a puffed up rooster of a Russian whose butt seemed to get stuck everytime she moved onto pointe and Evelyn Cisneros (deliciously partnered by Stephen Legate) stalking onto stage like an ostrich ready to mow down anything in the way, played their parts to the hilt. Claudia Alfieri was all breathless little hops and bobbing corkscrew locks. These competing divas were excellently supported by a female corps in pink that would dive into the limelight like fish snapping for air. Still some the timing, particularly of the applause-milking seemed over the top and dulled the comedic impact. It's possible that Tudor's 1938 audience might have responded differently.

The folk-dance inspired Sergeant Early's Dream, wore out its welcome rather quickly but it had its moments, particularly in a delicately-timed drunken buddy trio (Stephen Legate, David Palmer and Christopher Stowell) and individual performances by Berman and a wispy
firebrand of a Julia Adam.