Ballet teacher Richard Gibson liked to remind his students that their preparation for a step “predicts what comes next.” For the French-born ballet choreographer and pedagogue August Bournonville, it was important that the preparation remain simple and unadorned. Three Bournonville choreographic exemplars, “Festival at Genzano,” “Napoli,” and “La Sylphide,” have stood the test of time. From their home in Denmark, they have traveled the world to reach such dance hubs as Boston, Houston, Havana, and here in San Francisco.
Depending upon where and when you lived, you may have seen them performed by such Bournonville-trained dance artists as Erik Bruhn, Toni Lander, Peter Shaufuss, Johnny Eliasen, Frank Andersen, Peter Brandenhoff, or Jonathan Chlemensky. While the Russian Vaganova style elaborates its preparations by slowing the gestural steps to a full beat behind the music, stretching them like dough for a yeasty babka, Bournonville-trained dancers proffer theirs punctually, en face, arms opening from a low or mid-rise fifth into a broadly generous second. It’s as if to say, “Here comes a smorgasbord of quick if intricate bites, unceremonious, but color-coordinated and tasty!”
To stage its production of La Sylphide, San Francisco Ballet brought back former principal dancer, Ulrik Birkjaer, who, a decade ago, danced on the Opera House stage with a prescient confidence. He etched a memorable place in the hearts of the audience. I have at times wondered why a company with as strong a principal cohort feels the need to import guest artists for leading roles. On this opening night, guest artist Alban Lendorf, retired at 29 from the Royal Danish Ballet and American Ballet Theatre, interpreted the lead role of James. Lendorf bounded into Bournonville as if born to Bournon and burnish its style into the company’s family Bible. His partner was Wona Park as The Sylph, a role that in its propriety could rival Peter Pan’s Shadow, the difference being that, as a second skin, it never went missing. Park floated gossamer-like or darted in and out of sylvan hiding nooks like a heat-seeking damselfly or perhaps a flirtatiouus beat more shamefully, a damselfly in heat.
Caught napping, and already chemically intoxicated, James glimpsing The Sylph, becomes hopelessly so, as she inflects into his kilt-bound existence, a reason to break free of its plaid gridlines. The tripping hazards, as always in the balletic theatric, are the extant rivals, inconvenient fiancés, the Hilarions-of-record in any drama where leaps of faith, if not fidelity, describe the action. There are evildoers, schemers, plotters, and conspirators, whose interventions are reliably politically incorrect and offend the more-sensitive-than-thou onlookers. As such, the corps de ballet delivers splendid, insistent punctuation, lock-steppers all. With their every écossaise, they tap out a morse code-like warning to conform to the codicils of those who dwell outside the world without borders that is the sylph-inhabited forest. Their fast and furious footwork could be the footwriting on the wald forestshadowing what “up a steep and very narrow stairway” Richard Gibson taught us.
If there is frivolity throughout, there is heartbreak at the end, but you won’t see a spoiler in this review, not after having witnessed such genuinely-felt commitment to production values that even
A witch’s brew
Cannot un-do.
Toba Singer
