Dance with Me

SEGUE: IT ALL STARTED WITH THE NUTCRACKER …

Sounds like one of those wistful testimonials from A Chorus Line, no? But a lot of people who spend their careers in dance will tell you that. Not a few of them became dance writers; some of my New York colleagues studied at the School of American Ballet, the feeder for George Balanchine’s New York City Ballet, in the early years of his Nutcracker (it premiered in 1954). They were children in the Party Scene. They remembered being sent over to Capezio for their ballet slippers, soft and pink and reserved especially for them.

That was not me. As a child, I’d had an unorthodox introduction to dance. My mother had a keen interest in modern dance, instilled by a roommate in the 1930s who danced with Helen Tamiris. No sooner had I begun to leap around the living room than Mom signed me up with a modern-dance teacher in Washington, DC, launching a happy childhood of weekly classes and show-and-tell performances in the local elementary school.

When we moved to New York, I was taken to the City Center on my 9th birthday to see the New York City Ballet in George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker, and the world changed. I became besotted. It wasn’t just the story or the music, the lights or the costumes or the children in the Party Scene or the snow or Maria Tallchief or Robert Barnett, the handsome, hoop-jumping Candy Cane, who autographed my program at the stage door. It was all that, and the precision, the unified perfection of it all. And surmounting it all were the toe shoes, of shiny, seductive satin. I stared at them in my souvenir program, aching to dance in them. It would be a long time— seven years of lessons before I did. It swiftly became obvious that my feet would never adapt to pointe work. I left ballet soon after. But I kept watching people dance, and I never stopped.

************************************************************************

The first Nutcracker, choreographed to Tchaikovsky by Lev Ivanov, premiered in 1892 at the Marinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, Russia. There have been many versions since, and I’d probably seen a dozen as a New York reviewer over a period of oh, 17 years or so. But when New York Newsday went south, I went west. Today, in a world devoid of full-time dance writers, I’m down to one Nutcracker. Happily, it’s this one. So it’s time, yet again, to write about the San Francisco Ballet’s Nutcracker, which has just concluded its 2023 season.

Helgi Tomasson, who choreographed the San Francisco Ballet production, ran the company— beautifully, by my lights—for 37 years. After his retirement in 2022, his successor, Tamara Rojo, former artistic director of the English National Ballet, took charge of the Nutcracker..

Rojo is also readying the company for her first season, which begins January 26 with a show called Mere Mortals. If Rojo’s as adventurous in the new works she’s commissioned as she’s been in coaching and casting “The Nutcracker,” it could be a lively, fascinating debut.

Rojo has a tremendous advantage and a daunting responsibility — San Francisco is historically one of the world’s great ballet companies—and this season’s Nutcracker showed her moving the troupe forward with energy and precision. Among her achievements are expanded opportunities for company artists of color, a long-needed reflection of the city’s diversity.

I saw the December 20 matinee at the War Memorial Opera House, aswarm with delighted and delightful children and their grownups. Tomasson’s creation is uniquely a product of San Francisco’s surroundings and history, from the swirling fog to the Edwardian houses on the hills. The city of 1915 was created by a matchless artistic team: Michal Yeargan, Martin Pakledinaz, James F. Ingalls and Wendall K. Harrington.

The Christmas party scene in the Stahlbaums’ gorgeous manse launches the show with a bang, with the arrival of the Clara and Franz’s mysterious uncle, Drosselmeyer (Pascal Molat), the sweet ensemble dances for the visiting children and grownups, and the opening of the boxes concealing three buoyant Dancing Dolls—dancers Simnone Pompignoli, SunMin Lee and Davide Occhipinti. Aaron Robison was a courtly yet lively Nutcracker Prince, dispatching the wily Mouse King, Andris Kundzins, with the help of the resourceful Clara (delightfully portrayed by Danielle Hillman, a most promising student from the company’s San Francisco Ballet School). Sasha Mukhamedov gave a crisp, gracious, standout performance, welcoming Clara and the Nutcracker prince to the Land of Snow. The corps of Snowflakes, yes, danced up a storm with unflagging loveliness and cohesion. Music Director Martin West presided over the bright and brassy orchestra.

Of all Act II’s variations and ensemble pieces, the most affecting is the Sugar Plum Fairy scene, whose student dancers constitute a virtual timeline of their own artistic growth —from tiny ladybugs, crouching on the floor, to leaping preteen butterflies, and on up the line, morphing into the grownup corps de ballet of the fabled Waltz of the Flowers. Jasmine Jimison, among the fastest-rising ballerinas in the company (from apprentice in 2018 to principal roles today), was precise and enchanting as the Sugar Plum Fairy.

Among the greatest hits in Act 2’s character dances were Lleyton Ho, leading (and leaping) in the Dragon Dance, and, as the Russian trio’s central figure, the incredible pyrotechnician Joao Percilio da Silva.

But the crowning magic of the entire afternoon came as Clara had her dream fulfilled, becoming transformed into the queen of the realm—the beaming ballerina Nikisha Fogo. In an art form where choreographic challenges plus expectations of excellence can make even superb dancers tighten up, Fogo, beautifully partnered by Aaron Robison in the climactic Grand Pas de Deux, looked both uncompromisingly precise and unequivocally at ease, a nigh-impossible combination. Stunning and tall, calm yet energetic, Fogo—whose parents ran a hip-hop school in her native Sweden, where she had her earliest training—romped and floatede through endless fouette pirouettes, daring leaps and arabesques. Fogo wrapped the whole thing up with a knockout plunge into Robison’s arms. I could have watched her do it all over again. Who wouldn’t?

-30-