Right angles
Square Dance highlights S.F. Ballet's Program Four

By Rita Felciano


POINTE TAKEN: San Francisco Ballet performs Hans van Manen's
'Grosse fuge.' Photo Courtesy of San Francisco Ballet.
HOW IRONIC THAT a new ballet by a choreographer in his 30s should look so musty, while a 48-year-old work by a man who was well into the second half of his life when he created it should look so remarkably fresh. In San Francisco Ballet's mixed-repertory Program Four, the superbly performed Square Dance, in which George Balanchine honors his adopted homeland, simply outshines the premiere of Yuri Possokhov's Reflections, the young choreographer's fourth work for the company and, in terms of casting, his most ambitious yet. Completing the triple bill is Hans van Manen's assaultive Grosse fuge. The piece was introduced last year, and I had hoped it would look better the second time around. It doesn't.

Possokhov is undoubtedly someone to watch. The man challenges himself. For Reflections, he thinks big – probably too big. In this case, a big ensemble, a big stage, and a four-movement Mendelssohn symphony. Taking his cue from classical ballet's hierarchically defined roles for soloists, demis, and corps and – for some odd reason – Ingmar Bergman's stark color palette in Cries and Whispers, Possokhov has come up with a strangely anemic piece of formalism.

If Reflections' primary purpose is to contravene the expressionistic tendencies of his Bolshoi Ballet heritage, he has succeeded – but that's not enough. The ensemble's abstract patterns lack finesse. And even the solos for the genial Nicolas Blanc and Pascal Molat look pale. Still, a dream duet for Muriel Maffre and the always elegant Damian Smith is good Possokhov choreography, showing us how tradition and innovation are entirely compatible.

Square Dance looks as if it has been designed specifically for SFB. The work is a brilliant essay on dance as a social activity, whether in the ballrooms of Versailles or the grange halls of Nebraska. Square Dance's fresh-faced innocence, enhanced by those gorgeous Vivaldi and Corelli scores, is not the least of its charms. Gonzalo Garcia's dancing lesson for the men, with the women watching from the sidelines, is pure joy.

There is a 1950s-style youthfulness to these encounters that, were it not for their elegance and refinement, might look a little like the teenage movies of that period. Maybe that's why Balanchine introduced a haunting male solo when he revived the work in the 1970s – it colors the piece with a sunset's burnished glow.

Square Dance's vocabulary is fiendishly detailed; it's fast, precise, and full of little beats and steps that sometimes make the dancers look permanently airborne. With this performance, SFB proves the old adage that a company is only as good as its corps. You could draw a line straight across the elevation of the scissoring leg beats. Vanessa Zahorian dances the ballerina part at her sunny best, every bit Garcia's equal in charm and refined demeanor. As the leader of the women, she sets the tone, with sassy high kicks and, just for good measure, a quick pinup pose.

Finally, van Manen's Grosse fuge is set to an orchestration of sections from two Beethoven string quartets. The choreography is rudimentary, piling one section on top of the other. A work for eight dancers, Fuge has a few bright spots, among them Lorena Feijoo, who slyly plays Moises Martin as much as he does her, and young Pauli Magierek, whose ferocious partnering with Peter Brandenhoff shows she is a dancer to be reckoned with.

San Francisco Ballet's Program Four runs Fri/18, 8 p.m.; Sun/20, 2 p.m., War Memorial Opera House, 301 Van Ness, S.F. $8-$165. (415) 865-2000, www.sfballet.org.