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Sylvia Opening Night

“Sylvia”
San Francisco Ballet
War Memorial Opera House
San Francisco, California
April 21, 2006

by Paul Parish
copyright ©2006, Paul Parish

The opening night of “Sylvia,” which Mark Morris choreographed to Delibes’ great score, was a little disappointing this year. It did not sparkle as it did when it was new. Many of the dancers outdid themselves, but the ballerina was not quite on, and so much depends on her.

“Sylvia” was new two years ago; Morris spent a good deal of time with the company creating the piece, and it was top priority in the dancers’ minds when it opened as the grand finale of a remarkable season. Morris’s special feel for things permeated the whole production then — the tone of the piece, in particular, was fascinatingly coruscating — you did not know when to take things seriously, or rather, the moments of poignancy took one by surprise — as indeed, the feelings of love and softness took the heroine, a chaste votaress of Diana’s, by surprise when the boy-god Eros shot her with his arrow and made her fall in love with Aminta.

This year, however, “Sylvia” alternates with a mixed-rep program, and one suspects the dancers shot their wads on the previous program’s “Artifact Suite,” the Forsythe ballet which has most visibly stirred the corps dancers (especially the women) to outdance themselves. Forsythe works, of course, in a vein of athletic extension that’s quite the opposite of the mixture of musicality, old ballet, and modern dance that Morris asks for in “Sylvia.” The Nymphs of Diana, for example, have a unique way of moving that involves very grounded balances on pointe while the breast and arms extend upwards in ways reminiscent of Isadora Duncan. It’s the opposite of the quick-release, fleet footwork many contemporary ballet choreographers ask for — the dancers have to stay up on those pointes rather a long time, in an old-fashioned way – and this year they did not look comfortable, and without Sherry Le Blanc (recently retired), there was nobody reaching upwards through the breast-bone, keeping the movement breath-like and alive, during one of the most beautiful corps dances in the ballet — the scene when Sylvia (Elizabeth Miner) enters with her friends and let their hair down and relax in a glade that’s sacred to Eros (where Aminta — Pascal Molat opening night — is lying in hiding and flushed out, awaits his punishment when Eros intervenes on his behalf). Perhaps by the end of the run it will be back up to standard.

The story is one of those French confections made from Hellenistic myth by way of an Italian poet, and its tangle of emotions is so contrived one would have a screw loose to take it very seriously. And yet, it is a story-ballet, with sets and costumes and a look to it all its own. This year, the satyrs and Dryads were the only truly visionary creatures, but the women (especially Lily Rogers) moved with an astonishing lightness and ease, like long-legged flies running across water. Hansuke Yamamoto and Ruben Martin moved from deeply crouched positions into astonishing patterns in the air — double tours were the least of it — and back to earth with amazing ease and silkiness.

In this pastoral world, Sylvia leads an Amazon-like band of dazzling virginal huntresses, devoted to chastity and the goddess Diana. Both Aminta, a shepherd, and Orion, a quasi-Cyclopean cave-dwelling herdsman (played by the fabulously handsome Pierre-Francois Vilanoba, who it’s hard to believe any red-blooded girl could turn down), have fallen in love with Sylvia; when Eros intervenes to make Sylvia love Aminta, she has just shot an arrow at the statue of Eros which Aminta jumped in the way of; she lingers over his corpse, which is when Orion the brute abducts her. Eros (the brilliantly eccentric Jaime Garcia Castillo) then disguises himself as a learned Magic-doctor and revives Aminta and sends him off to rescue Sylvia.

Act 2, which is spent in Orion’s cave, strongly resembles the second act of “A Folk Tale” — in each a heroine in captivity gets her grotesque captors drunk and while they’re carousing (whole lots of fun for us) contrives to escape. Orion’s slaves are riotously funny. With their blackened teeth and weird skull-caps, only Rory Hohenstein was recognizable; the others were Garrett Anderson, David Arce, Moises Martin, Ruben Martin, Steven Norman, James Sofranko, and Hansuke Yamamoto. All were hilarious.

In the last Act, Aminta enters a city where a pas de seize is going on — very classical, and very charming. The Martin brothers Moises and Ruben, as heralds, were particularly brilliant. As Aminta begins searching for Sylvia, a boat appears on the horizon containing pretty girls in rosy veils who vary their poses fetchingly as the ships crosses the stage. Master of the ship is a Levantine slave-trader (Eros in disguise), who disembarks and offers the girls for sale. Sylvia is one of them. Aminta senses intuitively that it is she, and their pas de deux is a very classical, brilliant number in which he never sees her face until the very end. Her variation to the famous pizzicato music is Ashton-esque, sharp, sparkling and vertiginous; his is unutterably exhilarating and begins with a long pirouette that dives immediately into a renversé, sweeps around itself and continues on in a dazzling cascade of invention, leaps that cover nearly the whole stage in bewildering succession, to one of the most exhilarating pieces of music ever created for a dancer. Pascal Molat swept through this in a display of bravura that took my breath away.

Unfortunately, Miner was not quite on her leg that night, and she let it bother her — nothing that a non-dancer would notice – but it did put her just enough off the music so that her variation did not sing. Her performance of two years ago is the one we will judge all future ones by; she was just a corps dancer at the time, and as the end of the season approached, and the “Sylvia” premiere came closer, her dancing began to shine in everything she did to the point where no matter how small her role, she was gleaming on the stage. And when she opened in Sylvia, a star was born. Well, she didn’t dance up to that standard herself last Friday. Probably as the run continues the show will oil itself and the dancing will become more musical — these are very musical dancers, especially Miner, and what music! The orchestra played beautifully, and the score is one of the most satisfyingly dansante scores ever written. Any dancer must feel it.

Mention must be made of the wizardly fascinating dancing of Jaime Garcia Castillo as Eros — his steps are the most brilliantly original in the whole score (soutenu turns with the derriere careening around like a bucket, grand pliés where again the pelvis takes astonishingly curving paths, brisés at 90 degrees, sautés where both knees lift, the feet point underneath like daggers, and maybe the dancer makes a 360-degree turn, on and on endlessly inventive). Morris knows a lot of traditions that have quirky-playful dances for boy-gods in them — Kathak, for one, has lots of material for the tricks that young Krishna liked to play, and some of these moves for Eros look like Kathak steps. In any case, they are enormously satisfying to watch, and it would be impossible to imagine anybody dancing them on a grander or more adorable scale than Castillo, whose long limbs, amazing flexibility, and sweetly fey personality all combine to make his performance astounding.

There’s a cameo role for Muriel Maffre as Diana, who appears at the very end to settle scores. Maffre makes the most of it.

Photos (all by Erik Tomasson):
First: Elizabeth Miner and Pascal Molat in Mark Morris's "Sylvia."
Second: Pierre-Francois Vilanoba and Elizabeth Miner.
Third: Elizabeth Miner.

Volume 4, No. 16
April 24, 2006

copyright ©2006 Paul Parish
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