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Thin Brew

“Sylvia”
San Francisco Ballet
Lincoln Center Festival
LaGuardia Concert Hall
New York, NY
July 26, 2006

by Leigh Witchel
copyright ©2006 by Leigh Witchel

San Francisco Ballet followed the blockbuster opening gala in their New York engagement with what should have been another juggernaut; Mark Morris’ version of “Sylvia”.  It’s a handsome production and it has Delibes’ marvelous and haunting score, but the choreography is a thin brew.

Morris’ version of "Sylvia" was created on San Francisco Ballet in 2004, one year before the Royal Ballet revived Ashton’s version, which also entered the repertory of American Ballet Theatre, which danced the ballet here less than a month ago. Both versions stick close to the original libretto of the tale of Sylvia, an acolyte of the goddess Diana, and Aminta, a shepherd who loves her.

Morris has also opted, at least in his own mind, to hew to the conventions of the classical three-act ballet, but there are departures and the results are not good. The oddest is a reverse from the current trend in classical ballet to force music written for mime to become music for pure dance: Morris takes Sylvia’s variations in Act I and Act II and deletes the dancing. In Act I she’s trapped on a flowered swing while an unnamed friend usurps her music and in Act II during her gorgeous waltz she’s stomping grapes into wine to get her abductor, the hunter Orion and his slaves drunk. There’s plenty of other music for that, could we please have her variation back?  Morris forces mime music to do dance duty as well; Eros’ entry to revive Aminta is turned into a fussy and disconnected variation.

When Morris does finally give Sylvia her variation in Act III, the steps don’t add up architecturally to a variation. You don’t need wildly original steps or tons of vocabulary to make a successful dance — “Esplanade”, anyone?  You do need a design to the phrases; how they connect and interact. Morris’ phrases lay there inert. Sometimes, as in Sylvia’s coda with Aminta in Act III, they look straight out of the classroom. More often, as when he begins a male duet with the men hopping in a circle as if doing the Alley Cat at a Bar Mitzvah, they’re just dull. There’s no pressure or energy in the dance itself; Morris leaves it to the dancers to provide that.

Two dancers in supporting roles succeeded. Yuri Possokhov and Muriel Maffre brought so much focus to their performances of Orion and Diana that they focused the dance as well; the energy on stage jumped several levels when they appeared. Possokhov is a sweet natured comedian (he’s an adorable drunk) as well as a vivid actor. Maffre is so gloriously unorthodox that even her flaws are fascinating. Her rage as she came in to punish Orion was galvanizing.  The leads didn’t fare as well. As Sylvia, Yuan Yuan Tan didn’t bring much more to the role than her beautiful lines. She was charming, but she didn’t project. The role of Aminta is a cipher in Ashton’s version as well (though at least with better dancing); there wasn’t much Gonzalo Garcia was able to get out of it. Eros, danced by Jaime Garcia Castilla, was conceived by Morris as camp with several glitzy disguises for the god as a sorcerer or pirate. I enjoy camp, but when Morris thinks he’s being campy I think he’s being arch.

It isn’t just the solo work that is thin, so are the corps dances. Even when Ashton does a finale that’s nothing more than skipping in place, the rhythms are tighter and the dancers move in more complex patterning. Morris uses simple folk steps, but they’re not amplified enough for the opera house stage. Balanchine may have set daisy chains of dancers walking in “Concerto Barocco”, but, as in Ashton, that is a contrast to more complicated dance patterns to give the eye a rest. Here, a hora for the corps is as good as we’re going to get. Morris also seems to prefer his nymphs Amazonian; they stomp around flat-footed in their pointe shoes. 

San Francisco is a company with ambitions. It sets out to show itself off on this tour and deserves to be taken seriously.  The previous night’s gala kept the corps mostly out of our view; this was our first real look at them. It was not as flattering as the brilliantly calculated glimpses of the soloists and principals the night before. At the soloist level and above the company can stand with any other but the corps looked a notch lower and “Sylvia” is not a work that will take them up another level.

The sets by Allen Moyer, particularly Orion’s cave in Act II, are lovely and inventive. In a particularly beautiful moment at the end of the act, at Eros’ intervention the cave walls fall away to reveal Aminta waiting for Sylvia suspended in her swing. Morris is a clear dramatist; he gives Sylvia time in Act I to indicate the effect Eros’ arrow has had on her affections towards Aminta, an unfortunate omission in Ashton’s version. Sometimes an outside point of view on ballet can be refreshing; Morris gave the women oddly pitched runs on pointe at the beginning that looked strange at first, and then strangely interesting. But the dance invention of this production is weak. Morris may know how to make a dance, but Ashton knew how to make a variation or a divertissement for ballet, and there is a difference.

Photo, by Eric Tomasson, of Yan Yan Tan in "Sylvia"

Volume 4, No. 29
July 31, 2006

copyright ©2006 Mary Cargill
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