The San Francisco Ballet is better than ever, but it's not as good as it
used to be.

The company that will turn 70 next year has a star-studded roster.  It
opened the season last week with a brilliant gala, and has produced two
first-class repertory programs already.  But something doesn't feel right
or, perhaps, just familiar.

As solid a hometown institution as SFB, the San Francisco Forty-Niners
started unraveling when "hometown" lost its significance.  Between the time
Joe Montana left for Kansas City and Jerry Rice left for Oakland, the team
became a different institution - but during the same period, Evelyn
Cisneros didn't go anywhere.

The great San Francisco prima ballerina could have gone, and way beyond
Oakland and Kansas City at that - but she didn't.  Very few important
dancers ever left SFB of their own volition, even if they had a better
deal, except during the turnover between two administrations a dozen years
ago.

But now, the Cisneros figure of today, the Ballet's most appealing dancer,
Lucia Lacarra, is leaving (taking husband Cyril Pierre with her),
presumably only because the sushi is greener on the other side.

Yes, there are stars aplenty, in a company that used to be perhaps the
most democratic of all major dance troupes - no titles, no exclusions for
unusual body types, those dancing leading roles would turn up the next day
in the corps.  And, most importantly, EVERYBODY danced in the umpteen
"Nutcracker" performances, which brought the money in as well as young
balletomanes of the future.

In the new, streamlined SFB, several new hires arrived with contracts
specifying that they don't have to do the Nut Drag.  Let's face it: it
is tough when you have to dance the piece (even in alternating roles) twice
a day through the whole month of December, but the point is that it was
a "team thing," something everybody did.  No more.

The lineup of dancers has never been better, but something seems to be
coming undone - that old sense of ensemble, togetherness, spirit.

That's what came across in the spectacular first program, an all-Jerome
Robbins affair.  Between "Fanfare" and a dazzling performance of "Glass
Pieces," "Dances at a Gathering" featured 10 brilliant dancers - Lacarra,
Joanna Berman, Sherri and Tina LeBlanc, Yuan Yuan Tan, Gonzalo Garcia (an
ascending Joe Montana of dance), Stephen Legate, Roman Rykine, Damian Smith
and Vadim Solomakha - and yet the whole piece didn't work.  When it becomes
a series of star turns (definitely an option, presented as such at the NYC
Ballet, Royal Ballet, etc.), the continuity, the coherence, the heart of
"Dances" is missing.

Another subtle indication of the change is seen in current performances
by Berman, along with Cisneros, the brightest light of the company for a
couple of decades now, and somebody just as loyal to the home team.  It is
her last season and it would be understandable if she started slowing down,
but that' s not what is happening.  She dances as much and as well as ever
- in a new Morris work at the gala, in the first program, then in Duato's
"Without Words" and the premiere of Julia Adam's "Angelo" in the second
program - but it was as if someone who looked liked her danced, not the
same ballerina we' ve known and loved, the one with the smile, warmth and
unequalled verve and elegance.

It doesn't seem right to complain when there are so many good things
happening: Tan and Muriel Maffre have gone from good to great, the Russian
contingent - Solomakha, Yuri Possokhov, Guennadi Nedviguine, Kirill
Zaretskiy - is uniformly superb, Lorena Feijoo, Katita Waldo, Vanessa
Zahorian, Julie Diana, and a dozen others could be featured by any company
anywhere in the world. . . and probably will, when they leave.

=======

Totally unrelated, but irresistible: Gary Trudeau has done it again, bless
his heart. Check out http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/index.htm.

Janos Gereben/SF
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