None of my 25 San Francisco Ballet season-openers was better than
tonight's.

Fifteen years of the Helgi Tomasson regime have not changed my opinion
of his choreography, but it's undeniable that he has whipped the company
together, and lately he has recruited some world-class talent.

Among the many jewels of tonight's War Memorial gala (with its amazingly
well-behaved audience, maintaining the kind of silence that would be most
welcome at the opera and symphony) was the brilliant young Cuban dancer,
Joan Boada.

Don't call *him* Joan.  Say Zhuan Bo-ADA.  We saw him first in San
Francisco not long ago as a kid, and now that he's grown up, it's clear
that Boada has the potential to become one of the first major ballet
dancers of the new century.  He is that good.

Barrel-chested, not particularly tall or handsome, a bit on the pudgy side,
Boada's magic is not in his appearance.  When he dances, there is strength,
elegance, and a compelling presence on par with the magnetic attraction of
some of greatest male dancers of recent history.

Boada performed a strange, wonderful piece:  Leonid Jacobson's "Vestris,"
to Genaidi Banschikov's music.  In seven minutes, a dozen characters
followed one another to the stage, each portrayed by Boada -- face,
expression, body language transforming in an instance, amazingly,
memorably.

How is it possible to follow Boada? No problem:  the heavenly Lucia
Lacarra did the job, partnered fabulously by Yuri Possokhov, the tallest,
most focussed of today's young Russian dancers.  Lacarra's fragility, with
the steel underneath, served the piece well:  a pas de deux from Roland
Petit's "Proust," a lover's memory "raised from the dead," and after a
heartbreaking attempt to bring her to life, placed back in the crypt.

The much-anticipated appearance of another young Cuban, Lorena Feijoo, in
the Balanchine "Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux," was disapponting because of the
obvious lack of chemistry between her and her partner, Parrish Maynard.
Both performances were several notches below what these dancers can
accomplish separately.

With many notable retired dancers in the audience, there were still some of
the stars of past seasons doing very, very well:  Joanna Berman and Cyril
Pierre in excerpts from Tomasson's "Handel:  A Celebration"; Muriel Maffre
and Pierre Francois Vilanoba in bit from William Forsythe's "In the middle,
somewhat elevated" (to Thom Willems' super-percussive electronic music);
Tina LeBlank and Roman Rykine in the "Corsaire" pas de deux; Kristin Long
and Christopher Stowell in the Balanchine-Gottschalk "Tarantella"; Julia
Adam and Benjamin Pierce in "Embraceable You," and, with an exceptional
Broadway flair, Katita Waldo, in "I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise," two
excerpts from Balanchine's "Who Cares?".

Yuan Yuan Tan has been steadily developing over the years, and her "Black
Swan Pas de Deux" (with the formidable Vadim Solomakha) was well danced,
although she continues to have a problem masking the effort.  The smile is
painted on, and it peels off too often.

New (at least to me) was Vanessa Zahorian, a very young and small dancer
who seems to move by coiled springs, with the excellent Guennadi Nedviguine
in Tomasson's "Two Bits," to music by Aaron Jay Kernis.  Bach's music
provided the evening's greatest exhibit of energy, as Michael Eaton,
Stephen Legate and (especially) Peter Brandenhoff tore up the stage in Hans
van Manen's "Solo."

Showing the company's strength in depth is the long roster of leading
dancers who were *not* featured tonight.  This 67th season will be a good
one for the nation's oldest ballet company.

Janos Gereben/SF
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