NEWS
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Feb 17, 2010
A DAZZLING NEW WHEELDON BALLET!
Arts come alive in the Bay Area
A DAZZLING NEW WHEELDON BALLET!
By Paul Hertelendy
There is a captivating, almost hypnotic flow to the modern ballets of Christopher Wheeldon, who unveiled his new "Ghosts" at the San Francisco Ballet Feb. 9. For the SFB, this hottest of new choreographers lives up to being a major catch.
There's an air of mystery around the willowy figures that rise and fall and bend deep at the waist, with the women wearing tulle skirts suggesting an obscure romanticism. They whirl and turn in circles. But the moves are fresh and contemporary, with a dazzling pas de trois of Sofiane Silve interacting closely with, and being lifted a thousand ways by, Brett Bauer and Tiit Helimets---one of the most original inventions I've ever seen on the ballet stage.
Yuan Yuan Tan and Damian Smith added a pas de deux which was more dutiful than inspired. Enhancing the environment is a huge, blackened sculpture by Laura Jellinek overhead, like an old dredged-up wreck of a plane or ship, moved about from time to time, adding to the precariousness of the scene (would it come tumbling down??). I trust the health-plan insurance is fully paid up for all involved.
The ballet's name was surprisingly given not by the choreographer but by the composer, Kip Winger, who created an effective, unsettling new 26-minute score for piano and orchestra to back the effort in this most gratifying and thematic of SFB commissions of recent years.
