Hello blogosphere!

James Sofranko performs Trepak in Tomasson's Nutcracker. (© Erik Tomasson)

My name is James Sofranko, and I am now going to be maintaining a blog for San Francisco Ballet’s Open Studio 455. I haven’t done much blogging in the past, which is to say I haven’t done any blogging whatsoever! I mean really, I never even knew what the word meant ’till about a year ago! (And, I’m still not crystal clear.) Oh well, at least now if someone talks to me about blogging, I don’t have to nod my head politely and pretend anymore. I can confidently say that I myself am a dancing blogger, or should I be a blogging dancer?

So, my name is James, but people who know me usually call me Jim, much in the same way people call Mikhail Baryshnikov “Misha.” Yes that’s right, I just compared myself to Baryshnikov; you may find that happening a lot here. After all, it is my own blog, and I get to compare myself to whomever I choose, right? Just kidding, but seriously, Baryshnikov, as I’m sure he is to many male dancers, is one of my biggest inspirations. For one thing, he’s short at 5’7”, the same height as me. (I might even say he’s 5’6”; I stood next to him in the cafeteria once.) He’s amazingly explosive when he dances—you can feel his intensity and commitment to the movement. Of course, he does crazy tricks and millions of pirouettes, but that’s not everything that impresses me about him. So many dancers these days can turn more than he ever did and do all the same exciting tricks. I’m intrigued by the intangibles of his dancing as well as his physical achievements. His acting, phrasing, musicality—they all play a part in making him a full packaged artist/athlete. I say athlete because that’s what we, as dancers, are; we train our bodies and put them to use in just the same way a baseball player or football player does. “Game time” for us is the stage and we have pressure to excel just as they do.

Anyway, we’re getting ready for Nutcracker now, and for most of us it’s back to business as usual after the fall tours. The new dancers this year that haven’t been in our production might feel a little overwhelmed with new choreography being thrown at them in a short period of time, but for the returning dancers (this is my 9th Nutcracker at SFB), the steps are pretty much ingrained in our subconscious!

We still have to maintain a level of commitment, though. We have to remember that there are people for whom the Nutcracker is their first time at the ballet. We owe it to the audience to give the best show we can, and that means not just execution of steps, but full realization of character and belief in the story. Helgi has encouraged us to focus on this aspect of the performance, not just the steps. In a dancing dolls rehearsal, he said that we have to make someone believe they are watching an actual toy doll, not just a human impersonating one. So, even though Nutcracker is something we all feel we could do in our sleep, we can’t fall victim to that apathy.

I’m actually at the theater right now waiting for Act II rehearsal to begin. Opening night is tomorrow—I’m dancing the Nutcracker doll that comes out of the magic box in the party scene. For many years in a row, I performed the Russian variation opening night (I also performed it for the PBS filming), but this year I’m content to watch other people get their chance. I am still cast to perform the center Russian guy, and my first show this year is Sunday night. He doesn’t have that much more to do than the side guys, but there are all those split jumps and some extra turns in the finale, enough to make me a little nervous! It’s a great part and always a crowd-pleaser, so it is definitely fulfilling to perform. And, of course, the music for Russian is so well known that I think I’ve counted five holiday commercials so far this year that use it. The same is true of the Sugar Plum Fairy variation music. We hear the Nutcracker music so many times in our lives, but every year I’m reminded how good the score actually is. I love listening to and watching the transformation scene in the first act, when the tree grows. Spectacular! As ballet dancers, we owe a lot to Tchaikovsky. I wonder if he knew what his contributions would really mean to generations of dancers.

Well, gotta run and watch a new cast of Russians jump out of those eggs—always fun to watch someone jump out for the first time!

Talk to you soon.