This is SFB’s eighth visit to the Segerstrom Center (previously known as the Orange County Performing Arts Center) and my second. My first visit was in 1994 with The Royal Ballet. Much seems to have changed here, or at the very least I’d forgotten what Costa Mesa is like…after San Francisco it is very, VERY, flat, and I even got excited when I saw a hill, only to realize that it was simply the road rising to cross over the top of a freeway. Costa Mesa feels like the America I’ve seen from TV programs, whereas San Francisco, by comparison, feels like a reminder of Europe.

Monday was a free day for the dancers after a travel day, but I taught an optional company class, and then spent the next few hours in the studio, rehearsing mainly principal dancers who had requested some studio time. With opening night the next day, it always feels good for the lead dancers to touch on the roles they’ll be dancing, as well as getting in a bit of time on R&J ahead of their scheduled performances. Because the main studio at the center isn’t large enough to accommodate everyone for the barre work, on Tuesday I got to teach barre for the newest members of the company, along with the apprentices and trainees (who have joined us mainly for R&J) in a second studio. this group then joined the remainder of the class (taught by Helgi Tomasson).

Finally, the stage technicians have completed all of their preparations and we get to move onto the stage. There’s a 30- minute spacing rehearsal for Symphony in C. With so many dancers on the stage, and the need for military-like precision formations, this is a useful half-an-hour ahead of the actual dress rehearsal. Whilst this is happening, I’ve been asked to speak with a group of the Segerstrom Center’s donors, who will be watching most of our dress rehearsal. It’s the Center’s 25th Anniversary Season, with SFB formally kicking of this celebratory season, and the Center’s financially supportive friends are being thanked with extras such as coming in to watch the company rehearse. A short while later and the dress-rehearsal begins.

We run the rehearsal in the same order as the performance will be, giving the local orchestra (the Pacific Symphony), the best opportunity to experience what that evening’s performance will feel like. Each ballet is allotted time to be run straight through, and then some additional time to deliver notes to the dancers, check any musical issues, and address, if necessary, any lighting cues, etc. The stage is almost identical in size to our home (the War Memorial Opera House), and Trio runs smoothly, without any stops. A few placing notes to the ensemble, and some more specific, technical and artistic notes to the principals and it’s time for RAkU. In both RAkU and Symphony in C we need to briefly stop to correct some tempi issues, but otherwise the dress rehearsal has been without major dancer issues and the stage is left to the crew to finalize last minute things and set-up for curtain up at 7:30pm.

The first night goes well, with a very responsive audience and it’s great, after so many weeks in the rehearsal studio, to see the company performing again. After the performance the theater hosts a first night party for the company, but also to celebrate the start of their 25th Anniversary Season. It’s a great way to end the evening. As to how the performances went…I’ll let you read the reviews, here and here. Wednesday morning, we split barre again, and then there’s a chance to put this evening’s changes of cast in Trio and Symphony in C through their paces. The stage isn’t available as the stage crew are building the R&J set, which is going to take time as it’s big, elaborate and complex.

So, we’re in the studio, which has about half of the depth of the stage, but the dancers adapt admirably, and this is more about ‘feeling’ the steps than the space. After a lunch break we have a two-hour R&J rehearsal for the Saturday matinee cast (Sarah Van Patten & Pierre-Francois Vilanoba), who won’t get to have a run-through on stage before their performance. However, they’ll get about about an hour on stage on Thursday afternoon. After rehearsals, everyone’s free until the ‘half-hour call’ at 7:00pm for this evening’s performance. Again, another very responsive audience, who seem to really enjoy the three very different works being performed. Which brings us back to today (Thursday). With no performance but an evening run-through, there are two classes. An earlier one (10:30am) for the younger members (whom I taught barre to earlier in the week) along with any of the rest of the company who’d prefer to begin their day at a more regular hour…and a later one (2:30pm) for everyone else. In between I am taking a rehearsal in the studio for the Saturday evening R&J couple (Vanessa Zahorian & Davit Karapetyan). They will dance the Friday afternoon orchestral dress rehearsal with the orchestra, with friday night’s opening cast (Maria Kochetkova & Joan Boada) having this evening’s stage rehearsal to piano. Beforehand, though, we have to spend some time in the first scene (a piazza in Verona) placing all of the sword fighting scenes. The fights themselves take place all over–on the flat stage, on the raised platform at the back of the stage, on the steps leading up to the platform as well as on a bridge above the stage.

In addition, surrounding all of the various fights are the town’s people, who need to know exactly what’s happening, when and where, as they need to be visible to the audience, but keep well clear of the fighters and their armory. The fights have been very well rehearsed in the studio along with all the town’s people in attendance. However, with all of the scenery suddenly very solid (instead of indicated with lines on the studio floor and strategically placed chairs), it’s going to be a very different environment.

Time is always tight on tour, and we have to maximize every moment of stage time that we can. But, for a show like R&J, the stage crew need a lot of time to get the production ready, so the logistics of when we can get on stage with the dancers is a carefully crafted schedule, that has to have a degree of flexibility built in to it. If all goes smoothly in preparing the stage there might even be the chance of some additional stage time, however, there’s also the chance that we have to lose some if anything doesn’t go according to plan. So, from here on it’s all Romeo & Juliet…and I’d better get ready to take that rehearsal with Vanessa & Davit.

Live performances are what every performing arts company is working towards.  Without them, what’s the point?  It could be argued that art only becomes art once it has an audience and once it’s observed. For a company of ballet dancers without performances, it’s all preparation and no ‘closure’.  With this in mind, and taking into account how San Francisco Ballet’s yearly cycle works—Nutcracker in December, the Repertory Season from January through to May, lay-off through to July, then the rehearsal period to prepare for the following season’s Repertory Season—Helgi Tomasson strives to ensure that the Company always benefits from a fall tour.  And this year is no exception.

Orange County’s Segerstrom Hall is hosting San Francisco Ballet for a week of performances.  Opening on Tuesday 27^th September, the Company presents a mixed-repertory program (Tomasson’s 2011 premiere Trio, Possokhov’s 2011 premiere RAkU, and Balanchine’s 1947 classic Symphony in C), which repeats the next evening.  The Company then presents Tomasson’s 1994 full-length version of the star-crossed lovers, Romeo & Juliet; opening on Friday 30^th in the evening, and repeated twice on Saturday 1^st October with a final matinee performance on Sunday 2^nd.

San Francisco Ballet has built a strong reputation for commissioning and presenting new ballets, and this is clearly reflected in the fact that out of the four ballets being shown at the Segerstrom Hall, three were created on the Company, and two of them (Trio and RAkU both premiered last Repertory Season) have only ever been seen by San Francisco audiences, so the Orange County audiences will be the first people outside the Bay Area to see them.

In a way, presenting ballets that were first performed last season makes preparations for the tour to Orange County a little less complicated.  There have been only a few changes in the Company’s roster of dancers, so there are not too many new dancers to teach new roles to.  And San Francisco Ballet dancers have a well developed sense of muscle-memory, being able to retrieve ballets that they’ve previously performed almost step-perfect many months, and sometimes years, later.  So for those who have already performed in these ballets, it should be an easy re-acquaintance.

The more that a work is performed, the more secure, comfortable, and at ease the dancers can become.  But that doesn’t mean that they take their foot off the gas.  Far from it!  If anything it allows dancers to push more, to challenge themselves and their physical, musical, and emotional approach to their roles with greater assurance.  It’s exciting for the dancers and for the rehearsal staff working with them, to see dancers really grow and develop these roles…and it should be even more thrilling for the audiences to see a live performance by dancers enjoying the pleasure of returning to a role that’s still fresh in their experiences, but ready for renewal.

And dancers performing roles in narrative works can particularly benefit from more performance opportunities, which offer them the chance to really delve deeply into the artistic, choreographic, and character challenges that these ballets set.  San Francisco Ballet last performed Romeo & Juliet for the 2010 Repertory Season, so, with a two-year gap there will be a few Company dancers who will need to learn roles they’ve either never seen, or never learnt before.  That said, many of the new dancers will have performed walk-on roles in the production when they were still students of San Francisco Ballet School.  For everyone new, apart from being taught the specific steps, they will be able to learn how to play the role of a townsperson or of a guest in the ballroom by watching their peers who have already benefited from the experience of performing the ballet.

This passing on of experiences from generation to generation is part of the balletic tradition.  A bit like oral histories being passed on purely through the spoken word, ballets used to be passed on by showing and doing.  Now, in the same way that oral histories can be preserved on tape, we can record rehearsals and performances.  However, nothing beats being able to see fellow artists taking on roles to really understand what it is possible to achieve, and to understand the artistic growth from studio rehearsal to stage performance.

San Francisco Ballet’s Segerstrom Hall engagement will offer the Orange County audiences a feast of artistic opportunities.  But those same opportunities bring benefits to every one of the Company’s dancers, preparing for future generations to step into the limelight.

SF Ballet in Tomasson's Romeo & Juliet (copyright Erik Tomasson)

For example, while the Company was performing Balanchine’s Coppelia, it was also rehearsing McGregor’s Chroma, Wheeldon’s Number Nine and Ghosts, Helgi Tomasson’s 7 for Eight, Fokine’s Petrouchka, and Zanella’s Underskin.

So what is class there to accomplish?  What do dancers look for?  And how does the person at the front of the studio deliver a class that will suit everyone’s needs: preparing so many individual dancers for ‘their’ day which could include such a different set of ballets to be rehearsed and, possibly, performed?

Class History

Ballet truly began to be established in the second half of the 17^th century in the court of Louis XIV (known as the Sun King for his lavish theatrical/dance performances, in which he would play the leading, God-like figure).  The courtiers were expected to dance, to keep up with the king.  And so training began, teachers emerged, and style and technique began to take shape.  The Paris Opera Ballet was the first school to emerge.  Exported across Europe over the coming centuries, various schools, each with their own syllabus (still understood and taught today with French terminology used the world over), began to emerge lead by authoritative teachers; the most famous names being Vaganova (Russian), Bournonville (Danish), and Cecchetti (Italian but working in Russia for much of his career).

Class Structure

Each syllabus, or training method follows the same basic principles: preparing the body through a series of exercises first undertaken at the barre, where the dancers hold onto a bar that provides support as their bodies warm-up and gain control.

The first barre exercises are basic, small and slow, easing joints and engaging muscles to react slowly and with length–think a slow walk on level ground–then increasingly building to the equivalent of a short sharp sprint up-hill.  But in the midst of all of this, the legs are required to gradually lift higher off the floor, both in fast and slow controlled movements.

The barre over, and the process, in effect, is repeated in the centre; this time, obviously without the support that the barre provided.  Without a fixed object next to the dancer, turns are introduced and finally jumps–on the spot to start–and then building in height and travel, until the end of class offers the opportunity for dancers to try out some virtuoso combinations of flying leaps and complex turns.

So, the structure of class is pretty clearly defined for anyone teaching.  The judgement comes in working out how you, as an individual teacher, approach the assignment.  You need to decide if you:

• Are going to provide instruction (in effect teach), dancers how to approach and correctly accomplish a movement. This can be tricky simply because they will have executed all of these movements for years, having begun their professional training, at the very least, at the age of 11 years old.
• Attempt to work in particular combinations of movements that reflect aspects of a ballet that they are rehearsing or performing at that time.
• Provide tricky combinations that challenge the brain as much as the body.
• Work the dancers hard so they get a real aerobic workout, or simply warm them up gently.

There’s probably a myriad of other things that we all take into consideration, but certainly from my perspective, I follow a structure that I learnt from one of my favourite and last professional teachers with The Royal Ballet, Elizabeth Anderton.

My process is the following: from the very first day of teaching company class here and in fact since I began teaching, I give the same three first exercises at the barre.  My justification for this is that the dancers need to feel their bodies and not challenge their brains. I realise that it offers them the chance to tune-out, but, if they understand the physicality of those first steps, the real warm-up process will have begun.

If a dancer can complete the basic movements correctly and understand what the physicality of each position actually feels like, right from the start of class, then the chance of clean and accurate technique as the complexity of the challenges increases across the class, is vastly improved.

One of my main areas of information giving is to ensure that legs need to be accurately in front, behind, and to the side of the body without allowing one hip to move in front or behind the other.  A dancer with full control of the basics can move ‘outside the box’ of pure technique freeing them to be able to approach all of the physical demands that today’s choreographers require.

I set my exercises fast and have all of the combinations at the barre geared so that the dancers can change from the first side to the second without a break.  In addition, I aim to provide a basic pattern that I make slight adjustments to with each subsequent exercise.  My slow tendu (stretching the leg out in front, to the side and to the back so that the foot points but the toe remains on the floor), is of a very similar format as my degage exercise (faster leg action, this time with the foot disengaging [degage] from the floor by a couple of inches), and so on as each exercise gains speed and/or height.  I also invariably set opportunities for the dancers to test their ability to balance on one leg, with the other leg in a variety of positions.

In the centre begins a period known as ‘centre practice.’ I always begin with adage (slow controlled movements with the legs lifted high).  This goes slightly against my grain in that I would typically want to start with slow tendus, however, the barre finishes with dancers typically having time to stretch out their limbs, and to maximise on the length of muscles achieved with the stretching I take the Vaganova approach and start with adage.

I then return to, in effect, the start of class, with slow tendus and onwards.  Pirouettes (turns) are introduced. Initially I want to see the dancers successfully complete single turns with ultimate control, which can be harder to achieve than multiple pirouettes, simply because if you do more there’s a good reason for perhaps not finishing perfectly.  I want to see perfection at the basic level, so the body has felt it, remembers it, and can return to that sensation.  I sometimes have to be clever to set an exercise that forces single pirouettes, as some dancers simply refuse to consider a single pirouette a challenge, and flash away with as many as they can fit into the available music.

Centre practice over and allegro (jumps) begin to be introduced.  Again, just like the start of the barre and the centre, it’s important to start small and carefully.  To me a petit allegro (small jump) is a tendu (stretching the leg), but this time using both legs together.  It’s a concept that, if accepted, can change the whole approach and physicality of how to execute a humble tendu.

From small to medium; from two legs to two legs; from two to one; from one to one; travelling; and finally to tour en l’air (jumping up and turning in the air), for the men particularly, and variations of it.  By now the sweat is flying and the dancers are pushing themselves aerobically.

Professional dancers know what they need to achieve within class for their day ahead, and those with multiple hours of rehearsals won’t necessarily complete the whole of the class.  The teacher’s aim is to provide them with as complete a preparation as they need so that they are warm and ready for what the day is going to throw at them.

I often think about icebergs when a ballet like Nutcracker opens.  What audiences get to see is the tip of the iceberg, the 1/8^th that’s visible above the waterline.  What we all get, ahead of that, is the 7/8^th below.

Looking back through the rehearsal schedule the first Nutcracker rehearsals began on Friday 29^th October.  It’s better to make an early start if the schedule allows for an odd hour or two, and that Friday rehearsal had Ballet Masters Betsy Erickson and Katita Waldo beginning to teach Snowflakes and Flowers to San Francisco Ballet School students, some of whom will never have seen this production.

The weight of Nutcracker rehearsals builds over the following weeks, but, for example, that same day the company was rehearsing Winter Dreams, Artifact Suite, Giselle and Symphony in C and continued to do so for the next few weeks, along with a few other 2011 Season ballets.  The balance from 2011 Season repertory gradually shifts until right after Thanksgiving, at which point Tchaikovsky rules and it’s wall-to-wall Nutcracker.

A while ago Artistic Director, Helgi Tomasson, presented Ricardo Bustamante and myself (joint Ballet Masters and Assistants to the Artistic Director), with his choices of who would dance with whom, and how many times, for the Act I Snow King & Queen, the Act II Grand Pas de Deux and The Sugar Plum Fairy.  Our job was to create a schedule that spreads the workload out across the 3 weeks and 30 performances.  Most of the dancers taking on these roles take on more than 1 role, and for many of the ballerinas, all 3.  It’s a big jigsaw to get it to work so that no one is overworked or without a performance for too long.

On paper it should be relatively easy to achieve a smooth flow for 5 roles, but other aspects impact on who’s available when, and in the end, just ahead of opening night, we were working with the 10^th draft of this document!

So, imagine what it’s like when it gets to casting the complete ballet, across all 30 performances!  Each performance has nearly 170 roles to be filled by company dancers (the dancing roles), older students (covering dancing roles and acting as sleigh pullers, pages, walk-ons, etc), school children (Act I party scene, Act II opening and clowns) and supernumeraries (Act I front cloth).

The GRID (the ultimate Nutcracker document that gets posted on the War Memorial Opera House corridor walls) has to be “built” for the full run of 30 performances.  Every role has to be cast in such a way that no dancer is dancing more than one role in any one scene and no dancer should perform more than 8 performances in a week.  The permutations are extensive, and the moment a change has to be made, (due to illness, etc.), then the knock-on effect across the casting can be extreme.  Checking, double-checking and triple-checking is the order of the day.  Ballet Masters Anita Paciotti and Betsy Erickson take on this task, working closely with Rehearsal Planning Master Alan Takata Villareal.

In addition, Regina Bustillos, Personal Assistant to Helgi Tomasson, is responsible for ensuring that any updates are recorded correctly in a variety of places, working closely with Rose Gutierrez, Assistant to the Artistic Staff, who takes responsibility for ensuring that the students and supernumeraries are available, and that the required numbers of adults are on hand to supervise the children.

I’m gasping just getting the above down on paper, realizing how complex a process Nutcracker is.  Thankfully the Ballet Masters also get to enjoy working with the dancers in the studio; rehearsing dancers in roles they’ve performed many times before, as well as dancers taking on new roles, especially those who have just joined the company and therefore have never seen SFB’s Nutcracker before.

For dancers who have performed in this production before, the process of remembering their roles is relatively easy.  But remembering them and perfecting them is a different thing, and everyone needs to rehearse fully to get the technical and stamina aspects back, allowing their artistic qualities to shine.  Most dancers have multiple roles across the production, and the possible permutations are huge, but necessary, once we get to performing 12 shows in a week.

For new company members, having to quickly learn numerous new roles can be challenging.  Especially in featured roles, such as the Act II diverts (Spanish, Chinese, etc.) the challenge is as much about the technical aspect as about knowing how the roles need to be performed.  Until they get a chance to see previous seasons exponents of the roles dancing them, getting the style, look and feel can be tricky.  The more they see the more they absorb and the easier it is for them to grow into their new roles.

The principal roles and each of the individual dances – be they corps numbers (Snow Flakes and Waltz of the Flowers), party scene dancing dolls or Act II diverts – are rehearsed separately for a couple of weeks, but towards the end of November full scenes begin to be pulled together.  The parents, children, Drosselmeyer, Clara and dancing dolls all come together for the Act I party scene.  Likewise the Snow King & Queen join the Snow Flakes, and the Act II finale, involving everyone needs to be taught and rehearsed.

Finally, a week before opening night, we begin to rehearse full studio run-throughs, with everyone involved.  It’s a great moment, as everyone’s individual hard work gets an opportunity to be tested in front of their peers, and for new company members it’s a chance to see how the production knits together.

The great thing for all of us on the Artistic Staff is that, while we experience the 7/8^ths below the waterline – the machinations of which, as I’ve written, involves a lot more complex logistics than the work that has to go on in the rehearsal studio – we also get to enjoy the 1/8^th that our audiences look forward to at this time of the year.

Last night’s opening night was an exciting way to open the 2010 Nutcracker season.

The Nutcracker GRID backstage at the War Memorial Opera House.

Vanessa Zahorian and Taras Domitro in Tomasson's Nutcracker (© Erik Tomasson)

The catalyst for this ballet was the Farewell Pas de Deux that Sir Kenneth choreographed for the Royal Ballet ballerina, Darcey Bussell, and the recently defected Bolshoi Ballet star, Irek Mukhamedov. It was to be performed only at a special gala for the Queen Mother as part of her 9oth birthday celebration in 1990. However, the pas de deux was such a huge success that the following year Sir Kenneth created Winter Dreams with the Farewell Pas de Deux at the dramatic and passionate heart of the ballet.

Based on the Chekhov play Three Sisters, the play follows the story of the sisters Olga, Masha, and Irina as they live their wearisome lives miles from Moscow, the city in which they used to live and which they long to be back in.  The town they live in has a garrison, and the soldiers there are one of the few diversions, for good and bad, that exists for the sisters to be distracted by.

Grant Coyle, Principal Dance Notator and Répétiteur for The Royal Ballet, spent 12 days setting Winter Dreams, having just seen the opening night of the ballet performed by The Royal Ballet. So it was very fresh in his mind, but he was also aided by the whole ballet having been notated into a written score, as accurate as a musical score.

Grant uses Benesh Movement Notation, something that I studied, to a very basic level, when I was at The Royal Ballet Junior School. I find it a fascinating process; the basics of which are very simple. You take the body and placing it against the five lines of a music stave, with feet on the bottom line, knees on the next, hips on the middle, shoulders and arms on the second to top, and head on the uppermost line.  Simple positions are relatively easy to conceive and read, and even simple movements, like ports de bras (movements of the arms), walking or simple jumps…but after that you really need a professional to write and then, of course, read back the information.

Any form of notation needs to be exact as well as capable of extreme detail.  It’s all very well if everyone on stage is doing exactly the same thing, but imagine, for example, a sequence where five male dancers are all lifting one ballerina, each holding or supporting a different part of her, each facing in different directions and therefore, if traveling while carrying her, each walking either forwards, backwards, to their right, their left, or diagonally.  Each dancer gets their own musical stave, very much like an orchestral score carries a line for each instrument…however, each dancer’s line of activity has to relate directly to how they make physical contact with the other dancers they are working alongside.

Rather than trying to impress on you the complexity and accuracy of Benesh, for those interested to know more, may I suggest you look up the Benesh Institute, part of the Royal Academy of Dance in the UK. There, you can even download some simple notated dance movements.

Back to Winter Dreams – the ballet consists of 24 short scenes. Rather than specifically telling the story of Chekhov’s Three Sisters, Sir Kenneth has captured the essence of the main characters and how they interact, creating a tight, and at times, uncomfortable distillation of the narrative (all without words), in which every look and gesture has meaning. And, for those meanings to be true to the ballet, each of which has been very specifically choreographed and set to the Tchaikovsky score, they all need to be performed with extreme attention to detail.

At one point during the rehearsal process one of the dancers involved said to me that they didn’t realize there would be so many details to capture – there’s a BBC recording of the ballet and it all looks so natural that it’s easy to not recognize how tightly controlled the story telling really is. I have to admit that it made me laugh to hear this as he, and many of the company dancers working on Winter Dreams, were still working on Wayne McGregor’s Chroma, which in my eyes is one of the most complex and detailed of physical works I’ve seen.

It was good for the dancers to discover that it can be just as challenging bringing into your muscle memory a series of complex, extreme physical actions (Chroma), as it is to learn such specific looks and subtle interpretative nuances (Winter Dreams).  Which brings me back to Grant Coyle, who was very clear and appropriately demanding with each member of the cast to make sure that they understood that the steps they were being taught were the starting point. These steps then needed to be imbued with just the right style and dynamic; that each character needed to hold their body in such a way that, even before they began to move, they were saying something about themselves, all without a single spoken word.

However, once you’ve seen San Francisco Ballet perform Winter Dreams you may want to question me about the lack of words. To explain, throughout the majority of the ballet, at the very back of the stage behind a gauze, we can see the cast of family and friends, enjoying a dinner party.  Different characters leave the party and emerge onto the main stage to dance/narrate their situations. It’s a clever theatrical device, and, while there are no spoken words, in one scene there are two, cleverly timed sounds that underline the discomfort of the one character who is, at that moment, enduring a moment of personal crisis on the stage.

With so much emphasis on storytelling, the dancers really have to be dance-actors, and it was therefore important to cast artists with the experience to be able to get under the skin of the roles they were learning. In fact, for some it became slightly tougher, as a few of the dancers were learning two, or even three, different roles in the ballet – so switching from one to another could be quite a challenge, especially as within a couple of scenes the whole cast is interacting at the same time, each character with very specific actions to undertake.

I’m delighted to be working on Winter Dreams. I was never cast in the ballet, but I remember it very clearly: all of the artists the ballet was made on, with their own personalities and characteristics that Sir Kenneth used so adroitly as a starting point to develop into the ballet’s characters. I take particular pleasure in seeing how a step performed by one character in the story says something so specific about them, but performed by another can show something quite different. The ability to craft true narrative through dance was one of Sir Kenneth’s great strengths as a choreographer, and Winter Dreams is a perfect example, offering artists and audiences what I hope will be a very rewarding experience.

The end result–please realize that I’m unashamedly biased here–is that Sir Kenneth has created a perfect, tight-knit community, whose individual situations you can “read” and follow with extreme ease.  It’s pure dance-drama, told through nuanced steps, avoiding the kind of traditional stylized classical mime that you might see in productions of The Sleeping Beauty or Swan Lake. The cast of Winter Dreams are real people, portraying real lives (albeit Chekhov’s created lives), with real emotions, that reach out to you across the footlights.

However, these emotions are controlled, in a somewhat British way, rather than how we perhaps imagine Russian characters might project themselves.  All apart from the Farewell Pas de Deux, when the passions run deep and strong.

Hear a recent podcast, where Bruce describes the creation of the piece and the intention of the choreographer to distill the characters and relationships of Anton Chekhov’s play The Three Sisters into a pure dance-drama. He also discusses the unique challenges that ballet presents the dancers and touch on the use of Benesh Movement Notation in the staging of the work for SF Ballet.

We return from a week’s lay-off after the tour to Copenhagen and went straight back into rehearsal mode. Tuesday morning (Monday was an additional free day for Labor Day) sees Judy Fugate watching class, alongside Helgi Tomasson, looking to finalize the cast for Coppélia.

Judy, who has danced various roles including the lead in this production, is going to be with us for two weeks…giving her ten days to set a three-act ballet!  I’m somewhat in awe, as well as, in truth, unbelieving that this can and will be possible.

Helgi was the originator of Franz in this, George Balanchine’s production, so he knows it extremely well and has prepared the cast list.  However, it’s good for Judy to be able to sit down with Helgi so he can point out the dancers he sees in particular roles, and for Judy to not only get her first look at the company, but to also spot dancers who she’d like to test out in one or two of the many solos the ballet offers.

The rehearsal schedule is posted two days in advance to ensure no rehearsal time is wasted; for those first two days Judy will be working with an agreed schedule, but with dancers she doesn’t yet know.  If Judy spots someone she’d particularly like to with work in a role they’ll get added on to the schedule from the third day onwards.

Each member of the artistic staff is in on the production; Helgi’s visiting the studio a lot, keeping his eye on what’s going on, and being a resource as – and when – Judy needs. Ricardo Bustamante and I are assisting with the principals (Swanhilda, Franz, and Dr Coppélius) – and I’m also keeping my eye in on some of the solos – alongside Anita Paciotti who’s specifically working closely with Judy on the soloists’ roles; with Betsy Erickson and Katita Waldo working with the corps de ballet.

There are a few other ballets being worked on alongside Coppélia, as Judy can only be in one studio at a time, but for the two weeks that she’s with us, Delibes’ score rings out seven hours a day.  Yes, Judy is working daily without a break!

I’ve never danced in Coppélia, but I’ve seen a couple of productions, and have a good sense of what will be demanded in terms of style and characterization, but am intrigued to see if Balanchine’s version varies greatly from what I’ve experienced elsewhere. Over the next two weeks I discover that it’s a very traditional production, and aspects of the style are identical to what I’ve seen elsewhere, even if the choreography is Balanchine’s own.

The ballet is female-dominated in terms of the amount of solo work that’s on display.  In Act III there are four solos, all of which prove to be technically demanding, but oh-so-musical and danceable.  They’re a challenge, but at the same time purely classical steps, so once the dancers have each solo in their bodies, their ability to develop the solos is wonderful.  I continue to be thrilled at this trait that professional dancers possess; a trait I find particularly strong here at SFB.

The men, other than Franz and Dr Coppélius (a true, non-dancing, old theater-style character role) don’t get as many challenges.  However, in Act III there’s a wonderful number, War & Discord, featuring an Amazonian woman, a Herculean man, and an ensemble of eight supporting couples, all wielding hunting spears.  It’s all bravura swagger (for the men) and big leaps (for both men and women) and is the perfect pre-cursor for the beautifully tranquil wedding pas de deux for Swanhilda and Franz; after a rather up-and-down journey, they finally do get together, and I don’t think I’m ruining a major plot line by revealing that.

The dancing for Swanhilda (created on Patty McBride) and Franz (created, as previously mentioned, on Helgi Tomasson) is truly testing.  It makes me smile to see dancers discovering that technique back when the ballet was created (1974) was really so strong.  The choreography hasn’t changed but the demands remain a real challenge, even for today’s outstanding dancers.

In ballets like this, when you get to the big moments, (even if those moments need to look so easy that they appear as if off-the-cuff), there’s nowhere to hide if your technique is not up to it.  You’ve got to be right on top of your game to be able to accomplish them, and it takes quite a few practice runs to get them consistently smooth.

As the choreography is all so classical – easy to digest, if difficult to perfect – Judy Fugate has accomplished setting just about all the choreography by the end of the first week.  This means that across the second week she’s able to work with the dancers on perfecting the style and technique, along with building the much-needed stamina to be able to deliver what will be required: flawless performances.

By the end of the second week, Judy is able to pull the whole three acts together and she runs the ballet, from curtain up on Act I to curtain down on Act II, a couple of times in the last two days.  It’s a chance for everyone to see the shape of the ballet as well as recognizing what everyone else has been working on.  There are a few gaps – business that will be filled in once we are on stage working in the set, as well as a group of young girls who dance in Act III who will learn their steps much closer to the premiere.  But all-in-all Judy achieved what seemed impossible.  Three Acts in ten days, and, as far as I’m aware, she’s not dropped her smile once!

Having arrived on Friday 18 September, the dancers were offered an optional class on Saturday that I taught. The crew were working to get the theatre ready for our stage rehearsals, and, with no studio available that day within the theatre, we took buses out to Yuan Yuan Tan’s former ballet school.

There’s always a slight sense of ‘spirit of adventure’ with optional classes. The dancers don’t have to be there, but probably want to shake out the cobwebs of the previous day’s air travel.  It’s the first chance for them to find out how their body has reacted to hours of sitting.

The studio was a good size, and with open windows all the way around, the conditions outside meant that inside it was also warm and slightly humid; the perfect conditions for muscles to relax and work well. We had the pleasure of an audience made up of some of the school’s staff and students. I reminded the SFB dancers that this wasn’t an exhibition class, but nevertheless, by the end our audience was enjoying the virtuosic pirouetting some of the company members put on, applauding loudly.

The next day (Sunday) we were working in the theatre’s studio. This proved to be smaller than the previous day’s and with a very solid floor. The studios back in the ballet building in San Francisco are state of the art, and it comes as a shock to the joints to be jumping on a floor that doesn’t have any ‘give’ at all.

The company always travels with it’s own sprung floor to cover the stage, so the sooner we can get on to the stage for class and rehearsals the better; but for the crew, setting everything for the mixed-repertory program (On a Theme of Paganini, Stravinsky Violin Concerto, Distant Cries, Concerto Grosso and Within the Golden Hour) and Swan Lake was a huge task.  This meant the dancers weren’t able to get on to the stage until the next afternoon (morning class again in the small studio) for a Swan Lake placing and run-through.

Yuan Yuan Tan and Damian Smith in Liang's Distant Cries (© Erik Tomasson)

The next day, class again in the studio while the crew changed over from Swan Lake to the mixed-repertory program. That afternoon’s rehearsal of the mixed-rep program was somewhat of a stop-start rehearsal as the company adjusted to the new space, a new orchestra, and spot lights that needed to be adjusted down in intensity. The stage itself—with our own blissfully well-sprung floor—was a great size with lots of depth to it; not unlike the WMOH, but it still takes time to adjust to new surroundings.

That evening’s performance went extremely well, with the company pulling out all the stops and everything together superbly. We had been forewarned that Chinese audiences weren’t used to mixed-repertory programs. To begin with they seemed reserved in their response, however, by the end of the evening they were very enthusiastic, and I had the feeling that they realized they could get involved with the quality of the dancing, even if there was no story.

Wednesday it was on to Swan Lake. Again, with the crew making the program changeover, company class was in the studio. In order to spare their joints, the dancers held back  from jumping too much until they could get down on to the stage before the stage rehearsals began.

San Francisco Ballet in Tomasson's Swan Lake in Shanghai (© Erik Tomasson)

Having just seen the new production of Helgi’s Swan Lake in San Francisco this last April, it was strange seeing the old production again, which I had danced with the company back in 1992.  The older style of sets and costumes (all designed by Jens Jacob Worsae) meant that, while the majority of the dancing/steps remained the same, the way the dancers as characters moved on stage needed to be adjusted slightly.  The rehearsal, barring a few tempi (easily adjusted) and spotlighting issues (on tour they always seem to be too bright and to be coming from a different angle), went well, as did the opening night.

While Yuan Yuan Tan had performed the previous night (Liang’s Distant Cries with Damian Smith), this was her ‘real’ opening night in her hometown with the company. The audience seemed to be extremely polite, or holding their breath, until the very end of the performance when you got a better sense that they were acknowledging her as an artist and as a local heroine. The company danced beautifully, especially the Swans in Act II, who danced as one creature, especially on their entrance into the lakeside scene.

Thursday—and finally class on stage, which was a luxury in being able to get everyone jumping, and jumping, and jumping! The early afternoon was spent in rehearsing a few changes of casts; pas de trois, cygnets, the Act III divertissement, etc. That evening’s performance of Swan Lake had Vanessa Zahorian and Davit Karapetyan in the leads. The audience seemed more relaxed and prepared to respond more readily than the previous evening, and Vanessa and Davit gave, what was to me, a stunning performance of Act II. While their Act III was strong, they took themselves to a new height in Act II.

Friday—much the same as Thursday with class on stage and then a series of request rehearsals in the afternoon. That evening’s performance saw Yuan Yuan and her partner, Tiit Helimets, giving their second Swan Lake. They really took off in Act III and the audience responded more and more as the drama built up.

That was it!  Shanghai performances are over and now our thoughts are on moving on to Beijing and a whole new set of working conditions to get used to. The Saturday was a free day and, as I expect you’ve been able to read in some of the dancers’ blogs, they were making the most of getting out and enjoying what Shanghai had to offer.

I’ll do another update once we’ve completed our performances here in Beijing.

It’s been a bit of a relief to know that the repertory for China is, in the main, repertory that will be performed in the coming season. With so many ballets already needing to be prepared, having a chance to get some of them set, rehearsed and performed ahead of the 2010 season makes perfect sense. It means that the dancers can keep their focus on the ballets we’ll be performing in China, with the knowledge that they’ll then be performing them back here in the season.

A typical day in the office. (© Erik Tomasson)

Each year Helgi aims to get the company performing in the fall, during the rehearsal period; this allows the dancers to work towards real performances ahead of Nutcracker so they have a goal midway through the rehearsal period to work towards, making sure that they’re in shape and refined for the stage.

As I’ve indicated above, the way the company works means that the dancers have to learn an enormous amount of repertory in the fall and, if there were no thrill of performances to work for, the rehearsal period could seem longer than it actually is. The extra dimension, frisson, and challenge of performing offers the edge that dancers need and relish. Nothing really feels the same as performing to an audience.

A fall tour also offers Helgi–and all of his ballet staff–a chance to see the dancers in action ahead of Nutcracker and the full season…it’ll provide an opportunity to see who’s making good progress and who might be ready to be offered greater challenges later in the season.

It’s also important for the company to be seen beyond the Bay Area, nationally and internationally. SFB has built a great international standing and touring helps the company maintains its visibility around the world. So, the tour to China, as a new country to visit for SFB, fulfills the need for international visibility and, as we’ll be performing during the celebrations for both of these important anniversaries, there’ll be even greater kudos for the company.

It’s going to be a fascinating trip, and hopefully I’ll get a chance to blog about it after we’re all back in October. Until then…