Aside from being the Snow Queen…

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 | All Posts by Elana Altman, SFB Scene | No Comments

The past few weeks I have been fortunate enough to work with Renato Zanella on his new piece for the 2010 Season.  The first thing that struck me about him is that he came very prepared.  More than just seeing the piece in his mind, he could show us the steps with his body, making it easier for me to learn what he wants and how to do it.   Of course the steps morphed when Renato saw them on our bodies and with our pointe shoes.  Some swivels that worked so well in his socks were not quite the same with our hard boxes and shanks!  Since Renato was familiar with almost every step of his ballet when he arrived, the daunting task of creating an entire ballet in three weeks was accomplished.  We had the first run-through tonight and it looks fantastic!  I’m learning the Storyteller role–a somewhat dark, mysterious creature.  It’s fabulous and I’m eager to see the ballet come to life on stage next spring.

In other hours of the day I’m rehearsing Forsythe’s in the middle, somewhat elevated, one of my all-time favorites.  And then there’s Nutcracker right around the corner.  One thing I love about this Company is that during one hour I’m doing crazy contemporary movement, throwing myself around to the extreme, and the next hour I’m in a tutu dancing Queen of the Snow.  It is that variety and contrast on which I thrive.

Elana Altman and Brett Bauer in Tomasson's Nutcracker. (© Erik Tomasson)

Tags: Elana Altman, in the middle somewhat elevated, Nutcracker, Renato Zanella

Hope for the Lost in Shanghai

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009 | All Posts by Charlene Cohen, Perpetual Motion: SFB on Tour | No Comments

Tonight is opening night for San Francisco Ballet’s performance in Shanghai. Though it has been rainy and gloomy here for the past two days, we’re anxious to get onstage and perform- it’s been far too long. We rehearsed last night, and we were still a bit off from jetlag and being away from home; wearing costumes felt foreign and being onstage with lights was dizzying. But we slowly acclimated and Helgi was understanding; he told us we were doing a good job and due to time and circumstance we needed to pull together as a company and work to make ourselves feel comfortable onstage. It was an inspiring speech!

Elana Altman, Mariellen Olson, Danielle Santos, and Erin McNulty... how many guidebooks does it take to get around Shanghai? Three, apparently!

As our workload was light for the first two days after our arrival, we’ve been off exploring the sights, shopping, and discovering new culinary delights. The dim sum has been my favorite thus far, though the breakfast spread our hotel provides is in close second. It’s become standard to exchange stories with one another about our finds for the day. Most of the Company, especially the men, have visited the tailor to have custom suits made. We’re all working on our bargaining skills and bragging to each other about who got the best deal and their method of choice. So, we’re all healthy, happy, and relishing the opportunity to experience Shanghai firsthand.

Danielle tries to pick out (and find) our next haggling destination.

Keep your fingers crossed and wish us “Merde” as we offer up our own cultural experience to Shanghai tonight!

Tags: China Tour, Danielle Santos, Elana Altman, Erin McNulty, Mariellen Olson

Quinn Checks In

Sunday, September 20th, 2009 | All Posts by Quinn Wharton, Perpetual Motion: SFB on Tour | 1 Comment

These first few days have felt like a complete upheaval of my normal routine. Jetlag mixed with nerves, and a city filled with more people than live in the entire Bay Area, takes its toll on you. The flight wasn’t nearly as bad as you would think. Thirteen hours is daunting, but when you’re surrounded by your friends, it becomes much more bearable. The dancers actually ended up commandeering most of the space on the plane to stretch, gather, and talk. I’m afraid it threw the flight attendants into quite a tizzy, as it seemed they were unaccustomed to people wanting to get up and move around as frequently as we did.

Elana Altman curls up with a book on the plane (photo by Quinn Wharton)

We arrived in Shanghai around 5:30 Friday night and made it to the hotel around 9pm. It was immediately apparent that things were going to be different here. When traveling, things never happen like you’ve planned, so you always expect change. Exhibit A: Upon arrival at the airport, we were taken down an escalator and out to the curb to get on a bus. Then our guide pulled us back inside, up the same escalator, onto an overpass over the road, and down the other side to a different curb to meet the bus. It may not sound so bad, but when you have 75 sleepy dancers with twice as much luggage, it’s like an epic wildebeest migration!

Most everybody spent the next day exploring the city. A group of us ended up wandering through the busy tourist area to get to the older, more prestigious area of the city on the river, called The Bund. When we arrived, all we saw were cranes, bulldozers, and large white walls; construction had begun to redo the whole waterfront for the 2010 Shanghai Expo. Not just the waterfront, but the entire city seems to be under construction. The view from our hotel room consists of endless cranes and construction sites. The amount of high-rises makes SF’s downtown look tiny by comparison. So, since our plan for riverfront sightseeing was ruined, we turned inwards and ventured back into the city. One of the girls recommended we go to a restaurant she found in her Lonely Planet guidebook. It turned out to be the best decision of the day! It was a gaudy, red and gold ballroom filled with big white tables with lazy susans on each one. (Side note, the lazy susan might be one of mankind’s greatest inventions; I think all households should invest in one.)

Cables in Shanghai (photo by Quinn Wharton)

The restaurant was a dim sum establishment and it was fantastic. And by fantastic, I mean tasty, mouthwatering, authentic Chinese food. There is always apprehension when you’re ordering by pointing at  items on a menu in a foreign country. We must have ordered 10 or 12 different dishes and each one was not only “Western-palate accessible”, but still authentic as well. We had sweet and sour crispy chicken; spicy black pepper beef fried rice;and vegetable, shrimp, and pork dumplings. Not to mention won ton soup, sautéed mushrooms, and some of the most delicate tea I’ve ever had. We couldn’t come close to finishing everything! The cherry on top of the whole meal was that the bill ended up costing us only 10 dollars per person. The whole experience warmed me to this country very quickly.

Yum! Charlene Cohen at lunch in Shanghai (photo by Quinn Wharton)

Tags: Charlene Cohen, China Tour, Elana Altman

Lily’s Season Wrap-Up

Wednesday, April 29th, 2009 | All Posts by Lily Rogers | 1 Comment

I’m back blogging after a very long absence.  I apologize for the silence, but I have been keeping myself very busy for the past few months.  I would like to take this opportunity to catch everybody up on what’s been going on since our 75th Anniversary tour concluded last fall.

When we got back from Washington, DC, we prepared Nutcracker in less than two weeks.  Luckily the majority of the dancers know Nutcracker inside and out and we didn’t have much trouble putting the whole thing together.  We performed to very full houses almost every night and I think, especially this particular winter, the performances provided a lot of extra holiday cheer to everyone, young and old.  After thirty-one performances we were very ready for our one-week break, but we knew that we would really be getting into the swing of things by the time January came to a close.

Lily Rogers and Daniel Deivison-Oliveira in Balanchine’s The Four Temperaments (Choreography by George Balanchine © The George Balanchine Trust; photo © Erik Tomasson)

We got things rolling with Gala on January 21st and opened Programs 1 and 2 just a week and a half later.  I was lucky enough to not only revive my original part as 1st Theme in The Four Temperaments, but I had the opportunity to do Choleric as well.  Choleric is the fourth and final theme of the ballet. Right when you think the ballet’s over, Choleric comes flying out of the wings in a blaze of fury.  It is clear that this role must express anger and shows it by the sheer force and expansiveness of the steps Balanchine created for the part.  It was amazing to do and I relished in the opportunity to sink my teeth into a new part of a ballet we had performed so many times already.

After closing our first two mixed-rep programs, we began preparations for Helgi Tomasson’s brand new Swan Lake, which was an undoubted success!  It was unbelievably exciting to see it take shape.  Watching the sets come together for the first time, trying on our brand new tutus and hand-made feather head caps, and seeing the long awaited vision become a reality was very exciting.  We put in a lot of work to make it happen and there were definitely a few kinks that we had to work out, like with any new work.  It went off without a hitch, by the way.  I felt so fortunate to be a part of the process and had a wonderful time as a Swan Maiden with Elana Altman. Helgi made a few choreographic changes from his original version, including cutting down the number of Swan Maidens from four to two.  I also had fun playing the part of the Spanish Princess in the third act.  It was a nice reprieve from the sometimes stressful, precise accuracy that is demanded of you when being a swan.  Swan Lake was a challenge for me, in that I really had to focus on my classical technique, especially my classical port de bras.  I think I got a lot out of the experience and I feel very blessed to have played a part in the premiere.

Lily Rogers rehearses Tomasson's Swan Lake (© Erik Tomasson)

We were so happy to hear about the success of the production, especially during this difficult economic time. I’m so happy to see that it became such a success and look forward to doing it again next season.  I recommend you get your tickets ASAP!!

After Swan Lake closed we opened up with an all Mark Morris Program and another mixed-rep program consisting of Helgi’s On a Theme of Paganini, our premiere of Lilac Garden, and The Concert.  I had a full plate learning two Morris ballets and performing Paganini every night, but I have to say, it almost felt like a break after the intensity of the previous full-length.

I really loved Program 6 and every single ballet in it. I thought it was a wonderful mix and the way each ballet was juxtaposed against the other intensified their individual strengths all the more.  The evening opened with Balanchine’s Stravinsky Violin Concerto.  It is one of his more abstract pieces with some of my favorite music of all time.  True to form, the costumes are minimal, girls in black leotards and boys in white t-shirts and tights so the audience can clearly see the unique shapes we are creating with our bodies.  In one of the principal pas de deux’s the girl goes into a bridge and rolls her body over and over again until she has crossed the stage, outlining the shape of a sliver of moon.  I was one of the tall corps de ballet ladies. Though there isn’t a ton of dancing for us, the ballet was still fun to perform and there was a real sense of camaraderie during each performance because the music is so mindblowing in its complexity.  We were constantly looking across at each other to make sure we were together, on the right count, in the right formation and even if we lost the music we knew that, as a whole, we could stay together.  In a Stravinsky ballet, that’s what’s important.  The music can be so erratic that it’s easy to get lost at least once or twice.

San Francisco Balllet in Wheeldon's Within the Golden Hour (© Erik Tomasson)

Within the Golden Hour was sandwiched deliciously in between Violin Concerto and West Side Story Suite.  I performed the corps role I helped create for the New Works Festival last year and had the opportunity to perform a lead pas de deux, as well.  I had a lot of fun with both parts this time, mostly because we had preformed this ballet so much by that point that I was able to relax in to them a bit more.  I found time to explore new movements and feeling onstage, which is always fun.  I feel like I was able to expand on both roles and really see how far I could take them.  Finally, there was West Side Story Suite which is just fun.  There are no pointe shoes and no stressful balances or pirouettes; the scariest part for me was the singing.  I had a ball getting to play a mean-tempered Jet girl in “Cool”, crouching down low to the floor, looking spiteful and screaming at the top of my lungs in the opera house (which by the way, is something I thought I would never do).

We are performing our final two programs of the season right now.

Bye for now, more later.

Tags: Elana Altman, Gala, Lily Rogers, Mark Morris, Nutcracker, Stravinsky Violin Concerto, Swan Lake, The Four Temperaments, West Side Story Suite, Within the Golden Hour