Fall brings us dance old and new, from modern masters and contemporary innovators, plus, because no season would be complete without a ballet about waterfowl, one of the great Swan Lakes. There isn’t a lot of dance this fall, at least not compared to the spring, but what there is, to paraphrase Spencer Tracy, is choice.
Smuin Ballet’s Cold Virtues
Smuin Ballet presents choreographer Adam Hougland’s Cold Virtues (2003), set to music by Philip Glass, as well as three eclectic repertory works by the late Michael Smuin. A real highlight this season for the company is bringing back Trey Mcintyre's work Oh, Inverted World, that was just performed to sold-out houses in New York City last month. Smuin's season opens Oct. 5 at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco and journeys on to Walnut Creek, Carmel, and Mountain View in ensuing months.
Smuin Ballet Fall Program, Oct. 5–14, Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco, $25–$65, (415) 912-1899.
Mariinsky Ballet’s Swan Lake, Cal Performances
The Kirov Ballet, based in St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad), has reverted to calling itself the Mariinsky Ballet, but its Swan Lake, choreographed in 1950 by Konstantin Sergeyev and based, of course, on the 1895 Petipa/Ivanov version, prevails, uninterrupted by the vagaries of history. Cal Performances hosts the exquisite birds Oct. 10–14 and — with the Mariinsky Orchestra conducted by the peripatetic maestro Mikhail Agrest — the Tchaikovsky masterpiece for six performances at Zellerbach Hall. The flock of Odettes/Odiles flying west, listed on Cal Performances’ website, may be glimpsed, tantalizingly, on YouTube. Casting will be announced later. There will also be plenty of marvelous Prince Siegfrieds, but you’re not coming to see them — or are you?
Mariinsky Ballet’s Swan Lake, Oct. 10–14, Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley, $30–$175, (510) 642-9988.
Akram Khan’s Vertical Road, Mondavi Center
The much-honored British choreographer Akram Khan, whose piece for the London Olympics’ opening ceremony was unceremoniously cut from NBC’s televised coverage, brings his 2010 Vertical Road, a 70-minute dance set to a commissioned score by Nitin Sawhney, to the Mondavi Center at UC Davis, on Oct. 12. Khan, who credits his international brigade of dancers as collaborators, drew inspiration from Sufism and the Persian poet and mystic Rumi. It’s a chance, we hope, to see what we missed.
Akram Khan Company, Oct. 12, 8 p.m., Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts, UC Davis, $25–$55, (866) 754-2787.
Russell Maliphant Company, San Francisco Performances
At Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ Lam Research Theater (quite a mouthful, even after Novellus), San Francisco Performances presents British choreographer Russell Maliphant Oct. 13 and 14. His evening-length After Light, a meditation on the artistry and influence of Vaslav Nijinsky, touches on Nijinsky’s role as one of classical ballet’s greatest dancers, as well as the breakaway invention of his hotly controversial Afternoon of a Faun. It makes for a nice parallel with Maliphant’s training at the Royal Ballet School, his performances with Sadler’s Wells, and, by contrast, his work with the adventurous DV8 Physical Theater.
Russell Maliphant Company, Oct. 13, 8 p.m.; Oct. 14, 2 p.m., $35–$50, (415) 978-2787.
Margaret Jenkins, Time Bones
Margaret Jenkins, whose troupe and work has been part of San Francisco’s DNA since the 1970s, presents four performances at the San Francisco JCC’s Kanbar Hall, Oct. 18–21, with dances from the company repertory as well as a preview of the new Time Bones, which she created with her eight dancers. Set to a score by Paul Dresher, it premieres in 2013 as part of the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company’s 40th anniversary season.
Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, Oct. 18–20, 8 p.m.; Oct. 21, 7 p.m., Kanbar Hall, San Francisco Jewish Community Center, $20–$31, (415) 292-1233.
Alonzo King LINES Ballet
Swinging into Yerba Buena Center’s Lam Research Theater for its annual season Oct. 19–28 is Alonzo King LINES Ballet, kicking off a 30th-birthday year. Visual artist Jim Campbell, with whom the troupe collaborated last year on Exploded Views (a well-received work for San Francisco Museum of Modern Art), returns for another collaboration with the dancers. Campbell works with electronic memory and prerecorded images, and the new piece promises to include hundreds of light-emitting diode (LED) spheres, controlled by computers.
Alonzo King LINES Ballet, Oct. 14–23, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Lam Research Theater, $25–$65, (415) 978-2787.
Here and There …
Things seem pretty quiet down on the The Farm. Stanford holds its horses as it prepares to open the Bing Concert Hall in January, so it’s nice, dance-wise, that the Bears (via Cal Performances) are picking up the slack.
Fall also brings back the work of postmodern legend Lucinda Childs, whose choreography is integral to Philip Glass and Robert Wilson’s Einstein on the Beach, with its revival tour coming to Cal Performances Oct. 26–28. Childs no longer performs, but they certainly couldn’t bring the opera back without her.
Other not-surprising holiday notes: San Francisco Ballet waits out opera season and opens its wonderful Nutcracker in December. And Smuin Ballet uncorks The Christmas Ballet, with new dances added, Nov. 23–Dec. 24, circuiting to San Francisco, Livermore, Mountain View, and Carmel.
And this is the spot to mention the return of Mark Morris’ lovely and sidesplitting The Hard Nut, that biennial Bay Area holiday staple, to Zellerbach Hall Dec. 14–23.