Photo by Erik Tomasson
Well into its 17-day engagement at Théâtre du Châtelet, featured in Les Etés de la Danse Festival, the San Francisco Ballet is acclaimed in the press.
The company was the first visitor to Paris when the new festival began, and it has been invited to mark the 10th anniversary of the event, which has been successful in meeting the demand for live dance in a month when supposedly "everybody leaves Paris."
With the gala opener and 16 programs, each featuring a different triple bill — 18 pieces by 12 choreographers — SFB is called "a treat indeed for Paris audiences," by ArtsDesk.com:
... a critic’s dream: They have company dancers of extraordinary quality trained to uncompromising standards of excellence, world-class principals, and a gifted artistic director (Helgi Tomasson), who combines strong heritage programming with a very lively commitment to new works.
Hanna Weibye's review continues:
Maria Kochetkova is a Bolshoi-trained little gem, performing every step with flawless precision and the ghost of a soubrette’s smile. Yuan Yuan Tan, another of the company’s top women, is a dancer of breathtaking physical perfection, whose smooth, flowing lines could have been tailored in a Christian Dior couture atelier.Most of what these two do in Caprice with their partners, Davit Karapetyan and Luke Ingham, looks great — but that’s more to their credit than the Tomasson’s. After all, Tan probably looks this great taking the bins out; Kochetkova will be this precise in the most boring of class exercises. With only occasional, fleeting moments of emotion or sparky innovation, Tomasson’s sometimes over-fiddly partnering and its accompanying, rather bland music, Saint-Saëns' Second Symphony, left me desperate to see something like William Forsythe — nourishment for brain or heart, as well as eyes.
Sarah Crompton says in The Telegraph: "the company looked light, sharp, and totally at home."