Since 2006, Napa Valley’s Festival del Sole has lured the likes of Joshua Bell and the Russian National Orchestra to wine country in the summer months for an orgy of the tasteful high life: the world’s finest musicians paired with the region’s best wines, enjoyed between meals at the area’s architecturally exquisite estates, vineyard strolls, and test drives of the Bentleys parked on display. On Friday, thanks to the sponsorship of Dede Wilsey, the festival added ballet to its pleasures, with tremendous success. “Stars of American and Russian Ballet” sold out Yountville’s Lincoln Theater, which has a passable stage for dance with good sightlines. And though I could quibble over the canned music and the tinny sound system, there was no room for complaint over the lineup. These were dancers as carefully cultivated and stylistically nuanced as any vintage sauvignon blanc, well sampled in the program’s small sips.
The biggest attraction for me was New York City Ballet’s Megan Fairchild and Andrew Veyette, who proved to be the evening’s high point. The pas de deux from George Balanchine’s plucky Stars and Stripes, with its rousing John Philip Sousa marches, is always a crowd-pleaser, but Fairchild’s interpretation is unsurpassed.
Short and muscular, she flew through the grand allegro jumps with airborne attack, while imbuing her shoulders with sweet swooning to match the wistful trumpet melody. In his military captain’s epaulettes and hat, Veyette showed off an impressive elevation that seemed to come with no preparation — he was especially boggling in the toy-soldier-like jumps, pulling both feet up under him at the jump’s peak. The two sweethearts’ teasing interplay, while perfectly timed, also seemed perfectly spontaneous. They were everything Balanchine dancers should be: athletic, space-devouring, and jazzy. And though Petipa’s Swan Lake is not their stylistic heritage, they also delivered a confident take on the Act 1 white swan pas de deux, one more notable for strength than lyricism.
Clever in Contemporary Works
Russian by birth and training but now principals at American Ballet Theatre, married partners Irina Dvorovenko and Maxim Beloserkovsky played down their virtuosity in the evening’s most interesting contemporary pieces. The two were sleek in matching pantsuits for the unison sharp modern lines of Anatoliy Beliy’s version of Carmen. And they were a high-fashion vision in Jessica Lang’s Splendid Isolation III, to Massenet’s Meditation from Thaïs, Dvorovenko striking Dior-worthy poses in a white dress with a moatlike pooling skirt, with Beloserkovsky, underwear-clad, yearning for her at the edges. The two also turned in a playful rendition of the main pas de deux from Balanchine’s eternally contemporary Apollo, Dvorovenko flirty as the chosen muse and Beloserkovsky as the classical tall blond god.
Fellow Russians Marianna Ryzkhina and Gennadi Saveliev, of the Bolshoi Ballet, were the evening’s weaker spot. Their first selection, from Raymonda, had him wielding a cumbersome cape and her showing off her exquisite length — neck, legs, everything — without really dancing. Then as Giselle, from that ballet’s second act pas de deux, she played the dead girl who returns as a ghost with funereal droop.
But San Francisco Ballet principals Lorena Feijoo and Vitor Luiz were all powerhouse fire. William Forsythe’s sexy slam-bam in the middle somewhat elevated served as a warm-up — the crashing electronic score needs to be played much louder, as it is at the War Memorial Opera House, to occasional patron complaints. (It should assault the ears.) And this role is usually danced by a leggy ballerina who can wield a thigh like a two-by-four.
Still, the two products of Cuban training were top-drawer in the final pas de deux from Don Quixote, and Friday they brought the audience to their feet. Feijoo was light and sassy in her shoulder-swishing variation, while Luiz cleaned up the coda with a crazy jackknife twisting jump that seemed to court spinal-cord injuries — you had to wonder if S.F. Ballet artistic director Helgi Tomasson, spotted in the audience, was as excited as the rest of the patrons to see one of his star principals do something that dangerous. Feijoo sailed through her fouette turns, snapping open her Spanish fan on the doubles.
The two were as sparkling as a glass of bubbly from Domaine Chandon, just down the street. For future Festival del Sole dance galas, may I suggest live music, perhaps from one of the festival’s star soloists, an outdoor stage at a vineyard, and wine poured freely while you watch? Or is that much luxury at once liable to kill those of us not in the market for a Bentley? I’d take my chances.