Photos by Erik Tomasson
Yuri Possokhov’s The Rite of Spring for the San Francisco Ballet is different from all other Rites, of which there are at least 150. Set to the Stravinsky score, which turns 100 on May 29, and played by a tremendous, terrific orchestra conducted by Musical Director Martin West at its premiere Tuesday night, resident choreographer Possokhov’s ballet is not to be missed.
Possokhov has said that as a Russian he was, inevitably, exposed to choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky and The Rite of Spring, as well as to the folklore attached to the work, adding that he tried to ignore as much of it as he could in creating his own ballet. In deciding what to include and what to leave behind, he couldn’t have done a better job; in casting his four principals, six soloists and 16 corps de ballet dancers, he chose equally well.
At the outset, we see the women, in short, gauzy dresses and pointe shoes, rolling downhill. The hill and the rest of the décor — bare, birch-like tree trunks, mostly — is the work of former dancer Benjamin Pierce; the costumes, with suggestions of flowers and plants painted on them, are by Sandra Woodall, and that hill, certainly not a Rites commonplace, is evocative of the raked stage of the Bolshoi, where Possokhov used to dance. When dancers come down the hill, their propulsive movement is accelerated. Too, of course, you never know what will come over that ridge.
The women, led by Jennifer Stahl, who will become the (untitled) chosen one, frolic among themselves, accenting the beats of the music by hammering one blocky toe-shoed foot on the floor behind them as they move. What to make of these women? They conduct themselves like naughty little girls, holding their skirts up, up over their faces to create oblong masks through which they can see while they dance on pointe. Their flesh-toned leotards and tights create an illusion of nudity as they kick exuberantly; their skinny, leggy sensuality is deliberate. It looks as if they were cast for their thinness, chosen from a company not exactly known for its avoirdupois.
Up over the hill, as if drawn by their heat, come the men, led by Luke Ingham. Muscular and bare-chested, in tights and booted like Russian folk dancers, they use their hands for percussion and sink into deep plies, grabbing the women and lifting them high so their dresses fly up. It’s all quite playful and sexy, becoming more so when the men take the dresses the women have momentarily discarded and, en masse, enact the moment from Nijinsky’s Afternoon of a Faun where the Faun makes love to the nymph’s silk scarf.
And then arrive the elders (Garen Scribner and James Sofranko), and the world darkens. Carrying two long poles, they’re bundled into one skirtlike garment, and on their torsos are skeletal human ribcages. They’re definitely monstrous, and, though wordless, grin as snarkily as this year’s Oscar host. They propel each other around the stage, as if in a boat from hell. Think of a sack race with oars, vaulting poles or pogo sticks. And try not to wonder what the red, abstract design on the front of the garment might signify.
They move as one. I recall a jolly Moiseyev Folk Dance Company number, once upon a time, with two men inside one garment, whirling each other around the floor. So there is some basis, perhaps, in Russian folkdance.
The elders are observers as the massed movement, with its leaps, lifts and exposed limbs, grows more orgiastic. The impulses and accents in this Rite are more upward, more airborne than in others. The addition of onstage percussion becomes important as, perhaps, anchor and aide-memoire. The men now have short sticks that they beat on the floor, adding gravity as the women did earlier with their toe shoes.
It’s the way Possokhov unwinds the story, the dynamism and attack ... his mastery of the rhythms and impulses of the score — and, of course, conductor West and his orchestra’s heartfelt precision — that makes this particular Rite particularly extraordinary.
The two elders, predictably, go from observers to predators. They grab the chosen woman and trap her between them in that horrible skirt. At first her friends are horrified, but the swirl of movement and intensifying noise seems to generate a hysterical complicity. As they circle the stage, each person raises a hand in the air; the hands flip down and up, like mini-engines of destruction, as the dancers leap feverishly around the floor, surrounding the elders and their victim.
As the elders stand to one side, the men of the community hoist their captive high above them, forcing her to balance as she lies across a few logs. It’s a remarkably painful-looking moment. Then they surround her, pulling her up the hill. The circle around her closes and we see slender birches being pulled inward by ropes to form a fatal circle. We’re left to only imagine what happens next as the ballet reaches its inevitable end.
So as Possokhov has said, and as the world and previous versions of The Rite of Spring have shown, this is not merely some ancient tale, but one that repeats and repeats: the singling out as if by random, the losing of the self to the mob, the ritual of sacrifice and human destruction.
It’s not new, then. But it’s the way Possokhov unwinds the story, the dynamism and attack, the nuance and modulation he achieves amid such vigorous action, his mastery of the rhythms and impulses of the score — and, of course, conductor West and his orchestra’s heartfelt precision — that makes this particular Rite particularly extraordinary. And in a stage full of great performers, the work of Stahl as the chosen one was singular in its virtuosity and commitment.
The roaring crowd at the War Memorial Opera House, rising to its feet, offered immediate proof of success. Stahl’s reward was her immediate promotion from corps de ballet (since 2006) to soloist by artistic director Helgi Tomasson.