On Saturday afternoon, San Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House was abuzz with festivity, colorful banners and voluminous silk flower bundles hanging from up above, little wrought-iron cocktail tables set amid the throng of patrons, lending to the feeling that we’d all headed south of the border for the afternoon. Welcome to Dos Mujeres, San Francisco Ballet’s sixth program, within a season artistic director Tamara Rojo has vowed to make memorable. Dos Mujeres, in particular, is close to her heart: it’s the company’s first double-bill program to feature Latina choreographers. And the celebrating, it was clear, had already started.
Cuban-born Arielle Smith’s world premiere of Carmen, set to a jazz-influenced score by Grammy-winning composer Arturo O’Farrill, started off the performance. Snippets of Bizet’s original opera score appear in the opening overture, and likewise, Smith’s ballet draws bits from the original opera. It’s set in Cuba, not Spain; Carmen is the daughter of a restaurant owner, not a tobacco-factory worker, and the love interest that comes between Carmen and her husband is a female chef named Escamillo. Carmen, danced by Jasmine Jimison on Saturday afternoon, is still strong-minded and feisty, but also in search of meaning and identity in her life.
Following her mother’s death, Carmen returns to the family restaurant. Once there, she decides, to the dismay of her husband Don José (Esteban Hernández), to stay and help her father, Gilberto (Myles Thatcher), run the place. Levity arises after a “help wanted” sign produces applicants, dancers from the nine-member ensemble who each take turns revealing their distinctive “skill” through eclectic choreography. It’s hilarious: whirling, bendy bodies, erratic head bobbles, arms going wacky, an oasis of fun in an otherwise somber ballet.
Sasha Mukhamedov danced a deliciously memorable solo as Escamillo the chef, that could almost be called “pas de deux with a kitchen knife”. With her sinuous, seductive moves and skills with the knife, she’s instantly hired, and almost immediately, passion ignites between her and Carmen. From then on, the ballet delivers a lot of angst, jealousy and sexually charged glances. Some great dancing arises, particularly a pas de quatre – really more like two tandem pas de deux – where Gilberto, Escamillo, Carmen and Don José couple, uncouple, switch partners, revealing the story’s central conflict in a more nuanced fashion. But the ballet’s intention to demonstrate Carmen’s personal liberation seemed to fall flat, as did a muddled conclusion that posed more questions than it answered.
The program’s second ballet, the North American premiere of Annabel Lopez Ochoa’s Broken Wings, draws its story from the life and art of Frida Kahlo. Created in 2015 for English National Ballet, it’s wildly colorful and imaginative, visually and kinetically. No movement feels derivative. The scenery is sparse and economical. (Dieuweke van Reij designed both scenery and costumes.) A ten-foot black box dominates the stage, opening and closing to reveal various sets: a hospital bed; Frida’s journal; a blood-smeared room that speaks of terrible loss.
Nikisha Fogo, dancing as Frida on Saturday afternoon, was compelling in all ways, almost constantly on the move through the 48-minute ballet. Composer Peter Salem’s musical score, complete with mariachi and Mexican folk music, switched moods and instruments frequently to reflect pathos, gaiety, bliss, loss, contemplation, as integral a part of the story as the set and costumes. A pas de deux set to “La Llorona” a recording sung by Chavela Vargas was top notch, as Frida’s romantic interest and future husband, Diego Rivera (Nathaniel Remez, eerily transformed into an ageing, heavy-set man in a rumpled business suit) spun, lifted and wooed her.
The ballet begins with Frida as a playful schoolgirl whose lighthearted world is shattered by a devastating bus accident that crushes her bones, leaving her bedridden for a year. During this time we observe the birth of her world of imagination, the solace her art provides, producing vivid colors and flowers, birds, leaf women, skeletons. The latter remain onstage throughout, sometimes menacing, or protective, and other times just plain fun. Then there are the wonderfully creative “Frida Men” who appear onstage like something out of a dream, a representation of different versions of Kahlo in her self-portraits, a line of ten male Fridas fluidly skimming across the stage, wearing voluminous skirts of varying vivid colors, matching headdresses, performing a unison dance that nearly steals the show. Except, there was Nikisha Fogo’s Frida, dancing her heart out, baring her soul for all to see, as she struggled through a stormy marriage, infidelities, a miscarriage, constant physical pain, all amid a continued output of creativity and art. The ballet’s ending breaks the heart, even as it fills it with glorious buoyancy.
This is a ballet you’ll want to see again and again, one that illuminates, empowers and soars.
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