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Tamara Rojo named new Artistic Director of San Francisco Ballet


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On 1/18/2022 at 1:28 AM, Drew said:

I was mildly surprised by this announcement, but fact is, she could have been the fairy godmother of ENB rather than its Director and still wanted to see what she could do someplace else. (And that's without the impact of the pandemic--which has caused a lot of people to rethink what they want/need from life.)

It doesn't odd to me that almost any artistic director would want the San Francisco job. Vis-a-vis ENB, it is a slightly larger company which, for starters, may appeal to her. (These are delicate matters, but I'd have thought it's slightly more prestigious internationally as well though presumably not in the UK).  And as you mentioned,  ENB has to tour throughout the UK--that's their raison-d'être--and the touring may also mean there is a limit to the kind of development of new repertory that interests Rojo. I suppose it may be she has been promised resources in San Francisco she doesn't have at ENB, though I agree with what was said above about her needing to learn a new donor community.  And yes, one suspects San Francisco's audiences' apparent openness to new repertory appealed to her as well...

Drew - I believe most UK ballet-watchers would think that SFB is a more prestigious company than ENB.

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ENB suffers from being in the same city as Royal Ballet.  It "feels" to me the way Joffrey Ballet was in relationship to the older twins, NYCB and ABT, when it was located in NY.  

It's really too bad that ENB hasn't been able to do the local tours, because being the touring company exposes many people to it and is an opportunity to define ballet where they tour.

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Some interesting quotes from Roslyn Sulcas' New York Times article, San Francisco Ballet Appoints Tamara Rojo to Artistic Director:

"Since Tomasson’s arrival in 1985, the company has commissioned around 195 new ballets, and established an international reputation for stylistic versatility and technical aplomb."

“Helgi brought exquisite taste, an adventurous spirit, a willingness to take risks and an ability to solve problems of all kinds, to San Francisco Ballet,” said Sunnie Evers, the co-chair with Fran Streets of the search committee, and the co-chair of the company’s board. “Finding someone to fill his shoes was a daunting prospect.”

'Evers said that the committee had been committed to a global search that was “inclusive in terms of ethnicity and gender, and people who weren’t necessarily standard candidates.” Over 200 candidates were contacted when they began the process in February, she said, with the list narrowed to eight by July. “We had three people of color and three women in that round,” she said. “There is a lot of talk about ballet being dominated by white men, so I am thrilled we were not.”'

"...Tomasson will program the 2022-23 season, including a festival of new choreography"

>> That's more information on the hiring process than I've seen from SFB, that's for sure. 195 new ballets is, well, impressive. I had no idea it was that many - even given the number of years Tomasson was A.D. I'd love to know more about that global search. Sounds like they did the necessary hard work. It's just interesting that Tomasson is actually the one slated to program the 2023 season ( I guess I thought there would be more of a shared input). I wonder if that means it may be a while before there is any real change in the artist ranks?
 

And from Margaret Fuhrer's recent Do Men Still Rule Ballet? Let Us Count the Ways article:

"On Jan. 11, San Francisco Ballet named Tamara Rojo — the international star who has commissioned more than 40 works by women during her decade leading English National Ballet — its new artistic director."

>> 40 new works by women is impressive.

Edited by pherank
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ENB directors have largely ignored the body of work that former directors have introduced.  To her credit Ms Rojo continued with Manon and Le Jeune Homme et la Mort brought in by Wayne Eagling.  I think only Etudes has endured through the years but with no set to speak of I imagine it is cheap to revive.

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1 hour ago, volcanohunter said:

Not all ballets are keepers. But I wonder how many of Tomasson's 195 commissions are still being performed.

Exactly. If you can count on one hand the number of commissions that have gained a permanent toehold in repertory, then the 195 number becomes a meaningless statistic. The dancers who danced in the commissions originally may have enjoyed the experiences but, ultimately, history will judge based on how many of those works survived in the San Francisco Ballet's repertory and spread beyond it.

(I wouldn't count Tomasson's own works as 'commissions'. It doesn't matter what bucket you place them in, though. I don't think they will prove any more lasting than Lew Christensen and Michael Smuin's works did.) 

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"If you can count on one hand the number of commissions that have gained a permanent toehold in repertory, then the 195 number becomes a meaningless statistic"

Not meaningless: The creation and performance of new works is the living practice of the art form - it's not some kind of unfortunate aberration. Of the thousands of paintings appearing in fine art galleries around the world each year, how many will be considered master works and gain any notice over the years? Music and book releases are no different. What percentage of films released each year are 'box office' hits, and what do box office and streaming receipts have to do with the art of cinema?

Dancers dance, choreographers create dances. As long as they're able to keep working, we have an art form - even with no audience. The economics of ballet are not the artistic aspect of ballet. We can point out that there are only a few 'hits' or iconic works that survive over the decades/centuries, but that is only a portion of what transpires in ballet.

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Many of Tomasson's commissions were parts of festivals which are done in relatively large batches and would have less sticking power than say a single ballet by a well known choreographer during a season. 

Loipa Araujo was a member of Roland Petit's company (Wikipedia says she was an "important muse" for him). so she presumably knew his aethetic well and how to stage "Le Jeune Homme et la Mort," which might have been a factor in it being kept in ENB's repertory.

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1 hour ago, pherank said:

"If you can count on one hand the number of commissions that have gained a permanent toehold in repertory, then the 195 number becomes a meaningless statistic"

Not meaningless: The creation and performance of new works is the living practice of the art form - it's not some kind of unfortunate aberration.

By this standard, would Helgi Tomasson's old company, the Harkness Ballet, be considered a meaningful one and Rebekah Harkness be considered a successful company director? Rebekah Harkness commissioned plenty of new works but those works (and the company itself) disappeared without a trace. The same could be said for the Lew Christensen-Michael Smuin iteration of the San Francisco Ballet.

So, did the art form benefit from these failed experiments or not? I would say 'no' because they neither produced lasting new repertory nor performed the canonic works to a high standard (the latter of which could be said of Tomasson's San Francisco Ballet). But I think this is an area where we'll just have to agree to disagree.  

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If the artists and staff had memorable and fulfilling careers, and their audiences were engaged and had good memories of attending the ballet, yes, of course it had meaning, and was 'meaningful' in their lives.

"So, did the art form benefit from these failed experiments or not?"

First of all, they weren't 'experiments' - it was just the business of creating a performance art known as ballet (or contemporary dance when that was more of the case) on a daily basis. Even the smallest companies rely upon new works/new choreography to flesh out their offerings each season. That's how young choreographers get started and the dancers love to be created on. But the 'benefit' is in the practice of the art form and all the relationships created in the process of working together - it's a rich experience for the practitioners. And plainly, the art form changes constantly with each generation's contributions. Whether an audience member appreciates the developments is another matter. I'm wondering what possible benefit there could be to telling aspiring ballet dancers (or choreographers) that if they don't produce lasting new repertory or perform canonic works to a high standard (whose standard?) that their time will have been wasted. Sorry, that's no way to learn about and practice an art form.

Just ask someone who has finished the performance part of their career - ask Vanessa Zahorian if she experienced any benefit to the art form in her years at SFB. She would likely find it a bizarre question.

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1 hour ago, pherank said:

First of all, they weren't 'experiments' - it was just the business of creating a performance art known as ballet (or contemporary dance when that was more of the case) on a daily basis.

Yes and no.  While there are benefits to the dancers to work with choreographers on new work, at least those who are respectful in the studio and takes their health/workload into consideration, every AD I've heard speak has talked about commissions being experiments, particularly when they either give the choreographer a lot of leeway in what the "what" is, and when the choreographer either says they want to do go in another direction, or they say nothing (like Robbins with Watermill), or they take on something like a full-length, or a closer, or are paired with a composer where the music has yet to be written, none of which they've done before.

If an AD orders up a "typical [Choreographer X]" ballet, and that's what the company gets, or if there's a resident choreographer who is creating the type of ballets they've done before -- and Balanchine was often in this category, however genius his output, as was Robbins when he choreographed his third vs. his first Chopin ballet -- or the choreographer's output is consistently the same, then the experimental value goes down.  I haven't seen any of Tomasson's most recent work, but I did for years, and I can't say I was surprised by them, or by Justin Peck's, although he's early in his career.  In his early choreographic career, ever work by him was an experiment, using different composers, from classical to contemporary, and a pretty wide range of styles, from his Magic Flute for SAB (later performed on the mainstage), to A Schubertiade, to Tango Tango, to Calcium Light Night, to Songs of the Auvergne, etc.

I'm not sure what the question to Zahorian would be, because different dancers would have different answers to the question of whether they wanted to dance new work or work with outside choreographers.  Some prefer the classics to new works and/or reconstructions of the classics, which is not specific to San Francisco Ballet to anyone who has their eyes open about what SFB's rep is, but has applied to dancers at ABT, Paris Opera Ballet (which has a famous split between classics and contemporary, and dancers who never became etoiles, because they didn't dance both), the Bolshoi Ballet, the Mariinsky Ballet, Plisetskaya's company in Spain, until it was turned into a contemporary company.   A dancer who joined NYCB to dance Balanchine and Robbins might not have been enamoured of the rep that came after them.  A dancer who joined a company run by a former NYCB dancer might be disappointed by shrinking Balanchine rep at those companies.

Zahorian might answer that it was a great benefit to do new work.  She might have given a different answer at 20 than at 35.  But, as Melanie Griffiths' character said to Alex Baldwin's character in the movie Working Girl, after he proposed to her, "If you want a different answer, ask a different girl." :)

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43 minutes ago, Helene said:

Yes and no.

You're talking specifically about new choreography but I was actually referring to Miliosr's comment about whether or not companies like the Harkness Ballet and SFB could be considered "meaningful". There's a lot more to this than choreography, and I don't see these companies as being mere experiments. Sorry for the confusion.

EDIT: New work can be described as an experiment I suppose, but that's just creation. It doesn't have to fall under the rubric of experimentation necessarily.

Edited by pherank
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58 minutes ago, pherank said:

You're talking specifically about new choreography but I was actually referring to Miliosr's comment about whether or not companies like the Harkness Ballet and SFB could be considered "meaningful". There's a lot more to this than choreography, and I don't see these companies as being mere experiments. Sorry for the confusion.

I understood the question as the experiments being the constant stream of new works that didn't survive, so were the companies -- Harkness, SFB before Tomasson -- meaningful.

The Christensens were proponents of American ballet and choreographers.  They were doing ballets on subjects that Lincoln Kirstein was constantly trying to cook up.  Similarly, Royal Winnipeg Ballet was dancing and touring choreography in its early years about Canadians, not Princes and swans.  The main difference between them and Harkness Ballet was that SFB and RWB survived as institutions, while Harkness Ballet didn't, even though little of the originators' ballets, or even the types of ballets they did, survive.  (Although the Christensen Nutcracker was performed at least until they closed War Memorial in the late '90's; I saw one of the last performances before the closure, and since Tomasson's Nutcracker premiered in 2004, according to the SFB site, it must have been performed a few years after the re-opening.)  They're around, they continue to do new work, but new work that the reason they've survived?

There are so many times that all of the companies that led to NYCB and NYCB itself were hanging by strings and could have fallen over cliff and gone under, and with it, a lot of the recordings of Balanchine's work, almost all, if not all, of the Robbins ballet rep, the Ford Foundation grant that is attributed to having established Balanchine institutionally, a State Theater built for ballet, not Broadway, the Stravinsky Festivals, etc, etc.  Balanchine considered decamping to Europe multiple times, and who knows what works earlier works would have been saved, although I don't think there's much doubt that whatever he might have created elsewhere would have been part of a genius legacy.  ETA: But if NYCB didn't survive past 1950, I don't know how it would be looked at now.

 

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Helene - Can you clarify what you're referring to when you say "But if NYCB didn't survive past 1950, I don't know how it would be looked at now." Do you mean the company or the works? Assume you mean how the company would be viewed this many years after its demise.

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In the context of what makes a company meaningful, would NYCB have been considered meaningful if it had folded in 1950, about the same life span as the longest of the other Balanchine- and Kirstein-affiliated companies until then?  Would Balanchine be known in Amercia as the film and Broadway choreographer who made a few ballets, instead of the choreographer of Concerto Barocco, Symphony in C, Orpheus, and Four T's, if they were no longer danced in sight?  Would it have been a European company for whom Balanchine made his ballets and would have become the keeper of his legacy, and would that have dissipated when the local or federal sponsor of that company decided it was too old-fashioned and they wanted Nacho Duato's work instead, and there wasn't an performing institution behind it, however we might feel about how NYCB has handled that legacy?

Surely that would have changed the trajectory, if not existance, of Pennsylvania Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Ballet Arizona, Miami City Ballet, and Pacific Northwest Balleet for starters, since the "Children of Balanchine" who led them wouldn't have been born.

 

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On 1/22/2022 at 3:06 AM, pherank said:


 

And from Margaret Fuhrer's recent Do Men Still Rule Ballet? Let Us Count the Ways article:

"On Jan. 11, San Francisco Ballet named Tamara Rojo — the international star who has commissioned more than 40 works by women during her decade leading English National Ballet — its new artistic director."

>> 40 new works by women is impressive.

I think the way this is worded makes it sound as though she commissioned 40 works by women, but I believe it is more accurate that there are 40 works choreographed by women in the repertoire of ENB. From "The Guardian:" "The acclaimed dancer – who has introduced groundbreaking works into the ENB’s repertoire, including more than 40 works choreographed by women – will step down in late 2022 to take up the role of artistic director at San Francisco Ballet, where her husband, Isaac Hernández, was recently appointed a principal dancer." I am trying to verify this. Maybe someone more familiar with the company can, but 40 seems a pretty high number for her tenure.

Also, somewhere earlier in this thread, it spoke of her saying she never "poached" dancers, I believe there were several she invited as "guest artists" and they ended up joining the company. I am sure there are others, but those that come to mind are Jurgita Dronina, Jeffrey Cirio, Gabriele Frola, and Emma Hawes.

 

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Les Ballets 1933 was in most respects a failure--but it was also an important artistic event that (I think) impacted the trajectory of ballet history from the use of baby ballerinas to Balanchine's future commitments and even future works....some of which got a first try out with this company. I'm glad it happened.  Institutionally it was a blip on the ballet history radar or barely. I'm not saying I put the Harkness in the same category, but note that at least there is still a Harkness Foundation supporting dancers.

Some companies (not referring to any in particular here) can also be important for the audiences they bring to ballet even if they don't dance Swan Lake at standard of the Mariinsky or have major new rep.

Edited by Drew
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13 minutes ago, Drew said:

Les Ballets 1933 was in most respects a failure--but it was also an important artistic event that (I think) impacted the trajectory of ballet history from the use of baby ballerinas to Balanchine's future commitments and even future works....some of which got a first try out with this company.

And who knows what Les Ballets 1933 would have become if it had saved Edward James and Tilly Losch's marriage (from Taper's Balanchine bio)?  Balanchine may never have come to the US.  And if Lifar hadn't been such a snake, Balanchine may never have come to the US (although I can't imagine him having lasted long with French bureaucracy at Paris Opera Ballet).

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1 hour ago, its the mom said:

I believe there were several she invited as "guest artists" and they ended up joining the company. I am sure there are others, but those that come to mind are Jurgita Dronina, Jeffrey Cirio, Gabriele Frola, and Emma Hawes.

It's not unreasonable for dancers to want to "test drive" a company before moving. In the case of Dronina and Frola, they initially maintained dual allegiance to the National Ballet of Canada. And you can understand why Dronina might have been somewhat frustrated in Toronto. For example, James Kudelka declined to cast her in his (horrid) Swan Lake, while ENB gave her Odette-Odile. When Covid and quarantine restrictions made a trans-Atlantic career impractical, Dronina opted for Toronto; no doubt she had to consider what was best for her family. Frola severed ties with Toronto and chose London. A number of dancers have left the National Ballet of Canada in recent years, so Dronina, Frola and Hawes were not alone in seeking greener pastures.

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The first Mozartiana and the Seven Deadly Sins came out of Ballets 1933, and who knows what else from Balanchine's choreography for Schubert Wanderer and Beethoven waltzes.

Ballets Suédois, with its dazzling visual design, was a company that left its mark on the scene. (There's a beautiful, not too expensive Abrams book on their work – costumes, sets, still from productions available at through ABE.). And at the same time Picabia was doing Ballets Suédois sets, 1924, Picasso designed Mercure for Soirées de Paris, whose nightmarish starry effects show up again in Stedelijk's Still Live with a Mandolin.

Gonzalo Garcia, who trained at San Francisco Ballet and became a leading principal, /// left suddenly for City Ballet at the end of the 2007 season. It was the first time I heard the term "poached" associated with a dancer. Leaving suddenly for another company like that made an awkward situation when Garcia came back to dance at Tina LeBlanc's farewell and shared the stage with Helgi Tomasson to whom he seemed invisible– or so it looked from the audience. 

[Modify to reflect Helene's comment]

 

 

Edited by Quiggin
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To me, "poaching" is when an AD, themself or through a proxy, contacts a dancer in another company about joining that company, and I don't remember reading that Martins approached Garcia.  I don't think it's poaching when a dancer contacts a company, or if a dancer's BFF or mentor hears about a potential opening in a company and suggests they contact the company/audition for a spot.  An AD who has no dancers who want to be taken with them to their new company, whether or not the AD can/wants to and however impractical, is likely a questionable hire for the new company.

Dancers have different reasons for leaving their companies, and some of them are personal, for example, to be reunited with a spouse/partner after a long-distance relationship, or, like Miranda Weese, who wanted to finish her dancing career with a company whose schedule wasn't as physically demanding as NYCB's. And all guesting creates a risk that the dancer will want to stay, which can be just as much of a surprise to a dancer, who wasn't really looking for chance but found an opportunity.  Those who "test drive" to see whether they really want what they wished for are learning something important for both themselves and the company.

 

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3 hours ago, Helene said:

To me, "poaching" is when an AD, themself or through a proxy, contacts a dancer in another company about joining that company, and I don't remember reading that Martins approached Garcia.

I should adjust my comment then. I remember that characterization among audience members at the time but also there were other scenarios that I realize now didn't square. In general there may be subtle, under the radar ways of letting dancers know they "would always" be welcome at another company.

Edited by Quiggin
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The Times of London posted a short article on Isaac Hernandez -

Isaac Hernández: Why I’m leaving English National Ballet
The Mexican star never expected to stay in London, find fame and start a family

'Hernández repeats how lucky they are to be making the move as a family. When Rojo was interviewing for the new role he auditioned, having previously danced for the company from 2008 to 2012 under its outgoing director Helgi Tómasson. “It was a gamble because we were not sure if Tamara would get the position, but we wanted to be as transparent as possible.”'

This part was funny:
"Rojo is worried Mateo will have an American accent and they plan to keep their home in London, but Hernández is looking forward to being closer to his family in Mexico. His brother also dances with San Francisco Ballet and their friends in California include Miriam and Nick Clegg."

Good luck with that accent thing. I'm not sure it matters that they are friends with Facebook executive Nick Clegg (or, Sir Nicholas Clegg). But I guess that's supposed to demonstrate that Rojo and Hernandez are in with the movers and shakers of the Bay Area, and London. For some reason that makes me feel more queasy than hopeful, but there you have it, folks.

Edited by pherank
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