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Smuin
Contemporary Ballet
The Christmas Ballet
Blue Shield of
California Theater at YBCA, San Francisco
December 23rd,
2019 (matinee)
This season has
been all about revisiting some of the longtime holiday dance traditions that
the Northern Californian region has to offer. And there are plenty – the
lineage here for festive choreographic programming is significant. My final
stop was at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts to take in Smuin Contemporary
Ballet’s twenty-fifth edition of The
Christmas Ballet, a revue style program that pairs numerous dance forms and
genres with jolly musical selections. Divided into two halves of short dance
musings, Classical Christmas and Cool Christmas, much enchantment and joy awaits
with every new number, many of which were choreographed by the company’s
founder Michael Smuin. A great holiday dance sampler, indeed!
Smuin Contemporary Ballet in Amy London's Still, Still, Still Photo Chris Hardy |
Because I’ve seen
this production several times (though each year is slightly different), what
follows are simply some highlights – performances and choreography that stood
out as particularly noteworthy in 2019’s iteration. With its delicate balances
and luxurious turns, Smuin’s Zither Carol
was again part of the line-up and Maggie Carey was sublime in the treasured
pointe solo – her attitude poses floated timelessly in space. Sleigh Ride, a quartet choreographed by
Amy Seiwert, had some of the best unison of the day, and managed to walk that
fine line of being technically demanding without looking too busy or fussy. A
new addition to the mix this year, Amy London’s Still, Still, Still impressed with its lyrical elegance, grand
lifts and clever incorporation of gesture. This dance for six is surely already
in the running for next season’s The
Christmas Ballet. Other returning favorites included Smuin’s hypnotically
meditative Veni, Veni Emmanuel,
interpreted by the women in the company. The walking patterns, the stage
architecture, the port de bras – everything is so pure and unencumbered, and
the result, powerful. Whimsical Celtic footwork and social dance patterns
imbued the charming The Gloucestershire
Wassail. And closing the Classical Christmas scene was Nicole Haskins’
jubilant ensemble piece Joy To The World.
Grand majesty soared from the stage in every moment of this finale, especially during
Ian Buchanan’s incredible multi-pirouette sequence.
Ben Needham-Wood in Val Caniparoli's Jingle Bells Mambo Photo David Allen |
The Christmas Ballet’s second half, Cool Christmas, is chock
full of fun, novelty and humor. And while I think that some of the vignettes
might be a bit dated and perhaps ready for retirement, the audience’s
uproarious laughter is certainly indicative of their immense enjoyment
throughout. One of the more technical dances in the act, Mengjun Chen was
impeccable in Smuin’s Drummer Boy – his
enviable ballon informing every beat, jump and leap. Jingle Bells was a popular musical option. Haskins’ J-I-N-G-L-E
Bells featured a cute reference to Swan
Lake’s famous cygnet variation and Val Caniparoli’s Jingle Bells Mambo (another stellar example of unison by Buchanan,
Ben Needham-Wood and Max van der Sterre) brought the rarely seen Italian
changement to the stage. But by far what I look most forward to in this act is
the percussive dance. Some years it appears more prominently than in others,
and this year it had a strong presence. There was the waltz clog in Droopy Little Christmas Tree, Tessa Barbour’s
rhythm tap solo (with terrific toe stands) in Bells of Dublin and a new, endearing tap duet, created by Barbour
to It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like
Christmas. Danced by Carey and Cassidy Isaacson, its old-school tap
vocabulary of back walks, time steps, essences and riffs was both winsome and
nostalgic.