Smuin Contemporary Ballet opened its silver anniversary season on Friday, September 21, and founder Michael Smuin would surely be proud of what his namesake company has achieved since his sudden death in 2007. Former company dancer Celia Fushille took the helm and she steered the company away from the shoal and into the future while maintaining its philosophy of accessibility and unassuming goodwill.
The advantage of Smuin’s approach is a high level of dancer artistry and an inviting theatrical style. At risk is the rather narrow lineup that marked the otherwise celebratory “Dance Series 01,” a six-work bill seen on the Saturday, Sept. 22 matinee at the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek.
Michael Smuin’s latest work, “Schubert Scherzo” from 2007, opened the show. The dynamic Balanchinese neoclassical ballet for five couples features numerous lifts, throwns and couple pirouettes, and a searing ending (Emmy and Tony winner Smuin, who preceded Helgi Tomasson as artistic director of the San Francisco Ballet, was a showman at heart). The delight that principal dancers Terez Dean and Ben Needham-Wood have in each other has given the work effervescence and heart.
“Schubert” was juxtaposed with “Eternal Idol,” a 1969 work by Smuin inspired by Rodin’s sculptures. A couple in naked bodysuits lie down on a rock, then wake up and perform a sensual duet on Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in F minor. Exulting in new flesh sensations, Erica Felsch and Peter Kurta were mesmerizing Age of Aquarius.
Three dancers made their choreographic debut on the main stage with works incubated as part of Smuin’s choreographic showcase. Rex Wheeler’s “Sinfonietta,” named after its Boris Tchaikovsky score, and Nicole Haskins’ power-pop “Merely Players” were firmly in Smuin’s way: updated versions of neoclassical ballet, with five-couple structures and insinuating smiles.
Both works revealed more as they progressed. Alysia Chang’s energetic phrasing and fluidity brought out the potential of Wheeler’s second adagio section. Haskins’ closing duet, danced by Chang and Mengjun Chen to Bon Iver’s song “Flume,” weaved imaginative movement into the music.
In his “Echo”, on a piano score by Nicholas Britell, Needham-Wood explored the myth of Echo and Narcissus. The idea isn’t new (Isadora Duncan and Michel Fokine touted it a century ago), but the contemporary choreography has been stripped of superfluous detail, using the dancers’ bodies to drive the compelling narrative. Without telegraphing their water roll, a set of blue-clad dancers drowned Kurta and Valerie Harmon, whose limbs rippled in torment.
The program ended with Trey McIntyre’s “Blue Until June” in 2000, a 30-minute play on an Etta James jukebox. McIntyre’s ability to create characters in a specific place and time – here, couples bickering and swapping partners in a club – is evident, as is the talent of Smuin’s dancers to embody them.
But the snappy punchlines age quickly and are at odds with James’ raw, worldly voice. Needham-Wood’s wonderfully cut solo aside, only Kurta and Ian Buchanan, in a meltingly lyrical duet, have anything truly substantial to dance to. McIntyre’s more offbeat “Oh, Inverted World”, commissioned by Fushille in 2010, would have varied the program more and better showed how much Smuin has evolved in 25 years.
Smuin Contemporary Ballet: 7:30 p.m. Friday, September 28; various evenings and mornings until Saturday 6 October. Palace of Fine Arts, 3301 Lyon St., SF $25-$79. 415-912-1899. www.smuinballet.org
