S.F. Ballet students shine in showcase, for many a final step toward careers
Rachel Howard, Chronicle Dance Correspondent

Friday, May 25, 2007


Seventeen young women stood on the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts stage Wednesday night, arms raised searchingly toward a soft light. In their pale blue leotards and simple gossamer skirts, they could have been merely time-lapsed versions of the giddy little girls who, an hour earlier, had stood in similarly neat rows, demonstrating tottering tendus and plies as their parents watched with irrepressible pride.

But then these young women lowered their hands regretfully to their foreheads as the Tchaikovsky strains swelled, gathered their arms in solemn preparation, and -- in one startling split-second -- opened their feet to first position. George Balanchine's "Serenade" is never so moving as when it's performed by students, when it becomes a rite of passage: Young women become artists.