This summer's Lincoln Center Festival is full of exhilarating and innovative ballet and dance. Highlights of this summer's program include:

San Francisco Ballet
July 25- 30
An extraordinary range of ballets, including a lavish production of Sylvia created by Mark Morris and two mixed repertory programs.

Emanuel Gat Dance
July 12, 14, 15
A sensual fusing of Stravinsky and Cuban salsa from Israel’s Emanuel Gat, along with a work set to selections from Schubert’s Winterreisse.

Bill T. Jones/ Arnie Zane Dance Company
July 18-20
Dance becomes an extraordinary tool for probing life’s big questions, as opposing forces clash in this provocative work from choreographer Bill T. Jones.

Batsheva Dance Company
July 20-22
Celebrated choreographer Ohad Naharin fills the stage with forty exceptional dancers, while four large screens amplify their bodies and faces in extreme close-up.

The 2006 Festival also features an array of works in opera, theater, and music. For tickets and more information please visit http://www.lincolncenter.org or call CenterCharge at 212.721.6500

Thanks, kurinuku, for posting this appreciative review; I'm glad the New York Times asked a critic who has actually followed SFB for many years to introduce it to a New York audience. And as someone who was in New York in June (where I saw Helgi at a performance of the NYCB) I can say that New York ballet audiences are really wonderful. They know what good dancing is, and they respond to it. And dancers respond to them. It should be a great festival.

You are welcome
Here comes another one for SFB...

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The San Francisco Ballet website is now providing links to reviews of its Lincoln Center performances:

http://www.sfballet.org/about/touring/index.aspx [dead link]

My guess is that they will keep updating the site as the reviews come in.

But I hope you'll continue to post reviews, kurinuku, especially from the international press.

Here's a negative one for Sylvia:

Five reviews of all three SFB programs at Lincoln Center (including 3 takes on Mark Morris's Sylvia) are now on the Dance View Times website:

http://www.danceviewtimes.com/backissue ... 73106.html

1. Susan Reiter on Opening Night Gala:
"It celebrated the company’s array of strong, personable dancers, imbued with a gift of showcasing fluency and technical expertise without every seeming to push or strain for effects. Clean, crisp, artfully phrased dancing was there in abundance. The program also celebrated the diverse, intelligently chosen repertory that artistic director Helgi Tomasson has acquired over his 21 years directing this splendid troupe. . . ."

2. Leigh Witchel on Mark Morris's Sylvia:
"San Francisco Ballet followed the blockbuster opening gala in their New York engagement with what should have been another juggernaut; Mark Morris’ version of “Sylvia”.  It’s a handsome production and it has Delibes’ marvelous and haunting score, but the choreography is a thin brew. . . ."

3. Mary Cargill on Mark Morris's Sylvia:
"Morris’ Sylvia is a feistier heroine than the traditional classical ballerina, and Elizabeth Miner, a tall, leggy blond, with a heroically pure line, made her immensely appealing. . . . Morris gave the company a real ballet, which required emotional as well as technical abilities, and the cast I saw created true and vibrant characters, even if they had to dance around an elephant [Ashton]."

4. Susan Reiter: Vanessa Zahorian and Guennadi Nedviguine in "Sylvia"
"Vanessa Zahorian, lithe but strong, projected warmth and humor as Sylvia. Her commanding presence and powerful, sleek technique made her the clear leader of the huntress nymphs, who fend for themselves and have no use for the powers of Eros, to whom everyone else in the ballet bows, or prostrates themselves, reverently. This Sylvia is obviously a take-charge, no-nonsense nymph, but also rapturously feminine. Her crisp attack imbued her Act One material with welcome energy and fire, and her dramatic skill allowed one to follow Sylvia’s emotional journey quite clearly, culminating in her lucid radiance in Act Three. . . ."

5. Lisa Rinehart: 7 for Eight, Quaternary, Artifact Suite

"[T]he interesting story here is that the San Francisco Ballet is a force to be reckoned with. Somewhat under the radar, Tomasson has commissioned work from internationally respected choreographers and has hired high caliber dancers for those choreographers to work with. There's work to be done, but the directors of large New York based ballet companies would do well to take notice: Tomasson appears to have the vision, taste and patience to create a company of international importance. There's room for all, but the gauntlet has been thrown."

Robert Gottlieb reviews SFB's Lincoln Center performances in the New York Observer:

NY Observer

A review from NYC in the SF Chronicle.



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Thankis for the link, LMCtech. It looks like SFB has stopped posting reviews on its own website.

I thought Apollinaire Scherr made some particularly worthwhile observations:

"Tomasson is doing things. With his long-standing commitment to Forsythe, Morris and Wheeldon, he has steeped his dancers in the working process of masters. They have responded with what amounts to a house aesthetic.

"Former dancers Julia Adam, Val Caniparoli and the newly appointed resident choreographer, Yuri Possokhov (whose beautifully nuanced performances here were the last of his dancing career), make dreamlike work in a language as evocative and unpretty as that of Wheeldon and Morris. The Lincoln Center affair might have celebrated this rare accomplishment by showing some of their work.

"On the other hand, the engagement did celebrate the dancers -- at the top end, as good as any in our leading companies. And, without being provincial, it reflected San Francisco, where the women are strong and the men are good-looking." [the opposite is also true]

I'd like to see more of Scherr's reflections on SFB in the Chronicle, especially with Rachel Howard no longer writing SFB reviews regularly.

Gottlieb's is the most interesting and readable of the minority negative reivews of Morris I've seen.

I found this comment about SFB particulalry astute:

"San Francisco Ballet strikes me as deeply virtuous, and I can’t wait to see it again. Even so, it lacks, for me, a crucial element of great dancing: large-scale personal expressivity. Like most companies, it reflects the characteristics of its leader. Tomasson was an immaculate classicist—elegant, tasteful, contained, never vulgar, always correct and frequently charming; that’s what his company is like, too (several of the men actually look like him). But he never fully absorbed Balanchine’s insistence on dancing full-out: His movement was always measured, his presence small-scale. Peter Martins was a cool, smooth dancer, Edward Villella was explosive and full of feeling, and their companies reflect their qualities. How could it be otherwise? Splendid as Tomasson’s San Francisco is, I can’t help wanting more—dancers not only superbly trained, hard-working and personable, but dancers who thrill."

PS: Check out Erik Tomason's off-beat photo of YYT as Sylvia posted in the Guardian. Eric (Helgi's son), has an exquisite photographic eye. He often captures a dancer's feelings and emotions even more than their movement; he's becoming a favorite dance photographer.
http://www.observer.com/20060807/200608 ... bdance.asp