San Francisco Ballet trains them, sends them out into the world and they come back to the Bay Area as does Tricia Albertson with Miami City Ballet—subtly comic in the missed connections that are sketched into “Somethin’ Stupid” in Twyla Tharp’s “Nine Sinatra Songs” in Friday’s performance at Zellerbach Auditorium in Berkeley. Along with Albertson, standouts were Haiyan Wu in “Softly as I Leave You,” whose soft gentility in Tharp’s sweeping lifts issued from an exquisite line, and Patricia Delgado in “Forget Domani,” herself unforgettable in the ruffled fuchsia dress she was born to wear. Delgado is the exclamation point that adds a big dollop of personality and artistry to a company that offers some great moments, but lags slightly behind audience expectations.

“Agon” is an ambitious piece to include in the program. Its quintessential George Balanchine choreography to 12-tone music by Igor Stravinsky wryly dials in the number 12 again and again in 12-sided patterns that bump the classical into the neo-classical in the context of a Greek-styled athletic competition. It can go both stilted and mimetic if the dancers aren’t at the top of their game. Most of the men were too macho in their shoulders to show the proper deference demanded by Balanchine in his famous “Ballet is Woman”-aesthetic rallying cry. Deanna Seay rose to the challenge with spot-on precision and an energy that trumped the dead-eyed insouciance of the other dancers.

Tharp’s “In the Upper Room” brought the fog that is so familiar to San Franciscans across the Bay to the Berkeley stage. Dancers in railroad blue and white striped tops and pants danced in red pointe shoes or sneakers. They gave us a fogged-up and souped up mirror-image reflection of “Agon” in Tharp’s zany vocabulary to Philip Glass cadences limned by a flute that could fool you into thinking it was a clarinet. The smoke and mirrors ambience and undulations that go to splits on the floor, flanked by ensemble lifts that fold six dancers into a love knot bring the evening’s uneven program to a resolutely brilliant close.

Interesting, so how many dancers in Miami City Ballet trained at San Francisco Ballet School? Just the one? Or are there more?

It appears from the printed program that there are no fewer than six: Tricia Albertson, Katie Gibson, Tiffany Hedman, Kyra Homeres, Michael Sean Breeden and Ezra Hurwitz.

Wow, 6 is very good! I would have imagined that number to be lower but I guess it makes sense considering the heavy emphasis on Balanchine repertoire at Miami City Ballet.

Rachel Howard reviews the program in the San Francisco Chronicle:

SF Chronicle

Love the photo of Carlos Guerra and Jennifer Carlynn Kronenberg from Nine Sinatra Songs

A number of those dancers - in particular Ezra Hurwitz (a former Nutcracker prince) and Michael Breeden spent a number of years at SAB, which feeds a lot of dancers into MCB.

In anycase, SFB School is one of the best schools in the country, so no surprise that it would send a number of dancers to MCB, which has a superb reputation.

Kate

Alastair Macauley went to Berkeley to see the MCB program of "Nine Sinatra Songs," "Agon" and "In the Upper Room." Here is is New York Times review:

NY Times