Feature Stories

FOR ALL THE WORLD TO SEE: SAN FRANCISCO BALLET ON TOUR

Since 1934, San Francisco Ballet’s second year of life, touring has played an increasingly important part in its evolution. The Company’s first tentative steps away from home took it only to venues in the Bay Area, then gradually it ventured north and east, finally making an appearance on the East Coast in 1956, at Jacob’s Pillow.

For several consecutive years in the late 1950s, the Company wandered Asia, the Middle East, Mexico, and South America. But with the exception of an engagement in New York City in 1965, the Ballet was never seen in any of the cities considered critical to building an international reputation—cities such as London, Paris, Washington, D.C., and New York, which are blessed with sophisticated dance audiences and critics who see most of the major companies. Six years after Tomasson stepped into his new role as director, he changed that. “It’s not enough to be great here and wait for people to come and see us,” he says. “We have to show ourselves in those places if we want that recognition, if we want to be considered one of the major players in dance in America.” In 1991 he took a strategic action that moved San Francisco Ballet out of the minor leagues and into the majors: The Company made a triumphant appearance at New York’s City Center that wowed critics and audiences and convinced the Board of Trustees that touring to the dance capitals of the world was vital.

As Tomasson was planning that first trip to New York, he began to feel that the Company was approaching the ideal he had for it. “I was seeing it daily. The dancers were getting better; the ladies were wearing pointe shoes in class and the pointe work was improving,” the artistic director says. “Maybe an average person couldn’t see that in the second or third season, but I think Swan Lake [1988] started a turnaround. Then going to New York and getting very, very favorable notices gave the dancers a tremendous boost in confidence. We came in with a repertory that was new and interesting. And we did The Sleeping Beauty [1990], which is much harder to dance than Swan Lake—those ballets had to be part of your repertory, I felt, if you were to be taken seriously as a major company. You have to dance them very, very well.”

By 1999, all four of the critical cities had played host to San Francisco Ballet, some more than once. After the 2002 New York tour, New York Post critic Clive Barnes commented, “Over the past few years, these San Franciscans have shown themselves to be in that select league previously occupied in the U.S. only by New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theatre—with a remarkably varied repertory and an exceptionally fine troupe of dancers.” The New York Times’ Anna Kisselgoff offered equally high praise: “San Francisco Ballet [is] one of the world’s great classical dance companies . . .”

But establishing a reputation as a world-class ballet company is not the only reason to tour. Top-drawer dancers need performance opportunities, more than an annual Nutcracker and a three-month spring season. Since the Company has no hometown venue to perform in from May through November, touring is slated for the summer or fall months. Also, says SF Ballet General Manager Lesley Koenig, “in order for us to attract and keep top dancers, choreographers, and designers, their work needs to be seen someplace other than San Francisco. To see the dancers do a new work in front of a San Francisco audience is fantastic. But to see them do a piece that’s even in our standard repertory and put it in front of a new audience, in a new environment, on a different-sized stage—well, what it does to them brings tears to your eyes.”

There’s also the fringe benefit of having dancers around the world see the Company and perhaps aspire to join it. “We do have dancers ask to take company class, and although there’s rarely an opening at that time of year, Helgi does take a look at them,” says McCoy. “That’s how many of our dancers came to us.”

Selecting a program for touring is both an art and a science due to the many factors involved. The type of venue, whether or how recently the Company has been there before, whether it’s self-presenting or being presented (the tradeoff is paying the bill or having total freedom in the choice of repertory), amount of rehearsal time, and the budget are the concrete, “science” part. As far as venues are concerned, the Company is limited by its size and expense. “We often get invitations,” says McCoy, “but we tend to return to the places where we have reputations. We’re a really big, expensive company, so there aren’t that many places that can take us, and there are very few we’re willing to foot the bill for. We have to be sure we’ll leave with good press, good houses, and as much box office as we can.”

Then there are the artistic considerations. “A lot of it has to do with Helgi feeling what the next step is for the development of the Company,” says McCoy. Tomasson has dancers to showcase and challenge, and he has an image to uphold—an image of excellence that goes far beyond what one might expect from a ballet company. He has created an international roster of dancers—he’s fond of saying that his hobby is “to collect good dancers”—whose differences in training, temperament, and body type almost demand equally diverse works to dance. In developing an eclectic repertory that is perhaps unrivaled in the ballet world, Tomasson has set aside his own ego as a choreographer to bring in the most innovative, in-demand dancemakers to create new works for his company. And he wants to show the world how well his dancers segue from Petipa, Bournonville, Ashton, and Balanchine to Forsythe, Morris, Caniparoli, Welch, and Wheeldon.

It has taken a concerted effort to show the world what’s unique about San Francisco Ballet, and Tomasson has been untiring in his efforts. “When we went to London [in 2001], they wanted us to do a full-length, Swan Lake or Giselle or The Sleeping Beauty,” says Ballet Master and Assistant to the Artistic Director Ashley Wheater. “And Helgi said, ‘Yes, we do those ballets, but we also do all of this, and this is new; no one’s seen this.’ So where people wanted to play it safe, he wanted to take a risk, and it paid off. We have a reputation for doing new works. We’re continuing to contribute to our art form by showing audiences that we’re always moving forward. Helgi is very firm about showing everyone what we really do well—which is what they want to see, only sometimes they don’t know that! When they do see it, they go, ‘This is fantastic; we want more of it.’ ”

Tomasson’s high standards and network of contacts from his dancing days, combined with the reputation for excellence his company now enjoys, have paved the way for unique opportunities. For example, in 2001, Tomasson arranged a cultural exchange with the Paris Opera Ballet: That company performed as part of the San Francisco Ballet season (its first time in the U.S.), and San Francisco Ballet performed in Paris later that year. Other projects are in the works for summer 2005 and beyond. Such opportunities for international exposure are the result of the innovation and excellence Tomasson has brought to San Francisco Ballet, and from there to the world.

Cheryl Ossola is a freelance arts writer and editor, and a contributing editor for Dance Magazine.