San Francisco Ballet: next@90 Curtain Call

Visit the ballet performance calendar to view dates of all showings of this program.

VIOLIN CONCERTO
Choreographer: Yuri Possokhov
MADCAP
Choreographer: Danielle Rowe
GATEWAY TO THE SUN
Choreographer: Nicolas Blanc

◆ San Francisco Ballet

Beginning this evening and running for the next ten days at War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco Ballet presents the reprise of three of the works that first appeared in 2023’s next@90 program –  Yuri Possokhov’s Violin Concerto, Danielle Rowe’s MADCAP, and Nicolas Blanc’s Gateway to the Sun.

These three contemporary ballets were commissioned especially for next@90 in celebration of the company’s 90th anniversary season.

Possokhov, who is San Francisco Ballet’s Choreographer in Residence, reimagines Igor Stravinsky’s score of the same name in Violin Concerto. Steeped in classical vocabulary for a ballerina and seven other couples, the ballet was inspired by George Balanchine’s Violin Concerto, one of Possokhov’s favorite ballets to dance.

“I needed to do this now,” the choreographer shares. “My memory of Balanchine comes back, of course, but this impulse gives me the chance to express myself.”

Rowe’s MADCAP, set to Pär Hagström’s eerie, carnival-inspired score, transports audiences into the sinister world of the clown after the circus lights go dark. The Oregon Ballet Theatre Artistic Director created a piece in which the dancers also need to use their voices:

“It’s been a very collaborative experience,” said Rowe at the time of creation, highlighting the versatility and bravery of the dancers. “They’re so willing to be uncomfortable, so willing to try something new.”

Gateway to the Sun is a five-movement poetic ballet modeled after the five lines of 13th century poet Rumi that Anna Clyne excerpted for her cello and orchestra score:

Dance, when you’re broken open.

Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off.

Dance in the middle of the fighting.

Dance in your blood.

Dance, when you’re perfectly free.

— Rumi Blanc

Blanc, a former San Francisco Ballet principal dancer and current Rehearsal Director/Coach and Choreographer at Joffrey Ballet sums up his piece:

“Dance is a liberation, dance is a sense of soothing, of solace for a human being”.

Featured photo for San Francisco Ballet’s next@90 Curtain Call of Sasha Mukhamedov and Joseph Walsh in Possokhov’s Violin Concerto // © Lindsay Thomas.