San Francisco Ballet

Alexei Ratmansky choreographed Seven Sonatas in 2009, his first year as artist in residence at American Ballet Theatre (ABT). He'd just left the Bolshoi Ballet where, as artistic director, he had made his mark by choreographing full-length ballets and restaging the classics and Soviet- era ballets. Seven Sonatas, his second work for ABT, is ballet on a more intimate scale. It's "a jewel of a piece," says Helgi Tomasson, San Francisco Ballet's artistic director and principal choreographer. "Just beautiful — and the quality of it, the inventiveness!" An ensemble piece for six dancers, Seven Sonatas is set to seven of Domenico Scarlatti's 555 keyboard sonatas, performed by an onstage pianist. The ballet is "a study of the music with a human element woven into it," says Nancy Raffa, an ABT ballet master and stager of Ratmansky's works. "It gives the dancers an opportunity to be individual, to be free, to make their spirit move through their body and be the music. They have to stay in the margin of what Alexei is asking for, but there's a lot of artistic freedom there." The piece premiered in a small venue at Bard College; Ratmansky played off that intimacy in creating a chamber ballet. "He wanted it to be as if this dance was happening, this life was happening, and the audience was looking through a peephole in the door," says Raffa. Rather than projecting to the audience, "the dancers are bringing us into their world." Using painting as a metaphor for the choreographic process, Raffa says the dancers "come out of the canvas as individuals. Then they come out of the canvas as couples, with different ways of expressing love — a conflictive way, a joyous way, a playful way. And then you see men together with their very masculine humor, very Alexei humor, and the women mocking them — it's very folkloric in a way." In the studio at SF Ballet, Raffa gives detailed feedback to the dancers as they rehearse. "Breathe with the body, not the arms," she says about a moment in the finale. "Find different ways to do it, some stronger, some softer." Emphasizing the need for precision, she reminds the dancers that "we see everything — every detail, every transition. The floor is grey, the backdrop is blue, the piano and wings are black and you're in white." Raffa says Ratmansky asked her to convey to the dancers the idea that the music is playing because of what the dancers feel and do. "He's saying, 'Create music with your bodies. Don't dance to the music; be the music.'" The dancers move through solos, duets, and trios. "Then the tone becomes very heavy and serious. They go on this journey as individuals, then as couples, then as trios, then as a whole community together. It actually is quite dramatic." By ending with everybody in unison, she adds, the ballet is saying "that the human condition is like a common language that all human beings share. Alexei never loses that notion of 'We need to say something with this art form or it doesn't mean anything.' And he manages to do that with Seven Sonatas in a really simple way." When Choreographer in Residence Yuri Possokhov commissioned music from Russian composer Ilya Demutsky, he had no idea he would end up making a ballet about revolution. Demutsky hadn't anticipated it either. But when Possokhov told him the music brought to mind the 1933 play An Optimistic Tragedy about the 1917 Russian Revolution, Demutsky immediately understood the connection. Possokhov was inspired by the play and by Sergei Eisenstein's 1925 silent film Battleship Potemkin, creating a dramatic ballet driven equally by emotion and aesthetics. Possokhov explains that "optimistic tragedy" refers to the idea of death for a worthy cause. "People who believed in the Revolution believed in the best futures [for everyone]. But it's tragic because revolution often brings death and misery for people." On a navy ship soon after the end of World War I, a captain heads a crew made up of communists and anarchists. Then the ship's new commissar arrives — a woman, whose presence stirs the soldiers' emotions and libidos and deepens the divide between the two factions. The play hints at romance between the Captain and the Commissar, but Possokhov expands upon the idea, pitting the Captain and the leader of the anarchists against each other in pursuit of the Commissar. The Commissar dies — but before she does, Possokhov gives her a romantic, tension-filled pas de deux with the Captain. The rest of his ballet, presented SEVEN SONATAS PRODUCTION CREDITS Music: Domenico Scarlatti: Keyboard Sonatas, K. 474, 198, 481, 39, 547, 450, and 30. Costumes constructed by Cygnet Studios, New York, New York. By Cheryl A. Ossola PROGRAM NOTES SF Ballet in Ratmansky's Seven Sonatas // © Erik Tomasson SEVEN SONATAS OPTIMISTIC TRAGEDY WORLD PREMIERE 2017 SEASON GUIDE SAN FRANCISCO BALLET 57

• Cover