San Francisco Ballet

OPTIMISTIC TRAGEDY PRODUCTION CREDITS Music: Original composition by Ilya Demutsky. Costumes constructed by Mark Zappone et Co., Seattle, Washington. Scenic construction and painting by San Francisco Ballet Carpentry and Scenic Departments. OPTIMISTIC TRAGEDY CONTINUED in a black-and-white palette like the films that inspire it, is "emotional feelings of the play — just dance, nothing else," Possokhov says. Choreographically, Possokhov is well suited to telling this kind of heightened dramatic story. When he creates, says Artistic Director and Principal Choreographer Helgi Tomasson, "he brings the classical ballet he came from, the Bolshoi — that larger-than-life approach to dance — and with that comes theatricality. At the same time, having been so long in the West, he's influenced by other things. But he doesn't let go of his roots." Like all of Possokhov's ballets, Optimistic Tragedy evolved from the music, which Music Director and Principal Conductor Martin West calls "a terrific piece, intensely dramatic." Possokhov has worked with Demutsky before, when the composer was assigned by the Bolshoi to compose music for Possokhov's full-length ballet Hero of Our Time in 2015. Admiring Demutsky's music for its emotion and symphonic qualities, Possokhov asked him to write a score for his next SF Ballet premiere, planned as an abstract, plotless ballet. In listening to what Demutsky had written, "I understand that there's no way to make abstract [ballet]," Possokhov says. The music is "rich, so powerful, and it's little bit — there's a word pathétique, in French. In Russia pathétique means full of emotion, full of everything. Almost right away, I thought about revolution — Russian, French, even contemporary." And that led him to think of the play An Optimistic Tragedy. The timing for a ballet about the Russian Revolution is fortuitous, as 2017 marks its 100th anniversary. Serendipitously, the music has a military quality that "emerged accidentally from the very beginning of the work," Demutsky says. "I was given carte blanche with this work. Yuri's only desire was that I had to compose deeply emotional music. While I was composing the piece I was thinking about love, melancholy, passion, fear, pride, doubt, resoluteness, tenderness — everything that can be materialized in Yuri's stunning choreography." Also serendipitous, given the use of silent-film-type projections in the ballet, is the cinematic quality of the score, which Demutsky says comes from using various forms, such as a march, a waltz, an adagio, and a bolero. "There is much in common between ballet and cinema — music serves a functional role in these art forms," he says. "At the same time I am convinced that my music is self-sufficient. Here I agree with Stravinsky, who liked to listen to his ballet music in concert." There's no denying the music's Russian roots. "Russian and Soviet music — Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Rachmaninov, and Shostakovich — had a profound impact on me," Demutsky says. "When I was studying at San Francisco Conservatory of Music, my composition teacher, David Conte, said, 'Ilya, never lose your composer's voice. Save the so-called Russianness in your music.'" Demutsky's extensive choral background also influences his work, he says. "Particularly this is reflected in a vocal nature of melodic lines. I see an orchestra as a choir with extended features in terms of timbres, range, etc." For his ballets, Possokhov often draws on art, literature, and history from various cultures, but Optimistic Tragedy is purely Russian in story, imagery, and emotion. When the music is percussive, lines of sailors move like Cossacks — masculine, militant, sexual. When the music surges, the men gather in wavelike formations that evoke the ocean. At several points in the pas de deux, Possokhov wants more fluidity, less definition, telling Principal Dancer Lorena Feijoo not to match the music's rhythm but to freeze for a moment, "then go, make freedom." In group sections, he creates shapes and steps drawn from statues and structures in Moscow. "You see in Russia a lot of monuments, especially with the marines, with sailors," he says. The most visible depiction of these monuments comes when the sailors lift the Commissar high above their heads in a running stag position; then they run, holding her aloft for us to admire. The group of men is the foundation and the Commissar is the object of glory. "It's powerful," Possokhov says. "That's why I like it." Those Russian monuments are in the constructivist style, a modern art movement (embraced by many artists who believed in the ideals of the Revolution) that favored the idea of construction over composition, the concreteness of materials and forms over the abstract and conceptual. This aesthetic, characterized by clean lines and geometric shapes, dominates the film Battleship Potemkin and, in turn, Possokhov's ballet, which he describes as "aesthetically at the beginning of the last century, constructivism." Throughout the ballet, projections help to illuminate the story and enhance the shipboard setting. Describing the set, Possokhov says, "I love it — simple but strong. Everything [is] gray; there's no color at all. Even [the] flag is gray." Constructivism was the art form that marked "the escape from Revolution," Possokhov says. Transitions of any kind can foster creativity, and out of this period of violence, of political and social upheaval, came beauty. "[Constructivism] was first in the arts [after the Revolution], especially in architecture. Many poets, many painters came from revolutionary feelings," he says. "The socialist Revolution brought art to the world." 02 Left: Carlo Di Lanno and Sofiane Sylve in Forsythe's Pas/Parts 2016 // © Erik Tomasson Right: SF Ballet rehearses Possokhov's Optimistic Tragedy // © Erik Tomasson 58 SAN FRANCISCO BALLET 2017 SEASON GUIDE

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