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San Francisco Ballet's Othello
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Othello
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By Dany Margolies
Anyone who could possibly doubt the storytelling power of ballet need look
no further than Lar Lubovitch's Othello. And anyone who doubted the
fire and commitment of the San Francisco Ballet likewise was given a
salvaged second look: Those false steps the company took earlier in its run
at Orange County Performing Arts Center this week might have vanished from
memory in the face of this nearly flawless production.
The story indeed follows the Cinthio/Shakespeare tale of the Venetian
general, Othello, twisted into a jealous rage by Iago into believing
Othello's wife, Desdemona, was unfaithful with the cheery young lieutenant
Cassio, while Iago's wife, Emilia, must bear witness to the unpardonable
deception. Lubovitch speaks with descriptive, emotive movement, to an
intelligently programmatic, jazz-tinged, and robustly orchestrated score by
Elliot Goldenthal, conducted with controlled passion by Neal Stulberg.
In this version, Desdemona embodies everything good and innocent, and, of
course, balletically lovely. Yuan Yuan Tan makes this role very much her
own--pure, light, deceptively fragile, malleable. Yuri Possokhov, seething
as Othello, is ideally paired with the Iago of Parrish Maynard, a
malevolent juggernaut no earthly good can stop. The partner work of
Possokhov and Tan is seamlessly uniform, but in Lubovitch's trademark
same-sex pas de deux that cannily substitutes for dialogues, so is the
partnering of Possokhov and Maynard in their characters' relentless power
struggles. Likewise the empathetic relationship between Desdemona and
Emilia is told through gentle pas de deux by Tan and the solid Katita
Waldo.
Providing the evening's few lighter moments, Gonzalo Garcia is a bounding,
genial Cassio, while Lorena Feijoo's Bianca savagely provides the means for
Iago's plans. The corps not only dances with a sense of ensemble, it also
dances musically to music that has barely perceptible rhythms.
These are ballet dancers, however, and their ingrained ballet technique is
sometimes substituted for Lubovitch's dynamics, mostly by the corps, only
occasionally by the principals: Leaps soar instead of hurtle, falls float
gently rather than plummet with abandon. They're small faults, however,
particularly because Lubovitch's impassioned choreography and the
commitment of the dancers keep our focus on the unfolding of this too, too
universal tale.
Orange County Performing Arts Center, Segerstrom Hall, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. (714) 556-ARTS or www.ocpac.org. $20-75.
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