BALLET REVIEW : Kudelka’s New ‘Comfort Zone’

James Kudelka’s important new work for San Francisco Ballet, “The Comfort Zone,” is like an Olympic relay race, with the flame of the ballet--its remarkable energy and invention--held high while passed from team to team on stage at the War Memorial Opera House.

This sense of a shared trajectory and destination, with a community of dancers making collaborative contributions en route, also shaped Kudelka’s recent “Concerto Grosso” for the Joffrey Ballet and “Dreams of Harmony,” his large-scale San Francisco Ballet success of 1987. Once again, Kudelka has found a dynamic paradigm for an ideal society and also made a statement about the continuity of classical dancing.

In “The Comfort Zone,” however, the young Canadian choreographer divides his cast into teams of three, a unifying structural premise drawn from the accompaniment: Beethoven’s mighty Triple Concerto for Piano, Violin and Cello.

Color-coded in Santo Loquasto warm-up suits, each team has its own movement signature--a scooping/swimming gesture, perhaps, or a recurrent running lift--but all are alike in their surge to cover space, their serene, non-competitive athleticism.

But if three people make a stable, productive unit in Kudelka’s world, he doesn’t trust twos. As in his bitter study of sexual incompatibility, “The Heart of the Matter,” the central pas de deux here details a nasty power struggle, one defined through formalized arm wrestling and resolved positively, it seems, only because Beethoven’s music mandates a hopeful conclusion.

In style, the workis propulsive, muscular, intense--requiring the full technical resources of contemporary ballet in the trios plus considerable dramatic heat and extraordinary stamina in the turbulent duet. San Francisco Ballet responded Saturday with dancing that amply fulfilled Kudelka’s thematic purposes without ever coarsening the musical line. Kudelka, after all, may be the obvious successor to Kenneth MacMillan in the realm of downbeat contemporary dance drama, but he works at a level of taste and sophistication (especially in his choice and use of music) that MacMillan has never reached.

In the overlapping ensemble passages, some of the finest young dancers of the company flashed by, including Andre Reyes, Lawrence Pech and, once again, the prodigiously accomplished 20-year-old Elizabeth Loscavio.

On Saturday, the pas de deux belonged to Evelyn Cisneros and Anthony Randazzo--she memorably stifled, rebellious, but fascinated with her partner/opponent in spite of herself and he superbly unyielding, manipulative, instinctual until combat yielded to accommodation. So much for modern romance.

Jean-Louis LeRoux led a polished account of the score, with Roy Bogas, Roy Malan and David Kadarauch the capable soloists. “Ballo della Regina” and “Rodeo” (both previously reviewed) completed the program.