DANCE REVIEW : David Bintley’s ‘Wanderer’ Offered by San Francisco Ballet

While still in his 20s, David Bintley became resident choreographer of the Royal Ballet, bastion of British classical tradition. Since then, he has produced full-length narrative works as well as abstract ballets and, at 32, is widely considered the creative heir to Sir Frederick Ashton.

Yet Bintley remains largely unknown in the United States. San Francisco Ballet acquired his “Sons of Horus” two years ago and, this season, currently in progress at the War Memorial Opera House, Bintley made a new work expressly for Helgi Tomasson’s dancers.

Or, rather, Bintley used San Francisco Ballet as a surrogate for his usual company. Certainly his intelligent, sensitive “The ‘Wanderer’ Fantasy” speaks the language of ballet with a distinct British accent and explores an unmistakably British obsession with eroding, oppressive grandeur.

A plotless, one-act suite for eight soloists, the work has been given an elegant, faded backdrop and rich, dowdy costumes (both by Terry Bartlett) that make it look like a repertory relic. The choreography is also deliberately backdated, with references to Balanchine’s “Serenade” and an overall emphasis on the rigidity of pose that was once the hallmark of British style.

Sight and sound clash strangely. Liszt’s arrangement for piano and orchestra of music by Schubert restlessly surges--but Bintley’s dancers continually pause, like mannequins, to define The Motif: a single, curved and upraised arm. At the height of the score’s passion and Bintley’s most fluid invention, The Motif suddenly appears on the backdrop in silhouette: shadows that help suggest a paralyzing tradition or legacy, the oppressive weight of the past.

Provocative in its implications, “The ‘Wanderer’ Fantasy” also challenges the dancers’ stamina and control: a test that several of the SFB men could not pass on Wednesday.

However, the moody central adagio (a trio that developed into a duet) had superb command and flow in the performances by Joanna Berman, Wendy Van Dyck and Anthony Randazzo. Jean-Louis LeRoux conducted the fine company orchestra and Michael McGraw was the excellent pianist.

Completing the program: familiar principals in Balanchine’s effervescent “Ballo della Regina” and William Forsythe’s abrasive “In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated,” both group vehicles of the utmost difficulty that have evolved into company staples.

New to the pageboy-ballerina role of the Forsythe, however, was Muriel Maffre, a glamorous, young Parisian ballerina with pale skin, perfectly symmetrical features and a way of making the fierce technical bravado of the choreography seem a sensuous caprice.

Garbo on pointe? Only in San Francisco. . . .