Diverting Proficiency, but Little More

Founded in 1933, San Francisco Ballet is America’s first professional classical company, and over the decades it has danced its way to major international recognition.

Its mixed bill at the Orange County Performing Arts Center on Wednesday (the opening of an engagement that switches tonight to a full-evening “Othello”) proved that the company can look authoritative in 19th century showpieces, home-grown dance dramas and acquisitions from the world of modern dance.

But this evening of local premieres had nothing genuinely new to offer, no vision of ballet as anything other than expensive, conservative entertainment. You could marvel at all the honed proficiency on view, but after that, nothing.

Indeed, the evening proved most memorable for rehabilitating the reputation of Mark Morris at a time when his choreography for his own modern dance ensemble has become progressively hollow and formula-ridden.

Choreographed for the San Franciscans three years ago, Morris’ plotless “Sandpaper Ballet” created a sense of spontaneous, childlike buoyancy through the charming white-and-green play clothes designed by Isaac Mizrahi, the zesty orchestral bagatelles composed by Leroy Anderson and the choreography for a 25-member super-corps.

There were typical Morris structural ploys (lines forming and re-forming), but, for once, they never became predictable. There were typical Morris jokes (people “accidentally” out of line), but, for once, they never looked forced. So when the music repeated itself but the dancing didn’t, or a slew of guys suddenly tried to partner the hyper-glamorous Muriel Maffre, Morris took you by surprise.

Although James Sofranko and Nicole Starbuck danced a sweet early duet, the ballet increasingly focused on Yuri Possokhov, a distinguished classical cavalier and dancing actor here enjoying such anti-classical challenges as a gymnastic floor tussle with Julie Diana.Possokhov also choreographed the serious ballet that always comes in the middle of this kind of mixed bill: “Damned,” based on the Greek tragedy “Medea” and set to two pieces by Ravel, including the highly challenging Concerto in D major for the left hand.

Unfortunately, the narrative portions of the work weren’t merely bad, they were corrupt--throwing nonstop showpiece steps and lifts at a classic of world drama as if that somehow made the storytelling clear or powerful.

The equally fine Guennadi Nedviguine, as Jason, and Starbuck as his doomed new mistress, thus turned romance into something resembling the international ballet Olympics, and even Lorena Feijoo’s magnificent intensity as Medea soon became misused.

However, Possokhov manipulated a masked, 16-member corps with unfailing mastery. Designer Thyra Hartshorn left these dancers looking vaguely sphinx-like, and they never really meshed with the dramatic action. Still, they alone caught the surge and sweep of the concerto, and they alone confirmed Possokhov’s talent.

The evening’s inevitable dose of tutus and tights came in the company premiere of a 34-minute suite from Marius Petipa’s 1881 version of “Paquita,” in a staging created 99 years later by the great Russian ballerina Natalia Makarova.

As the San Francisco dancers grow into the work, corps lines will no doubt become straighter and the height of extensions adjusted for greater evenness. But at this first performance, you could already find artists such as Feijoo, Clara Blanco and Vanessa Zahorian turning their solos into something individual, and the cast as a whole understanding how much refined arm movement contributes to the style of the ballet.

Like many of her colleagues, Yuan Yuan Tan seemed at times to be working through the choreography. But in her best moments she danced the prima ballerina role with feeling as well as exactitude, finding an impetus in the Minkus score that carried her through step combinations on one sustained breath.

Vadim Solomakha partnered her effortfully, but delivered bold, clean turning combinations in his solo. Other principals included Katita Waldo, Gonzalo Garcia, Sarah Van Patten and Kristin Long. Guest conductor Neal Stulberg expertly led the Pacific Symphony through the evening’s radically different scores, and pianist Roy Bogas skillfully performed the solos in the Ravel concerto. Once again, the evening displayed San Francisco Ballet’s impressive prowess, but also arguably squandered an extraordinary amount of talent and training on familiar kinds of upscale diversions, as if the company or even ballet itself had no real future, only an endlessly recycled past.

San Francisco Ballet, “Othello,” tonight, 8 p.m.; Saturday, 2 and 8 p.m.; Sunday, 2 p.m. Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. $20-$75. (714) 556-ARTS.