SF Ballet Performance, Program 1

February 2, 2013

There were three ballets on this performance program. The first was Suite en Blanc Composed by Eduoard Lalo, and choreographed by Serge Lifar. This is a very conservative, traditional ballet. Light on substance, but strong on aesthetics and technique. If you like pretty pictures and dainty, picturesque movements of agility and grace, then you’ll love this. Superbly performed by the SF Ballet dancers. This is visually pleasant to watch, but basically light entertainment. Nothing challenging or particularly interesting to my taste.

In the Night was the second ballet. Choreographed by Jerome Robbins, it uses four Chopin Nocturnes as a back drop to four male-female duos. Despite the fact that the four Nocturnes vary somewhat in character, the four dances were all very similar. It struck me that the dancing did not fit with the music. These Nocturnes are introspective pieces. They are narcissistic rather than romantic. The choreographer treats them as love songs with a happy ending. I don’t think so. I think the choreographer misunderstood the Chopin Nocturnes. The second one against Op. 55 No. 1 was particularly offensive in this respect. This opening section of this Nocturne is tender and delicate, but the middle section is rather distressed and contentious, in high contrast to the sweet calm of the framing segments. None of this was reflected in the dance. The dance was rather bland and had a sameness throughout. The final one, the famous E-flat Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2, is a dreamlike reverie, a lullaby almost. It is reflective and somewhat nostalgic. But the dancing didn’t come anywhere near that kind of feeling. It’s weird watching a dance performance where the dancing seems to have nothing to do with the music that is backing it. I think this one needs to be rethought.

The final segment, the World Premier of Borderlands, by composers Joel Cadbury and Paul Stoney, and Wayne McGregor as choreographer, scenic and costume designer, and Lucy Carter as lighting designer, was by far the most interesting of the three pieces. The style was very different from the first two selections. This was hyperactive, with frantic, discrete movements emphasized by strobe lights that seemed to reflect a temperament, and perhaps a lifestyle, of the modern era that is atomized, choppy, jerky, and abrupt. The soundtrack — it wasn’t exactly music — is too loud. It’s rather assaultive. Perhaps that is the object to blast the audience with harsh sounds and oppress them into a kind of unpleasant resistance. It fits with the anxious, staccato, discontinuous movements, but it draws attention away from the dancers, overwhelming the audience with obnoxious sound. Differentiation between the genders is much reduced. Distinct genders are still discernible but very much blended. Identity of gender becomes indistinct. However, the sexes are very much interactive, touching, embracing, well engaged with one another. The middle section cast in orange light is a man apparently trying to invigorate a woman who keeps falling away from him in a kind of lethargy. She doesn’t seem to have the will to keep up with him and remain connected with his interest. But in the succeeding segments she casts off the deadness within herself and becomes a much more alive and responsive partner, and they become a more involved couple with smoother, more fluid movements. The ballet ends on a positive note with the couple dancing with energy, and mutual engagement. It was by far the most interesting of the three selections of the evening, and all were superbly presented by the San Francisco Ballet dancers at their usual top level of performance.

Django Unchained, written and directed by Quentin Tarantino.

Tarantino’s latest film takes place in 1858, two years before the Civil War-  the year that William Wells Brown published the first Black drama, Leap to Freedom; John Brown held an anti-slavery convention; Abraham Lincoln said  “A house divided against itself cannot stand;”  The  Richmond Daily Dispatch reported that 90 blacks were arrested for learning.  Early that year a series of events hostile to Blacks happened in San Francisco.  The case of the escaped slave, Archy Lee, heightened conflicts between pro- and anti-slavery contingents in town.  Black children were excluded from public schools and legislation was introduced to ban black immigration into California.

Tarantino made his engaging, well-acted and directed film in the true spaghetti-western style, with Ennio Marricone adding to the soundtrack as he had  for Sergio Leone’s films which featured Clint Eastwood.  However, he tackled a more serious issue than that of the typical pulp western of revenge, show-downs, and gun-battle one-upmanship.  Django Unchained is a seriously nutty “comedy” that elicits a sober discussion on enslavement, and its portrayal over the years by slaves to Hollywood.  Put bluntly, he does not employ mushy sentimental platitudes a la Spielberg in Amistad or The Color Purple.  It is about the deadly craziness of racism and slavery’s particular horrors.

“Django” stars Jamie Foxx, Kerry Washington, Leonardo DiCaprio, and the incredible German actor, Christopher Waltz, for whom Tarantino wrote delightful, erudite, highfalutin exchanges (as he did for Waltz in Inglourious Bastards).   He also wrote a lot of inflammatory dialogue for the white guys and some “domesticated” Blacks, including generous use of the “n” word.  Tarantino’s love for Japanese samurai films is evident in lots blood splattering, gushing, and spraying.

Dr. King Shultz (Waltz), a meticulous record keeper, is a bounty hunter who tracks wanted men: Dead or Alive.  He’s masquerading as a traveling dentist, evidenced by the oversize spring-mounted molar that jounces and wiggles on top of his horse cart as it rumbles along .  During a chance meeting in the woods at night, he comes across Django, an escaped slave in a chain gang.  Shultz frees him because  he knows where the bad guys are and elicits his help.  Django agrees only if Shultz helps find his wife, Broomhilda (an obvious play on the name Brunhilda of Wagnerian lore), played by Kerry Washington.  She is a slave at Calvin Candie’s Mississippi plantation.  When they ride into a town, the townsfolk are shocked:  “Looka there!  A n- – – – – on a horse!”  and dumbstruck.   A tavern owner shouts, “Get that n – – – – outta here!”  Over beers, Shultz tells Django that bounty hunting  is “like slavery, a flesh-for-cash business.”  He convinces Django to play his valet so as to come off more a business man than bounty hunter, and sends him off to a costume shop.  Django emerges dressed as Gainsborough’s  The Blue Boy  (Tarantino does have a wicked sense of cultural reference).   To his credit, Tarantino uses flashbacks sparingly; showing them only to flesh out character, such as Django and his wife and his early days as a slave.

Many scenes are shot through with gory brutality wreaked on blacks that are difficult to stomach, one of whipping a half-naked woman for breaking a few eggs.  Shultz and Django rile up white slave owners who resort to forming a hooded posse (precursors to the Klan?) who complain about the hand-made hoods- the eye holes, especially, which is hilarious; much needed levity in this bloody, violent film.  In one scene, Shultz asks Django about Broomhilda’s name, then tells him the German myth, how the hero, Siegfried rescues Brunhilda.  He then convinces Django to act like a slaver himself, to ingratiate themselves with Candie,  outfitting him in fine, well-to-do cowboy attire and a beautiful, hi-steppin’ horse, on which he cuts quite a figure.

By now, almost half-way into the near three hour film, I was getting impatient- when would meet we Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio)?  After witnessing a gruesome contest between slaves egged on by white plantation hands, involving a slave, d’Artagnan (Eto Assando), they arrive at  Candie’s plantation, CandiLand.   Candie is handsome, rich, smooth-talking, corrupt, and evil.  He stages a bloody wrestling-to–the-death matches between slaves in a gorgeously appointed room while guests drink and dine, oohing and ahhhing as they shrink from blood spatters.   Broomhilda is there, severely punished for trying to escape.  Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson, made up like, as one critic said, Uncle Ben), is Candie’s kowtowing, simpering house slave with his own agenda, who literally hangs over Candie’s chair at the head of the table.  He bows and nods as Candie explains to his guests why slaves don’t revolt, using a skull to illustrate.  At one point, Shultz is visibly appalled; Stephen asks Django why it doesn’t bother him, being Black himself.  Django answers that Shultz is German, “I’m more used to Americans than he is.”

One scene in particular: Shultz gets Candie’s goat by mentioning the slave d’Artagnan, telling him that the man who wrote The Three Musketeers, Alexander Dumas, was Black.  Candie loses it spectacularly, in a mad rage.  It’s fair to say that Christopher Waltz carries the film.  When both Candie and Shultz  are literally no longer in the picture (Shultz had a trick up his sleeve) near the end, the film becomes predictable.  Django turns himself in to spare his wife.  But he has an out: money- lots of it.  The ending is, of course, an absolute blood-bath, no one is spared, not even Candie’s toady, incestuous sister, Lara Lee (Laura Cayouette).  Django gives Stephen his comeuppance, too.  There are horrific explosions and a happy ending.   Django impresses Broomhilda with his horse’s dressage, then the couple ride off into a Gone with the Wind-like sunset.  Django becomes a legend for Blacks, almost like Toussaint L’Ouverture.

Tarantino is known to tap “has been” actors for his films.  In Django, the TV actor Don Johnson plays a sheriff, and film star Franco Nero who was in the original Django  a decade or so ago, is seen as one of Candie’s guests at the wrestling match.  The film is up for several Academy Awards.  See it now!

This review can also be read in an abbreviated version at www.socialistaction.org

The Great American Symphony Orchestra

by Anthony J. Cirone.  Galesville, MD:  Meredith Music Publications.  2011.

The Great American Symphony Orchestra is an informative, well-written overview of how a symphony orchestra operates.  It is a primer, an outline, a guidebook, not an in depth exploration or analysis.  It is not Ball Four, or The Paper Lion.  I attend San Francisco Symphony performances frequently, and over the years have developed a number of questions about just how does all of this come about and what keeps it going.  Cirone answered many of my questions, especially about the organizational structure of the symphony.  What you see on the stage is only the visible tip or a rather large enterprise.  In his Appendix B he lists the many departments that support and administer the orchestra.  He says the ratio of support staff to orchestra members is one-to-one, but it seems to me like it must be more than that.  There are many people behind the scenes that make a symphony orchestra possible.

Cirone was percussionist with the San Francisco Symphony from 1965 to 2001.  During this long tenure he served under Music Directors Seiji Ozawa, Edo DeWaart, Herbert Blomstedt, and Michael Tilson Thomas and noted guest conductors such as Leonard Bernstein, Igor Stravinsky, Aaron Copland, Eugene Ormandy, Kurt Mazur, Rafael Kubelik, and James Levine.  He has vast knowledge of the symphony and its personalities. I wish he would share more of what he knows.  What you get in this book is the public tour.  The Symphony as it would like to have itself presented.

Throughout the book he stresses the dedication demanded of the musicians to reach the high level or performance required of orchestra musicians.  It is an arduous process to create a symphony orchestra musician that begins early in life and continues throughout.  He describes in detail the training that musicians must undergo, the audition process for admission to the Symphony, which is very interesting, the rehearsals in preparation for a concert, the process of moving a symphony orchestra on a tour, the expenses of a symphony orchestra and its sources of funding.  There is a very nice chapter on Arthur Fiedler and his tenure presiding over the San Francisco Pops.  I was very interested in the role of the conductor and how the conductor shapes the character of the orchestra.  I would like to have heard more about the relations between the musicians within the symphony.  These are people who spend a lot of time together and are a rather close knit group that continues over years.  These very intimate relationships which he talks about only in generalities.  He is very discreet about the family business.  One point that he obliquely touches on, but does so repeatedly, is that developing extraordinary musical skill stunts young people in other areas of their development.

Professional musicians practice constantly; in fact, they become slaves to their instruments.  Even as young children, these artists-to-be spent years developing technique and preparing etudes for lessons — time that often replaced social activities. (p. 25)

Students who excel as music majors at the undergraduate level and want to pursue graduate-level studies in this field love to perform and have no other strong interest. (p. 39)

Although members of a family have hobbies, this is not always the case with symphony artists, many of whom have no interests outside of music. . . To  excel in any one area takes a great amount of energy and when family obligations are added into the mix, little time is left for anything else in a busy musician’s schedule. (p. 18)

This theme of the personal and social cost of producing high caliber musicians recurs throughout the book although he does not develop it in detail or illustrate it with specific anecdotes.  But I have the sense that there is some regret or ambivalence about his life as an orchestra musician when he weighs what he has missed in terms of his personal life against the notable achievements of a symphony musician.

Professional musicians spend an inordinate amount of time practicing in order to maintain technique and learn new music.  Besides juggling a major orchestra schedule, many players perform in chamber music ensembles or hold teaching positions in universities and conservatories; others compose, conduct, and participate in a variety of music-related activities.  These never-ending endeavors leave little time to master the personal life skills so necessary for enduring friendships and close relationships. (p. 197)

This de-emphasis of the personal is also reflected in how the book is written. The book is detailed and engagingly written.  He includes anecdotes from his personal experience that add interest and color to the narrative, but his anecdotes are generally not revealing of himself.  This is not a personal perspective on a life in the symphony.  It is not about his personal point of view on the symphony, it is written almost in a journalistic style that concentrates on the facts and the processes, while at the same time keeping the reporter’s subjectivity in the background.  I think it is in keeping with the mentality of a player in a symphony orchestra.  Symphony musicians are team players par excellence.  Individualism is discouraged.  The symphony musician must suppress his own idiosyncratic interpretations of the music to create a unified whole in the context of the group.  The individual musicians are submerged into this well-integrated totality.  He wrote the book as a member of the symphony, who executed his part flawlessly, carefully observant of the smallest details, but very discreet in his choice of what to report, and otherwise kept his mouth shut.

The other point that impressed me is the conservatism of this music and the players who perform it.  The demands of the profession foster a very conservative, structured lifestyle and personality.  There is great reverence for the printed score.  Punctuality is vital.  Interdependence is understood and taken for granted.  People who are unable to subject themselves to the regimen necessary to achieve the high level of technical proficiency and maintain it over years are weeded out of a symphony orchestra.  They will never even get close to one.  People without the even temperedness and tolerance necessary to be in close quarters with the same 100+ people for much of the time including traveling for months on end together cannot be in a symphony orchestra.

This book helped me understand why I have never been able to warm up to symphony music.  Although I often attend symphonic concerts, it is not to hear the Symphony.  I am far more interested in the soloists, usually pianists or violinists.  I like seeing that single figure standing out apart from the mass with his sound soaring out above the rest with spectacular strength and power, dominating the attention of the listeners.  In recent years my tastes have broadened somewhat, having become more interested in the different instruments and intrigued by the myriad ways a symphony orchestra can be used to create communicative sound, but I’ve never been much of a team player, unless I am the captain.  When I studied piano, I studied the solo repertoire, and I never liked to accompany people.  It is perhaps a limitation in my character, but it is reflected in the kind of music I like.  The Symphony interests me, but I do not feel passionate about it.

This book gave me a greater understanding of the organizational structure of a symphony orchestra, some of its inner workings, and especially the wholehearted dedication demanded of its players and the high cost it exacts on their personal lives.  I would like to see something that would fill out this picture more in terms of a personal perspective, an introspective look at an orchestra and its musicians.  But this book is a good, solid introduction for anyone who attends the Symphony.