There was still some Saturday San Francisco sunshine left to get out into after I broke free of Fred Scott's eloquent and original book (as described and quoted in the post below).
Fred Scott talks about 'urban interventions' approvingly, and I suspect he would approve of this long-ago but durable intervention in wet cement. It was most likely unauthorized, but has now been overlaid in its turn by the intervention of a municipal worker wielding a can of official orange spray paint. Jackhammers and excavations will probably follow. The outlaw imperative anciently set in cement appears to be living on borrowed time.
At San Francisco Ballet last night (speaking of dance) I saw the opening of the season's Program 6 consisting of Balanchine's Stravinsky Violin Concerto, Wheeldon's Within the Golden Hour, and finally (painfully) West Side Story Suite by Jerome Robbins.
Wheeldon was the highlight for me. All three principal couples were splendid. Below is an image of this staging from the web site of Principal Dancer Maria Kochetkova, partnered with Joan Boada.
Surprising fact: Kochetkova (according to her blog biography) "won the solo gold medal in the NBC series Superstars of Dance which was watched by over 10 million viewers."
Kochetkova's ten million viewers shrink a bit when we recall that her fellow San Francisco Ballet Principal Yuan Yuan Tan (a.k.a. the finest dancer on the planet, shown here in Nutcracker) performs at holiday-time on Chinese television for an audience in excess of one billion human souls.
Tan danced last night in the Balanchine piece, most memorably a long adagio with Damian Smith called Aria II. Stravinsky revealed late in life that this passage of music was written as an apology to his wife for his love affair with another woman (and Balanchine would not have lacked for material from his own biography to parallel Stravinsky's). The characterizations are extremely subtle and complex – guilt, defiance, sympathy. How confidently these two veterans inhabited the whole space of the vast stage. Lighting designer Lisa J. Pinkham gave them cavernous shadows to emphasize an intimacy most often locked in angular conflict, yet sometimes (briefly) melting into concord. The duet ends with Tan leaning back in acquiescence as her partner gently covers her eyes with his hand.